In this article, Richard Rothstein is critical of high school textbooks–and of our media in general–for failing to identify the true causes of de facto segregation.
Either they barely mention the role of government in segregating neighborhoods by race or they imply that it happened naturally (de facto), without any government intervention.
He writes:
One of the worst examples of our historical blindness is the widespread belief that our continued residential racial segregation, North and South, is “ de facto ,” not the result of explicit government policy but instead the consequence of private prejudice, economic inequality, and personal choice to self-segregate. But in truth, our major metropolitan areas were segregated by government action. The federal government purposefully placed public housing in high-poverty, racially isolated neighborhoods (pdf) to concentrate the black population, and with explicit racial intent, created a whites-only mortgage guarantee program to shift the white population from urban neighborhoods to exclusively white suburbs (pdf). The Internal Revenue Service granted tax-exemptions for charitable activity to organizations established for the purpose of enforcing neighborhood racial homogeneity. State-licensed realtors in virtually every state, and with the open support of state regulators, supported this federal policy by refusing to permit African Americans to buy or rent homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Federal and state regulators sanctioned the refusal of the banking, thrift, and insurance industries to make loans to homeowners in other-race communities. Prosecutors and police sanctioned, often encouraged, thousands of acts of violence against African Americans who attempted to move to neighborhoods that had not been designated for their race.
Rothstein compares our present moral blindness to the Truth and Reconciliation commission of South Africa that followed the end of apartheid.
Public policy must be built on a firm foundation of facing the past honestly, not by evasion or lies or indifference.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need more Richard Rothsteins.
LikeLike
Some of this is undoubtedly historically true, but it seems to ignore the voluntary tendency to self-segregate.
We lived in a small New England town. There were three back families. They all lived next to each other and to us.
I play soccer. Most teams have developed a strong ethnic identity: Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Brazilian. My own has a statistically unlikely concentration of Scots.
When I came to the States, I was amazed at the ethnic neighborhoods in almost every large New England city.
As a graduate student, I was also astonished at the distribution of minorities in the dining halls.
The government played no role in any of these phenomena.
LikeLike
It is strange, isn’t it? I grew up in an American community such as yours; we all went to the same ’60’s h.s. The blacks sat together in the cafeteria; those of us who had friends there felt free to sit with them, tho’ they did not free to sit at the rest of the tables. Yet I found it quite shocking, as an adult in the late ’70’s, to see a ‘black’ town on LI, demarcated by certain streets. I spent early adulthood in an integrated community in Brooklyn, & was shocked again in the ’90’s to see a NJ town divided into black & white by one street. Yet it was all just an extension of what I’d grown up with, in my high school cafeteria.
I do not know if I agree with your term ‘self-segregated’. It applies without doubt to neighborhoods of recent immigrants in the NY-NJ metro area, but those neighborhoods change as those groups are assimilated. The black American culture is not such a simple story. In my chi-chi NJ suburb I see Indians, Chinese move in, but blacks only when they have intermarried with whites.
LikeLike
There is much truth in what you say. The black community, for the most part, feels more comfortable staying just where they are – but perhaps that is due to the way they have been historically treated by the white community when they have attempted to move into “white” neighborhoods. Racism is still alive and well in mainstream America.
LikeLike
Rothstein also seem to ignore the reality of “white flight” when busing was imposed only on urban areas and did not extend to suburbs.
LikeLike
Bernie: most prejudice will lock in at age 4; what you see is a pattern but I believe it is chicken and egg…. reciprocal causality. For example, I am 75 , and in the neighborhood where I lived my parent who was French married an Irish person and they had to go live across town in the “French” district; another aunt Irish married an Italian and it was hostility even though they all belonged to Catholic churches (i personally was one of the lone dissenters protestant) perhaps you wouldn’t see that in Pennsylvania but I did see it in my city/town…. I think the only lesson from all of this I can sum up at my age (trying to be realistic but not wholly cynical) is the song from “south Pacific” “You have to be carefully taught”….
LikeLike
Unfortunately, I believe what Mr. Rothstein says is true. And Bernie, believe it or not, I agree with you as well. Integration is more than the mixing of races. It’s not successful if they self segregate in the school cafeteria. My daughter was best friends with a black girl in elementary school, but she was devastated when this girl was no longer her friend in middle school, refusing to sit with her at lunch and preferring her other black friends. However, that was over twenty years ago.
There is hope. As individual ethnic groups commingle through marriage and other close relationships, the lines get blurred. My former high school students who graduated over the last few years from various ethnic backgrounds have continued to maintain their multicultural friendships. I see it through their connections on Facebook. Social media has done a lot to shrink the world.
If we blurred those governmental predetermined borders between city and suburb in regards to school boundary lines – think of the possibilities. Just a thought.
LikeLike
You’re so right about “blurring the borders.” It was tried in Michigan; alas, the Supreme Court shot it down:
“Lost chance for school desegregation led to today’s woes”
“A huge victory was won when a district court ruled the Detroit Board of Education had created and perpetuated school segregation in the city as a result of official policies. Not only did the court order the school board to submit Detroit-only desegregation plans but significantly, it also ordered state officials to submit desegregation plans encompassing 53 communities in the three-county metropolitan area.”
However, hopes were soon dashed. At the Supreme Court, the lawsuit lost by a 5-4 vote.
http://peoplesworld.org/lost-chance-for-school-desegregation-led-to-today-s-woes/
LikeLike
Nowhere does the effect of state sanctioned segregation stand more starkly than the post apocalyptic hulk of the once great Detroit:
From ISA Today: “Wall that once divided races in Detroit remains, teaches”
“Blacks lived on this side, whites was living on the other side. … That was the way it was.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/01/detroit-race-wall/2127165/
And don’t forget that segregation was maintained until well into the 1950’s in the auto industry, largely due to pressure from the UAW. White workers went on strike when a black was promoted to a skilled section of a plant.
LikeLike
Your point is well illustrated by the book, All – Bright Court by Connie Porter. Connie grew up in the projects of Lackawanna when the steel industry was thriving (outside of Buffalo, NY). Black families were recruited to come there to work in the steel factories back in the 50s. Her story follows a smart young black boy and his struggles growing up in the projects of Lackawanna. He has the opportunity to attend a private school in Buffalo and grows to resent the differences between the two lifestyles he observes.
Buffalo is filled with ethnic communities – the original map of clusters is fascinating. We have Greek, Ukrainian, Polish, Irish, Italian, Hispanic, African American, Native American, etc., and each one has a Festival plus other celebrations each year. The death of the steel industry and the beginning of a medical corridor is changing these lines as old slums are being torn down to make way for high class housing for professionals who are looking for the excitement of urban life. It should be an interesting thirty years which will definitely end up having an impact on public education (whether it is positive or negative is yet to be determined).
LikeLike
It is patently false that the UAW maintained segregation.
While the auto plants in and around Detroit employed many people from the South and Appalachia who had regressive racial sentiments, the UAW has a long history of fighting racism.
Indeed, one of the major opponents of the UAW in its early years, before it received legal recognition for the companies, was the Black Legion, a Klan-type organization that used violence against blacks and unionists alike.
Strikes over black employment in the skilled trades were wildcat strikes, without union sanction, and were strenuously opposed by the union, which from its earliest days had far more progressive views on race than most of American society.
Your anti-union falsehoods will not play here.
LikeLike
“Numerous antiblack strikes occurred in the early 1940s, precipitated by the promotion of a small number of black workers into an all-white job area.”
Racism: From Slavery to Advanced Capitalism by Carter A. Wilson p152
LikeLike
“One of the more serious strikes occurred at Packard plant involve local 190 of the UAW. In the strike, 25,000 white workers walked off their jobs in protest over the placement of three black workers into an all white skilled area.”
LikeLike
You’ve somehow labeled my comment as anti… something; the UAW of the thirties and forties reflected the times; check out these photos of white UAW members beating a black “scab.”
Walter P. Reuther Library (8790) 1941 Ford Strike, violence, Dearborn, Michigan
https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/3411
Evidently many black union members crossed picket lines, feeling that they were systematically excluded from decision making in their own union. Walter Reuther went on to speak out against segregation in the coming years.
LikeLike
Any thought that you might have simply been misinformed is quickly disproved by a cursory check of your “sources.” In fact, you do seem to be intent on consciously spreading falsehoods.
While auto workers did walk off the job when blacks made their way into the skilled trades – before that they’d been consigned to the hardest, dirtiest jobs, such as the foundries – those walk-outs were wildcat strikes, unsanctioned by the union, which from its earliest days had anti-racist policies that were years ahead of their times.
A cursory check of the Packard strike you refer to shows that it was caused by firings, violation of seniority rights, barring the negotiating committee from the shop floor, and failure to remedy dangerous shop conditions. (news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat1949025&id)
Indeed, reaching out to and including black workers was a primary strategy of the UAW before it received company recognition. Coleman Young, much later Mayor of Detroit, was an organizer in the black community for the UAW in its early years.
As for the photo you link to, it in fact shows armed black workers, with the caption stating that UAW members left the picket line with pipes to attack scabs. So, in fact, what you claim to be evidence disproves your initial point.
If you’re going to lie, you should try to make it a little harder to disprove your false statements. After all, this is a site for educators and people interested in education, and casual falsehoods will be exposed.
Take your disinformation back to the Koch Brother’s Center for Union Facts, since it will be easily refuted here.
LikeLike
Mr. Fiorello,the ad homenim attack is SO unnecessary. I linked the wrong phot in the series:
The is the correct one:
https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/3417
In the photo you see a white man with a pipe, who appears to be being restrained by other white workers assisting a bloody African American. The book “Racism: from Slavery to Advanced Capitalism”
Is a scholarly work siting sources. I am a truth seeker who us undeserving of your vitriol.
LikeLike
I guess one shouldn’t take a person attack personally. You, Mr. Fiorello, besides calling me a liar, associate me with the Koch brothers; I really hope you’ll reflect on your tack for future dialogs. For the record like the newly elected Seattle council member
“I Wear the Badge of Socialist With Honor”
An amazing speech:
“My colleagues and I in Socialist Alternative will stand shoulder to shoulder with all those who want to fight for a better world. But working people need a new political party, a mass organization of the working class, run by—and accountable to—themselves. A party that will struggle and campaign in their interest, and that will boldly advocate for alternatives to this crisis-ridden system.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/177846/i-wear-badge-socialist-honor
LikeLike
Try again: your second linked photo also shows nothing of the kind. In fact, it shows the strikebreaker being protected by union stewards/marshals.
The photo was taken during the strike to organize Ford, the last of the Big Three auto companies to recognize the union, and the violence connected to it was related to Henry Ford’s use of strikebreakers, not racial animosities.
I accused you of dishonest argumentation, and stand by that charge, given that you are unable to refute my points, and insist on interpreting images in a transparently false way.
LikeLike
Rather than play the victim, please refute my argument, and I’ll be happy to apologize. You were the one who made an outrageously false claim that libeled an organization that has done far more than most to end discrimination in this country.
I rebutted your statements about the UAW maintaining segregation in Detroit – segregation that was real and extensive, but hardly the fault of the union – point for point, and showed how the photos you linked to proved the opposite if what you claimed. You then followed with the non sequitur of linking to a speech by a recently-elected socialist in Seattle. What does that have to do with the issues under discussion?
If the link was intended to demonstrate your progressive bona fides, it contrasts sharply with your false statements about the UAW.
As public school teachers, we and our unions have been unfairly scapegoated and vilified for problems not of our making, with the people vilifying us also making the grossly dishonest claim that they are the upholders of the civil right movement. Your blaming the UAW for deeply entrenched racism in Detroit and Michigan is analogous to that, thus my heated response.
LikeLike
Michael: I wrote to you a few weeks back noting that I quoted you on another blog about “bread and roses”…. I live in the 495 belt outside Boston and it is an important resource/reference for me but I misplaced your blog quote…. I am writing today because the Zinn history project reminds me that it is Jan 11 the anniversary of the Bread and Roses but our weather has been so bad this week that I can’t get to the city (i’ve worked in this area for over 40 years with about 35 cities and towns from a central “school” office — not state operated) …. would you mind posting for me the information on “bread and roses” ; I remembered that you quoted students from the Boston colleges came out to Lawrence and took the side of the “corporate” managers…. I personally believe that teachers need to take the side of the union workers. Just as an aside I have one friend who is 75 and her mom was a union organizer on the docks with the workers; she told me their home was “bugged” by microphones and electronic equipment even back then.
you could send me a website for your blog at jeanhaverhill@aol.com
thanks
LikeLike
District 9.
LikeLike
There was a very good extended radio piece on this issue and its history on the public radio program, This American Life. The program was entitled, “House Rules”.
The transcript and audio file are available here:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules
The work is based on reporting from ProPublica.
LikeLike
Chicago is one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, where the West Side and South Side are predominantly black and low income, with a few exceptions. I personally witnessed how block busting by realtors played a major role in preventing integration in South Side neighborhoods in the mid 60s.
I was born and raised on the South Side and, while there had been some HIspanics who attended my public schools while I was growing up, it wasn’t until high school that I went to school with blacks.
I loved the diversity at my racially integrated South Side neighborhood high school. I hung out with so many kids from different ethnicities that we dubbed ourselves “The United Nations.” However, that was not to last.
After one black family moved on my block, realtors started regularly contacting white home owners and scared them into believing that the values of their homes would dramatically decline if they didn’t sell their homes immediately. Realtors did this en masse throughout the South Side and It was very effective. South Side neighborhoods went from being predominantly white to predominantly black within just a couple years. I raged against moving, but I lost the battle and spent my senior year at a segregated suburban high school.
After college, I moved back to my city and have lived here ever since, in the few racially integrated neighborhoods that are on the North Side.
LikeLike
Long Island is one of the most segregated, if not *the* most segregated areas in the nation. Restrictive covenants were the norm.
LikeLike
“Chicago Most Segregated City In America, Despite Significant Improvements In Last Decade”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/chicago-most-segregated-c_n_1244098.html
LikeLike
My hat is off to you, Chi-Town Res, for being in the park in ’68! I was a kid watching all this on television and extraordinarily moved by it. I spent my late twenties in your wonderful town. What a great, diverse, endlessly fascinating city it is. I have many, many fond memories of it.
LikeLike
You are indeed correct. Levittown, often spoken of as the archetypal postwar suburb, had restrictive covenants on deeds prohibiting sales to blacks for years.
In NYC, the same was true for rentals at Stuyvesant Town, then owned and managed by Metropolitan Life.
LikeLike
In Chicago in 1959, shortly after the City Council approved building what became the notorious Robert Taylor Homes, Mayor Richard J. Daley (the older Mayor Daley, not the younger), literally built a barrier through the middle of the city to separate the black South Side from the rest of Chicago. Federal highway funds had been approved for the building of the many-laned Dan Ryan Expressway to route traffic out of the downtown area known as the Loop. Daley rerouted the highway so that it went along Wentworth Avenue, the traditional dividing line between the white and black areas of the city. Infamously, Langston Hughes had once been beaten for crossing over this line. The Daley design had the downtown portion of the highway sitting on top of a concrete wall that separated Daley’s own downtown neighborhood from the black South Side.
LikeLike
One Daley’s death, the great Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman wrote a hilarious piece called “Daley’s Gone.” A couple of verses and the chorus:
When John Kennedy wanted to be President
He knew what to do
He called up Mayor Daley
because he was Irish too.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Heaven
Was like the 11th Ward,
And you had to know the right people
To get your just reward.
There never was another man
Who could inspire more love or hate
If you were in the park
And it was 1968.
Daley’s gone, one more round, Daley’s gone.
LikeLike
That would be Grant Park, in 1968, during the Democratic Convention, when Chicago police attacked unarmed protesters with billy clubs, tear gas and stink bombs. And, yes, I was there.
The Daley machine didn’t die after Richard J. Daley’s 21 year reign though. Following a few brief years with other Democratic mayors, his son Richie (Richard M. Daley) was mayor for 22 years and is the predecessor of our current mayor Rahm Emmanuel. And so the machine continues.
LikeLike
Thanks, Robert! I attribute my progressive mindedness to my mom, who was very active in Civil Rights and political arenas –despite getting a lot of grief for doing that from my father.
I love my city, too, and have always felt blessed to be from here. However, due to ongoing, politically-based issues, and this particularly brutal winter, I am now considering retiring to a warmer climate.
LikeLike
The Dan Ryan expressway runs from north to south, so it separates neighborhoods in the west part of the South Side from neighborhoods in the east part of the South Side. (Technically, we have no “east side” due to Lake Michigan.) The location of the Dan Ryan was intended to protect Daley’s own mostly white, near Southwest Side neighborhood of Bridgeport. For the most part, it did just that, as most white Bridgeport families remained, as they did in other Southwest Side neighborhoods as well. Though Bridgeport is more diverse today, it’s integrated primarily with Hispanics and Asians.
LikeLike
Ah, you beat me to it. If 90/94 had extended directly south, it looks like it would have split Bridgeport in two.
LikeLike
Thanks for that clarification. Yes, I remember now, that the Dan Ryan runs East-West. My comments come from a biography of Daley. Rereading that passage, I see that Daley had the route of the Dan Ryan changed in order to separate his neighborhood from the black neighborhood.
LikeLike
Yikes, I meant North-South, of course. I really should edit these post before hitting the send button!
LikeLike
It’s confusing because Interstate 94 runs east-west across the country. However, in Chicago, it runs north/south. However, that does not stop IDOT from posting confusing signs that say west when that really means north and east when that really means south.
LikeLike
Exactly, Randal. The Kennedy Expressway portion of I-94 was built before the Dan Ryan and extending that directly south would have cut straight through Bridgeport. Daley I made sure the Dan Ryan was rerouted to the eastern boundary of his beloved Bridgeport.
LikeLike
The East Side where fast Eddie Vrdolyak lived is east of the Ryan, even if it is no longer predominantly white.
LikeLike
Technically you’re correct. However, most Chicagoans would look askance if you mentioned the East Side because of the lake and the fact that the neighborhood is a small area on the far south side by Hegewisch, which Vrdolyak’s ward covered as well, that’s more commonly referred to as the Southeast Side.
LikeLike
Except for some pockets like The Gap and other gentrified areas south of the Loop (on the near South Side), the only neighborhood on the South Side that’s east of the Ryan and has long been integrated is Hyde Park, which is primarily because the University of Chicago is located there.
LikeLike
I’m sure your main point about Richard J. Daley is true, but in case anyone is confused, Daley didn’t live in a downtown neighborhood. He lived in Bridgeport, a South Side neighborhood.
LikeLike
Right. Richard J Daley’s son, Richard M (aka “Richie”) lived in Bridgeport, too. It wasn’t until after gentrification of the south Loop area, under Richie’s reign, that the Daleys moved downtown.
LikeLike
Buffalo has one, too – The Kensington Expressway (Route 33). There’s calls by the African American community to tear it down.
LikeLike
I live in a large city in California (Long Beach). On my block in a middle income neighborhood there are people from different religions, ethnic groups and races. We have Muslims, Christians and Jews. We have whites, blacks and Hispanics, although the neighborhood is predominantly white. It’s been this way for thirty years.
Sixty years ago my own extended family was almost totally Italian-American. In fact I remember one aunt who was always regarded as “odd” or “different.” One day I finally asked my mother, “What is so odd about Aunt Angie?” My mother responded in a hushed voice, “She is not Italian.” Aunt Angie was of Irish descent!
Now my family has almost all religions (and no religions). Many ethnic groups are represented among the younger people. Last year at a wedding, a cousin announced (can’t remember the context) “Soon we’ll have black children in our family.” I hurried up to this cousin and whispered in her ear “We already have a black cousin and his mom is here.”
“Who?” gasped the speaker. I explained that our first cousin had married a woman whose attorney father is part black and that cousin had a new baby.
We are now in a transitional period where ethnic and racial groups are rapidly “finding one another.” In the not-so-distant future, these differences will disappear. We’re already seeing this in parts of California.
As California goes…
LikeLike
America is becoming no longer a white bread nation. It’s a beautiful thing.
LikeLike
I cannot reconcile the idea that race is a concept that isn’t scientifically valid and the idea that segregation by racial categories is of any importance. If segregation matters is it economic and social differences not racial ones.
LikeLike
Agreed, the racial achievement gap in test scores is proably really a gender gap. When the test scores are only broken down by race and not gender, that remains hidden. I totally agree with Pedro Nogera in that African American male students are the “canaries in the coal mine”. Sorting students by birth year works for many students but not all. Unfortunately NCLB.RTTT has just further aggrevated that problem with the U.S. education system.
LikeLike
Poverty is the issue, not race, not gender. That’s where the achievement gap really lies.
LikeLike
A scholar in Buffalo did a study and discovered family income was the biggest indicator of success in school.
LikeLike
Ellen:
I would be more interested in research that examined the choices, actions and specific education-related circumstances of those who come from disadvantaged groups who did in fact achieve educational and life success.
LikeLike
Bernie, this is not from a study, but my own observations as a teacher who worked closely with such students. Ultimately the bottom line is ability and drive. If the child took school seriously, paid attention in class, and did the work, they did well in school – even if their home life was less than desirable. The gifted school I worked in was not limited to white children, but had many poor black children who were bright and motivated. But, my comments include other children I observed during my evenings tutoring in the homes. One sibling might be barely passing (or even failing), while another would shut themselves up in their room so they could complete their homework undisturbed.
Ability and drive! Two key components for being successful in life.
LikeLike
If I could bring this back to issues in education, what role do you think traditional goepraphically determined school districts and school catchment areas play in SES segregation? If we want neighborhood schools to strengthen neighborhood identities, are we not also reinforcing SES segregation found in these neighborhoods?
LikeLike
How typical of TE, to try to garner support for school choice and charters by insinuating that schools and districts are guilty of promoting segregation by serving children in their neighborhoods.
Don’t fall for the bait, folks. And don’t bother mentioning the important roles that magnet programs and magnet schools play in desegregation, because that’s already been described to him numerous times.
LikeLike
You think district and catchment lines don’t reinforce neighborhood SES segregation? Of course they do.
LikeLike
Magnet schools are choice schools and I am in favor of them. I am in favor of students having the ability to choose. I am posting about the traditional all and only geographic admission system that has been traditionally used.
LikeLike
When you make no mention of magnets, you are campaigning for privatized schools that are OUTSIDE the regulatory oversight of the school district, have no democratic representation on their boards and which rob communities of THEIR choice of a neighborhood school. As demonstrated in cities like Chicago, charters have led to increased segregation, not integration.
LikeLike
When I criticize public school admission criteria, I always talk about traditional zoned public schools. When schools are criticized for creaming students and destroying neighborhoods, I am the first to defend magnet schools like TJ High School in Fairfax County, Virginia.
LikeLike
I also defend magnets that destroy neighborhoods. I do think that the ability to choose can reduce the regulation that any school faces. If parents are forced to send their students to a particular school, the parents will demand control. As a result, the school curriculum will be a compromise and will most likely mirror the education the parents received. Robert Shepard’s desire for innovative curriculum dies I when a school is governed by the majority in a geographic district.. Innovation requires allowing diffuse innovative families to join together.
LikeLike
Your campaigns are delimiting. You defend magnets that cream because you want schools for gifted students. You do not typically campaign for integration or school choice within the regulatory oversight of districts.
LikeLike
You are showing your prejudices and your limited knowledge of democratically elected school boards, the makeup of which can be regulated. Like with the Local School Councils in Chicago, the law can require representation from certain numbers of parents, community members, teachers, the principal and a student in the case of high schools. IL law also requires that members attend an 18 hour training program. That’s how you can prevent rogue boards like the one in NYS.
LikeLike
I think I understand a winner take all system. The curriculum that offends the fewest households wins. Not the best for each student (is there a curriculum that is the best for all students?), but the one the parents remember.
LikeLike
You continue to generalize and discount the many options that already exist in a lot of neighborhood public schools.
At some schools, such as my local high school, for years, students have been given the choice of IB, Arts, Vocational and a Military Academy. Vocational was eliminated not long ago by our mayoral controlled district due to Obama/Duncan’s “College and Career” push –so there are fewer choices due to your beloved corporate “reforms.”
LikeLike
There might be 10 IB schools in my state, I am not sure because out of district IB schools are not relevant to an in district student. Alas no arts schools, no language immersion, no military school ( though an active FFA chapter in one high school). My district is the ideal one for the orthodox posters here. All zoned schools, some with 60% on free and reduced price lunch, other schools with less than 20%.
LikeLike
That’s a local issue, not a national matter.
Many posters here believe in choice within and across school districts and are only opposed to choice outside of and unregulated by districts, which siphon public funds, such as charters and voucher schools.
We’ve discussed both of these issues way too many times before. I’m all finished here.
LikeLike
Cosmic,
It was your use off the words “such as my local school district” that caused me to think we were talking about local issues. I apologize for not understanding that you were actually talking about national matters.
Many posters here condemn, in the strongest terms, the creaming of students by choice schools. Many posters here condemn, in the strongest terms, the destruction of communities that comes from neighbors sending their students to different schools. Many who post here condemn, in the strongest terms, the diversion of funds from traditional zoned neighborhood schools to schools that do not take everyone who applies.
In other words, many who post here argue that the specialized, tailored education that is possible with parents choosing a school shall remain only available to those with sufficient wealth. They get Montessori, they get Waldorf, they get progressive educations.
LikeLike
You advocate for choice outside of the regulatory oversight of local school districts and my examples demonstrate how those issues are, should be and can be addressed locally, not through corporate “reform” policies pitched nationally.
I don’t know anyone here who argues that family income should determine the quality of education a child receives. We promote choice WITHIN school districts, for which many options are available. You have been told this MANY times and choose to ignore. Instead of constantly bugging us with your thousands of repetitive posts for ONE kind of choice, charters outside the purview of regulatory oversight, go deal with your local district if you have a problem with their policies and practices and stop trying to foist the federal corporate “reform” agenda on everyone else, as if that’s the only option..
LikeLike
Cosmic,
You mischaracterized my posts. If you go back and retread them, you will find that I advocate in favor of families being able to choose educational approaches that fit the needs and aspirations of their students. I have never said charter schools are the only way to do this and have often brought up district run magnet schools like Thomas Jefferson High School as examples of choice schools.
LikeLike
Reread, not retread, of course. Did you find a post when I criticized any choice school?
LikeLike
TE: If “parents [are] choosing the school,” why won’t that lead to their choosing the education most likely to mirror the one they received? Are you in favor of STUDENTS being able to choose or PARENTS being able to choose? There is often a HUGE difference.
You usually make sense but seen to be contradicting yourself here.
LikeLike
I think a substantial minority of parents will choose a different education from the one they received. The largest private school in my town is a Montessori school, and I suspect that most of those parents did not have a Montessori education themselves.
Dr. Ravitch went to public school and choose to send her children to private school. Her children have chosen to send their children back to public school, though from what posters have said here it seems like an unusually wealthy NYC public school.
The majority of parents, I think, will fall back on the education they received as a reasonable compromise when a curriculum must be determined for all students in a geographic area. The parents that like a progressive approach, a Montessori approach, or a Waldorf approach will not be the overwhelming majority in a catchment area. They will all have to compromise, and the likely compromise will be the approach to education they remember from their youth.
LikeLike
Sometimes parents choice might depend on the needs of a child. Many of us here have indicated that one of our children did not do well in the traditional setting. When given an alternative, we chose it for that child. Let’s remember, one size does not fit all.
LikeLike
I should add that I think student autonomy should grow as students age.
LikeLike
Some charter schools have neighborhood boundaries and do NOT offer transportation. The instances where the neighborhood boundaries enclose white neighborhood sure give the impression that the purpose of the school is segregation.
At least KIPP schools don’t try to do that.
LikeLike
KIPP and other no-excuses charter schools are notoriously segregated. However, white and middle income parents are not likely to want their kids attending those military style bootcamp schools, with 5 week trained TFA drill sergeant “teachers.”
LikeLike
Veteran Educator, I do know working class African American families attracted to KIPP since the longer school day is preferable to having their children home alone after school.
LikeLike
Many public schools and/or Boys and Girls Clubs provide after-school services on site for families today, so I think that’s a very poor trade off, since “no excuses” practices amount to child abuse to me.
LikeLike
Getting back to the textbook issue raised by Rothstein… I think it may be WAY to soon to expect such enlightenment as history textbooks elucidating active governmental involvement in ‘de facto’ [not] racism. Judging only from this comment thread, we are all still assimilating our racist context, present & past. However, as a few noted on Rothstein’s comment thread, there are ample texts available for those who [are allowed?] to supplement the curriculum. Personally, I remember just-post-’60’s h.s. learning much from 2 texts: 1 was “The Organization Man”– the other was a text about redlining, REscamming & white flight… I haven’t been able to retrieve it, but many more have been written on the same theme.
LikeLike
What about the fact that textbook publishers turn to Texas, a large purchasers of textbooks, to determine “curriculum” and that a small committee decides which “facts” to include in – say -the history books. My social studies teacher gets mad at the revisionist history being taught. My own daughters’ world history book had very little about Hitler – focusing on how he improved the economy in Germany vs the slaughter of the Jewish population. The design, content, and accuracy of textbooks should be a matter of discussion.
And, also of concern, is what is on those programs used in virtual schools and the educational apps on the iPads. Will the Southern point of view temper the content? Are we leaving out or downplaying evolution to appease the Christian Right? Who should determine what our kids learn? It looks like Pearson has been chosen as the determiner by the Ed reformers. Looking at the leaked questions, can they be trusted? Scarier than it’s effect on teacher’s and children’s psyches, the CCSS could be a determining factor on not only what our future generations actually learn, but how they learn it.
LikeLike
Finding Rothstein’s work was an enormous personal a-ha moment for me. I’ve lived my entire life in two almost inconceivably segregated metropolitan areas, ones where there are 100% white neighborhoods or municipalities literally across the street (or highway, railroad, park, or forest preserve) from 100% black/Hispanic or black ones. I was taught or absorbed the historical explanation that Rothstein has emphatically debunked: that minorities prefer to self-segregate, and the rest of it is just hazy, formless, blameless, and uncontrollable market forces.
However, when it comes to recommendations for promoting integration, I think Rothstein vastly underestimates the power of the traditional zoned school district. He acknowledges that the district arrangement has been a critical force in enabling and perpetuating residential segregation (much along the lines of what Teaching Economist has said in this thread), but he thinks that residential segregation has become so entrenched and protected by physical barriers that it wouldn’t make sense to put school integration before residential integration.
I strongly disagree with this stance, particularly with respect to the dense metropolitan areas where I’ve lived and the metropolitan areas of the midwest, northeast, and mid-Atlantic. In fact, given how rarely fair housing laws are enforced; the unyielding unwillingness of segregated communities to change their zoning laws and create affordable housing; and a complete lack of political interest in more drastic measures like grants for minorities to purchase market value housing in segregated towns, I’d say that integrating traditional school districts might be our only hope to kick-start a meaningful assault on residential segregation, especially in the suburbs.
A natural question, then, would be what’s in it for the currently segregated suburbs? Easy: it’s not only the right thing to do, but it’ll also eliminate the biggest glaring competitive disadvantage of their schools, which is that their kids aren’t exposed to kids or cultures that aren’t exactly like them or their own while at the same time competitive colleges, employers, and the nation in general is getting a lot more diverse.
LikeLike
An excellent point. We need to rethink city and suburb. Excellent reason – the need to introduce diversity at a young age. Don’t expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon – the pushback will be deafening.
LikeLike
Mr. Rangoon: an ad hominem attack is not when someone says to a journalist “check your sources”…. an ad hominem attack is when Dick Armey says to Joan Walsh (Slate/Salon) you are too ugly to be married when she said she disagreed with his political argument. When a journalist is told to check sources that is just what a good editor should do ; but journalism has not been supported by the corporate powers so the skills are being lost and instead of research and information we have public relations and political “communications specialists.”… I have followed Mr. Fiorello for quite some time and I have never known him to make an ad hominem attack…. if there are any editors reading, should I use a different gender/case when I speak of Joan Walsh???? for example : I know when to change professor emeritus do I also have to change ad hominem? I ‘ve forgotten my Latin case endings from 9th grade….
LikeLike