Jaisal Noor and Nikole Hannah-Jones report on the alarming return of segregation in the schools of the south. Hannah-Jones describes a high school in Tuscaloosa that was successfully desegregated but then resegregated as the result of political decisions intended to attract white students by isolating black students. For many black students in Alabama, it is as though the Brown decision never happened. As they note, New York State now has the most segregated schools in the nation, and segregation is deeply entrenched in New York City, especially in its charter schools.
Has the Brown decision been completely forgotten?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Isn’t the charter and blame-the-teacher movement really about finding a politically palatable way to separate “good” students” from “unmotivated/bad” students while generating high income for the charter operators?
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My jaw was about to hit the floor when I saw that this post was linking to the ProPublica story about segregation. Finally, I thought, a post about segregation that isn’t about charter schools. But I see charters get a dig in the last sentence, and of course the first comment on the thread is about charter schools.
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Although the linked presentation talks about racially segregated schools, the real problem is not racially segregated schools but rather SES segregated schools.
The middle and high SES families live in different neighborhoods than the low SES families. The schools that serve the low SES students do not offer academically challenging courses because many/most of the students are working far below grade level, not because the school system is being run by racists. Similarly, the schools that serve the low SES students have a larger percentage of inexperienced teachers because the low SES students are much harder to teach and because the low SES students misbehave much more frequently, both factors that cause the more experienced teachers to either quit teaching or move to schools serving higher SES students who are easier to teach and who do not misbehave as often. Also, the low SES students will always have lower test scores (and almost always have lower VAM-based teacher ratings due to the difficulty teaching classes with many “problem” students), so high-stakes testing reforms will disproportionately cause the low SES schools’ teachers to have low ratings and be discharged — another reason for high turnover in the low SES schools.
But, these factors are all driven primarily — almost exclusively — by SES rather than by race. And, merely mixing the low SES students together with the high SES students will help the low SES students only a little, if at all. Offering academically challenging classes to students performing below grade level would be silly. Adding a few low SES students to a high SES class might reduce the amount of misbehavior relative to an all-low-SES class, but adding more than a few low SES students to the high SES class would simply spread the misbehavior to the high SES students. In either case, the immediate result would be high-SES flight (by white, black, brown, and Asian high SES families, not just whites).
Rather than focus reform efforts on unrealistic and politically unsaleable SES integration efforts, we should be focusing reform efforts on improving the education of the low SES students — by improving the pre-school verbal interactions with adults so the low SES students start kindergarten with the vocabulary/verbal skills/neural networks of the middle/high SES students and by improving behavior in the low SES schools so experienced teachers were more willing to teach in those schools.
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Yes, yes, yes, absolutely! You lost me a little there on the last paragraph, because pre-K will not do a single thing to fix the rampant discipline problems, the dysfunctional home situations, and the other cultural/social problems that make many of these kids well nigh uneducable.
The middle class will move wherever it has to move or do whatever it has to do to keep their kids in relatively safe positive learning environments.
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Jack — Re pre-school for low SES children. My thinking, tracking some research, is that a/the main reason low SES students misbehave so much is that their vocabulary/verbal skills are far behind normal when they start elementary school and fall further behind each year, making school difficult/frustrating so they resort to misbehavior to relieve frustration and gain the peer approval that they cannot achieve via academic achievement. The reason the low SES students start elementary school in such bad shape re vocab/verbal skills is that low SES families — on average — have much less quantity/quality verbal interaction between children and adults starting pretty much from birth. If this research is correct, a possible magic bullet for improving academic achievement/behavior in the low SES schools would be preschool and/or parent training that focused on improving the quantity/quality of the low SES child’s verbal interactions with adults starting at the earliest age possible — ideally age 1.
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I don’t believe in magic bullets, and I don’t think that low verbal skills are the reason they misbehave. Kindergarten vocabulary isn’t that huge for pretty much any kid, but the behavior problems are already evident at that point. The biggest problems are that these kids have never been taught discipline or how to follow directions at home, and many of them are very angry and rebellious. I’ve seen it first hand. Some of these kids are so starved for love, it just breaks your heart.
I understand the allure of magic bullets, but any research indicating that these kids are just frustrated at not knowing enough words is written by people with an agenda other than science.
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Jack – My impression, based on conversations with teachers in low SES elementary schools, is that the low SES kids behave relatively well in K and first grade, but that their behavior gets progressively worse starting around second or third grade. If this is accurate, it suggests that most of the low SES kids start K with roughly the same attitudes toward behavior as the higher SES kids. If the main cause of the low SES kids’ misbehavior was parental attitudes towards behavior, I would expect the opposite trend — that is, the low SES kids being completely out of control in K and then gradually improving throughout elementary school as the school-based behavior norms increasingly balanced the allegedly dysfunctional at-home behavior norms. Also, many teachers from low SES schools tell me that the low SES parents — on average — are tougher re discipline/behavior than higher SES parents, again suggesting that most of the low SES misbehavior (although obviously not all — there are definitely some totally screwed up/absent low SES parents whose kids will be out of control basket cases from pre-K on based on at-home attitudes) is due to in-school frustration.
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Well, that does not match my experience or the experience of my wife, who is a first-grade teacher. Kids at younger ages tend to be “sweeter” in many ways, but just as maturity brings on cognitive development, it also tends to exacerbate violent tendencies. The underlying problems, however, are already there. K-2 students who are unloved and/or abused and/or in bad home situations tend to be sad and withdrawn; the anger often shows up later.
As for low-SES homes having stricter discipline, I disagree completely. Yes, punishments are often more severe, but punishment is not the same as discipline. From what I have seen, most of these kids are not taught manners and social norms. They have little to no supervision and can do more or less whatever they please… until they get on an adult’s nerves, at which time they are told to “Shut-up, fool, before I smack your &%$!” or actually smacked. And many times, the adults take out their life’s frustrations on the kids for nothing the kid has even done. So the kids learn that adult anger and punishment is arbitrary. It’s tough for kids like that to behave in a structured environment. Teacher instructions don’t mean much to them because they have been conditioned to respond to screams, yells, and threats. It’s a darn horrible situation, but not anything pre-K is going to much to help.
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Jack — I defer to your wife’s personal experience re the fact that many low SES kids are already misbehaving a lot in early elementary. But, I still argue that the misbehavior gets significantly worse — both in quantity and quality — as the kids age through the elementary grades and that this worsening is evidence that frustration/difficulty with school work is at least as important a factor contributing to the misbehavior as the no-behavior-standards home environment.
Do you or your wife have any thoughts re why the school reform debate largely ignores the minor-but-endemic-misbehavior problem?
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My mind is like a sieve, so I cannot remember where I read the reports on Tuscaloosa schools. I did note, however, that when they did their redistricting they had to tweak their attendance boundaries to create a black high school out of their formerly award winning integrated high school.
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There used to be one massive high school, but the school board created, IIRC, two more schools. The old school, being in the central part of town, then became virtually all black.
As I stated elsewhere, the city had two choices: Create a school situation that would be acceptable to middle-class parents, or see the middle class evaporate. Either way, you end up with some schools that are largely black and poor. At least this way, the city maintained some of its tax base.
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It is now 60 years since Brown vs. Board of Education. What this shows is that in the long run it is very difficult even for very powerful governments to force people to do what the do not want to do.
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I am working on a doctoral research project inspired by Diane’s book, Death and Life of the Great American School System (2011). If the public school system–as many of us knew it, at least–is dead or near death, it would stand to reason that public school teachers who remember the system as it was prior to No Child Left Behind (2002) have experienced loss and grief. If you remember what it was like to teach prior to No Child Left Behind, if you feel as if teaching completely changed when No Child Left Behind was implemented, or if you ever felt saddened by some of the changes that resulted from educational reform, then you may be interested in taking my survey.
Professional Loss and Grief in Teachers (a survey)
https://ndstate.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5nCLnPAFadWZX93
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As a mixed race person, I live “diversity” everyday. The real dividing line, as we know, is the bottom line. Rich Black kids and Rich White kids go to the same swanky schools, like Sidwell-Friends in Washington. Green is the real color of equality.
We parents, educators, citizens, could not have predicted the economic climate catastrophe that began around Reagan’s time, compounded by more middle-class degradation brought on by NAFTA, twelve years of profligate Pentagon spending, the Wall Street meltdown, etc
The people at the bottom, of all races, are being made to fight over the scraps, and of course they tend to form tribes. It is a shame, however, that so many “people of color” like myself, don’t remember why segregation is not the best choice. Morgan State U., our HBC (Historically Black College) is also after school privatization money.
Take our Public Schools off the carving table. Public Schools should be off limits to any kind of profiteering if we are to survive and thrive as the exemplary nation we are. Greed is an equal opportunity corrupter.
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“…could not have predicted the economic climate catastrophe that began around Reagan’s time…”
You missed the 70s, eh?
“…twelve years of profligate Pentagon spending…”
Seriously?
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“Hannah-Jones describes a high school in Tuscaloosa that was successfully desegregated but then resegregated as the result of political decisions intended to attract white students by isolating black students.”
NO! This is utter BS and a perfect example of the sort of magical revisionist thinking the blinkered often employ. If Tuscaloosa hadn’t done what it did, the hemorrhaging of middle-class white residents would’ve continued until we ended up at the exact same place: Virtually all-black schools in Tuscaloosa. The difference would be that the system would have fewer resources because its tax base would be gone. Hannah-Jones is acting as an activist here, not a reporter.
“For many black students in Alabama, it is as though the Brown decision never happened.”
Oh please, Diane. Really.
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