Politico Morning Education reports that the U.S. Department of Education finds that an extraordinary proportion of black and Hispanic students are enrolled in high-poverty schools. The combination of racial segregation and poverty is a clear indicator of high risk for students. They will not have the benefits of peer effects which comes from economically and racially diverse schools. Nor are they likely to have the small classes, rich curriculum, and extra resources they need.
“MINORITY KIDS CLUSTERED IN HIGH-POVERTY SCHOOLS: Nearly half of black and Hispanic public school students attended high-poverty schools during the 2014-15 school year, compared to 8 percent of white students. That’s according to the 43rd “Condition of Education” report, out today and produced by the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences. Traditional public schools that are considered high-poverty — defined as having more than three quarters of their students qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch — made up 24 percent of all schools. In that same year, 36 percent of charter schools were considered high-poverty. About 2.5 million students were reported homeless during the 2014-15 school year, with the largest numbers of homeless students enrolled in schools located in cities and suburbs.”
This is a danger signal for our schools but for our society.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An INTENDED consequence of charters and vouchers. When will we learn?
Well off parents don’t want their children “soiled” by the poor non-whites.
And then there are those parents who think white means better.
Even though I am an educated female, i get get dissed, because of my skin color and stature. I should write a book, but it’s too painful. If I were African American, I’d be treated better. Honest! This is called “political correctness.”
LikeLike
I am sorry you are treated badly. It is totally not right. Continue to speak out and vote with your heart, both for yourself and for others to elect representatives who will protect the rights of all members of our society, all humans. Public schools are our best hope.
LikeLike
I too am sorry you suffer from the ignorance of others. We all need to learn to judge people “by the content of their character,” and public schools are our best hope.
LikeLike
That is sad. Our public school is economically diverse and I think it’s much easier to bring lower income kids up if there’s a solid middle and a few upper class.
I don’t know how this fits into the whole mix but we have really affordable housing a lot of which is rentals. You really can afford to live w/in a good (not great) school district here on 25k income- it’s not a fancy school district- we don’t have all the bells and whistles of some suburban schools- but it is decent.
The trend that I think has people scared is our lower income group ticks up every year. I have grown children who attended the same school ten or more years ago and there are simply more really low income kids. When we ran a levy campaign a couple of years ago we had to tell people this because it’s really crucial context. They need to know that a school with 30% low income has an inherent advantage over a school with 50% low income. They’re bailing this boat as fast as they can but they’re just keeping it afloat. It’s not really moving forward.
LikeLike
Chiara –my school sounds similar. I think class/race integration helps the lower kids somewhat, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem that few are willing to face honestly: the deficiency in the cultural “software” that makes learning possible. Many of my lower-class students don’t value learning, have poor work habits, and get sucked into social dynamics at school that polish off whatever shreds of learning software that they might have had. There’s a mass of kids that just drift from K-12 without lifting a finger to learn; who assiduously ignore every bit of instruction; who never complete a HW assignment or project; who fail every test. Edu-charlatans and scolds notwithstanding, teachers cannot fix this problem –at least at my level –middle school. What I see is teachers spending inordinate amounts of their limited energy to get these kids to budge, but the inertia is too strong. As these kids advance through the years, the problem becomes more and more intractable. Discouragement and bad habits get reinforced by an invidious social dynamic that is all-powerful –no amount of pep talks, positive incentives and/or threats of detention (summer school and retention are no longer part of our repertoire of threats here) can make a dent in the social imperative to not look smart, to stop the incessant socializing, to refrain from the sport of teacher baiting and class destruction (rampant in high-poverty schools). KIPP, for all its flaws, sees the need for more powerful tools to break the inertia. Most of the commenters here abhor this tough approach, but I have yet to see another model that works for these kids who come to school without the learning “software”. Our solution seems to be to lower the bar, avoid punishments that might correct destructive behavior, and let students pass, having learned nothing other than the fact that school is a farce and rules can be broken. Is this really more humane than KIPP?
LikeLike
KIPP’s great insight is that you have to repress the classroom social dynamic for learning to happen. Meanwhile education “authorities” tell the rest of us that it’s the teacher that needs to shut up and kids’ talking needs to be unleashed. Another example of how our public schools are being deeply damaged by bankrupt and harebrained ideas emanating from the solons in the ed schools.
LikeLike
ponderosa–Not all poor students are the same. Perhaps my foreign students were more aspirational than many home grown, poor minority students. What also helped the students in my district was the fact that the poverty level was about one third of the students. When poor students are the majority, I believe students may learn more self defeating attitudes from each other. In my district under the influence of the middle class students and demanding instruction, many of the poor students saw themselves as achievers and set their sights on college. Geography may also play a part. I worked in the NYC suburbs where it is still possible to find a decent paying job. In many parts of the country there is little opportunity for young people. They may not see the point to education.
LikeLike
Every year we have an assembly and the seniors who are going to college are honored. Every year there is a small group of kids who came from really rough homes and succeeded. I can tell this is very gratifying for teachers and the school, but I think it also tends to make the rest of the community believe “anyone” can do what they did and I’m not sure that’s true, or if the school ALONE can get them there. “Scaling that up” would be very difficult and then what about the kids in the middle? They need some attention just to stay even.
One thing the school has changed that seems to help is they stopped “tracking”- we used to (literally) have an A and B team. “A” parents loved it because the A kids were apart and can go faster, but it was not so great for the B parents. They don’t do that anymore. Instead they assign the kids randomly and then add adults to classes with a lot of needier kids. My son was in one of these classes in 7th grade and it seemed to work well – he knew they had two teachers but he didn’t know why- but obviously it’s expensive to add teachers.
LikeLike
I totally agree that not everyone is college material, and I wish we did a better job with vocational training. There is a big demand for welders, plumbers electricians, medical billers and mechanics.
LikeLike
My first job a long time ago was in a “tracked” junior high school. The “A” groups were amazing, but the “D” groups were deadly dull, containing students with multiple problems. I prefer mixed groups where there is opportunity for students to learn from each other.
LikeLike
You are among a small number who identify the problems, extensive and weakening, which affect many of our children. They indeed do not have the necessary home preparation to be successful in school. In ‘Tiger Mom’ the author showed that the child needs parental guidance, and few children are born with the attitude to study and be successful. Parental guidance is vital for it seems to set the necessary attitude for school, and allow the young person to avoid many pitfalls. Some students think it is okay to come to school without basic things such as pencils.
Parenting is difficult and many of the young parents from crowded poor neighborhoods just do not have the required skills.
There is no way teachers can do it. In a book, ‘The Race Between Education and Technology,’ the author says that American led globally education and productivity during the first part of the nineteenth century but lost the leadership in education and subsequently lost the leadership in productivity beause there were not enough highly educated people for the high tech jobs around.
In ‘Our Kids’ Putnam suggests that the social problem caused by inadequately educated kids eventually cost the nation too much; investment in providing them the education they need would be cheaper that the costs of prisons, welfare and troubled neighborhoods.
LikeLike
My experience as an ESL teacher in a diverse suburban district confirms what you stated. My very poor ELLs benefited tremendously from being in a school that contained about 70% middle class students. The school was well resourced with an active PTA that included my poor students in the school community. Everyone benefits from diversity. Middle class students learn to be tolerant and accepting of individual differences, and poor students benefit from attending a safe, clean school with a wonderful library and access to technology.
LikeLike
The trend that I think has people scared is our lower income group ticks up every year.
I wonder if that reflects students who go off and complete college moving on to even more affluent communities. There is documented self-segregation going on.
Some of that phenomenon is from young/new more affluent families shopping around for where to buy a house, and then looking at “rankings” for school districts. Those rankings are most often social class dependent, as in better educated & more affluent families scoring better on standardized tests, although there is the perception that this somehow means that the teachers and schools are “better.” “Better schools” is a pernicious euphemism for “better class of clientele” residing in that district.
If we’re going to use statistics to measure the quality of K-12 schools, then I think one key statistic to consider implementing for every school is college completion rate for first generation college students (or rather future first generation college students) from that district. It maybe hard to get at some of that data because of FIRPA and crossing education jurisdictions.
LikeLike
With our neoliberals and conservatives in charge poverty will steadily increase.
LikeLike
With over 70% of black children, living in single-parent homes, with the attendant poverty, then why are people surprised that minority children, are “clustered: in high-poverty schools?
LikeLike
IMHO, we live knowing how we are brought up and the true value of who we are. As a result, others cannot influence or persuade us on how to live our lives, unless we allow them to. Also, we can adopt other cultures which suit us or we can dismiss other cultures that damage the love for humanity in our lives, our community and our society.
As I see it, there can be a dualistic (rigidly segmented) world or there can be a dialectic (fluidly co-evolving) world; the world we choose to live in depends on our mindset, which results from our upbringing.
In short, if we do not open our mind to see things as they are, we will be ignorant regardless of our (educational) background, whether credentialed or illiterate. Back2basic
LikeLike
It is unfortunate that our current preoccupation with “choice” results in segregation and tiered opportunities for students. This trend is more isolationist which may result in tiers of discontent and mistrust. This may produce a society that is more mistrustful with angry, marginalized sub groups. This does not bode well for a country that is supposed to be inclusive and democratic.
LikeLike
Sadly, I can identify with the “culture of learning”. In WashDC, children who do well in school are often beaten up and bullied by other children for “acting white”
LikeLike
There are other sad statistics. I think that the NCES data needs to be examined in the light of data available from the American Community Survey (ACS) – U.S. Census Bureau
Among the big topics are: Population, Economy, Business, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Employment, Families & Living Arrangements, Health, Housing, Income & Poverty, International Trade, and Public Sector. Each broad topic has subheadings.
Of particular relevance to education are the color coded charts for Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) for School Districts, Counties, and States https://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/
LikeLike
This is because of geographic isolation of poverty and a property tax based funding system that offers school “choice” only if you can afford to move.
Anyone who blames parents assigned to these schools for taking a charter option open to them is ignoring the real problems.
LikeLike