A reader who grew up in Clinton, Mississippi, shared this story, which appeared in the Hechinger Report. She was in third grade when the district integrated its schools and made the fateful decision to pursue equity for all students.
In 2016, half of all black students in Mississippi attended school in a district rated D or F; 86 percent of the students in those districts were black. In districts rated F, more than 95 percent of the student population was black.
Only one majority-black district in Mississippi earned an A on the state’s annual A–F rating scale. An apparent anomaly on a list of top school districts that is mostly white and largely affluent, including neighboring Madison County and Rankin County Public School districts, Clinton Public Schools managed to excel against the odds. It’s a sign that the Clinton district, located in a small but bustling suburb of Jackson, is on the right track to closing the black-white achievement gap and raising achievement levels for black students.
That gap is wide: Data from the state Department of Education shows the achievement gap between white and black students in Mississippi is 28 percent, larger than the gaps for other traditionally disadvantaged subgroups in the state, including those between English speakers and English-language learners and between students in special education and general education, according to Mississippi Department of Education data. The achievement gap between students who do and do not live in poverty is second highest, at 27 points.
Clinton’s ability to narrow these gaps is due, in part, to the district’s intentional integration. And though Clinton is far from being a post-racial mecca, students and administrators say that effort pays off. There are no black schools or white schools in Clinton. In a district that is about 53 percent black and 39 percent white, children share the same resources, teachers, and the same well-stocked classrooms and school buildings, regardless of their race or economic status….
Philip Burchfield, the district’s former superintendent, says the district has been purposeful about seeking equity for its students. For decades, it has placed students into schools arranged by grade level instead of by neighborhood to achieve greater diversity, a strategy born in response to a 1970 desegregation order. (The city of Clinton includes a majority-black neighborhood within its borders, and roughly 38 percent of Clinton’s residents are black.)
“Our school system doesn’t have a neighborhood school of the haves and a neighborhood school of the have-nots,” said Burchfield, who retired as superintendent in June. “We always said if we start our kids off in Clinton it makes no difference; we’re going to give them the resources they need to be successful.”
Clinton can also attribute its success to the relatively low number of students living in poverty. Although about 40 percent of students receive free and reduced-price lunch, the poverty level in the city is 15.5 percent. Statewide, the poverty level for children is nearly double that. Superintendent Martin says the district doesn’t receive a “huge amount” of Title I funding to support its low-income students, but funnels money it does get toward helping students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and on acquiring intervention teachers.
Ya can’t get this in charter schools. Go Public Schools.
Integration is an ideal way to narrow achievement gaps between students. My diverse school district in New York always strove to ensure that each of three elementary schools included approximate racial balance. All schools were well resourced with an active PTA. Our school district was about a third minority and had between 25 to 30 percent of students that qualified for free lunch. While we did not a majority black school district, one of the reasons my school was awarded a “Blue Ribbon” award from the DOE was based on our efforts to eliminate the acheivement gap. Over 90% of students from different socio-economic levels went on to higher education. Integration is a positive for all students. We all do better when we learn to get along with different types of students. Isolation breeds mistrust.
Pray that the new Superintendent is not a Broadie, and that the school board and citizens of this community stay the course.
We must stay alert to offer support and protect this school district, because the leaders of the corporate public education pirates/reformers movement, including Betsy DeVos, will want to get rid of this district in some way since it is a positive role model showing how to support community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools to achieve success.
What was done in this district could be replicated across the country and then there would be no need for corporate charters and vouchers.
The Kochs, ALEC, and the Waltons will not stand for that. Their agenda is to end everything that has been achieved in the last century and return to the age of the robber barons with a crippled federal government and state governments owned and controlled by the barons, and a return to a poverty rate approaching fifty percent. In 1900, 40-percent of Americans lived in poverty, only 7 percent of 17/18 year olds graduated from high school, children could be sold into servitude (even prostitution) as young as 7, and women were the property of men.
If you don’t want to accept that agenda as a real threat, consider Betsy DeVos throwing her support behind rapists and turning her back on civil rights. For every journey, even treks into darkness and evil, there is always the first steps.
Just like Rahm Emanuel in Chicago closing 50 public schools against the protests of parents, the corporate education reformers and pirates will want to sweep Clinton Public Schools into the trash bin of history and bury those facts.