In an important article, Kevin Welner and William Mathis of the National Education Policy Center argue that school choice is not “the civil rights issue of our time,” as Betsy DeVos and Trump (and before them, Arne Duncan) maintain.
School choice was devised by southern segregationists to fight the Brown decision of 1954, and school choice today is promoting racial and economic segregation.
Segregation is bad for students and for our society.
As they show, Jeanne Allen and other charter and voucher zealots attacked not only Randi Weingarten for accurately describing the history of school choice, they even attacked the NAACP for calling for a moratorium on new charters.
Choice is a consumer good but not a social good.
They write:
”When schools shift from democratically run to privately run institutions, their very purpose itself can shift toward merely serving the private interests of customer parents. In that context, success is often realized by wooing more students who are lower-cost and higher-achieving.
“Contrast this with the purposes of education memorialized in states’ constitutional provisions. To advance the common good, Massachusetts speaks to wisdom, knowledge and virtue among all groups of people. New Hampshire says that knowledge and learning must be spread throughout the various parts of the land. Vermont speaks of expanding virtue and preventing vice. The private benefits of an education received by individual children are valuable, but so are the societal benefits of a thoughtful, informed and united popu-lace.
“The genius of the American educational system is not just in what it gives to the individual. It is in what it provides to society as a whole. We face the great challenge of providing equal opportunities and common values to an increasingly fragmented society. Can we sustain and transmit this democratic covenant of rights and responsibilities to a new generation? Can we do this in a society with increasing levels of privately run choice schools?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
With “ME” folks don’t know that “Choice is a consumer good but not a social good.” All they can do is think of themselves. We are losing this kind of distinction in thinking, esp. when the mentality is consume, consume, consume.
I find hope in young people like Marley Dias (Marley Dias gets it Done published by Scholastic Press, 2018).
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One more time. This whole argument is predicated on the idea that de facto segregation is bad – that going to school with those of your kind is bad.
Why? Most countries are mostly homogeneous and therefore they go to school with their own kind. Why is this a problem here, in the US?
Again, we have 104 HBCUs in the US and this is fine so why is it necessary to force desegregation k-12 when we do not do so in colleges? Again, segregation can happen but we should not force it. If it happens on its own then it is okay. I am not saying that we should segregate but that we should not worry about it. It should be a nonfactor.
Again, I am looking for some sense of consistency here.
For a policy (action) to be considered ethical it must be universalized. It must be able to apply to all the same way. It is called Universalizability and it is one of 5 characteristics of good ethical theory. The age should not be a factor!
If desegregation did any good then there should be NO achievement gaps, after more than 50 years of trying. We are still talking about them and still trying to close the gaps.
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“For a policy (action) to be considered ethical it must be universalized.”
Can’t agree with that statement.
Also, would you please link/cite those five characteristics.
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I am with you: whence this idea of good ethical theory?
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Integration is a powerful tool that allows all students to benefit. Poor students that attend integrated schools are more likely to go to college, more likely to attain economic and personal success. White students benefit from learning how to work in a diverse community. There are significant benefits for all derived from attending integrated schools. https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/
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“If desegregation did any good then there should be NO achievement gaps, after more than 50 years of trying.” 50 yrs of trying? Where? Maybe you meant 50 yrs of talking about it. Also, I don’t ever remember reading that desgregation eliminates achievement gaps. Just a few studies showing that there were benefits for all in the integrated schools studied [& ‘improvement’ didn’t mean closing the bogus test-score-based ‘achievement gaps’ touted by bipartisan accountability bureaucrats].
Do you really not get why true pro-equal-ed-access types push for integration? Hint: it’s not so much about kumbaya.
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Since the Brown decision, the USA has done more than just talk about integrating the schools. Look up “Little Rock”, and see where the “colored” students had to be taken to school by soldiers, because the white students were opposed to forced integration. Look up the supreme court case, Swann v. Mecklenburg, which brought in forced bussing to facilitate integration.
Just mixing the white and “colored” children, did not magically close the achievement gaps between ethnic groups.
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At the height of integration, the test score gaps were the narrowest they have ever been. As the schools desegregated, the gaps widened.
Black students are 13% of all students.
Is it really necessary to segregate them and wall them off?
We know you don’t care, Charles, but we do.
My mouth hurts from biting my tongue when I respond to stupid comments like this one.
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Why on earth did you feel the need to use the word “colored”, Charles? Are you over 90 years old or something?
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You said Q As the schools desegregated, the gaps widened. END Q
Is this a typo? Or are you serious? I thought the point of having an integrated school system, is so that all children regardless of race would have basic equality of education. (I support integration, as a moral imperative).
I was in an inter-racial marriage, and I would have been arrested, if I had married outside of my race, prior to Loving v. Virginia.
I used the quotation marks, to emphasize the historicity of my comments. When the Supremes ruled that public schools must de-segregate with all deliberate speed, it was considered polite to refer to black people as “colored” or even “Negro”.
I remember well, when the forced bussing of black children into the white schools of South Boston, set off the demonstrations and the “white flight” there in Boston.
For the record, I am 1000% supportive of full integration for public schools and all facilities. I don’t just provide lip service for de-segregation, I practice it. Separate is never equal.
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As the schools desegregated, the gaps narrowed.
Period.
As schools resegregated, gaps widened.
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You caught me on forced busing Charles – correct, that was in the early ’70’s. I was remembering that Brown & Little Rock were 60 yrs ago — was thinking busing was all over but the shouting in late ’60’s — but I was wrong.
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Integration has been the only intervention that has been shown to help close the so-called “achievement gap” for poor and minority students. Segregation invariably allows for and leads to substandard facilities, resources and education for the poor and minority students (which is why the Supreme Court outlawed it in 1954). Poor and minority kids have a right (legal and moral) not to be shunted into second-class (or steerage) facilities.
In addition to the poor and minority kids, integration helps the affluent whites too, although most would rather stick their heads in the sand and deny this fact. Life is integrated. We all benefit from diversity, from encountering people and cultures and ideas different from our own. Genetically speaking, we know that inbreeding leads to individuals with defects and deficiencies over time, while diversifying the gene pool makes everyone stronger (which is why mutts are generally so much healthier than purebreds who are prone to everything from distemper to hip problems to heart defects). The same is true when it comes to ideas and cultures. Sure, it’s more comfortable to live only among one’s own kind, but comfort leads to contentment and stagnation, leaving people mentally and socially weak and unable to adequately deal with real world challenges.
By the way, it’s pretty disingenuous to pretend we’ve been trying to make integration work for the past 50 years. There was a sustained effort in the 60s and 70s which did indeed show notable significant positive benefits. But beginning in the 80s we started reversing integration. We’re now about as segregated as we ever were before the Civil Rights Movement, especially when it comes to housing and schools.
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We all now know that “separate is never equal.” Plus, we never really truly tried to integrate our schools, We started out with great gusto in Arkansas and Mississippi, and we never made a full commitment to integrate schools, only a few token gestures. The forces of racism quickly opposed a policy of integration. That is one of the reasons Democrats have had so much trouble convincing the South to vote for them. They are still fighting the Civil War intellectually.
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Public School Advocates will remain at a disadvantage as long as they keep capitulating to the advertising slogans of the Corporate Raiders, for example, &ldquoSchool Choice”. How could anyone be against “Choice”? It just won’t wash. It needs to be pointed out until it becomes obvious that their nothing about freedom of educational choice that depends on commercialized, competitive, zero-sum market systems of distributing resources. All that could be achieved in a public-responsible public school system, as many advanced nations (a club to which we no longer belong) already achieve this.
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Arrgh …
Public School Advocates will remain at a disadvantage as long as they keep capitulating to the advertising slogans of the Corporate Raiders, for example, “School Choice”. How could anyone be against “Choice”? It just won’t wash. It needs to be pointed out until it becomes obvious that there is nothing about freedom of educational choice that depends on commercialized, competitive, zero-sum market systems of distributing resources. All that could be achieved in public-responsible public school systems, as many advanced nations (a club to which we no longer belong) already achieve this.
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The underenrollment of ESL & SpEd populations in charters run by ed-mgt orgs is telling. But I don’t see how you can make the race & poverty arguments separately from the issue of segregated residential housing. Frankenberg’s 2011 study says 70% of black charter school students attend intensely segregated 90-100%) schools, twice as many, proportionately, as black pubsch students. This doesn’t significant w/o more detail. Isn’t it probable that there are twice as many charter schools located in intensely segregated residential areas? I often see comments from inner-city parents on anti-charter articles who laugh at the ‘charters increase segregation’ argument, as their local pubschs are near 100% black. Same goes for Miron’s 2010 charter school poverty study. The article later acknowledges ‘shockingly segregated’ pubschs but claims ‘unconstrained school choice amplifies this existing stratification’ – not really proven by these numbers.
I don’t know what the answer is, but glad to see at least a mention of programs that helped alleviate residential segregation. My objection is really just that arguments about unequal access need to focus on underlying causes – not only residential segregation, but funding methods guaranteed to produce better schools in wealthier areas, worse in poorer. Charter schools no doubt amplify segregation in mixed-race school districts– there’s an issue I could get behind. But trying to tell people in all-black residential areas that they should shun charters because they ‘increase segregation’ is a non-starter. Better to focus on the true issues in the locale, e.g., undercutting parent & taxpayer influence/ splintering community power, increasing the more-expensive-to-teach population in pubschs while undermining the funding to do the job.
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I agree. Market based principles create fewer opportunities for minority students. It is shameful for our representatives to promote privatization, a system without any evidence to support its value. In fact, what we have learned is the opposite. Privatization promotes fewer opportunities for minority students and increased isolation for minority as well as white students. Considering education a “market” is flawed logic which is being used to tear public schools apart and destroy a democratic public institution. Corporate education benefits corporations, not students and communities.
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I don’t claim to have the answer either, but something I think would go a long way would be if we could mandate that all new real estate developments have to be fully inclusive – everything from subsidized/section 8 housing through luxury in the same development. No more luxury enclaves set off from moldering poor slums. Every residential area would have a broad mix of poor, middle-class and affluent people.
I suppose that’s just as “pie in the sky” as universal single-payer healthcare or tuition-free higher education, but, like those two things, it’s something that would make the biggest impact toward improving our society.
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This was tried in New Jersey, and it has been a reality for at least thirty years, ever since the Mt. Laurel decision in 1985. It has been a source of conflict ever since new developments are required to include an affordable housing plan. Wealthy communities have been fighting it ever since. One compromise is that some wealthy communities have been able to buy affordable units in other communities. This compromise undermines the law’s intent, but it has resulted in more affordable housing units available to needy families.http://fairsharehousing.org/mount-laurel-doctrine/
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Of course wealthy people are going to fight it. But they need to be told to stuff it.
I am at least heartened to hear that New Jersey had the fortitude to try it.
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It does happen retired teacher, at least on a small scale – going on right now in the two towns to the east of me as they scrap over the details of apt complexes replacing areas deserted by mfrs. I think something must have happened to halt that ‘buyout’ you described (would have to research). The fighting is over unrestrained growth – fallout from the ‘bldr’s remedy’ legislation that gives developers lopsided power. The little town next door couldn’t stop a developer’s plan which would have increased the town pop by 33% (!) – so the town bought the property from the devpr & is proceeding w/a scaled-down version. No arguments over the affordable housing portion, in fact towns seem to be hastening to fulfill their reqts.
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It’s a bit shocking to see comment’s on Diane’s blog questioning the value of racially desegregated or integrated schools. The research evidence on the harms of segregation (de jure and de facto) is overwhelming. A decade ago, I worked with the brilliant, late Bob Linn and a talent and ideologically diverse team — including Rick Hanushek — on a National Academy of Education report, looking at these issues. We unanimously agreed on our conclusions, which can be read here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Brief-NAE.pdf
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Kevin,
The Blog attracts a wide range of views, including a few bigots and lunatics. I let them comment to remind us what kind of views we must deal with and refute.
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For similar reasons, I force myself to watch FOX news now and then–a little goes a long way.
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… and sorry for the typos…
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Sadly, when segregated neighborhoods have neighborhood schools, the schools will be segregated. Stop the presses. As wealthy people locate into good neighborhoods, with good schools, they abandon bad neighborhoods, with terrible public schools.
The bad schools in the bad neighborhoods, decline, and with the tax base gone, decline more. As usual, the children and families on the lower end of the economic scale, get the shaft.
This is the problem, what is the solution? Some commenters state that public schools today are more segregated now, than 60 years ago. What can be done?
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Integrate neighborhoods. Build more housing in integrated neighborhoods.
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The devil is in the details. The feds passed “open housing” in the 1960’s My wife works in real estate, it is illegal to discriminate in housing sales. So how do you integrate neighborhoods?
And as far as building more housing in integrated neighborhoods, do you really believe that wealthy people in good neighborhoods, will support the construction of housing projects for low-income people. Fat Chance. People mouth all types of platitudes about providing decent housing for the poor. But when it comes to your own housing, it is location, location, location.
“Liberals don’t care what you do. As long as it is mandatory” -Author Unknown.
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