School Segregation Again?
By D. A. Barber.
School segregation again means rich versus poor rather than just black versus white. Are we experiencing school segregation again? In the wake of the May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education decision, school districts made strides to end racial segregation in public schools. But after meeting the clear goals of court-ordered desegregation, many schools slipped back into race and class segregation trends even with a growing diversity in student enrollment, according to several new reports from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which is exploring increasing school segregation trends in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States.
The Civil Rights Project study released May 9, Losing Ground: School Segregation in Massachusetts, shows student enrollment in the state growing more diverse, while the public schools become increasingly segregated along racial and class lines. According to the report, white enrollment in Massachusetts’s public school decreased from 82 percent in 1989 to 69 percent in 2010, while both the Latino and Asian enrollment doubled: from 7 to 15 percent for Latinos, and from 3 to 6 percent for Asians, while black enrollment remained stable at around 8 percent. But today, over 25 percent of the state’s black and Latino students attended “intensely segregated schools, 90-100 percent minority.”
Maryland public school’s show an increasingly segregated race and class issue, in spite of a growing diversity in student enrollment. The April 18 report, Settle for Segregation or Strive for Diversity? A Defining Moment for Maryland’s Public Schools, found that “over half, 54.2 percent of the state’s black students attended intensely segregated schools, 90-100 percent minority during the 2010-2011 school year, a large increase from one-third, 33.5 percent in 1989.”
In fact, the report found that nearly a quarter of Maryland’s black students attend so-called “apartheid schools” where the vast majority of students are non-white and low-income, producing a “double segregation” of students by race and class.
The March 13 UCLA report, MILES TO GO: A Report on School Segregation in Virginia, 1989-2010, shows that while school enrollment in Virginia’s major cities became “rapidly more diverse and more multiracial over the last decade, there is a rising levels of isolation for its African American and Latino students.” The report found that “16 percent of black students in the state of Virginia now attend an intensely segregated school, 90-100 percent minority, increasing from about 12 percent in 1989.”
What’s more, the report notes, low-income students account for about three-quarters of the student body in the state’s intensely segregated schools, highlighting a persistent and ongoing overlap between racial isolation and concentrated poverty in segregated schools.
“Virginia is at a crossroads,” said Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and lead author of the report. “The state has to decide to either step forward and build on the opportunities presented by its growing diversity, or sit passively and allow re-segregation to take hold.”
All three reports note what research has shown for years: “Segregated schools are systematically associated with severe educational challenges, like high dropout rates, high levels of teacher turnover, lack of experienced teachers, and fewer resources; at that same time, diverse schools are connected to a wide variety of benefits for all students.”
But what has changed today is that school enrollment is no longer just a black and white issue; it’s a multiracial one.
“Leaders need the vision to renew efforts to achieve justice and integration for blacks and to be sure that the growing Latino communities are not locked into segregation and inequality,” said Gary Orfield, Civil Rights Project co-director.
Featured Photo Credit: AP
Article reprinted with permission of USAonRace.com
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