Existing comment:
School segregation:
The geographic segregation of housing has a negative impact on the quality of schools minority students attend.
A race and class issue:
Many poor black and Latino families live in areas of concentrated poverty. Only one-quarter of poor white families live in neighborhoods with poverty levels over 20 percent, but three-quarters of poor black and two-thirds of poor Latino families do.
Public schools in poorer areas typically have fewer resources that those in middle-class areas. Because white families are less likely to live in such places, poor white children are less likely to attend these schools than poor children of color.
Desegregating schools:
During the 1960s and 1970s, federal and state governments passed laws aimed at addressing educational inequities that had resulted from the segregation of schools. These laws were largely successful in integrating many public school systems nationwide.
Resegregation:
In the 1990s, the legality of many desegregation efforts was successfully challenged, resulting in the resegregation of some schools. In certain American cities today, school districts are nearly as segregated as they were 50 years ago.
"Segregated schools and neighborhoods isolate children from networks and connections that are important for gaining opportunities for social and economic success."
-- Myron Orfield, executive director, Institute on Race & Poverty, University of Minnesota
Case study: Boston:
In 1974, US District Court Judge Arthur Garrity ruled that the Boston School Committee had "knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation." To remedy the situation, the court ordered black children to be bused to schools in mainly white areas of Boston, while white children were bused to schools in largely black neighborhoods.
Response to the busing was heated and at times violent. At some schools in white neighborhoods, rocks were thrown at black children as they got off their buses. Many white parents withdrew their children from the public school system and sent them to private schools.
Judge Garrity's busing order was enforced until 1989, when a policy of "controlled choice" was implemented: parents were allowed some choice in selecting schools, but the racial makeup of each school was matched to the racial makeup of the city as a whole. In 1999, a lawsuit was brought by a group of white parents alleging that the policy was discriminatory, and the racial-proportionality policy was abandoned. Today, as a result of white migration to the suburbs and enrollment in private schools, only 15 percent of Boston public school students are white.
Case study: Jefferson County, Kentucky:
In order to ensure that its schools are integrated, the Jefferson County, Kentucky, school district has a policy dictating that the student body of each school must be between 15 and 50 percent black. In 2002, parents of some white students took the school district to court, claiming that this practice amounts to racial discrimination and violates their children's rights to attend the school of their choice.
In 2006, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and will eventually rule whether a race can be applied in making school assignments. However the case is decided, it will set a national precedent in the use of race as a factor in school assignments.
NOTE: The exhibit was created in 2006, before the case was decided. This is from Wikipedia:
Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education is a case heard before the United States Supreme Court in December 2006 regarding racial quotas and explicit racial desegregation in public education. The U.S. Supreme Court handed down an opinion on June 28, 2007, rejecting the use of a student's race in student assignment plans. The Supreme Court overturned the decision of the lower court and remanded the case to the District Court.
Meredith was decided along with Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the lead case. For further information on the legal analysis of the opinion, see that article. |