Achieving Integration in Schools

Great Debates
1

I am currently doing battle with the public school system in my county because they have decided to reassign my two kids from a nearby school which we love to one halfway across the county. (There are 17 elementary schools closer to our home than the one they propose sending them to.) Their stated goals in doing so are:
(1) To even out enrollment at over- and under-enrolled schools throughout the county, and
(2) To reduce the fraction of low-income kids at any given school. (They cite studies which say that children in schools in which more than 40% of the kids are low income tend to have lower test scores.)

The school my kids are being transferred to has about 35% of its kids who currently receive free or reduced price lunches, which is the criterion they are using to identify low income students. About 10% of children at our current school are identified as low income.

The ironic thing about this move is that the school we are being transferred to is not located in an economically depressed area. It actually has a solidly middle-class neighborhood base. The problem is that when this school was opened a few years ago, the county decided that they would bus in lower income kids from the other side of the county to move them into a higher income school. Many of the folks who live in the neighborhood felt that lower-performing students were being dumped into their school, and opted to send their children elsewhere via our county’s magnet school program and/or private schools. Approximately half of the people in the school’s assignment zone have opted to go to a magnet school instead — hence the need for more students there, particularly of the middle-class type.

As an aside, let me explain the magnet school program. The magnet school program is one wherein the school system has added attractive programs to particular schools in the school system. Magnet schools are typically located in the schools in the lower-income areas of town. Approximately half of the attendance slots are allocated to the kids in the surrounding neighborhood; the other half are open to students elsewhere in the county, in the hopes of attracting the kids from suburbia into the inner city. From what I can see, it’s a win-win situation: integration is achieved, inner-city kids get access to top-notch programs, and the people who are inconvenienced by the longer bus rides do so voluntarily in return for getting the specialized program of education they desire.

The problem, as I see it, is that they don’t have enough magnets to achieve the level of integration they desire. To integrate the rest of the schools, they have gone to the social engineering route I referenced above, where they assign students of a desired demographic to a particular school to fit their needs.

This has created a two-tiered system within the school system: the Haves (in the magnets) and the Have-nots (outside the magnets.) Magnet school children receive the substantial benefit of having stability throughout their school careers. Once your children are in a magnet program, they may stay within the program throughout their school career at that school. They will also receive top priority to be assigned to a magnet program when they move up to the next school (elementary to middle, or middle to high school.) They may choose to leave and go back to traditional schools at any time. Their siblings will receive top priority to be added to the magnet program when they come of age so that siblings will be at the same school.

Traditional school children, on the other hand, face substantially reduced stability in their school assignments. Because parents in school assignment zones have used the magnet system as a method of fleeing situations they do not want for their children, this makes the children in traditional schools fodder for in-filling the less desirable schools. (I refer to these schools as the vacuum schools, since they use mechanical means to suck in students of the desired demographics. Magnets attract; vacuums just suck.) If you stay within the traditional schools program, you are subject to reassignment to meet their needs.

So why not get into the magnet program, you say? I’ve tried. When my older child was starting kindergarten, I applied for the year-round calendar magnet schools.* There were far more applicants than available spaces, so we didn’t get in. I checked out the program at the school we were assigned to, and found that we were fortunate to be assigned to an excellent school, so we stuck with it rather than re-applying to magnets in later years. I have also applied for the magnet program this year, in hopes of getting my kids into a school closer to our home, where they would be assured of being able to finish out their elementary school at one school without the threat of further transfers. Our odds of getting into the program are incredibly slim, however, as the first 90% of available magnet slots are earmarked for (1) siblings of current magnet students, (2) low-income students, and (3) students in currently over-enrolled schools.

My real problem with the whole situation is not the integration. I feel that this is a good thing, and I think that the voluntary methods of the magnet system provide a good incentive for doing so. My problem is that due to the limited number of magnet schools, some students are allowed to participate in the integration voluntarily in programs which substantially benefit them, while others are forced into the situation with very substantial disbenefits. (My children will be losing stability in being forced to leave a school that they love; they will be moving from a school where 94% of kids read at grade level into one where 88% are at grade level; their morning bus ride will increase from about 15 minutes to between 45 minutes to 1 hour; and due to the fact that the school system has opted to ignore the feeder patterns between elementary schools to middle schools, when my current 3rd grader starts 6th grade, he will be one of only 9 kids from his elementary school who enter the 350-member 6th grade class at his middle school.)

So, is it the job of schools to achieve diversity? How should they achieve this goal? Is forced bussing ethical? What alternative methods would you suggest?

*[sub](There has been an incredible demand for year-round schools from the parents in suburbia. The school system has added a few year-round magnets, but resists adding more because while the suburban parents love them, the lower-income students do not, and hence they are having trouble achieving their desired enrollment quotas there.)[/sub]

(You can find out more about the system that has prompted my complaint at http://www.wcpss.net.)

Warning to other posters: You may want to save a copy of your post in your clipboard before trying to post; I’ve had problems with this version of vbb “forgetting” that I’m already logged in, and having my posts go to never-never land between preview and submit reply.

2

I’m sorry you’re having problems in your schools, but around here (Decatur, Illinois), if we didn’t have state-mandated busing, we’d have an inner ring of a few overcrowded and aging elementary and middle schools that were 98% “low income black” and “2% low income white”, and an outer ring of nice new schools that were 90% “white, period”, “8% middle income black”, and “2% Asian, period”.

The State of Illinois requires all public schools to maintain a balanced racial mix, no matter how much busing it takes or how much fiddling around with the boundary lines they have to do (I know people who lived across the street from a grade school, whose kids were bused to a different school in order to help with the “mix”), and here in Decatur it’s kept at between (I believe) 24% to 26% black.

3

I find it disturbing that so many of our educators seem to think that low income children are incapable of learning unless sitting next to higher income children. If as much thought went into improving the schools as social engineering then everyone would get a better education. This is just another example of the administrators caring more about themselves than the children.

4

Good thread! I’m so happy I can post now.

I was bussed when I was in school, under a voluntary program called Minority-to-Majority. All the kids in my neighborhood could board the schoolbus and ride crosstown to the schools on the more hoity-toity side of town. Although there were hoity-toity neighborhoods in town that were predominately black, we were bussed to the “white” side of town.

Strangely enough, “bussees” weren’t always poor (in my neighborhood, few of us were really poor, perhaps lower middle class). In fact, quite a few white kids were also bussed. I don’t know how that worked, though.

Anyway, I think my school experience was generally positive. The schools I attended were not only more diverse than the neighborhood schools, but the standards of the schools were higher, the curriculum was more challenging, and thus the reputation of such schools were very positive.

But when I got to middle school, I realized there was something off about how school worked. The kids who weren’t bussed were generally favored for the best classes and teachers, and ended up in the gifted programs far more frequently than us other kids. Almost always, these kids were white. Meanwhile, the remedial tracks were chock full of bussed kids. One could argue that there were legitimate reasons for this segregation, but personally I believe something problematic was going on. I believe the segregation was intentional more likely than none.

I was an A-B student (more As than Bs, though), I had high test scores, and I was generally respected by my teachers. When I was in the sixth grade, I was in the “honors” classes. But when I got to the seventh grade, I was mysteriously put into the remedial track, with disruptive kids and mediocre teachers. My mother quickly made arrangements to get me out of there and back into the “good” classes. I would have assumed it was all a mistake if it hadn’t happened again, when I got to the eighth grade. No one can convince me that my not being from the neighborhood and my being black had nothing to do with those potentially life-changing “mistakes”.

I think tracking is a subtle way of segregating so-called “integrated” schools. As someone who loves academic challenges, I can see the benefits of seperating the slow from the fast, but only as long as it’s done fairly. At the schools were I attended, the parents who didn’t bus their kids were generally very educated and well-to-do. They had clout. The working-class parents of the bussed kids didn’t have so much power, and their children were more sensitive to the whims of the registrar, who’s job was to create the illusion that non-bussed kids were receiving the elite education they “deserved”. This illusion is built on the idea that poor kids (in my situation, black kids) are inferior to rich kids (white kids). So no wonder all the “honors” classes were lily white, except for a few token blacks thrown in for the sake of diversity. The way the system was set up, “honors”–by definition–meant predominately white and upper-middle class.

I think my parents did the right thing sending me crosstown for an education. However, I think bussing is an easy way out. As the OP says, not all kids can be bussed. What happens to those kids? I think what people should do is worry about bolstering and supporting their own neighborhood schools rather than spending time and energy on magnet schools. If my parents–and the other parents in my neighborhood–had put a lot of energy in building up our neighborhood schools, we wouldn’t have felt so compelled to run away from the problems. But the thing is, it’s so much easier to just put your kid on a bus and forget about the crumbling building at the end of the block. If I had been my parents, I probably would have done the same thing.

5

Welcome, monstro!. (Or should that be “Welcome Back?” Were you one of the ones whose existence got obliterated by the missing backup between December and February?) Thanks for giving your perspective as one who has been bussed. I’m glad your parents were watching out for you and making sure you didn’t get abused by the system in middle grade.

Like puddleglum noted, I, too think that it’s insulting to say that low-income students will benefit just from being in the presence of the higher income students. One of the (many) reasons I’m particularly bothered by this move is that I feel they are being dishonest about their motives. Yet another goal that the school system has factored into their decision-making process is a goal to have 95% of kids at grade level in every school throughout the county by 2003. I strongly feel that the REAL goal behind this reassignment is not so much to enhance the education of the low-income students there, but to dilute their test scores with an infusion of kids who come in reading at grade level.

It makes me mad because so many kids are being manipulated just to fudge some numbers. Instead of putting their energies into educating the below-grade level kids at the school, they just ship in some at grade-level kids to make the numbers look better. The below grade level kids don’t get the help they need, and our kids get put in a classroom where top priority will be given to the lower performing kids, because that is what the schools will be judged upon. (The teacher’s and principal’s potential bonuses are based upon the schools test scores. How’s that for pressure?)

DDG: Our school system is also under a court-ordered mandate to achieve racial desegregation. The court order dates back to the 1970’s. However, in 1999, a 4th circuit US Court of Appeals (which has jurisdiction over NC) ruled that a Montgomery County, MD policy which used race as a factor in assigning students to public schools was unconstitutional. This was upheld by the US Supreme Court. Fearing a possible lawsuit, our local school system switched to the income level criterion for school assignments.

I do not want segregated schools. Our current school, which does not have any “unnatural” assignment patterns where they are reaching way out across other school’s assignment zones has a minority enrollment of about 28%. (As a WAG, I think that the general population in our area is about 30% minority, although it may be a bit higher now as there has been a large rise in the hispanic population in the state over the last decade.) I just feel that as long as there are enough magnet schools provided to encourage desegregation, and that magnet school or other transportation opportunities are provided to make sure that no one is forced to be in a “naturally” segregated neighborhood school (one which ends up having a non-diverse population due to the fact that the population of the surrounding neighborhood is not diverse) without the opportunity to go elsewhere, then the school system is doing all its duty. It should then go put its energies into educating the kids rather than juggling them.

6

What’s so horrible about schools being naturally segregated? How is it worse than disrupting children’s lives?

7

I honestly think kids should go to the neighborhood school nearest their home, no matter what the racial balance or average income of the area.

I would also bet that busing kids around to achieve a good “income” mix in the public schools is merely a way to bypass the “racial integration” type busing which has largely been ruled unconstitutional.

8

Have you ever gone to a low income school?

I went to a high school in a district with two high schools- one in a very diverse but low income area with a lot of immigration and very little in terms of parent involvement. The other was in a newly developed suburban environment which was largely white and unanimously upper middle class.

Let’s see. They got people with PhDs. We got teachers with emergency credentials. They got a multi-million dollar auditorium. We couldn’t get ceiling fans to take ease the 100+ degree heat because the weight would tear down the ceilings. They got a variety of interesting classes and a huge selection of honors classes. We got the bare minimum classes and two honors classes. On their career day, they get recruiters from prestigious colleges. On our career day we got the military, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a couple of trade schools. I am not kidding.

Why all the disparity? Parent’s in our neighborhood just didn’t care. They don’t have time to serve unpaid labor on school boards. They don’t vote in school board elections. They don’t serve as room mothers. They don’t donate money to extracurricular activities. They don’t demand honors classes. They don’t show up to parent teacher confrences. They don’t push their children to do their homework and behave well. The people in my neighborhood grew up learning the value of hard work, not education. That translated in to terrible schools for us.

And that isn’t the fault of the kids.

Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong when kids that live ten miles apart from each other get such vastly different educations. No one from my school had gotten in to Stanford for ten years. There literally is no way to get in to Stanford if you go to Cordova High School. No matter how hard you work. Not with a 4.0 and stellar SATS. Kids down the road get in to Stanford on a regular basis.

How are we supposed to break this cycle? How are supposed to teach kids in the ghetto the value of an education if we give them the least valuable education possible. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that providing schools where oppertunity is next to impossible is going to create generation after generation that does not value education.

Something has to happen. I don’t know that the answer is bussing, but if that is what it takes to get somebody to care about a school then maybe it is. Do not ignore for one moment that the difference between a good school and a bad school is the income level of their students’ families.

9

YWalker , it’s interesting to learn that you’re from NC. When reading the description of the local education system, my first thought was that you must live in my home town of Lexington, Ky. It seems that the southern cities where the population has been growing so fast in recent years are the most likely to have this sort of problem.

During middle school and high school, I lived in a middle class white suburb, and our house was literally right next door do a decidedly average group of schools. My parents chose to send my brother and me to public magnet schools that the city had set up in largely black, lower class neighborhoods. As in your case, about half of the slots were reserved for neighborhood kids while the other half were mostly bussed in from the suburbs. What sticks out in my mind is how badly the attempt at integration failed within the schools. In both middle school and high school, there was a huge trend towards voluntary segregation. In the cafeteria at lunchtime, the black students sat on one side and the white students on the other. Within each classroom, the exact same thing happened. Other than a couple of black girls who occasionally crossed the line to sit on the “white side”, I can barely even recall speaking to any black students during that time, even though both schools were over 30% black.

10

Thanks for your perspective, even sven. As an aside, actually, I did spend most of my time in low-income schools. I started out in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school systems, but our family moved into the rural county next to it when I was in the fourth grade (1970.) The elementary school I went to handled 1st through 8th grade. The main building was built in 1908. Interestingly, this school was NOT segregated. The black high school for the county had burned down in the late 1950’s, and instead of replacing it, the county opted to integrate the schools instead. I found race relations there to be much more easy than they were in the Charlotte-Meck schools where forced bussing was just beginning. On the other hand, I didn’t have the nifty programs the Charlotte kids did. Since you went straight from elementary school to high school, you couldn’t have algebra until you hit 9th grade. Consequently, calculus classes weren’t offered. (The math sequence went Algegra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Advanced Math, Calculus. It doesn’t fit into 4 years.)

The problem is not the physical facilities. The school my kids are being transferred to is a brand new facility, just 3 years old. Our current school dates back to the 1920’s. All campuses throughout the county receive maintenance and refurbishments as funding is available. I know this because I work with an engineering firm that did the feasibility studies for providing air conditioning to all schools in the county that did not have it 10 years ago. It has subsequently been added to all campuses. Since all funding is provided through the county, I don’t think that the schools in the poorer neighborhoods receive any less funding than those in wealthier neighborhoods.

I think you made the most important point in that it’s the parents that really matter. Part of the reason our school is so strong is that we have parent volunteers to help extend the programs. That is possible when you live 5 minutes away from the school — less doable when it’s 30-45 minutes away. And, even if the parents don’t volunteer in the schools, its important that they let their kids know that education is important, and they are expected to do their work and not just go sit in the classroom. I want my kids sitting next to other kids whose parents think that education is important. I don’t want low income kids to miss out on this opportunity, either. In my opinion, the magnet program makes it possible for them to achieve this by letting them transfer to other schools. If the parents don’t give a damn about their kids’ education, however, then their kids will stay wherever their base assignment is. No matter where those kids get assigned, they are missing the most important component of educational success, and it’s not something that the school system can provide for them.

(As an aside, one of the other mothers at my son’s bus stop told me that her middle-grade son has gotten beaten up at school because he did his homework. The boys that beat him up said that only faggots did their homework.)