Anyone who follows education nationally knows that TUSD’s problems with desegregation aren’t unique. You find segregated schools across the country in places where, like Tucson, there is enough of an ethnic mix to create schools with diverse student populations. The question is, what are effective ways to get more children of different races and ethnicities attending the same schools? TUSD has a court-ordered plan to increase desegregation which includes attracting Anglo students to magnet schools in predominantly Hispanic areas. It hasn’t worked out well. Recriminations fly in all directions.
For me, one of the most troubling questions is, can Anglo parents with middle class incomes be convinced to send their children to schools with a majority of Hispanic children, many of whom come from families at the poverty level?
A study out of New York indicates how difficult the problem of desegregating schools is. New York is known to have some of the most segregated public schools in the country. Part of that has to do with living patterns, of course, with people separated geographically by race, ethnicity and income. But according to a study by the Center for New York City Affairs, even when geography isn’t a factor, school segregation often persists.
“We see a lot of areas where income is more mixed, and ethnicity is more mixed, but the schools are not,” said Nicole Mader, an education policy analyst at the center.
The analysts’ maps provide stark evidence of something many New Yorkers know intuitively: Middle-class families, often white, are happy to live in areas where their neighbors are less well-off and are a different color; this is the very tide of gentrification. But they are less willing to send their children to schools where most of their classmates are likely to be poor and either black or Hispanic.
This impulse creates pockets of extremes. More affluent families cluster in schools with reputations for good academics. Many middle-class families zoned for high-poverty schools send their children to charter schools or gifted and talented programs, rather than to a local school.
The study cites a school where the neighborhood’s average income is $69,000 and 37 percent of the people living there are African American or Hispanic. Yet the school is 96 percent African American and Hispanic, and the average income of the school’s families is $36,000.
We’ve been wrestling with integrating schools since the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. We’ve tried a variety of approaches with mixed results, at best. Sixty-one years later, it’s hard to see much progress. Tried, tested solutions are hard to find.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2015.
” The question is, what are effective ways to get more children of different races and ethnicities attending the same schools?”
What a worthless goal! At the end of a school day they return to the neighborhood dictated by their socio economic levels. This leads to feelings of being shunned and jealousy. They can’t develop friendly relationships as they do not live close enough, so school time is all they share, along with peer pressure. How would you like to be moved from your neighborhood to another one where they could “use more of your race?”
What is accomplished by social tinkering fools is nothing more that wasted funds for buses, drivers, fuel and air pollution. My kids will go to school near our home.
Robbing students and teachers of what they should have had.
Julie T: We are a heterogeneous society; the Student Population in our Schools should reflect this fact. We should not encourage the separation of races/ethnic/religious groups simply because it is convenient to send a child to a School close to their home. All Schools within a District, regardless of location should be provided with the resources, competent/dedicated Teaches with an effective Instructional Program and a supporting Infrastructure, and most importantly, with the implementation of ARS 15-841; that no Student will be permitted to chronically disrupt the Instructional program of a Teacher. Also, Magnet Schools should be located throughout the District so as to attract a diverse Student population.
An essential part of a Students Education, if not THE essential aspect, is to understand and respect the nature of Human Diversity in all its aspects. A segregated School District, for what ever reason, vitiates this essential process.
The problem is the government is more concerened about intergation than education. Students cannot be forced to learn or to intergrate. Most ethnic groups tend to live with like people. Intergration usually comes with higher education, when you are more interested in the person, than what color they are.
Francis you might think you’re taking our tax dollars to promote some grand social experience, but I hate to tell you that basic education seems to have been put last on the list. We have wasted trillions on Section 8 housing trying to use federal money to put people in neighborhoods they could not afford. Children should go to school where they live.
Stop the tinkering. I think Julie hit that on the head.
New York City has the dubious distinction of having one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and you are asking us to accept their chronic problems in achieving reasonable levels of integration — problems which have a lot to do with the specific characteristics of a major urban metropolis on a scale completely different from Tucson — as evidence that we should excuse TUSD’s failures to integrate?
That’s pretty weak, David.
The fact is that magnet schools can work as an integration strategy when the administration allocating funds does what is necessary to make them work — and makes an honest “good faith” effort to integrate, as Judge Bury said.
TUSD has not done this, and seems currently to be engaged in an expensive (legal fees) and disruptive (loss or threatened loss of magnet status at schools) effort of deliberate non-compliance with the courts. Their budgeting continues to be opaque and seemingly deliberately so. Reminds me of a form of mis-behavior I read about years ago in an education course: “displaying incompetence.”
Do you really believe that it’s time to give up on the effort to integrate our schools, that it’s an impossible task, or that in the context of white flight we should do everything we can to retain affluent white families in public districts, including tolerating schools within a large, poor urban system like TUSD clustering the privileged at sites like Fruchthendler, Sabino, and UHS?
Some of TUSD’s magnets work better to integrate than others. Why is that? What are the factors influencing it? Why does Borton work? Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and do a little bit of relevant research locally, instead of referring us to an irrelevant study of NYC schools?
How about this, David? What do you think of this?
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/12/17/tusd-ap-scores-show-disparities/
Is this an OK distribution of AP test taking rates, district wide?
Is it acceptable for TUSD to earn an award from the College Board by forcing UHS students, with a high concentration of Anglos and affluence, to take more AP courses than they want or need to take, while students in the rest of the district seem not to have sufficient AP opportunities at their sites?
You said in a November article, “I believe [TUSD’s Superintendent Sanchez] has done, and continues to do, a reasonably good job.”
But it’s increasingly clear that there’s little solid evidence of that — and even the scant evidence that IS produced, like the AP award, seems not, when you look into it with any degree of detail, to prove sound.
David W. : Property values are manipulated by Banks and other Financial Institutions, for their own Greed/Profit creating zones of “affordable housing”. This is, in fact, a successful attempt by Banks and other Financial Institutions to warehouse Families with low to moderate incomes.
A First Rate Education should be completely independent of these efforts. School Districts should provide the resources, as I mentioned above, necessary for every child within the District to obtain a First Rate Education notwithstanding their Economic Status or their Neighborhood. With this, Students from through out the District will be attracted to and attend the School that will provide them with the necessary skills to achieve their career goals; achieving, as well, a diverse Student population
News flash Francis. Home values are driven by the free market economy, based on supply and demand. Banks chase values. And then you go right to greed?
News flash David W. There is NO Free Market Economy based on Supply and Demand….it’s a myth. Commodities, including Housing, are manipulated so as to maximize profit.
“Tried, tested solutions are hard to find.” How about pushing higher taxation and funding (with actual oversight by community members), or community organizing for activities making safer and more encouraging neighborhoods? Nope, those involve asking for citizens’ effort; journalists doing so would lose audience share. Or, journalists, along with most citizens, never think to try encouraging actual involvement with raising children. –Yes, hurtful words. Earned.
No free market economy? Francis you’re mistaken. Have you ever sold or bough a house? There is no “master manipulator or bank” that is controlling prices.
Ditto for oil and gold. Gas prices have dropped despite any efforts of OPEC or oil companies and the same with gold.
Yes…No free market economy!, Frank Stagg. It existed conceptually in the mind of Adam Smith and in his seminal book, The Wealth of Nations (1776). In reality it is a myth. Markets are manipulated so as to maximize profit at the expense of the consumer…in this case Housing so that Families of low to moderate income are warehoused in “affordable housing” and the Education that their Children receive is second rate.
What a surprise.! Even in the Left Wing strongholds of NYC where scarcely a Republican nor a Redneck dares to appear, segregation still exists. Why O why does this still exist?
Could it be the Liberals don’ walk the walk when it comes to their children? I mean, why would Obama-san still send his precious little girls to the Sidwell Friends school when there are such fine public schools available?
Could it be the fault of Public Teachers Unions that have opposed almost reform of our Public Schools at every turn from teacher accountability to school choice? Nah why would teacher who are almost all Liberal oppose the improvement of their schools and doom the under privileged to third rate education?
“…Could it be the fault of Public Teachers Unions that have opposed almost reform of our Public Schools at every turn from teacher accountability to school choice? ..” I agree.
Incredible, people choose and want to be around people who are similar to themselves aka human nature.
But please note, white people should not only be allowed to participate, in what is basically human nature, but are allowed to be called evil or “racist” by other races.
Why is that? Who is pushing this agenda?
Old Pueblo Veteran: You have not the slightest understanding of the concept of “race”:
FYI: http://www.sciencedigest.org/human_races.h…
We are but ONE “Racially” heterogeneous Human population….so that….any schematic notion of race in Human populations becomes arbitrary; used solely for the expression of hate, social and cultural exclusivity, and invidious discrimination.
I am reminded of what my Father (God rest his Soul) told me when I came home from School crying because a classmate of mine, because of our superficial difference (economic and otherwise), said that he was “better” than me: Francis, my Dad said, next time that he does this to you, you tell him that your shit smells just like mine!
Dear Francis. Why is Down’s Syndrome less common in African Americans? Why can’t I develop Sickle Cell Anemia?
How people debate their Narratives in 2015. (Le Current Year)
1. Link to biased source that masks it’s political lean (goes both ways)
2. Make statement as a fact and not an opinion, attribute it to yourself or Einstein.
3. Regurgitate yarn about how racism is bad, without acknowledging anything I stated.
#4 – you forgot to remind me that it is the current year.
I’m not one of your teenage students Francis and I grew up as a minority in my city and county.
It seems apparent to many that our educational system was better in the past, but this “better” system established and almost unconsciously maintained clearly prejudiced policies, as well as hurtful everyday classroom practices. A more basic question is whether we can ever really expect to use the education of children to right the wrongs of adults who refuse to change beliefs and behavior. The hard irony is that these same adults are the ones required to have children in the first place.