Post by Moses on May 9, 2004 13:56:27 GMT -5
The population of the City of Memphis is 62 percent black and 35 percent white.
The enrollment of the Memphis City Schools is 87 percent black and 9 percent white.
You do the math.
When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the legal segregation of schools 50 years ago, it couldn't outlaw the voluntary kind.
Official segregation led to official desegregation, which was followed by unofficial resegregation, by race and by class.
Today in Memphis, for example, 84 of the city's 185 public schools are 99-100 percent black. More than eight in 10 students in those 84 schools qualify for free or reduced price lunches.
Once we had two school systems - one for white children, another for black children.
Now we have two school systems - one for the haves, another for the have-nots.
This time, there's no one to blame and no legal remedy. This time, the solution won't come from the courts.
The segregated schools of the past were products of Jim Crow laws that could be ruled unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.
The resegregation of schools is the product of another sort of law that can't be repealed - the law of unintended consequences.
The unintended consequences of such progressive acts as the Federal Highway Program, the Civil Rights Act, and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which invested billions of dollars in schools hurt by segregation.
Ironically, the 22 "failing" city schools targeted for "corrective action" all are Title I schools.
The unintended consequences of white flight, black flight, white flight from black flight, suburban growth, and two-income families which made private schools more accessible and inner-city neighborhoods more escapable.
Ten of the city's 22 "corrective action" schools are in three contiguous Zip Codes. Five are in the same Zip Code.
The unintended consequences of millions of decisions made by parents like me trying to do what's best for our own children.
Two-thirds of the households in Memphis earn more than $35,000 a year, but three-fourths of city school students qualify for free or reduced price lunches.
So where do all the middle-class parents like me send our kids to school?
We move out of the city and put our kids in suburban schools. Or we scrimp and save and put our kids in private schools. Or we stand in line and work the system and put our kids in the city's optional "schools-within-schools."
We segregate ourselves and our children from other parents and children who can't or won't meet our standards.
So what's wrong with that?
"You are paying a price for not being there," said Larry Brown, one of the participants in The Commercial Appeal's recent roundtable discussion on education issues. ". . . Your taxes are probably higher. The crime rate is probably higher. The quality of folks that are producing whatever you need is probably not as high as it could be."
There's no doubt the voluntary - and well-intended - resegregation of neighborhoods and schools has fed joblessness, crime, violence and a growing gap between the richest and poorest among us.
Resegregation has created have-not schools that tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods drained of upper-class capital and middle-class clout, where jobs are scarce and criminals aren't.
"The exodus of the nonpoor from mixed-income areas was a major factor in the spread of ghettoes in these cities," Paul Jargowsky and Mary Jo Bane found in a 1991 study of four big cities, including Memphis.
That exodus hurt the schools as much as the neighborhoods they serve. It hurt our own children and the children we left behind.
Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court asked and answered a question of supreme significance that affected parenting across the country.
"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?
"We believe that it does."
If it did then, on the basis of race, it does now, on the basis of race and class.
All children need good schools. Children who have been left behind in dysfunctional social settings need the best schools. Raising standards and expectations isn't enough.
"Can the mere issuance of standards really propel improvement in schooling, or are there other structural issues to contend with - issues such as funding, teachers' knowledge and capacities, access to curriculum resources, and dysfunctional school structures?" Columbia University educator Linda Darling-Hammond wrote in 1994.
"If the goal of standard setting is the improvement of education for all children, rather than merely a more efficient means of sorting students and schools into 'worthy' and 'unworthy' categories, attention must be paid to building the capacity for schools to teach in the manner envisioned by these learning goals.
"This requires carefully developed policy efforts in the areas of teacher development, school development, and equalization of resources."
It's time that parents who demand the best schools for their own children demand even better schools for all children.
It's time we put the best teachers and principals and the most resources in the worst schools.
It's time we support the public schools with our prayers[?!], our gifts[?!], and our presence[?!]. Thanks, but no thanks. That's not the solution.
— David Waters
Commercial Appeal
2004-05-09
www.commercialappeal.com/mca/opinion_columnists/article/0,1426,MCA_539_2865615,00.html
The enrollment of the Memphis City Schools is 87 percent black and 9 percent white.
You do the math.
When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the legal segregation of schools 50 years ago, it couldn't outlaw the voluntary kind.
Official segregation led to official desegregation, which was followed by unofficial resegregation, by race and by class.
Today in Memphis, for example, 84 of the city's 185 public schools are 99-100 percent black. More than eight in 10 students in those 84 schools qualify for free or reduced price lunches.
Once we had two school systems - one for white children, another for black children.
Now we have two school systems - one for the haves, another for the have-nots.
This time, there's no one to blame and no legal remedy. This time, the solution won't come from the courts.
The segregated schools of the past were products of Jim Crow laws that could be ruled unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.
The resegregation of schools is the product of another sort of law that can't be repealed - the law of unintended consequences.
The unintended consequences of such progressive acts as the Federal Highway Program, the Civil Rights Act, and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which invested billions of dollars in schools hurt by segregation.
Ironically, the 22 "failing" city schools targeted for "corrective action" all are Title I schools.
The unintended consequences of white flight, black flight, white flight from black flight, suburban growth, and two-income families which made private schools more accessible and inner-city neighborhoods more escapable.
Ten of the city's 22 "corrective action" schools are in three contiguous Zip Codes. Five are in the same Zip Code.
The unintended consequences of millions of decisions made by parents like me trying to do what's best for our own children.
Two-thirds of the households in Memphis earn more than $35,000 a year, but three-fourths of city school students qualify for free or reduced price lunches.
So where do all the middle-class parents like me send our kids to school?
We move out of the city and put our kids in suburban schools. Or we scrimp and save and put our kids in private schools. Or we stand in line and work the system and put our kids in the city's optional "schools-within-schools."
We segregate ourselves and our children from other parents and children who can't or won't meet our standards.
So what's wrong with that?
"You are paying a price for not being there," said Larry Brown, one of the participants in The Commercial Appeal's recent roundtable discussion on education issues. ". . . Your taxes are probably higher. The crime rate is probably higher. The quality of folks that are producing whatever you need is probably not as high as it could be."
There's no doubt the voluntary - and well-intended - resegregation of neighborhoods and schools has fed joblessness, crime, violence and a growing gap between the richest and poorest among us.
Resegregation has created have-not schools that tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods drained of upper-class capital and middle-class clout, where jobs are scarce and criminals aren't.
"The exodus of the nonpoor from mixed-income areas was a major factor in the spread of ghettoes in these cities," Paul Jargowsky and Mary Jo Bane found in a 1991 study of four big cities, including Memphis.
That exodus hurt the schools as much as the neighborhoods they serve. It hurt our own children and the children we left behind.
Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court asked and answered a question of supreme significance that affected parenting across the country.
"Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?
"We believe that it does."
If it did then, on the basis of race, it does now, on the basis of race and class.
All children need good schools. Children who have been left behind in dysfunctional social settings need the best schools. Raising standards and expectations isn't enough.
"Can the mere issuance of standards really propel improvement in schooling, or are there other structural issues to contend with - issues such as funding, teachers' knowledge and capacities, access to curriculum resources, and dysfunctional school structures?" Columbia University educator Linda Darling-Hammond wrote in 1994.
"If the goal of standard setting is the improvement of education for all children, rather than merely a more efficient means of sorting students and schools into 'worthy' and 'unworthy' categories, attention must be paid to building the capacity for schools to teach in the manner envisioned by these learning goals.
"This requires carefully developed policy efforts in the areas of teacher development, school development, and equalization of resources."
It's time that parents who demand the best schools for their own children demand even better schools for all children.
It's time we put the best teachers and principals and the most resources in the worst schools.
It's time we support the public schools with our prayers[?!], our gifts[?!], and our presence[?!]. Thanks, but no thanks. That's not the solution.
— David Waters
Commercial Appeal
2004-05-09
www.commercialappeal.com/mca/opinion_columnists/article/0,1426,MCA_539_2865615,00.html