Program to desegregate San Francisco’s schools has made them more segregated
I can’t say that the results of this attempt at intervention are especially surprising:
San Francisco allows parents to apply to any elementary school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning 18 years ago in an effort to desegregate its classrooms. Give parents more choices, the thinking was, and low-income and working-class students of color like Cinthya would fill more seats at the city’s most coveted schools.
But last month, Cinthya’s parents, who are Hispanic, found out she had been admitted to their second-to-last choice, a school where less than a third of students met standards on state reading and math tests last year. Only 3 percent were white.
Results like these have soured many on the city’s school enrollment plan, which is known here as “the lottery” and was once considered a national model.
“Our current system is broken,” said Stevon Cook, president of the district Board of Education, which, late last year, passed a resolution to overhaul the process. “We’ve inadvertently made the schools more segregated.”
But this is San Francisco, and the NY Times reporting on it. So the solution being discussed? More Draconian measures that will also fail to benefit anyone, we can safely predict, and will harm the entire system much as forced busing did in Boston in the 1970s. I described that process in great detail here, and it was a resounding failure for all concerned.
But that dismal track record is unlikely to discourage the powers that be in San Francisco:
Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Outlaw private schools! That’ll do the trick, I’m sure.
More:
The district’s schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city’s neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation’s largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York…
While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said — a change driven by astronomical housing costs…
Even the school district has acknowledged that a system of geographically zoned schools would most likely create more racial integration than the current, choice-driven approach.
There are several reasons the system has not worked as intended. One is a lack of transportation. Fewer than 4,000 of the district’s 54,000 students ride a bus to school. The city’s busing program was reduced in 2010, during the last recession, and has not been restored.
Much much more at the link.
What Thomas Sowell’s identified in other contexts. They’re obsessed with the demographics of schools and not with their pedagogic effectiveness. Maybe because they’re neither interested in nor talented in imparting knowledge.
Blacks don’t need a white kid seated at the next desk. They need schools which are (1) orderly, (2) have fixed standards, (3) give pupils honest and constructive feedback about their performance, and (4) assign pupils to tracks which are optimally paced and make the best use of said student’s time.
The Rachel Lotans of this world aren’t interested in any of this.
This is no surprise. When students of color are inserted into public schools via “lottery”, the uber-liberal white upper class in San Francisco pull their kids out and send them to private schools. It happens in housing too. Move people of color into a elite white liberal neighborhood via Section 8, and they will start to move away. It’s why they collectively shrieked in horror when Trump threatened to dump illegals into their sanctuary cities. These people virtue signal so violently and support the Democratic party so religiously because they are aware of their own massive hypocrisy. These people vigorously support integrated neighborhoods and schools, as long as they or their children aren’t in them.
When students of color are inserted into public schools via “lottery”, the uber-liberal white upper class in San Francisco pull their kids out and send them to private schools. It happens in housing too.
Liberals are in charge of the school apparat and are the people to whom the chief of police reports. The school apparat’s mentality can be seen in that of one Susan O’Doherty, erstwhile columnist for Inside Higher Education, who whined and wrung her hands at the suggestion that it was the business of school administrators to sequester incorrigibles and get them away from the other kids. “But they’re disadvantaged” So, actually educating youths should, in the mind of Susan O’Doherty, PsyD, take a back seat to the object of not making Susan O’Doherty, PsyD feel bad about her job. Police departments won’t use best practices because the politicians do not have their back (among other reasons). The politicians are addled by the idea that ‘too many’ blacks might be arrested and that black yutes might feel ‘dissed’.
Liberals know, if they do not acknowledge, that integration means disorder and insecurity. For it to mean something else, non-liberals must be in charge.
“Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether.”
Yes, affluent parents are such a problem. First they buy high priced real estate and thereby pay exorbitant property taxes. Then they have the gall to not make use of the public education services that they’ve overpaid for. Of course the school district can’t afford school busses. Because, … because … (Let’s change the subject.)
There was an excellent old documentary entitled “The Lottery” about charter schools in NYC.
Diversity (i.e. color judgments including racism) breeds adversity.
The kids being excluded might be better off. Home schooling, if possible, is a much better solution.
I’m in a high school where the student demographic is 97% African-American. I sponsor a student organization that’s mostly 99% African-American. Within the organization there’s segregation, not by skin color though. The segregation comes by other means: by mutual interests and certain personalities just coming together. For the most part, it’s simply cafeteria segregation.
I read the article. The comments were interesting–several pointed out that the parents of the students make more of a difference in the success of a student than the school itself. Merely integrating theschoolsor throwing money at them won’t change that.
Birds of a feather flock together. In truth, people unconsciously want to associate with their ‘tribe’. It is human nature.
No mention anywhere in the article about motion sickness from long commutes to far away schools. Maybe it’s not common? I spent years being nauseous and wobbly every day from being bused for hours.
It was also pretty rough being a white kid on the school bus, however, mainly I was green until High School. That was easier because, though it was a long commute to the ends of the earth, it was by train, not by car or bus. Trains don’t bother me for some reason. But, needless to say, running off to sea was off the table.