![]() ![]() But in others, especially in the South, the departing community was whiter and wealthier than the district left behind. The nonprofit advocacy group EdBuild identified 128 communities that attempted to separate from their school districts since 2000, including 73 that were successful. In the most dramatic cases, communities have broken away from their larger school districts. In much of the country, it’s common for every city, suburb and town to have its own school system, and that makes it easy for families to avoid or depart a district if they are uncomfortable with the demographics or unhappy with the offerings. “When I came to Penn State, people were like, `This is the district you should live in.’” “When you move to an area, you’re told by Realtors or by social contacts, ‘These are the places to live that have these kind of schools that we think are more like you,’ ” said Erica Frankenberg, who directs the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Pennsylvania State University. That’s because the demographic makeup of school districts within a metro area differ significantly from one to another. ![]() But only 3 percent of children lived in highly integrated metro areas in 2017. The Post found that 23 percent of all public school children attended highly integrated school districts in 2017. Virtually no metro area is better integrated than the school districts within it, The Post analysis shows. So taking a snapshot of integration across a metro area offers a richer portrait of how students are sorted across schools in the region. ![]() But that district may bear little resemblance to the student population in the larger metropolitan area, and when looked at in this broader way, those same schools may be regarded as segregated. One result: considerable segregation on the metro level, with the black children of Memphis separated by district lines from the adjacent, mostly white suburbs.Ī Washington Post analysis of the nation’s 13,184 traditional public school districts found school segregation is considerably more pervasive when measured at the metropolitan level.Ī school district is considered integrated if its campuses reflect the makeup of students in that district. Today, there are seven school districts, each serving the children inside their own lines. After a year, the suburbs rebelled, with six breaking away, each forming its own system. Then, a few years ago, there was one large merged district. For many years, there were two districts - one for the city, one for the rest of the county. In Shelby County, the boundary lines changed not once but twice in two years, as Memphis and its suburbs battled over controlling the schools. Those district lines also provided an escape route for middle-class black families, leaving city centers with concentrated poverty. ![]() But it’s the lines that divide school districts from each other that have a much more profound effect in separating students by race, ethnicity and class.īoundaries between districts enabled white flight from the cities to the suburbs after courts began enforcing desegregation orders. But cater to our children as well, be concerned about our children as well.”įor decades, debate over school segregation in the United States has focused on how school districts assign their students to individual schools. “I feel like if they don’t want the black children there, that’s fine. “Memphis is segregated - very much so,” said Catrina Morrow, whose son plays defensive end for Southwind, where she said there never seems to be enough money for anything. It sits in Germantown, a neighboring mostly white suburban district. It is part of the Shelby County Schools, which primarily serve Memphis.Īt Houston High, 3 percent of students are poor and 14 percent are black. At Southwind, more than 4 in 10 students live in poverty and nearly all are black or Hispanic. It made the community’s wealth obvious, especially to parents from Southwind High, seated on the visitors’ bleachers. MEMPHIS - The football stadium at Houston High School was alive with the sounds of a 185-student marching band and an announcer bellowing “Touchdowwwwn, Mustangs!” Videos played on a sophisticated scoreboard as players scrambled across pristine artificial turf. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |