At Talk Poverty Perpetual Baffour asks a question that’s amazingly easy to answer: why are schools still segregated?
One would think Americans are ready for school integration, though. In a new study released by me and my colleague, Ulrich Boser, we found that most Americans—more than 60 percent—report that school segregation is an important issue for them, and nearly 70 percent of Americans agree that more should be done to integrate low- and high-poverty schools.
These findings were a bit startling at first glance. After all, if most Americans are in favor of school integration, why aren’t diverse, integrated classrooms spreading across the country?
Historically, school integration has met intense resistance. But at least in principle, the general public seems to endorse it, and our poll may have tapped into the country’s sympathy for people living in poverty.
The answer is patterns of residence. As long as whites are willing to move so their kids can attend “better schools” which, coincidentally, have fewer poor people, i.e. blacks and Hispanics, in them there are no real prospects for school integration. And as long as most school funding is based on local property taxes wealthy school districts will have more to spend on their schools.
I have to agree with this. Communities are going to segregate by income. With some few exceptions, you just don’t get the $700,000 house sitting next to the $50,000 house. That tis how real estate works. Shipping kids around to force integration is not popular with anyone.
Steve
Plus those few exceptions don’t result in less segregation. Barack Obama’s house in Chicago is in a neighborhood that has both $50,000 and $700,000 houses. He didn’t send his kids to public school. Should white parents who made the same choice as President and Mrs. Obama did be faulted for it?
This reminds me of this article.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-marin-county-housing-cut-20170621-story.html
The gist is that Marin County (77-15 Hillary and 17th richest county in the country) managed to get an exemption for California’s affordable housing laws until 2028. An obvious case of “do as I say, not as I do”. Question is, how long till those rubes who get called “xenophobes” for wanting a halt to migrants catch on and …. Trump!
I was going to use St Augustine’s quote, but Dave beat me to it.