The UCLA Civil Rights Project just released a report on racial and ethnic diversity in New York City schools. For those of us fighting for education justice and equality, the results were staggering and instructive.
“The study notes that many of the charter schools created over the last dozen years are among the least diverse of all, with less than 1% white enrollment at 73% of charter schools… [Researchers] say segregation has the effect of concentrating black and Latino students in schools with high ratios of poor students compared with the statewide average.” (The Guardian)
In 1954 in a decision written by Justice Thurgood Marshall, the doctrine of separate but equal schools was outlawed–60 years ago.
Magnet schools were rated as both most integrated and least segregated.
That phenomenon reflects the desire of families for kids to attend public schools that offer both a quality education and racial and ethnic diversity.
The biggest problem with education in America is that we don’t fund public education as if it were essential to democracy –and it is.
The failure to adequately fund education drives inequality and voter apathy and social class sclerosis. This failure is toxic to democracy and social justice.
Charter schools are NOT the solution to our education problems. Adequate funding, better education policy including recess every day, making learning fun and interactive, parental involvement, and making teaching a respected profession that can sustain a middle class lifestyle are some of the answers.
My mother died at 64 of a massive heart attack, which struck her in the classroom–six months before retirement after a lifetime of teaching. My two kids go to well integrated public schools. Their ability to learn and do well has everything to do with class size, exercise, diversity, and an environment that is not constantly panicked by the next standardized test.
We need education sanity, not right-wing ideology.
Photo credit: National Archives and Records Administration.
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