School Segregation in 2015 - Education Inequality Leads To...

We'll take a break from the Republican horserace today to cover a vital topic: de facto segregation in our public schools. Below, I link to two podcast episodes from This American Life. You really should listen to both of them, as they're absolutely worth your time.

Backwards Bigots

We all learned in school that Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a triumph, and that it heralded the beginning of the modern civil rights era. We were horrified that America could so recently have accepted a system where many of our citizens were legally prohibited from coexisting with their white peers. We were revolted by the backward attitudes at the time, and reveled at the enlightened time we lived in.

This lesson implied that school desegregation succeeded. This may have been true, or seemed true, when I was growing up in the 80's and 90's: school desegregation peaked in 1988. The US has been on a backward slide since then, with the level of school integration in 2005 equaling that of 1968. This gradual decline of integration has happened quietly, and thus many of us probably don't realize it's happening.

We now live in a time when economic inequality abounds, with paltry opportunities for young minorities. Education is often proposed as a solution to these woes, but the poor education provided to minority students presents a barrier. "Separate but Equal" doctrine was struck down by the Supreme Court a long time ago, and it remains unrealistic today. Much of schools' funding comes from local property taxes, and for that reason schools in poor districts will be inherently unequal. Just as in 1954, integration is the answer.

Opportunity for All

This American Life released two fantastic episodes of their radio show/podcast over the last two weeks. Called "The Problem We All Live With", after the Norman Rockwell painting of the same name (at the top of this post), the shows examine school segregation today.

Part 1 focuses on the Normandy school district in Missouri, where Michael Brown attended high school. Normandy, which had its accreditation on probation for 15 years, was "accidentally" integrated a few years ago. This happened when the district finally lost its accreditation, and a state law allowed district students to transfer to a neighboring district at no cost. The neighboring district here was majority-white, and nearly 1000 students from Normandy elected to transfer.

Listen in this episode as Nikole Hannah-Jones, of the New York Times Magazine, tells you what happened. The transfer students were initially met with overwhelming resistance, but the first year ended up going very well. The integration of these students raised their educational outcomes well above where they were in the de facto-segregated Normandy school district. 

Part 2 jumps to Hartford, CT, where the school district is actively pursuing integration. They're doing this mostly through the creation of magnet schools, aiming to attract white students from the suburbs into schools in the city. These newly-integrated schools, flush with cash from a legal settlement, have dramatically improved the quality of Hartford's education system. By pursuing a magnet school approach, where a series of schools are individually tailored to different interests, Hartford found a way to integrate students willingly. 

Admitting the Problem is the First Step

Please listen to these two episodes; it's a great way to spend a couple of commutes. Wealth inequality is one of our biggest domestic problems, and our unequal schools are a root cause. As you'll hear in the school board meeting in Part 1, we also continue to have a problem with flat-out racism. Improved education won't fix this directly, but I've got to hope that increasing our exposure to other cultures will help improve how we feel about one another.

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Once you've listened to the shows, please let me know what you think!

-Eric