In the year 2000, 70.1% of the residents of Seattle were white, yet accounted for only 40% of the students in Seattle Public Schools (US Census Bureau, Census 2000). While some of this may be due to a demographic shift in the type of white families moving into Seattle (those not having children), an important factor to consider is that Seattle has one of the highest rates of private school enrollment in the country, which has been between 25-30% for the last two decades, corresponding closely with the implementation of district-wide mandatory busing in 1978 (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 25, 2005).
Educational equality is a different goal than simply having good education across the board at the public school level. Public schools, especially in the lower income areas should get more funding. I would advocate even more funding than public schools in affluent areas because affluent parents will supplement their kidâs education in other ways like travel, camps, computers, etc.
Iâm saying those with means will always find ways to get an even better education. So unless you ban private schools and insist on the exact same educational experience for each kid, youâre not going to have equality. Itâs not being cynical itâs being realistic. Parents donât want their kid to be equal, they want them to be better. I think they should want them to be happy but I digress.
One problem Iâve seen in affluent areas is the demand for âgateâ programs at the expense of programs for kids with educational challenges. IMHO, I think we should help those who have challenges first because the smart kids will do well regardless but try telling that to an overachiever parent.
Thatâs patently false: communities are segregated by both race and class. Equally poor white and black people tend to live in different areas, and thus get funneled to different schools. Furthermore, there tends to be significantly more economic diversity in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods, for a variety of reasons running from white flight (which makes it difficult for more prosperous blacks to live amongst their white economic peers) to historical redlining practices.
I almost feel youâre deliberately misunderstanding me and trying hard to present my as some sort of racist.
Not at all. In fact I believe that it is a far larger number of people than I can see from those maps. I am arguing that there must be much better statistics to show the real problem. After all, when SQUINTING, it can already be seen from this data. I am just saying that the data as posted does a poor job at showing the problem. The problem is obvious from the other side of the planet. If I need to squint at the maps to see the problem there, the fault is with those maps.
I am just arguing that using shoddy statistics for a good cause is still shoddy statistics, and that might even end up hurting the good cause.
In order to try to understand which way we want the statistics to go. We do want 100% of ALL kids in majority-white schools in majority-white areas.
That would be a safe bet, as I live on a different continent. Were you trying to accuse me of arguing from a position of âwhite color-blindnessâ or something like that? There is plenty of racism where I live, but its history and and its structure are completely different, so it needs to be discussed separately.
To be honest, first I looked at the headline on BB, and I thought âwell, duhâ. Then I looked at the map in the BB post, and I thought, âwait a moment, that map doesnât really show anything beyond the fact that some areas of the US are more diverse than othersâ. Then I looked at the linked post.
There is also problem (3), which is that the US seems to be mostly made up of rich majority-white districts and poor majority-nonwhite districts. Problem (1) does not need any maps to show. Problem (3) alone is big enough.
How big is Problem (2) on top of Problems (1) and (3)? We need to look at individual counties to see that. And we need to compare the percentage of white students in majority-white schools in a county with the overall percentage of white public-school students in that county.
Now I have no idea whether the percentages shown in the mouseover on those maps refer to all students or to all public-school students. If they refer to all students, we will only ever see problems (1) and (3) in the map and we have no chance at reliably seeing problem (2). Itâs covered up by the other two.
If they do refer to public-school students, then we really need to look at details. Why are there 100% white students in white schools in a district with 72% white students, and still 32% in a neighboring district with just 14% white students? Is that just a fluke or is it significant? A few districts over there are 31% white students, but 0% of them are in âwhiteâ schools.
Conclusion: The problem that the headline talks about cannot actually be seen from the maps without more statistical analysis. Thatâs why I was asking for different maps.
Did you miss the part where I said I am speaking from personal observation of my community that I actually live in? My statements are raw fact, independently confirmable, whereas yours are unsupported generalities that appear to be drawn from ideology and statistics.
Conclusion not supported by premise. We had forced school racial integration in the 1970s, as I pointed out in my original post, which set up racially and economically integrated districts and bus routes. The recent âneighborhood schools actâ, which was explicitly and openly an engine of class discrimination and not racial discrimination, is part of the re-segregation process (although certainly not to the degree that the âchoiceâ system is).
Well, maybe where you live. Here, the âwhite neighborhoodâ I live in contains both multimillionaires and long-term unemployed on public assistance. The nearby city contains far less economic diversity - nearly everyone lives next door to people of the same social class, and there are distinct boundaries between upper and lower class neighborhoods. This is one of the factors that was addressed by Murray Schwartzâs 1978 desegregation plan, which completely redistricted my county, and set up âpizza wedgeâ districts containing chunks of both wealthy suburban areas and poor inner city ghettos.
I have no doubt that you can stand 500000 miles away and reach different conclusions, but Iâm on the ground actually doing stuff, and what Iâm talking about is whatâs really here up close.
