Progressive Voices

There has been an attempt, especially in the South, to circumvent the racial integration of public schools ever since segregation was ruled illegal.  Separate schools were not equal, and most of us now see that segregation simply was wrong.

The job of racial integration has been a constant battle, and today, busing students solely to achieve racial balance is itself against the law.  In a perfect world, desegregation would have given us a meritocracy in public schools as it would in public life.

But this is not a perfect world.  We have seen that integrating public schools racially also means integrating across economic lines.  Many economically poor students are minority students, be they black or Hispanic, and, candidly, they also are academically poor performers. Hence, a large percentage of minority students usually means a large number of poor performers.

School boards such as Wake County's have tried to balance the education challenges by spreading the economically poor students among the whole school system.  It is a tough job.

An alternative to such integration has been charter schools.  They are operated somewhat independently of the larger public school system but with public money.  North Carolina has allowed charter schools for 11 years, and in Wake County, they have become divided into mostly white schools and a few predominately black schools.

Quest Academy and Raleigh Charter High School have, respectively, 91 percent and 82 percent non-minority populations.  PreEminent Charter and Torchlight Academy have almost no white students. And guess what?

Like the segregated schools of old, the mostly white schools are performing well, and the black schools are failing.

This is exactly what will happen if school boards give in to the current cry for what proponents call neighborhood schools.  They will be filled with students from their surrounding neighborhoods. The schools, like their neighborhoods, are sure to segregate economically and racially.

Business leaders in Wake County recognized this trend was taking place during the 1970s when there were two schools systems.  Raleigh schools had a growing minority population; the county system had a growing majority population.  The systems were merged and programs such as magnet schools were introduced to divide the education challenge.  It worked, and real estate values and business growth remained strong throughout most of the county.  You could live anywhere in the county and still have access to good schools.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system acceded to neighborhood school assignments. The schools there are moving rapidly toward a mostly segregated system, and it's only a matter of time before the predominately poor public schools there will perform like those of the past.

This is not a complicated lesson.  It is, however, very difficult to accept.

Barlow Herget is a host and commentator at State Government Radio

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 9:40 am and is filed under Progressive Voices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.