Picture an average day in the life of two 9-year-old, 3rd grade elementary school students. We find one White student at her hyper-segregated White elementary school in an upper middle class suburban community. Her counterpart is a Black, 9-year-old, 3rd grade student attending his elementary school in an inner city neighborhood. According to Google Maps, the two students attend elementary schools that are 11.3 miles apart. Google Maps reports that the driving distance between the two schools is approximately 17 minutes.
The White elementary school student attends school with a racial composition that is 90% White, 4.2% Asian, 2.7% Hispanic and 0.8% Black. In her school, 2.1% of the students are eligible for free and reduced price meals, and …show more content…
At the end of each school year, administrators at both schools will prepare a narrative that reports school-based efforts to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation by exposing students to diverse students and teachers. In the suburban school, the administrator will reference participation in the Open Choice Program, and will cite the school’s Spanish language program, multi-cultural literature embedded in the English Language Arts curriculum, and community service programming as evidence of the school’s commitment to diversity. The Black student’s school administrator will prepare a narrative that trumpets the school’s racially diverse community, efforts to celebrate diversity through programming and one-time events, and the school’s relationship with community-based partnerships as evidence of its commitment to promoting diversity. With the exception of the Open Choice program that consists of seven Minority students enrolled in the hyper-segregated White school, neither of the schools will provide any meaningful evidence of efforts to expose Minority students to racially isolated White students, and vice versa.
The above scenario sounds like it should be occurring in a Jim Crow-era public school system in a state south of the Mason Dixon Line. Instead, this is an accurate description of a day-in-the-life of two public elementary school students in Connecticut from …show more content…
By more fully understanding the legal, political, and historical context that created racially, ethnically and socioeconomically isolated public schools, we can more fully appreciate the constraints public educators face with respect to preparing students for college and career environments that will inevitably reflect the diversity of America. Unfortunately, many teachers, parents, and policymakers view the segregation of public school students as “normal.” We argue that if we hope to create a post-racial nation, we must view the current system and an aberration, and work to ameliorate the negative impacts of a system that maintains racially, ethnically and socioeconomically isolated public schools by better preparing our nation’s public school educators for the schools they will
The White elementary school student attends school with a racial composition that is 90% White, 4.2% Asian, 2.7% Hispanic and 0.8% Black. In her school, 2.1% of the students are eligible for free and reduced price meals, and …show more content…
At the end of each school year, administrators at both schools will prepare a narrative that reports school-based efforts to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation by exposing students to diverse students and teachers. In the suburban school, the administrator will reference participation in the Open Choice Program, and will cite the school’s Spanish language program, multi-cultural literature embedded in the English Language Arts curriculum, and community service programming as evidence of the school’s commitment to diversity. The Black student’s school administrator will prepare a narrative that trumpets the school’s racially diverse community, efforts to celebrate diversity through programming and one-time events, and the school’s relationship with community-based partnerships as evidence of its commitment to promoting diversity. With the exception of the Open Choice program that consists of seven Minority students enrolled in the hyper-segregated White school, neither of the schools will provide any meaningful evidence of efforts to expose Minority students to racially isolated White students, and vice versa.
The above scenario sounds like it should be occurring in a Jim Crow-era public school system in a state south of the Mason Dixon Line. Instead, this is an accurate description of a day-in-the-life of two public elementary school students in Connecticut from …show more content…
By more fully understanding the legal, political, and historical context that created racially, ethnically and socioeconomically isolated public schools, we can more fully appreciate the constraints public educators face with respect to preparing students for college and career environments that will inevitably reflect the diversity of America. Unfortunately, many teachers, parents, and policymakers view the segregation of public school students as “normal.” We argue that if we hope to create a post-racial nation, we must view the current system and an aberration, and work to ameliorate the negative impacts of a system that maintains racially, ethnically and socioeconomically isolated public schools by better preparing our nation’s public school educators for the schools they will