Essay On Segregation In Schools

Segregation of our students is a matter that many believe is no longer an issue due to the historical court cases such as Brown vs. Board of Education, where it was deemed that separate schools for black and white students was a denial of their rights as citizens of the United States based on our Constitution. Although this has been determined, over the years our schools have gradually become more and more separate and unequal in terms of the education that our students are receiving. This is described best by Kozol (2005, p. 10) when he states, we have “been traveling a long way to a place of ultimate surrender that does not look very different from the place where some of us began.” This progression back to separate and unequal education standards is ultimately hurting the students who are populating these schools systems. These individuals who are affected are not just the minority students who have substandard facilities, inadequate textbooks, and a lack of technology, but also the white privileged students who are not experiencing the real diversity that makes up the world, which they will be forced to experience after high school. As stated by Orfield, Frackenberg, and Siegel-Hawley (2010), “students in integrated schools are more likely to be exposed to challenging advanced …show more content…
These factors are not things that are necessarily under the control of the teachers, but rather they are things that the community has influenced. Residential segregation is a major factor that influences the segregation of schools, purely based on where they live. Individuals who are at relatively the same income level tend to live in similar areas, which leads to the separation of students based on poverty levels. This is also includes families moving out of areas that are rich in minority population so that their students can attend more privileged and primarily white school