Yeah… A lot to say on this one…
first this: “By 1988… school integration in the United States had reached its peak and the achievement gap between black and white students was at its lowest point since the government began collecting data. The difference in black and white reading scores fell to half what it was in 1971, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. (As schools have since resegregated, the test-score gap has only grown.) The improvements for black children did not come at the cost of white children. AS BLACK TEST SCORES ROSE, SO DID WHITE ONES [empasis mine].”
but then, in closing, this: “This sense of helplessness in the face of such entrenched segregation is what makes so alluring the notion, embraced by liberals and conservatives, that we can address school inequality not with integration but by giving poor, segregated schools more resources and demanding of them more accountability. TRUE INTEGRATION, TRUE EQUALITY, REQUIRES A SURRENDERING OF ADVANTAGE [emphasis mine], and when it comes to our own children, that can feel almost unnatural.”
I mean…. …. …. …. is this the question? Do what’s right by your kid or do what’s right by the country’s kids? Is this how we really need to frame integration, by an either/or, us/them framework? Surely, many of us may *feel* that, but many of us also feel that our kids DO get an advantage in integrated schools. Our middle-class-ish kids may not get some of the bells and whistles of the “good” schools, but they get other things. And those other advantages are damn good. Maybe not in all integrated/integrating schools, maybe not every kid, but I definitely don’t believe that my kids have been DISadvantaged by going to a ‘poor’ school. At all.
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