Transcript

Racial Issues in Urban Schools | Leslie Hinkson | TEDxSpringfield

Academia is now populated by many people like me right people who grew up in post Jim Crow America relegated to highly segregated High poverty neighborhoods we are like the unicorns of the academy really rare except we exist obviously I'm here today so for People Like Us regardless of whether we choose to make this our official area of research the question of why me persists right people like us who attended racially segregated schools where more than 75% of students qualified for free lunch who were given a chance to excel beyond the bounds of such schools simply because a teacher took aside our mother or father and said your child does not belong here right every year in a school like the one I just described a hand of students or fewer are plucked out and placed in institutions far removed from their communities so that they can Thrive academically leaving behind the vast majority of their classmates I started asking that question why me around seventh grade it wouldn't be until around college that I thought to start asking the question why not them right today the average black student scores below 75% of whites on most standardized assessments black students score lower than their white counterparts on standardized exams in Reading science math and a host of other assessments uh said to measure Scholastic aptitude I decided to pursue a PhD in sociology with the intention of answering one teeny little question right what explains this black white test or Gap my grownup version of why not them basically right this Gap has remained steady since the late 1980s and has showed no signs of diminishing with you know a slight exception of a slight reduction in the early 2000s where we have seen steady declines in the Gap are in the Years between 1971 and 1988 during this time white student test scores remained steady on the national assessment of educational progress or the nape as we call it the largest nationally representative continuing assessment of students in the US however ever scores for black 9 13 and 17 year olds Rose significantly over this time interestingly around 1970 the percentage of black students in intensely segregated schools meaning that they comprised 90% or more of a school's population began declining in every region of the country except the Northeast where I grew up and incidentally where we all are today this decline stops around you guessed it 1988 right and the percentage of intensely segregated schools has been increasing ever since so was that it did segregation explain these persistent racial gaps in test score performance was integration the key to eradicating these gaps if so why were we allowing our public schools to become more intensely segregated over time the name of my talk is the end of school desegregation it's a play on the word end meaning both the death of something as well as its purpose right so regarding the first I believe that we have witnessed the death of any meaningful efforts to desegregate our Public Schools that's sad I know in declaring legally sanctioned School segregation inherently unconstitutional the Supreme Court in its Brown V Board of Ed uh decision signal to Americans that equal educational opportunities could not exist for public school students if their schools remained segregated although the the decision was mat with great resistance in some quarters schools began to desegregate significantly across the country this was due in part to the portion of the ruling sometimes known as brown 2 that allowed federal judges across the country to issue court orders setting specific timelines for school districts to desegregate many districts remained under these orders for decades and some remain under them still however since 1991 more bad news many school districts formerly under these court orders have been granted what's called unitary status meaning that courts have ruled that these jurisdictions have demonstrably eliminated the effects of past uh past segregation to the extent practicable Studies have shown that once released from court order racial segregation in these districts gradually increase today black children are more racially and socioeconomically isolated than they were in 1971 granting of unitary status is really just one factor contributing to the increase in levels of school segregation since the late 1980s many also point the finger to patterns of residential segregation by race most school districts at least in the elementary years assign students to schools based on neighborhood of residents segregated neighborhoods translated into segregated schools and there're also a host of school choice policies that make it possible for schools even within desegregated neighborhoods to be composed of a student body that totally belies the demographic makeup of the community it supposedly serves so even though it is now unconstitutional for our government to mandate racial segregation in our schools that same government government often supports such segregation under the guise of school choice policies so what does this all suggest well I think it suggests that while Brown may have increased white Americans commitment to desegregating our public schools in theory um I think their actions illustrate a profound ambivalence towards making this a reality right but so what is it what is it what is it about us that is so scary what is it about our children that makes it so that their M presence in a given School above some token percentage causes adults of all Races to doubt the academic rigor the intellectual uh richness or the safety of that environment right well existing rationals run the gamut from biological blacks are inherently genetically uh in inferior right at least intellectually blacks are cultur culturally morally uh deficient um and also dissocial black children don't present the most desirable peers or future spouses for our children right but these reasons are actually often unspoken the stated reason for keeping your children away from ours is almost never race regardless right if white parents are not willing to enroll their children in public schools that reflect the demographic of a given Community how can we create and sustain desegregated schools and I do not mean to suggest that this is only a black white issue like far from it however I do believe that the black white divide is one of our most intractable race issues so Brown made it possible for schools to desegregate by ensuring that the state no longer mandated segregated schools but dismantling the jury segregation hasn't desegregated our schools and without desegregation we cannot have integration and isn't the latter the purpose the end if you will of the former not only has research shown that America's Public Schools remain segregated it also shows that in many of the schools that appear to be desegregated students are separated into different classrooms academic tracking within schools serves as a fairly effective mechanism for segregating students by race in class that the stated rationale for doing so is the purported differences in academic ability between students is what makes this practice of tracking such an Insidious one so what is 21st century integration and what should it be and why is it that greater levels of integration have positive effects on the academic achievement of black students in order to answer this I needed to find a different kind of unicorn one different from my kind of unicorn unicorn a school system that was truly desegregated both across and within schools desegregation after all as I said is a necessary precondition for integration to occur so I found that unicorn actually in the waiting room of my dentist's office right in the pages of a magazine there was a small item that announced that the Department of Defense educational activity or DOA had done it again that the students in these schools had on average out performed public school students in every US state except for Connecticut on the reading and math components of the NP and that racial gaps in test score performance were smaller there than in any other state in this country and actually were on track to disappear and this made intuitive sense to me in 1948 President Truman signed executive order 9981 officially desegregating the armed forces and as quiet as it's kept since the 1950s the US military has been seen as the premier Institution for facilitating Racial equality Paving the way for integration and addressing discrimination headon in such Realms as recruitment promotion and housing and while the military could not mandate schools near bases desegregate pre-br it did offer desegregated schools on base for the children of military personnel today the Department of Defense maintains base schools in the US and overseas primarily where there are no viable local public school options and serve almost exclusively the dependence of military personnel so when I looked at the test score performance of doia students I confirmed what I'd learned in my dentist's office the black white test score Gap was smaller in reading and math across all age groups tested in DOA focusing on the reading test scores of e8th grade students I found that the Gap was only 1ir the size of that found in civilian public schools did integration explain this well I decided to ask former doia students teachers a and parents about their experiences with doia schools and why they thought I had this finding and what I learned came in the form of good news bad news and I guess I'm going to start with the good news because I want to lull you all into a false sense of hope and then abruptly disabuse you of it right so good news good news first so in my interviews particularly with the former military Bratz is their terms when I asked why it was they thought the testore Gap was smaller in doia schools than in civilian schools three themes came up over and over again better resources more involved teachers and integration right integrated classrooms integrated peer groups and integrated housing I should also add that most of my respondents attended doia schools as well as civilian public Andor private schools right so their responses were really a comparison of DOA to civilian schools so not only are doia schools desegregated but the classrooms are as well not only do students play together in school but out of school they're also neighbors their parents are co-workers they credited smaller gaps at least in part to higher rates of integration and integration to them meant students learning playing and living together together without regard to raise this is good news it's possible folks right it happened somewhere integration not only leads to higher test scores for black students it also leads to Greater Harmony fewer instances of perceived and overt racism and guess what no negative effect on the test scores of white students right every single one of the 58 former doia students I interviewed who had attended a civilian School said that doia schools were far more integrated on these measures now comes the bad news in order to achieve this type of integration the American people and our local governments would have to agree to enforced residential desegregation severely limited choice in where our children attend schools work harder to address the reality of racism and racial discrimination in American society is that going to happen this third point I think is underscored by one of the other find ings in my research the test scores of black students in doia schools overseas are actually significantly higher than those in doia schools here in the US State Side the scores of white students were identical regardless of place as a result the black white Gap overseas is about 60% smaller than the ones we find here what explain this difference same curriculum comparable funding comparable teacher quality comparable student bodies I asked respondents to help me make sense of this difference and most of them were initially surprised but as our interviews progressed all but one seemed to agree on two things first overseas bases were Islands unto themselves with a greater sense of community and common identity American We're All American here and two race exerted a much less significant role in all aspects of their lives when I asked whether race played a different role for Department of Defense kids overseas versus State side I'll never forget one young woman said overseas we're all minorities there is no one dominant group and we are all one Community but here in the US there's no difference between on base and off base the same ideas about race off base come onto base and it can be very hard trying to adjust to being here after being overseas now let me be clear DOA is doing a fantastic job overseas and at home it is to their credit that the race gaps in their domestic schools are as small as they are despite the problem that we either believe no longer exists it's talked about too much or we're too afraid or ashamed to deal with racism it seems is one of our military's fiercest domestic opponents so given this what can our schools realistically do so many of our neighborhoods are racially segregated and as a result so are many of our elementary schools when our children finally meet in middle or high school for the first time our approach to Turning formally desegregated spaces into in mean desegregated spaces into meaningful integration follows the same logic I think as planning a middle school dance right and with similar outcomes right so think back to Middle School right so much attention ATT is paid to selecting the best age appropriate music the best snacks and beverages right and ensuring that they're adult chaperon there so that students don't dance too closely right students arrive and what happens the boys are all the way over there on that side of the gym and the girls are all the way over there on that side of the gym no one thought to figure out a way to bring them together right and if a few Intrepid individuals approach the dance floor and create a gender integrated dance circle the planning committee deems the dance a success right there's also that great feeling of relief that no one got too close on that dance floor right likewise we deem our schools successfully integrated when we can manage to have a student population that is not more than 80% Black Or Hispanic of course we never think of schools being segregated when more than 80% of that student body is white we deem our school successfully integrated even when we can identify by name all of the cross-racial friendships in the entire school we deem our school successfully integrated even when they are set up to physically separate students along racial lines but we can't lay all the blame on schools if we are not willing to live together play together and educate our children together How are schools supposed to move forward even given their flawed approach to integration middle and high schools or some of the most desegregated spaces in this nation if we had the will we could help schools reimagine how to achieve true integration it begins with inhabiting the same spaces but it isn't accomplished until we achieve a true sense of community one in which race doesn't imply hierarchy or value it doesn't happen until we can figure out how to care more about getting all of our children on that same dance floor and dancing together than worrying about them dancing too closely