I am betting that most parents in the Spencerport school district would welcome participation in the Urban-Suburban program, despite the few voices of opposition.
For 50 years, the program has opened the door for minority children from Rochester to attend school in one of seven participating suburban districts. (Spencerport would be the 8th if the school board approvals the proposal.)
And what’s not to like? It costs suburban districts nothing. And as supporters often explain, the city children who participate are selected because they have parents who are highly engaged; their children are ready to learn, not in need of substantial remediation.
Urban-Suburban is a wonderful opportunity for the 500-plus city children who participate; it gets them out of city schools where the risk of failure is high. And thousands of suburban kids get to know classmates whose lives are very different from their own. Urban-Suburban is a low-maintenance integration plan. No fuss. No muss.
But I suspect that many people think of Urban-Suburban as an enrichment program — good for everyone, but not critical to anyone’s education. And that is the problem. Fifty years of national research and our own experience have made it absolutely clear: socioeconomic integration of our schools is essential, though not sufficient to reverse the catastrophic outcomes in the city schools.
Rochester’s schools are among the most segregated in the country. Students and their families live in poor neighborhoods, isolated from the rich network of contacts that middle-class families take for granted — everything from entry-level jobs for teens, cultural and travel opportunities, and high-quality schools that are so important to building successful lives.
School is not just a place where information gets poured into your head; it is a community where children and parents learn from each other and learn to appreciate each other.
Separate is never equal. Chris Widmaier is a science teacher and the swim coach at the city’s World of Inquiry School. The city’s varsity swim programs have dwindled to two this year, and Widmaier says he knows why.
City kids use Depression-era facilities and are much slower than the suburban kids who have access to private pools and year-round training. It’s discouraging, Widmaier says; his students don’t have the wherewithal to compete. “At sectionals, the differences are glaringly obvious,” he says. “The swimmers on the other teams don’t even make eye contact with my swimmers. The fact is many of them have no idea how to talk to people who are different from them.”
It’s tempting to believe that it doesn’t matter where you go to school, or who you sit next to. But it does.
The benchmark 1966 Coleman report on equality of educational opportunity nailed the truth almost half a century ago: “…the social composition of the student body is more highly related to achievement, independent of the student’s own social background, than is any school factor.” In other words: in the classroom, demography is destiny.
If we are going to give the poorest children in our community a chance to succeed in school, we need not just Urban-Suburban, but a family of urban-suburban prodigies to bridge the gap.
The critics of integration are right about one thing: Sitting in a classroom next to a middle-class student does not make a poor child smarter. But it does create opportunity.
Socioeconomic integration is not magic; it works only when a school community embraces all of its children, including those who have fallen behind, and comes to value those children as assets.
School boards must recognize that you can’t measure a school by its test scores alone — that good schools teach students how to care for each other, and about our obligation to work for the common good. If we truly believe in equal opportunity, we must break up the segregated schools that have preserved inequality for decades.
Former D&C and City writer Mark Hare is filling in while Mary Anna Towler is on vacation.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2015.
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglas asked: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” Today, nearly 163 years later, I ask: What, to the African American is your bleeding-heart rhetoric? Douglass answered his own question by stating that, where black people were concerned, celebration of the 4th of July represented “fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” With regard to the history of public education in this nation, state, county, and city, and ongoing, rampant, bleeding-heart-rhetoric about so-called “equality” — my answer today is exactly the same as Douglass’ was in 1852, which brings us to the article at the link below.
With regard to the historic, intentionally-created, and intentionally-maintained, dual, race-based, unequal, public education system — the article (at the link below) easily ranks among the biggest bunch of bleeding-heart, super-liberal, hogwash that I have ever read. The content is nothing more or less than puffed-up, super-rhetoric of the highest order, which is so filled with fundamental contradictions, conflated distortions, and abstractions — that the author ends up undoing some of his own arguments. Let us examine my claims.
1. There is absolutely no evidence — nothing that substantiates the authors fairy-tail-theory that “most parents in the Spencerport school district would welcome participation in the Urban-Suburban program.” In fact, if history is an accurate indicator, the exact opposite is likely true. Nor is there one single iota of evidence that “the voices of opposition [are] few” in number.
2. “Urban-Suburban [might be] a [so-called] low-maintenance integration plan,” but way more importantly, is the fact that it is a thoroughly ineffective, miserably failed, so-called “integration plan.” Let’s examine the facts: a) The program is 50 years old; b) there are 18 suburban school districts in Monroe County (excluding two, overwhelmingly white BOCES districts) — only 7 of which have participated in the urban-suburban program (over a 50 year period), which means the other 11 have made it clear that they want no parts of racial, so-called “integration” ; c) it’s difficult (to say the least) to make a credible case that 500 students of color, spread out over 7 suburban school districts (while their own home district remains at least 85% students of color), and the districts that they are being “integrated” into remain, in most cases, over 90% white — represents some type of effective model of so-called racial “integration.” What a joke; d) Monroe County has some of the most racially segregated schools in the nation, and that’s how the overwhelming majority of white people intend to keep it — period. http://www2.monroecounty.gov/government-sc…
3. It’s exceedingly easy to detect phoniness within the author’s argument. For example, as a so-called benefit of the program, he touts the superficial, and largely irrelevant idea that “thousands of suburban kids get to know classmates whose lives are very different from their own.” So what? By the way, since it’s supposedly significant that “thousands of [mainly white,] suburban kids get to know classmates whose lives are very different from their own” — is the opposite not also true, and/or important, i.e., that 500 urban students of color “get to know” white students whose lives “are very different from their own” — or is this a one-way ‘benefit’? And then there’s the important question of how well most of them really “get to know” each other.
4. A classic, and extreme example of a fundamental contradiction, conflated distortion, and abstraction is contained in the author’s claim that “our own experience [has] made it absolutely clear: socioeconomic integration of our schools is essential, though not sufficient to reverse the catastrophic outcomes in the city schools.” What? The guy is literally making it up. There has been no local “experience” that involves, on any significant level — “socioeconomic [and certainly not racial] integration of our schools.” Thus, any claim regarding relational impact on “outcomes in city schools” is a matter of total fallacy.The writer is also very careful to shroud his argument in the cloak of “socioeconomic,” as opposed to racial “integration” (even though we know that the two are as closely correlated as they could possibly be, especially within deeply-entrenched, thoroughly segregated, Monroe County).
5. Another conflated distortion is the idea that it “matters where you go to school, or who you sit next to.” Of course, it “matters where you go to school” — in the sense that some schools are much better than others (for many complex reasons), but there is no evidence what so ever, that it “matters who you sit next to.” That is to say, just as in the case of good schools that are overwhelmingly, predominantly white — good, overwhelmingly black or brown schools, don’t become any less ‘good’ — because few or no white students attend. Thus, again, in part, the latter quote represents a false dichotomy or fallacy, and really seems designed to skirt a critically important, historic issue, and question: ‘Why are so many predominantly white, suburban schools good, and so many predominantly black and brown, urban schools bad (based on measures such as orderly classrooms, and general environments, modern, high-tech facilities and equipment, graduation rates, parent and community involvement, etc…)? This is NOT just one huge coincident. So, what (specifically) has produced this condition?
6. It is most interesting that, in the process of attempting to validate the ‘significance’ of the miserably-failed urban-suburban program, the writer extracted a totally de-contextualized quote from “the 1966 Coleman report on equality of educational opportunity.” The full truth of the matter is, the Coleman report raised more questions than answers regarding widespread, educational improvement for black and brown children attending public schools. And clearly, with regard to public education, where the masses of children of color are concerned, in some respects, since the time of the original 1966 Coleman report, overall conditions have grown worse. For example, I’m quite certain the author would shy away from discussing the facts that: “The Coleman report gave rise to mass busing in public schools. As a work of sociology, the Coleman Report was full of subtleties and caveats, but the mass media and makers of policy focused on one prediction–that black children who attended integrated schools would have higher test scores, if a majority of their classmates were white. That last point is key because in 1975 Coleman concluded in a new study that busing had failed, largely because it had prompted white flight. As white families fled to suburban schools, the report concluded, the opportunity for achieving racial balance evaporated. Political support for busing quickly waned. Many civil rights leaders, educators, policy-makers, and sociologists who had embraced Coleman’s earlier findings now were outraged.They blasted him for abandoning his earlier commitment to desegregation. Some members of the American Sociological Association even moved to have him expelled, albeit unsuccessfully. (Coleman was elected president in 1991).” http://pages.jh.edu/~jhumag/0400web/18.htm…
7. Of all the many illogical, nonsensical, abstract notions contained in the article, the following takes the cake: “If we are going to give the poorest children in our community a chance to succeed in school, we need not just Urban-Suburban, but a family of urban-suburban prodigies to bridge the gap.” What?
8. The author is obviously speculating relative to when or how “socioeconomic [/racial] integration works.” Since it has not existed on in any large, or even medium scale within Rochester, and certainly not within Monroe County — none of us know for certain how, or even IF it works.
9. IF it is true “that good schools teach students how to care for each other, and about our obligation to work for the common good” — then how do we logically explain that, as stated in the article — according to “Chris Widmaier, a science teacher and the swim coach at the city’s World of Inquiry School — suburban kids don’t even make eye contact with my swimmers. The fact is many of them have no idea how to talk to people who are different from them?”
10. Based on a very long, and clear history of well organized, well financed, and thoroughly effective resistance, I would urge urban parents and families to categorically, unequivocally reject (as totally unrealistic) the old, old, hyper-liberal, bleeding-heart, rhetoric regarding the assertion that: “If we truly believe in equal opportunity, we must break up the segregated schools that have preserved inequality for decades.” Socioeconomic / racial inequality was built into the fabric, foundation, and structure of the public education system (from day one), and there is absolutely no evidence that the vast majority of predominantly, but not exclusively, white parents have the least bit of interest in “breaking [it] up.” In fact, nearly all available evidence seems to indicate the exact opposite. Thus, my humble, but staunch recommendation would be focusing with laser-like precision on fixing urban schools as they currently stand — as opposed to chasing an integration-pipe-dream for another 50 or 100 years. Our children can’t afford to wait — period. http://blackagendareport.com/content/publi…
Mark, Sorry friend, I live in this district and I find I have to challenge your assertion. These people very much believe that it matters who their child sits next to in school. That is indeed the issue for them. They don’t want their kid sitting next to a “city kid”. And appealing to the common good is looked upon as a negative argument not a positive one. This is the place where the powers that be fought for exclusionary town prayers, the district has a Good News Club that teaches creationism as an after school program and the most important political issue is the registration of assault rifles. It is sad and ugly, but appealing to reason and the belief that it just can’t be that bad and pervasive is simply naive.