Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield, The Harvard Civil Rights Project
January 2003
Every year around Martin Luther King's birthday, the Harvard Civil Rights Project disgorges another in its interminable series of reports purporting to show that American education is growing more segregated and should, therefore, return to the days of compulsory busing for purposes of racial balance, preferably on a regional basis that ignores district lines. While I am persuaded that VOLUNTARY student movement across district lines in pursuit of better schools would be a good thing for American education, while I'm appalled by the barriers that many school systems erect to prevent that from happening, and while I have no doubt that racial and S.E.S. integration would be a valuable corollary to such movement, I see no appetite in the United States today for a return to involuntary desegregation via court order or administrative fiat. Orfield and company are living in cloud cuckoo land. The thrust of No Child Left Behind is that predominantly minority schools can be excellent schools if held to high standards, well staffed, well led, etc. And we can spot numerous examples of such schools across the land today. My impression is that most minority parents are more concerned that their child attends a safe, caring and effective school where every pupil acquires basic skills and fundamental knowledge, than about the skin color of the kid in the next seat. (Some, indeed, would just as soon have their child attend school with others like him/herself - and even be taught by people from the same race or ethnicity.) In any case, this time around the Harvard team doesn't even make a persuasive case that things are getting worse. They say, in fact, that "white students are attending public schools with more minority students than before" and that "a substantial percentage of students now attend schools where at least three races are each 10% or more of the total student population respectively." The average black student attends a school in which 45 percent of pupils are NOT black, with very similar figures for Latino youngsters. And the average Asian is in a school where more than three-quarters of his/her fellow pupils belong to other ethnic groups. Only five percent of U.S. students now attend what the authors call "apartheid schools," i.e., schools that are 99-100% minority. This isn't to deny that many schools serving poor and minority youngsters (and more than a few white children) still have a long way to go to become effective educational institutions. It is only to say that the Harvard Civil Rights Project is now felling trees in a forest where few are around to hear the crashes. You can obtain your very own copy, however, by surfing to http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/reseg03_full.php.
