Has anyone read the series of articles about segregation at propublica.org? If not, they are well worth your time.
Yes, very worthwhile.
I have not. Thank you for the recommendation!
Presumably, you mean the stuff here, right?
https://www.propublica.org/series/segregation-now
The article about Tuscaloosa city schools indicates that they initially complied with desegregation orders with one-big-school-for-everyone at the high school and middle school levels. The resultant high school was successful at both desegregation and academic quality, the latter presumably because it was large enough that it could offer something for everyone. But white flight (to private schools and by moving out of district) was leading to resegregation of the schools in a way that was out of reach of the desegregation orders. The school board then made it worse (in terms of both resegregation and academic quality) by breaking up the one-big-school-for-everyone into smaller schools after getting out of the desegregation order.
Any students or parents of students at the University of Alabama have any local observations? Perhaps it may be something that a scholarship honors student in the social sciences could study for honors thesis work or some such.
In the case of the rural area of Mississippi where a branch of my extended family lives, White flight ended up resulting in an education system in which the local private schools(a.k.a. segregation academies attended by children of White flighters and those living in the adjacent upper/upper-middle class suburbs) and the local public schools in the actual town were both crappy in terms of academics.
The only real difference between them was the race and SES of most attendees.
Worse, according to the stats comparing the two systems when my cousins briefly attended the local private schools before their parents realized how crappy they were and pulled them out for better educational opportunities*, the local public schools…as deprived/crappy as they were actually came out slightly ahead.
- One was sent to an elite NE boarding school, another to a regional Catholic HS requiring ~2 hour commute each way.
Where do children of middle-class Blacks go to school in these areas?
https://www.tuscaloosacityschools.com/Page/1012 leads to the Tuscaloosa city school district school zone map.
Someone with local knowledge may be able to tell where middle class (however that is defined) black people live and hence which schools their kids attend if they attend public schools there.
^^In places with a significant degree of Black wealth, typically areas like suburban Atlanta or in Seattle, African American parents have established their own “seg academies,” usually religiously oriented. In my experience such schools are perfectly fine and produce solid graduates, but really are not substantively different from successful “ordinary” schools, public and private.
As for rural locations, I am very familiar with a county school district in a distressed rural county in the deep south. Despite much black flight to wealthier regions of the state and severe racial segregation, the local school system has consistently sent its graduates to elite universities, public and private. Yes, some of the graduates won athletic scholarships (including one kid who played 10 years in the NBA, earning a couple of championship rings) but this small and poor county has been a small “farm team” for the Ivy League, too. I am so impressed by their accomplishments.