They would matter if the real numbers are very small and there aren’t enough kids of any particular demographic to be spread among classes.
And I am interested in other things. Thus my post.
Being the only person by either gender or race or cultural upbringing in a group turns that person into a specimen of sorts and comes with unwanted scrutiny. I don’t care how nice everyone is.
You could be the one cowboy among a group of NYC high roller stock brokers. Or the one stay-at-home mom among high-powered business people with no kids. Or the one college kid who doesn’t want to drink on a floor of wild parties. Or you wore a bathing suit to the “pool party” that turned out to be elegant resort wear.
You’re going to be very uncomfortable.
Get over it or get out? In these cases it depends on you as “odd man out”. How do you approach the situation? Is there enough commonality to hold things together? Fright and flight or stay and defend?
Some may easily adapt and welcome the opportunity to learn about others and even themselves.
Others would get out as fast as possible.
But there is strength in numbers–even if only one additional person. The chances would be much greater of hanging around I think if there was at least one additional cowboy or stay-at-home mom or inappropriately dressed person in the group. It’s the expansion of comfort zone that allows a person to relax and branch out further to the entire group.
We all get to decide for ourselves according to our background and feelings in these scenarios.
What if it was court-ordered for you to stay? And then your “back-up” (your " security blanket" no matter how thin) was gone? The other person in the swimsuit went to change? Would you stay? Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe unless you could afford another option and get out…
The school was right in this case on a very human level. They were trying to come up with a solution to make it comfortable enough on a social level for kids to relax in the environment. They knew they would branch out.
Unfortunately the court has to abide by the written law even if many people may agree with the school.
In the long run it probably didn’t matter since the numbers were so low. There’s always a breaking point and it had probably already been reached.
“Latino students and parents have not complained or sued about this?”
Charter schools for better or worse are sometimes “cultural experiments”.
This experiment is a “make an equal mix” experiment rather than let one cultural identity rule.
Not sure on what grounds Latino parents could sue.
To it’s credit it appears to be working. Don’t know if that’s because they chose the right teachers, the right students or because it is diversified.
Article discusses white flight in town in the Milwaukee area:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/tomorrows_test/2016/06/when_brown_deer_wisconsin_became_majority_minority_some_white_families_fled.html
Another example of white flight:
https://psmag.com/news/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessing-white-flight-from-an-asian-ethnoburb
Older discussion about how many white people are concerned or fearful of becoming a minority group in the US:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1937241-the-us-is-expected-to-eventually-become-majority-non-white.html
Of course, the court case in this thread is one where it appears that there was no dispute that white flight was happening in that area (and was already at a late stage), and was about whether the supposed remedy (which was probably not effective, at least at that late stage) was legal.
The laws in this area are entirely judge made. They can and should change them.
The Fifth Circuit ordered the lower courts to make desegregation rulings without regard to the effect on white enrollment or student boycotts. I don’t think those appeals judges ever dreamed that most of the white people would simply move away from their homes, thus making integration impossible. The thought was that whites would simply return in time. Well, that thought was wrong and the courts can start making new rulings based on the facts on the ground.
Would the translation be: white parents in that area are too racist for their kids to attend schools with significant numbers of non-white kids, regardless of what the courts or schools do.
?
I didn’t ask about or question the reality of white flight. I wondered about birth rates, after having read a very interesting article on the topic.
Link to the article about birth rates?
@ucbalumnus What is a “significant number of non-white kids?” Ten percent, 30, 50, 90, 99?
There really are some issues other that “race” involved here. I wouldn’t have wanted my kids to attend school in parts of eastern Kentucky, even though all of their classmates would likely be white. Why? Because the children are extremely poor, with multiple risk factors for failure, and have poor academic performance.
Probably varies.
As the second article in reply #23 indicates, there can be white flight even when the non-white people in the area are upper middle class with kids who do well in school.
@ucbalumnus – no the Latino and black families have not sued, they are trying their hardest to get their kids into this high school (100% college placement rate) or to feeder middle schools which guarantee admission.
And actually, the district schools are very segregated – the white kids go to the well-funded schools in their nice neighborhoods. My son went to this high school after attending a public elementary school where there was ONE family of color – the children of a Denver Broncos player, lol. So yea, attending a school where more than 60% of the students are children of color was a big change for him.
@gouf78 – the school works because, as a charter, it can ask kids and families things that regular public schools can’t, For example, mandatory summer school for incoming students who test below grade level. (That was the case before there were feeder middle schools which actually did get the kids on grade level.) And there was mandatory summer school if the student got less than a C- in any class. The entire high school has only 400 kids (100 per grade) ensuring teachers and administrators really get to know their students and limiting kids “falling through the cracks.”
The good charters – like the good exam schools (Bronx, Thomas Jefferson, Stuyvesant, etc.) – work because all the attending families understand and can meet the requirements, and buy into the school’s mission.
We live in a school district where court ordered desegregation mandates for more than 40+ years were a huge factor in the decline of the public school system and the rise of the public and parochial schools that now have more kids enrolled than the public schools system. White flight in the school system was not about moving from the neighborhood, it was about moving your kid to a private school so they did not spend 3-4 hours per day being bussed all over the area, and yes in the 60’s, 70’s and probably later also had a lot to do with race, but not now. Now is a function of the decline in the most of the public schools in our system to the point no one wants their child to attend, regardless of their race, schools with discipline issues disrupting class on a daily basis, drop out rates well over 50%, and so on. There are only 2 decent public high schools in our district and it is a lottery now to get in, most people already in the private school system don’t even bother. My son actually did get a spot at 1 of these high schools this year and moved to the public school system for the first time in his life, and yes he is the only white kid in some of his classes. He gets along fine with his classmates, has made friends and really likes his new school despite being the only or one of few white kids in the class, but I can see where other kids might struggle, feeling like they did not fit in. The bottom line is public schools now are just as segregated in the area as before, but now in reverse way because there are not enough white kids in the public schools system. Any innovative proposal to try and draw private schools kids back to public schools has to spend years going through the not efficient court system monitoring the program that nothing ever seems to change. So yes, court ordered mandates are still something that can have the opposite effect on what there are trying to correct.
As mentioned before, Latinos are 56% of that district, but allocated only 30% of the charter school seats, while white and black students are both under 30% of the district but also each allocated 30% of the charter school seats. So if interest is similar among each group, it will be more difficult for Latino students to get into the charter school than white or black students.
Seems odd that no one has noticed that it is harder for Latino students to get into the charter school than for white and black students, based on the populations versus the charter school’s quotas.
". I don’t think those appeals judges ever dreamed that most of the white people would simply move away from their homes, thus making integration impossible. " from post #24
Sure they did. But as judges they followed the law which was/is their duty.
What you want and what you get don’t always meld.
^^^ The charter is adding campuses, including new schools in mostly Latino parts of town, where local residents have an advantage. I suppose that may be why the overall statistical disadvantage, as you see it, isn’t an issue.
For schools, it has much more to do with the performance of the kids at the school than it does with the race of the kids attending the school. Most parents would probably go to extremes to get their kids into a very high-performing school and not care about the races involved.
We moved our kid from a 90+% white middle school to a charter where he was a minority (Asians were 55%+) and it was a great decision. We had no idea what the race of the kids were at the school and did not look, we just knew their performance was quite high compared to where he was going to go.
@gouf78 Just a reminder that the laws these judges were following were made by judges and can just as easily be changed by judges, particularly when new facts are discovered.
Judges don’t make law.
@gouf78 All of the desegregation rulings are based on interpreting the Constitution, and yes, the judges are making law. For example, there is no written law outside of case law that defendants are entitled to a Miranda warning; this is judge-made law.
The Supreme Court said in Brown v. Board that there was new evidence as to the harm of segregation to black children which justified overturning Plessy. All of the rulings after Brown involve judge-made law. If it can be shown that some of these rules that the court has set actually increase rather than decrease segregation then the appeals courts and the Supreme Court can certainly make changes.