Is desegregation dead? - San Francisco gives parents a say in where their children go to school — and that is leading to less diversity
San Francisco gives parents a say in where their children go to school — and that is leading to less diversity
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A federal judge ordered desegregation, and in 1971 San Francisco put children on buses that crisscrossed the city so they could be in multiracial schools.
The plan almost immediately ended racial isolation — but it also helped drive families out of the district and into the suburbs or into private schools. Many Chinese families resisted integration, boycotting district public schools and creating their own private “freedom schools” for their children instead.
From the 1960s to 1983, the school district enrollment plunged by 32,000 students.
Vying factions of parents filed lawsuits, and the district tried several different school assignment methods. A federal judge oversaw those efforts from 1983 to 2005, but eventually gave up and called the district’s attempts at diversification a failure. This handed control of the assignment system back to the school district...
[snip]
“If the school reflects the community, it’s not necessarily a problem,” he said. “It’s absolutely about every student being successful at every school.”
Sanchez and Van Court are not alone. Even the African American community, the force behind the historical desegregation efforts, has fallen silent.
“We really don’t have any public demand for this,” State Board of Education President Mike Kirst said about desegregation. “The courts, of course, have largely retreated in this area. And I feel no bottom-up demand for this.”
But just because everybody’s OK with the status quo doesn’t mean it’s right, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA....."
Translation: Just because everyone disagrees with me doesn't mean I'm wrong. I know what's best for you better than you do yourselves!