sufficient

diversity

Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I'm auditing a class in the divinity school this semester called "Race, Religion, and Poverty" and its focusing on New Orleans. It's been really interesting, but more on that later. The first assignment was to write a "poverty manifesto." Since I'm auditing, I haven't done it yet, but I plan to. The idea is to write a few pages on what has shaped your views and perceptions of poverty- people, experiences, books, Scripture. So I've been thinking a lot along these lines, not to mention the amount of time at school we spend discussing the achievement gap, how much harder it is to find and keep quality teachers in low income, low achieving schools.

I've thought a lot about my own schooling experiences growing up. I grew up in Raleigh and attended magnet schools after 1st grade. My middle school was in a housing project and my high school was almost equal proportions white and black. That racial diversity, especially in an education setting I grew up with has hugely shaped who I am as an adult. It's a large part of the impetus for me ever going to work at Desire Street Ministries in New Orleans, which is what made me want to be a teacher in under-served schools, which is why I am now in Nashville, learning about education policy in order to do something to ensure that ALL students have the opportunity to get a great education.

Lately, I've been wondering why there was so little white flight out of public schools in Raleigh. Compared to Atlanta and Nashville, very few (white) students in Raleigh go to private schools, and the public schools on the whole have a reputation for being GOOD schools. Because white, wealthier students did not flee the system, there was great economic diversity in the system as well and Wake Co. capped schools at 40% free and reduced price lunch, in order to create schools with economic diversity (and we know poverty and race are highly correlated), and so that there would not be schools with extremely high poverty. Wake Co never had court-ordered busing, and has been a leader in using socio-economics instead of race to diversify schools.

Until yesterday, when the school board voted to end busing and return to neighborhood schools. I know there can be good things about neighborhood schools, that it is a two-sided issue, and that in some districts (like Nashville), because black students have been the ones bused for hours, while white students have much shorter rides, the NAACP has fought to overturn forced busing. But that's not how it went down in Raleigh. So I'm quite disgusted and mostly just sad.

posted by CP @ 9:37 AM 0 thoughts