THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994 TAG: 9406160004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By SUSAN E. EATON
DATELINE: 940620 LENGTH: Medium
The newspaper and school official response raises invalid defenses and is simply factually wrong in places and masks problems we uncovered. Let's set the record - and the priorities - straight.
{REST} First, some background. The U.S. District Court accepted Norfolk officials' contention that resegregation would have a positive effect on black achievement. This promise helped justify the end to racial integration. But not only did achievement fail to occur. The very opposite occurred - achievement gaps have widened between resegregated and integrated schools.
But let's be fair. School Superintendent Roy Nichols was correct in saying that improving academic achievement is difficult. And as the newspapers' subsequent editorial said, disadvantaged kids do badly in school for some reasons unrelated to ``resegregation.''
But these comments miss the mark and hide the truth. The system has had nearly a decade to improve achievement and, despite extra money, resegregated schools aren't even treading water. They are sinking lower with no legal recourse that might save the students from drowning. The ``It's tough all over'' refrain covers up an oft-repeated lie - that high-poverty segregated schools are ``better.''
The newspaper is factually wrong in saying we didn't compare the performance of black children in segregated schools to that of black children in integrated schools. Anyone who read our report would see we did make such comparisons. Results of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and Cognitive Abilities Test showed black children in integrated schools scoring higher by 5 and 13 points, respectively, on the tests. But school officials retort that their recent study doesn't match our findings. They found abysmal achievement for black kids everywhere. Nothing to brag about but, more important, not relevant to our report.
The central questions we raise is not whether black kids from integrated schools do better than blacks in segregated schools, though certainly that is important. The question is: Did resegregation deliver on the promises its proponents made?
Let's consider that. They promised white enrollment jumps in elementary schools. White enrollment has declined.
They promised improved achievement. Achievement has declined in recent years.
They promised increased parental involvement. On the only measure available, parental involvement has declined in segregated schools.
They promised to make integration more viable over the long run. Racial separation increased dramatically under resegregation and demographics show no sign of reversal.
There is a fact people aren't facing: Resegregation is harmful because it concentrates poverty. Concentrated poverty overwhelms schools with the myriad problems poverty brings into classrooms - health problems, deteriorating neighborhoods, crime, high numbers of children who aren't ready to learn, a dearth of high-achieving role models - the list goes on. Concentrated poverty creates institutions where students and families are often cut off from middle-class opportunity and who have little connection to and power within the political and bureaucratic structures of school.
Resegregation creates institutions where there simply are not enough well-prepared, high-achieving students to promise the academic rigor and competition needed to prepare for college and jobs.
Contrary to what the newspaper implies, we don't think ``busing'' guarantees skyrocketing test scores. We don't say all-black schools can't be successful and we do not believe poor kids always ``need'' middle-class kids to ``learn.''
We say that an outright abandonment of desegregatin assumes things that are dangerous and untrue. ``Resegregation'' incorrectly assumes that providing poor children access to schools not overwhelmed by poverty and low achievement is a waste of time.
Resegregation wrongly assumes that connecting kids to middle-class opportunities and exposing them to well-prepared role models isn't worth the effort. That is wrong. This type of educational opportunity has been proved valuable - by studies conducted nationally since 1968 and in such places as St. Louis, San Francisco and suburban and urban Connecticut.
But in Norfolk, resegregation stole minority students' right to this type of educational opportunity by promising black children something better. After eight years, we checked to see if promises had been kept. Resegregation, we found, broke its promises. Resegregation lied to your community, and that's the truth.
{KEYWORDS} SCHOOL BUSING SCHOOL DESEGREGATION NORFOLK SCHOOLS
by CNB