Hope for Integration?

Richard Kahlenberg responds on the school integration issue with several points, including most notably that (a) many poor students aren't in big city schools, and (b) school district boundaries are created by state legislatures not by God.

On point (a), I'd need to see more information. Point (a) is well-taken. I'd need to see a more detailed analysis, though, to really understand how much good playing around with district lines can do. It's one thing to fold Raleigh's school district into a larger Wake County district, and another thing entirely to try that with a large city like New York or Chicago. But obviously to observe that there are limits to where integration policies are going to be feasible isn't to say that they shouldn't be implemented where they are feasible. But I don't want to see the DC government sit on its hands and wait for congress to work out some scheme to work out a way for our kids to go to school in Virginia or Maryland in lieu of trying to figure out what we can do to improve DCPS performance.

To step back from this a little, though, it's worth noting a substantial housing and urban policy issue here. Many large cities combine substantial concentrations of poverty with neighborhoods where housing is so expensive that families can't afford to live there. Here's a nice family-sized rowhouse near where I live but you need $700,000 to buy it amidst a nationwise real estate bust. If we built more housing units in our non-basketcase cities, more middle class families might live in them which would greatly facilitate economic integration in schools.

Comments

On point (a), I'd need to see more information. Point (a) is well-taken.

It looks like you mean "Point (b) is well-taken." Maybe you could deign to fix that one, since it's confusing.

Posted by live | July 24, 2008 6:29 PM

Before the race realists start falling all over themselves to attribute our educational problems purely to our large racial minorities, let me remind everyone that most failing students in this country are white, because of the simple demographic realities of our country. Black and Hispanic students have a larger percentage of students struggling, true, and these students present real problems for our system. But even if you somehow erase all of the academic failure among black and Hispanic children with a magic wand, you'd still have a large problem with white underachievers-- particularly poor white underachievers.

Posted by Freddie | July 24, 2008 6:29 PM

On point (a), I'd need to see more information. Point (a) is well-taken.

Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh! Even Katie Couric couldn't cover for this one!

Posted by Just Dropping By | July 24, 2008 6:31 PM

live hadn't posted yet when I started writing my comment.

Posted by Just Dropping By | July 24, 2008 6:34 PM

You should relocate Casa de Bloggers into that house. 700K is such a small portion of your trustfund.....

Posted by underachievers unite | July 24, 2008 6:37 PM

Why not go to the root of the problem - if an adult is so disorganized that they are surviving on government benefits [food stamps, housing vouchers, etc.] they are too disorganized to be allowed to have children. Mandatory norplant or other long-term contraceptives should be a condition of assistance - in four or five years the school situation would improve dramatically.

Posted by scrooge | July 24, 2008 6:38 PM

If we built more housing units in our non-basketcase cities, more middle class families might live in them which would greatly facilitate economic integration in schools.

You are free to get together with like-minded individuals and try to raise the money to build lots of inner-city spec houses (or "housing units"), then cross your fingers and hope you can find enough middle-class families willing and able to pay enough for them so you can make a profit.

But given that middle-class families can get a lot more housing for their money in the suburbs, and have lots of other good reasons to avoid living in the city, it probably wouldn't be a very wise investment.

Posted by Mixner | July 24, 2008 6:39 PM

You can redraw school district boundaries all you want, build new housing units etc. But within a few years time all the old problems will reappear. That's because school quality is one of the prime determinants of a family's choice of where to live. People who have economic choices tend to move to where the good schools are, and away from bad schools. And the socioeconomic status of the student body tends to a very large factor in the quality of the school and its learning environment.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 24, 2008 7:00 PM

Don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Waco Texas, an urban area of about 250,000, the school district boundaries are completely gerrymandered around racial and economic lines. In the greater Waco area there are at least 12 independent school districts. Many of the boundary lines closely follow racial and economic boundary lines between neighborhoods.

Some of this development is in response to the district boundary lines. For example, if you fly over Waco you can actually identify district boundary lines between the upscale suburban districts and the inner city districts by looking at where the subdivisions are built. As you drive out of Waco towards the north or west you can see where the suburban districts start by where the subdivisions start. Immediately outside of Waco's urban core there is undeveloped farmland that is still within the inner-city Waco ISD. As soon as you cross the district boundary to one of the "good" suburban districts all the subdivisions start.

What is the answer? I don't know. per-student spending varies very little between the urban and suburban districts in this area but there are dramatic differences in school quality. I'd like to see more money spent on the urban schools for starters. As it is now, most of the good teachers flee to the suburban schools as soon as they can for the easier teaching jobs. You really can't blame them. The inner city schools need to pay a whole lot more to keep thee best teachers.

Posted by Kent from Waco | July 24, 2008 7:48 PM

But given that middle-class families can get a lot more housing for their money in the suburbs, and have lots of other good reasons to avoid living in the city, it probably wouldn't be a very wise investment.

There's Mixner, right on cue with his "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded!" argument.

I can see it now... Here he is at Apple. "Mr. Jobs, we should really stop making the iPhone, it's far too popular."

Posted by Phaedrus | July 24, 2008 8:09 PM

There's Mixner, right on cue with his "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded!" argument.

There's phaedrus, right on cue with his "I can't think of anything intelligent to say, so I'll just spout gibberish!" argument.

Posted by Mixner | July 24, 2008 8:17 PM

DC is obviously an extremely unusual case in terms of political boundaries, with DC itself being geographically small and most of its much larger metro area being in two different states. The vast majority of areas would not face equivalent challenges if the relevant state decided to create much larger (e.g., metro-sized) districts.

Posted by DTM | July 24, 2008 8:49 PM

Dan Kervick,

If you make districts something like metro-area-sized, it essentially eliminates the problem of the parents' choice of housing location determining the quality of their childrens' districts.

Posted by DTM | July 24, 2008 8:57 PM

Here in Silicon Valley, the difference in valuation between houses (Same design, same shaped lot next to each other)in neighboring districts can be more than a quarter million dollars.

I would really enjoy the revolts when parents are told their kids in Palo Alto will be bused to East Palo Alto or vice versa. Or parents in Saratoga being told that they will be busing in kids from East San Jose. Even non-parents will revolt when they realize how it will impact their home's price.

Heck, even Los Altos (media family income about $150,000/year) is too "downscale" for parents in more affluent Los Altos Hill, which is trying to get their own independent K-5 school district.

Posted by Kanchou | July 24, 2008 9:09 PM

Matt, et al., you should read historian Matthew D. Lassiter's "The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South" for an interesting take on school integration in the "new" South.

Posted by Ben Cronin | July 24, 2008 9:14 PM

Kanchou,

It is true that many people with a vested interest in the current system would likely oppose these reforms. So, they would need to be outvoted.

Posted by DTM | July 24, 2008 9:16 PM

Scrooge nails it. Not shutting off the source of most uneducable kids is like dealing with an overflowing kitchen sink by mopping up the floor without bothering to shut off the faucet first.

Posted by Fred | July 24, 2008 9:25 PM

If you make districts something like metro-area-sized, it essentially eliminates the problem of the parents' choice of housing location determining the quality of their childrens' districts.

How, DTM?

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 24, 2008 10:03 PM

DTM - given that most homeowners (property tax payers) in better achieving districts have a vested interest in the current system, who is going to outvote them? Residents of poorer adjoining districts can't vote in the rich town's elections. And any state legislator who proposed to combine rich districts with poor districts would find themselves voted out of office.

And why should any kid have to travel dozens of miles across a major metro area to attend a "good" school.

Posted by CParis | July 24, 2008 10:05 PM

Matt says:

If we built more housing units in our non-basketcase cities, more middle class families might live in them which would greatly facilitate economic integration in schools.

Well, but again it's not that simple. The issue here is economic diversity, which isn't ameliorated purely by creating more units.

Check out the Executive Summary of this Brookings report (I assume you have access to the actual report through the Atlantic.)

http://www3.brookings.edu/es/urban/knight/executivesummary.pdf

It's from 2003, but the report is still decent and can be a stepping stone to understanding some of the nuances of housing policy challenges.

APS

APS

Posted by Ape Man | July 24, 2008 10:31 PM

It is unfortunate that school districts lines are not drawn by God as it would probably be easier to convince Him or Her to support integration.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | July 24, 2008 10:38 PM

1. Why are you anti-school choice? Wouldn't enabling students to cross district lines enable more integration?
2. What do you think of Roland Fryer's contention that black and Hispanic students underachieve in integrated environments?
3. Houston ISD is a large and diverse school district with a strong tax base in a city with plentiful cheap housing stock. There are some excellent schools, but high schools like Yates and Wheatley continue to be predominantly black; Sam Houston High was mostly Hispanic but just got shut down under NCLB. Shockingly, a number of private schools do a brisk trade.

Posted by Amitav | July 24, 2008 11:51 PM

1. Why are you anti-school choice? Wouldn't enabling students to cross district lines or attend private schools enable more integration?
2. What do you think of Roland Fryer's contention that black and Hispanic boys underachieve in integrated environments relative to majority minority environments?
3. Houston ISD is a large and diverse school district with a strong tax base in a city with plentiful cheap housing stock. There are some excellent schools, but high schools like Yates and Wheatley continue to be predominantly black; Sam Houston High was mostly Hispanic but just got shut down under NCLB. Shockingly, a number of private schools do a brisk trade.

Posted by Amitav | July 24, 2008 11:54 PM

Dan Kervick,

Well, obviously if the entire metro area is one district, locating anywhere within the same metro area puts a parent in the same district. Now one could hypothesis economic segregation at the metro level, but economic segregation within a metro area is far more feasible than between metro areas, and most parents face more contraints when it comes to choosing between metro areas (e.g., because of jobs, family, etc.) than within metro areas.

CParis,

Why do you think the requisite number of state officials would necessarily be voted out of office for supporting metro-sized districts? Some such officials would likely represent people who would benefit from such a reform, and others would have no real dog in the fight (e.g., representatives of rural areas which are often already in compliance with this proposal). So it is entirely possible the state officials whose constituents would not want such a reform could simply be outvoted by the rest at the state level.

I might note this sort of thing has already happened. Matt mentioned the Raleigh/Wake County merger, and my understanding is the merger was on balance opposed locally, but the local residents and officials who supported the merger went to the state legislature in North Carolina and got a merger bill passed.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 12:59 AM

DTM:

Since I am not a parent and is currently renting, I don't have a dog in this fight.

If you treat it as a zero sum game, and there are no benefit of economic integration for people who are already in "good" district. I know who I will bet on to come out on top in that fight.

Posted by Kanchou | July 25, 2008 1:15 AM

What about those of us who do not want our kids going to school with thugs and losers? I do not say this rhetorically - my views on this issue drastically changed when I had my own children, realized I would only get two shots at this and that, even if the vast majority of bussed-in kids are fine, that there is always the chance that my kid will be part of the small percent that is negatively influenced by them. I know that criminality and drug use exists across the wealth and race spectrums, but surely one agrees that, playing the odds when one only has one or two bets to place, one is best off sending your kids to a school with as much positive influences (broadly defined) as possible.

Think about this as the corollary to your post earlier about housing, how moving people from projects to section-8 housing resulted in increased crime in the areas they moved into. Sure, most of the section-8 people were fine, but it only takes a small number of punks to make a place somewhere that most people would really prefer not to live.

Posted by Heavy V | July 25, 2008 1:48 AM

Ever consider that school choice, which you so despise, might be an elegant way to achieve the integration you are talking about? It seems like a simple way to allow children from poor economic backgrounds to go to better schools might be to make it so that you don't have to buy a million-dollar home to get into them.

Posted by Will Chamberlain | July 25, 2008 2:16 AM

Matt, Maine went through a bout of consolidation in the late '60's, early '70's. And we're going through another round now, at least on the administrative level. This is a rural state, with poor children all over it.

But the first round, which happened when I was a child, did have one dramatic result: the town's that got the local high school survive with an active village center and services. The town's that lost their schools pretty much shriveled up.

If you're talking about livable communities, having schools there seems to be a very large part of the equation. Consolidating for savings might not save us as much as we think it does.

Posted by zic | July 25, 2008 7:40 AM

Kanchou,

Well, first, the education part isn't a zero-sum game. That is basically because there is a diminishing marginal return to per capita educational spending, so moving to more equitable per capita expenditures would increase the total educational benefit for the same total amount of spending. And in the long run, increasing the total educational benefit would in turn benefit all of the people in the area (parents and non-parents), because a better-educated workforce makes for a more productive economy. This, by the way, helps explain why the people who have supported similar efforts in the past (such as in the Raleigh/Wake case) have included many local business leaders.

Second, in addition to these long run productivity benefits, there would also be non-educational benefits to unbundling school quality and housing location, including for many richer parents. Basically, tying school quality to housing location means parents are constrained in their choice of housing location by school quality. So, if you remove that tie, you give parents a freer choice of housing location. In fact, you also give non-parents a freer choice of housing location, because non-parents are also constrained by the tie between schools and housing location to the extent that tie has created an additional risk factor for housing.

This, by the way, is just the basic economics of bundling--if there isn't a good reason for two products (in this case housing and educational services) to be bundled together, then bundling these two products will likely lead to inefficiencies. By the way, an example of a good case for bundling is left shoes and right shoes--they should be bundled because people almost always want their shoes to match, so the bundle reduces transaction costs. But people have variable housing preferences, so there is no similar matching effect between housing and educational services. Hence, there is no similar rationale for bundling them.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the steady state scenario is actually likely to be better for most parents, and certainly for most residents. The roadblock is the transitional period, basically because some home wealth would be redistributed among neighborhoods. But again that is precisely because you would have freed parents and other residents shopping for a new home to look at more locations, which means that this redistribution actually represents a net economic benefit. It just turns out that those heavily invested in the status quo would be on the short end of this redistribution effect . . . but they will likely be a minority.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 7:50 AM

Heavy V,

As a parent of a young child, I do in fact disagree with your analysis. First, I think my child would ultimately benefit from living in a better-educated society. I also think that my child would benefit for non-educational reasons from going to schools that contain a cross-section of society.

And speaking of which, I think you are misinterpreting the results of the Section 8 studies. What people have found is a threshhold effect: above a certain level of concentration, poverty does start to have negative effects on the community as a whole. But below that level, the causation works the other way with the community having positive effects on those in poverty. The problem people have found is that Section 8 isn't always dispersing poverty enough to get the relevant neighborhoods below this threshhold (and so in my view the upshot for housing policy is figuring out how to get even more dispersal, not giving up on the idea of dispersal).

Similarly, I don't think my child's school needs to exclude all poor students for it to be a good school. Rather, I think it likely just needs to be below the relevant concentration threshhold. Which is part of why I support very big districts--it would make it much easier to manage the distribution of poor students such that they were not concentrated above this threshhold level in certain schools.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 8:03 AM

DTM,

If you look at Montgomery County Maryland and Fairfax County Virginia, you will quickly see that the quality of the local schools varies greatly. One of the biggest factors in the quality of the local schools is the percentage of the school that is Hispanic, black, or immigrant. Thus, the upper middle class whites and Asians (there is not many middle class whites or Asians in the two counties) know to avoid such schools. Look at the difference between McLean High School versus Mount Vernon High School. Or the difference between Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, MD versus Walt Whitman in Potomac.

Posted by superdestroyer | July 25, 2008 8:04 AM

zic,

Consolidating for savings is a distinct idea from consolidating for a more equitable distribution of funding and reducing the concentration of poorer students. Indeed, the latter notions don't necessarily require closing any schools, and could well involve opening more schools. One of the reasons that could be true is the gold-plating problem--as funding in richer school districts races to the top thanks to the competition for home wealth, that funding is often increasingly spent in ways with little educational benefit (e.g., expensive sports venues). But a redistribution of those funds could allow them to be used in ways that actually benefit education directly, and one such use could be opening more schools.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 8:09 AM

superdestroyer,

First, measuring school quality is a tricky business. We know that the parents' demographic status has an influence on the child's test scores, college admissions, and so on. So, to get a real measure of school quality, we need to look at it in the value-added sense--given the child's parents' demographic status, to what relative extent are the child's educational outcomes being improved by the school? So, for example, it is likely a school with a lot of poorer students will have lower test scores. But it turns out to be less than clear that if, say, an upper middle class student went to that school, that particular student would also have lower test scores as a result.

Indeed, in my city the feeder schools in the richer neighborhoods tend to get better test scores and more college admissions, and have a better reputation as a result--even though they are being managed and funded by the same district. I think that better reputation represents a bit of a confusion on people's part about what might explain those better test scores, in that the relevant schools may well be little better (or indeed no better) in the value-added sense than any other city schools.

Second, again I think it is likely there is a threshhold effect here: a sufficiently high concentration of, say, poorer students may well ultimately lead to less value-added even for richer students at that school. But some of that will simply be a matter of lower per capita funding, and even the social effects likely are subject to a threshhold as well.

So, in short I don't think richer parents have much to fear if their kids end up going to schools which are representative of society as whole (nor white parents, or so on). The problem is that the current structure and funding of schools makes it the case that few schools are actually like that, and when forced to choose between schools that are non-representative in one way or another, it is natural for parents to choose schools that are non-representative in a way that would make their child typical for that school.

But the solution, I believe, is to then try to make each school more representative of the whole. And I again do not think that richer parents have much to fear if that happens.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 8:33 AM

Folks are overfocusing on money, students and teachers.

Look at the folks who actually run the things: principals, administrators, school boards. Those are the folks who actually make decisions about how schools are operated. Schools aren't communes governed by teacher's unions (well, not everywhere at least). This is often invisible in the education debate.

One thing that consolidating smaller school boards into larger ones offers is fewer honey-pots. Instead of having 3 separate central offices, with the inevitable patronage positions, you have one. Hopefully you might have more effective candidates for school board. In theory, the job of superintendent becomes a better-paid, more challenging role. In other words, you might be able to get rid of folks who aren't really pulling their share, and attract a higher quality of folks to do better work.

Isn't that what the entire debate about merit pay for teachers is all about? Yet how often do we discuss the crummy state of our educational administrators and supervisors? Not often. My prediction is that if you look at the worst school systems, you'll probably also see pretty crummy school boards.

I'm not saying that teachers and students are irrelevant, but when we are looking at system-wide failure we need to look at who runs the system.

Posted by William | July 25, 2008 8:39 AM

The difference between a school like McLean High school and Mount Vernon is more than parental income.

As NCLB as shown in Fairfax County, the children of upper middle class blacks and Hispanics do much worse than the children of white or Asian families with the same income. See the recent Washington Post article about Thomas Jefferson. Look at the NCLB failures in affluent Fairfax County.

Also, the difference between going to an upper middle class high school that is 60% white, 20% asian, and the rest black and Hispanics is very different than going to a school that is 30% white, 20% Asian and 50% black and Hispanic. The classes offered, the level of achievement, the extracurriculars, the level of student safety, and the level of parental support is very different.

As you increase the number of non-Asian minority children, you reduce the number of children taking AP/IB classes, you reduce the number of foreign languages offered, the level of the orchestra and band, and you even change the type of sports that the school is good at.

Upper middle class whites and Asian families know that when you increase the number of minorities, the educational success of everyone goes down. Just don't look at the SAT scores but look at the all-state band students, the number of all-district athletes, the number of people on the debate team, the quality of the student plays, or the number of participants in science fairs.

When you add large numbers of minority students, the schools have to divert resource to them and away from things like science fairs, scholastic bowls, or the Lacrosse team.

If you want to see what actually works in education, look at how the rich, elite Democrats educate their children: private nearly all-white schools, high stakes testing to get in, high academic standards, little social engineering, and little tolerance for trouble makers. What can't all public schools be more like Sidwell Friends High School and less like Anacostia High School?

Posted by superdestroyer | July 25, 2008 8:58 AM

The best hope for integration was demonstrated at our 4th of July parade. We set down on the curb and looked around and all down the block on either side of the street were mixed race couples and their kids. The movement will be slow, but it'll be based on intimate knowledge and (hopefully) love.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 25, 2008 9:25 AM

superdestroyer,

First, the need to measure actual value-added applies equally well to any demographic factor correlated with things like test scores, including race.

Second, you say:

"Also, the difference between going to an upper middle class high school that is 60% white, 20% asian, and the rest black and Hispanics is very different than going to a school that is 30% white, 20% Asian and 50% black and Hispanic."

But the second school isn't representative of most (if any) metropolitan areas. For example, the Washington MSA is about 57% white, 26% black, 9% Asian, and 12% Hispanic. So, my proposal could lead to something much closer to the first school being the norm in most places, including the Washington MSA.

Third, you claim: "Upper middle class whites and Asian families know that when you increase the number of minorities, the educational success of everyone goes down."

Again, that isn't obvious at all, and moreover I strongly suspect to the extent there is any such effect, it only exists above a certain threshhold.

Fourth, you state: "Just don't look at the SAT scores but look at the all-state band students, the number of all-district athletes, the number of people on the debate team, the quality of the student plays, or the number of participants in science fairs. When you add large numbers of minority students, the schools have to divert resource to them and away from things like science fairs, scholastic bowls, or the Lacrosse team."

First, a lot of this is a funding issue again. Second, some of these things may be nice at the time, but may also have little long term educational benefit. Third, minority parents may have slightly difference preferences for extracurricular activities than white parents, but I would view being exposed to those differences as a feature, not a bug.

Finally, you say: "If you want to see what actually works in education, look at how the rich, elite Democrats educate their children: private nearly all-white schools, high stakes testing to get in, high academic standards, little social engineering, and little tolerance for trouble makers. What can't all public schools be more like Sidwell Friends High School and less like Anacostia High School?"

You obviously already answered your final question yourself--not every public school can be nearly all-white and dominated by rich kids who more easily get high test scores.

But again, more generally I think looking at status quo choices is misleading. The better question in my view is why can't all public schools in a metro area look more like the metro area as a whole? Why should there be such large discrepancies between public schools in the same metro area in terms of demographic characteristics (income, race, and so on)? Again, faced with those discrepancies rich white parents are making the choice to send their kids to rich white schools. But that doesn't address the possibility of actually giving all kids more representative schools.

And finally, I understand that some upper middle class white parents are of the view that the fewer non-Asian brown kids in their school, the better, and that includes pushing their school well below even the averages for their entire metro area if possible. But I am an upper middle class white parent who doesn't want to eliminate all non-Asian brown kids from my child's school, and I think my fellow parents who think that way can and should be outvoted on these issues.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 9:45 AM

DTM,

You are whistling past the graveyard. Just admit that Superdestroyer speaks the truth. Yglesias's father knew this intuitively, which is why he sent Yglesias to Dalton.

Education policy and energy policy are two areas where affluent liberals want to punish poorer whites who can't afford to insulate themselves from destructive liberal policies.

Posted by Fred | July 25, 2008 10:14 AM

Fred,

As I have noted many times, I agree that a certain number of affluent white people have a vested interest in the status quo, and a certain number of affluent white people undoubtedly share superdestroyer's view that even one black or Hispanic child in a school is one too many. As I have suggested on each of the occasions in which I acknowledged such realities, I would propose outvoting these people.

However, I am not interested in "liberal" versus "conservative" finger-pointing, which I view as a game for mental children. But if it makes you happy, I will also agree that the affluent white people opposing these reforms include many nominal liberals. And in fact I know nominal conservatives who share many of my ultimate goals for our public education system. So, consider whatever anti-liberal and pro-conservative points you want to get from me officially scored.

Posted by DTM | July 25, 2008 10:29 AM

DTM:

You may not feel the "bundling" serves a positive function, but for the parents/home owners involved, it's a feature not a bug. The housing price serves as a sorting function to prevent their local school from ever reach the threshold with what they consider "undesirable".

Generally speaking, out side of East Palo Alto, most Silicon Valley area public school have very similar racial demography, until you break down the Asian-American population down further into sub-groups. So any non-fine grain based race mixing is not going to make much difference here. Heck, I have about 80% accuracy at telling 4-5th gen. Japanese American apart from expats Japanese. The rural peasant stock that came over in early 1900s does't really get mixed much with elite salaryman Japanese multi-nationals rotating to their U.S. outpost, even those days.
And I am not even Japanese descend.(Except maybe during (Due to treaty of Shimonoseki and Treaty of San Francisco, maybe during 1897-1952. But that's before I am born)

Posted by Kanchou | July 25, 2008 12:21 PM

"Upper middle class whites and Asian families know that when you increase the number of minorities, the educational success of everyone goes down. Just don't look at the SAT scores but look at the all-state band students, the number of all-district athletes, the number of people on the debate team, the quality of the student plays, or the number of participants in science fairs."

Um, are there any studies that actually look at this, or are you just pulling it out of your rear end? Really, I'm interested in reading published research regarding the impact of minority students on the quality of school plays.

Posted by William | July 25, 2008 12:31 PM

DTM,

No public school system in the Washington DC area is more than 50% white. However, there are many schools that are more than 50% white. Busing in children from DC or Prince Georges County to increase the number of blacks is of no benefit to the any of the students in Fairfax or Montgomery and of limited value to the students from DC and PG Counties.

All your plan would do is move a county from being 40% white to having the 5% white that the DC public school have.

In addition, even putting a large number of underclass blacks and Hispanics into the same schools with upper middle class whites and Asians does nothing. Look at the articles that the Washington Post has written about T.C. Williams in the City of Alexandria. Virtually every white or Asian student is in the IB/AP track whereas the non-college track is referred to as the ghetto track. I would guess that if the Post had looked harder they would find that the elective classes also breakdown on race.

Unless you are willing to go to the point of forcing whites and Asians into certain electives, busing children for hours just to be in the same building as white students, is a waste of time, money, and manpower.

Your only claim that the white/Asian students would get from the busing idea is that they would be exposed to black or Hispanic students. Unless you can find a school that has zero blacks or Hispanics, the children in the suburbs are exposed to minorities. However, they are exposed to low enough numbers that it does not affect their education. Increasing the percentage does nothing for the whites and Asians but make their educational experience worse. Until educators give up on the idea of social engineering, schools will not improve, no matter how many schemes you try.

Posted by superdestroyer | July 25, 2008 12:41 PM

"The better question in my view is why can't all public schools in a metro area look more like the metro area as a whole? Why should there be such large discrepancies between public schools in the same metro area in terms of demographic characteristics (income, race, and so on)?"

DTM - I'm hope your kids enjoy getting bussed for 2-3 hours every day to achieve diversity across the metro area schools.

Posted by CParis | July 25, 2008 1:40 PM

We already have a perfect test case of the advantages of this theory that bigger is better in school districts -- the Los Angeles Unified School District, which sprawls over an area roughly 35 miles wide and 40 miles from north to south, with 700,000 students.

How's that working out?

Smaller school districts tend to be better because they compete more for young families looking to buy a home. Neighboring Long Beach, Glendale, Burbank, and Torrance tend to be better-run school districts than LA, because they compete more with LA than LA competes with them. For people living in a vast swath of SoCal, LAUSD has a monopoly on public schooling, and performs like a stereotypical monopolist.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 26, 2008 5:32 PM