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Seattle Busing Case Study

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Seattle has a profound reputation for being one of the most liberal and progressive cities in the U.S. The historically blue city was one of the very first to legalize the use of marijuana and to emerge as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants. Despite the city’s efforts to assert itself as a tolerant and welcoming community, Seattle is struggling to take care of some of its most vulnerable - children of color. The Seattle Public School System was built on a foundation of racial segregation and socioeconomic inequality that has been perpetuated through education, housing, social welfare, and economic policies. As a result, Seattle Public Schools are still severely racially and socioeconomically segregated and, consequently, many poor, primarily …show more content…

This policy had helped facilitate a better mix of socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic demographics in Seattle Public Schools, by bringing together students from different neighborhoods across the city. This policy was far from perfect; it often involved forcing students of color to take lengthy bus rides past their own neighborhood school, to reach a more distant one in need of minority students. This required students to wake up earlier to accommodate the longer journey, and got them home later in the evening, with less time to decompress or study. Since overturning its busing policy, Seattle schools have trended toward extensive resegregation. (Shaw)
The demographic differences established above are not deterministic of disparate educational outcomes between schools. Instead, the disparities seen today are a result of policies formed around these schools and their varying levels of diversity. Sealth International is not struggling simply because it is more diverse. Rather, the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic breakdown of its student population has shaped the type and amount of resources the school has received, which in turn affects the education of its student …show more content…

federal education policy has been defined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, a reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education act. NCLB aimed to relieve the national achievement gap present between white students and students of color. Each state was directed to create a new standardized test, and for a individual school to receive its allocation of federal funding, each of that school’s demographic groups would have to reach a certain threshold on this test. Unable to hide their achievement gap behind aggregated data, schools would be incentivized to direct resources towards the populations that needed them most. If schools failed to meet these standards for several years in a row, they could face restructuring of administration or teaching

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582 Words | 3 Pages

Matthew Delmont’s book challenges us to rethink the history of “busing,” Delmont intentionally places in quotation marks to show its importance . Before Brown v. Board of Ed in 1954, riding the bus was only for white children. School integration movement headed up North during the 60’s, and white people did not like this so they made the issue about busing. This allowed white people to stop school integration and use different terms to not sound racist or bigoted. Delmont examines how the media went along with this new racist idea.

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150 Words | 1 Pages

The segregation in America's school districts are restrictions to the minority groups that seek further education. School districts in larger cities can not afford to have proper facilities for their students and fail to provide proper instructors. American author, Jonathan Kozol, exposes how inner city school districts are separating the minority children from the white children. In these segregated school districts, the schools that are primarily white have better facilities while the schools that include students with ethnic backgrounds have much higher dropout rates. Kozol’s goal is to share to the parents of grade school children how run down school districts are in the inner city.

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715 Words | 3 Pages

Ferguson has allowed discriminatory practices to prevail within public schools, disproportionately impacting the lives of minority students and teachers. These discriminatory practices have created disparities in teacher wages, allowed for mismanagement of public facilities, and inhibited socioeconomic advancement of communities of color. In Norfolk, Virginia, we can see the impact of the ruling take its effect when a white male teacher hired in segregated white high schools earned 53% more than a black teacher with identical qualifications. Considerable wage gaps based on discriminatory practices have made it difficult for Black educators to support themselves and their families. Similarly, mismanagement of Black public schools and facilities, like in Topeka, Kansas, has illuminated the fact that under the current Plessy v. Ferguson, schools are not able to be held adequately accountable for their failure to provide a quality education for all students.

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1548 Words | 7 Pages

The court case Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education identified that schools in Louisville, Kentucky were using voluntary integration plans in their public schools (Smith, 2008, p. 303). The main complaint was filed by a white mother who wanted her child to be transferred to a kindergarten in a school closer to home. Her complaint to the schools was denied because of the need to keep the color ratio matched to the racial guidelines (Greenhouse, 2007). Many other complaints similar to this one existed as well since many parents were concerned about the distance their children had to ride to school and how long it was taking. The Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 case was brought to court by a nonprofit created by parents in order to fight the school assignment plans used in the schools of Seattle.

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549 Words | 3 Pages

The American education system provides less resources and inexperienced teachers to schools with low-income students, which are said to be mainly African American and Latino. This continuing inequality has detrimental effects on society. In 2013, only 66 percent of African American graduated on time, while 83 percent of White students finished high school in four years. These facts undermine our core beliefs about education and equality. It also undermines our national ability to be competitive in the global

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1300 Words | 6 Pages

One of the great qualities of America is that everyone is entitled to equal opportunities. That if we work hard enough we will be able to reach amazing heights and pave the way to a better future, but unfortunately some aren’t given that fair chance and it’s America’s children who are sadly suffering. All over the country children in public schools, minorities especially, are being subjected to school segregation. Based on matters such as race, ethnicity, and social class students are given an education that undoubtedly contradicts the promise of equal educational opportunities. The goal of America’s educational system is to provide all of the nation’s students with a public, gratuitous education that is of fair and equal quality, insuring

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1444 Words | 6 Pages

Though Kozol’s article is not based solely on numbers and data as much as it is on his emotional experiences, he still includes the percentages of public school enrollment in specific areas. He introduces his article by listing all those numbers “to convey how deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of [those] cities have become” even with those types of statistics listed (Kozol 348). In Chicago, with “87 percent of public school enrollment [being] black or Hispanic” students of these minorities are still isolated and segregated. (Kozol 348). White families send their children to distant schools over schools where the majority are of blacks and Hispanics, which leaves all the blacks and Hispanics crowded at one school with a poor schooling

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642 Words | 3 Pages

The school encouraged students to excel in education. Graduation rates were high, and there was adequate funding. It is important to look at race, ethnicity, and equality because it has influence of the quality of education. It has also been historically determined that race influences funding and the

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699 Words | 3 Pages

Faced with discouraging conditions, such as low-quality education, amongst students who are primarily Black and Latino, he reminds us of the progress New York City has yet to make in order to provide a quality education for all students. This book provides support for the claim that schools are segregated even in urban communities, like New York City; specifically, because of segregated neighborhoods and failure of education policy. Gomez-Velez, Natalie. “Can Universal Pre-K Overcome Extreme Race and Income Segregation

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650 Words | 3 Pages

Still Separate, Still Unequal by Jonathan Kozol I found this article to be very interesting and extremely heartbreaking. Jonathan Kozol paints a vivid and grim picture of predominantly black or Hispanic schools in and around some the largest cities in America. Even in areas where the distribution of races is somewhat equal, Kozol tells us that most white families would rather send their kids by bus to a school where more than half of the students are white. Some schools, like Martin Luther King Jr. high school in New York City, are located purposefully in upper middle class white neighborhoods in hopes to draw in a more diverse selection of children, i.e. more white kids. It seems however, according to Kozol, that this plan not only did not work, but has made it a prime and obvious example of modern segregation in our schools.

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999 Words | 4 Pages

Segregation in public schools in the early 1950’s was not an uncommon site. In fact, it was the norm across America, and although the schools educated African American and white students separately, the districts and their education plans were supposed to be equal. However, that was not the case, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. Somewhere along the way, with many parents struggling to find normalcy for themselves and their children in this situation, a father with a voice needing to be heard and a movement waiting to be started would soon take place.

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1043 Words | 5 Pages

Decades after the Brown vs. Board decision, achievement gaps and disparities in educational resources and opportunities persist in many communities, particularly those with high concentrations of minority

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702 Words | 3 Pages

Many of the trailblazers of the Civil Rights movement feel that they have taken too hard of a mental toll on such little change. There have been numerous losses with the failed integration including; loss of community, black leadership in school environments, and the parent's lack of interest in their child's schooling. The new push for integration does not change the total environment of black children in urban areas. The integration does not address the unbalanced racial composition of the schools. The blame can only rest on the prominent race in

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872 Words | 4 Pages

Brown v. Board of Education was the most influential and important case of the twentieth century in the way it shaped American society by ending de jure segregation in schools. The case promised to end segregation schools with “deliberate speed” and to give African Americans public school students equal opportunity. Yet today, even Supreme Court Justices recognize “it remains the current reality that many minority public school students encounter remarkably inadequate an unequal educational opportunities”. African American students continue to lack equal access to a high quality education and continue to lag far behind their white peers in reading and math proficiency, high school graduation rates, and college completion. Indeed.

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1127 Words | 5 Pages

In recent years Guatemala has become one of the strongest economic performers in Latin America thanks to prudent macroeconomic management. Even with this happening it is just one of many countries that had an increase in poverty in this region in recent years. After a 36-year civil war this country made significant progress by achieving macroeconomic and democratic stability. With the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, the country improved its access to international markets through trade agreements (Guatemala). Guatemala was among some of the first colonial conquest of the mainland.

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