CA schools, the most segregated in the country

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California has the most segregated school system in the continental United States. A report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project released last fall revealed that share of “highly segregated” schools — those with more than 90% students of color — has quadrupled over the past three decades.

The gap becomes apparent at university. Students in the most segregated high schools complete the courses required to enter a UC or CSU at 25 percentage points lower than students in less segregated schools.

I am a senior at Menlo-Atherton High School and some of my classmates come from Atherton, the wealthiest zip code in California. Others come from East Palo Alto, where the only public high school enrolls some of them lower scores on state standardized tests.

California does not ignore these divisions. Create programs to deal with them. Most follow the same structure: moving some children from one school district to another without changing existing divisions.

The problem is that the programs don’t work.

He is the oldest Tinsley Voluntary Transfer Program which resulted from a settlement in an education discrimination lawsuit in 1986. It was the first interdistrict desegregation plan in California.

Each year, about 135 students of color in the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto win a lottery seat in an affluent neighborhood. Many of them graduate from my school. In four decades, the program has bused more than 5,200 children from Ravenswood. He brought two.

Lottery winners usually do well. However, a 2011 doctoral dissertation at Stanford compared winners to unsuccessful applicants—families who were equally motivated—and found that They all got similar results. in mathematics and English.

The area that lottery winners left behind paid the consequences. When the most dedicated and affluent families leave an area, poverty is concentrated among the children who remain, and concentrated poverty is one of the most important indicators of academic achievement.

Ravenswood has lost nearly half its enrollment since 2008, and the percentage of students in the socio-economic disadvantage has increased to 92%.

None of this is accidental. The limit on the number of school lottery winners is too small to require changes in district boundaries or in the way schools are funded . And the other goals of the agreement were vague enough will discreetly abandon.

Margaret Tinsley, the East Palo Alto mother who sued to achieve district desegregation and whose name is on the resulting program, recently criticized it.

“I can’t say that’s why I filed the lawsuit,” he said.

California found itself in this situation. In the past, courts have ordered racially segregated school districts to change their boundaries and bus children to achieve racial integration. However, the backlash was so strong that in 1979 California voters amended the state constitution to ban mandatory school busing.

Voluntary transfer programs like Tinsley’s have filled the gap. But they did not change the borders and practically did not ask for anything from the richest areas. Milwaukee and St. Louis also tried similar solutions. However, racial divisions between districts They persisted.

These optional desegregation tools not only failed in areas like Ravenswood, but also benefited wealthy areas that kept their tax base intact while taking on the appearance of integration.

The state knows there is danger. Its district election law prohibits new ones transfers that “exacerbate racial segregation” or financially destabilize districts that leave students behind. However, no agency evaluates existing desegregation programs against this criterion. While voluntary relocations are the easy solution, redistricting—changing district boundaries—will never be necessary.

The Choice District program expires in 2028 unless the Legislature renews it. Before that happens, lawmakers should order the Department of Education to audit every cross-district program based on these two criteria: Does it contribute to segregation? And does it hurt the neighborhood that is falling behind?

Answers should specify which programs are supported. Moreover, they are likely to confirm what Gary Orfield, a co-author of the UCLA report, has spent years researching: integration only takes hold when school district boundaries, school funding and housing patterns change simultaneously.

Tinsley was a decision that didn’t work out. This allowed the state to appear to be acting without changing anything.

This September, another group of East Palo Alto families will enter the lottery. Buses will continue to run in one direction and California will continue to consider this a valid response.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under license Creative Commons Attribution/Attribution-Noncommercial.