[Marxism] Resegregation of U.S. schools deepening

["Darrel Furlotte" <darrel.furlotte@xxxxxxxxx>]

Resegregation of U.S. schools deepening
Districts in big cities of the Midwest and Northeast undergo the most change.
By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

from the January 25, 2008 edition 


Reporter Amanda Paulson discusses efforts to integrate schools.

Chicago - At one time, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North 
Carolina was a model of court-ordered integration. 

Today, nearly a decade after a court struck down its racial-balancing busing 
program, the school district is moving in the opposite direction. More than 
half of its elementary schools are either more than 90 percent black or 90 
percent white. 

"Charlotte is rapidly resegregating," says Carol Sawyer, a parent and member of 
the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Equity Committee.

It's a trend that is occurring around the country and is even more pronounced 
than expected in the wake of court cases dismantling both mandated and 
voluntary integration programs, a new report says. The most segregated schools, 
according to the report, which documents desegregation trends, are in big 
cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The South and West - and rural areas and 
small towns generally - offer minority students a bit more diversity. 

Suburbs of large cities, meanwhile, are becoming the new frontier: areas to 
which many minorities are moving. 

These places still have a chance to remain diverse communities but are showing 
signs of replicating the segregation patterns of the cities themselves. 

"It's getting to the point of almost absolute segregation in the worst of the 
segregated cities - within one or two percentage points of what the Old South 
used to be like," says Gary Orfield, codirector of the Civil Rights Project and 
one of the study's authors. "The biggest metro areas are the epicenters of 
segregation. It's getting worse for both blacks and Latinos, and nothing is 
being done about it."

full: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0125/p01s01-ussc.html
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