[Summit] Education

[Greg Gerritt]

This one is a bit thought provoking.  Greg


> STUDY: BETTER EDUCATED WHITES PREFER SEGREGATED SCHOOLS, NEIGHBORHOODS
> 
> RICE UNIVERSITY - A study, co-authored by Rice sociologist Michael
> Emerson, shows that increased education of whites, in particular, may
> not only have little effect on eliminating prejudice, but it also may
> be one reason behind the rise of racial segregation in U.S. schools.
> Furthermore, higher-educated whites, regardless of their income, are
> more likely than less-educated whites to judge a school's quality and
> base their school choice on its racial composition.
> 
> Blackˆwhite racial segregation has been on the rise in primary and
> secondary schools over the past decade. While whites, especially those
> who are highly educated, may express an interest in having their
> children attend integrated schools, in reality, they seek out schools
> that are racially segregated. In the study, researchers found, on
> average, that the greater the education of white parents, the more
> likely they will remove their children from public schools as the
> percentage of black students increases.
> 
> Emerson and research colleague David Sikkink, an associate professor
> of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, know that income and
> other factors come into play in terms of school choice, but their
> study shows that, even after controlling for these variables,
> education has an unintended effect. Whites with more education place a
> greater emphasis on race when choosing a school for their children,
> while higher-educated African Americans do not consider race.
> 
> "I do believe that white people are being sincere when they claim that
> racial inequality is not a good thing and that they'd like to see it
> eliminated," says Emerson. "However, they are caught in a social
> system in which their liberal attitudes about race aren't reflected in
> their behavior."
> 
> According to the researchers, part of this behavior is explained by
> the place and meaning of schooling for children of more-educated white
> parents. Degrees, for example, become status markers, regardless of
> income. Parents seek quality education for their children to ensure
> they are not hindered from achieving the "good life." As earlier
> studies indicate, education is a key to social mobility and one of the
> most important forms of cultural capital.
> 
> Emerson and Sikkink cite earlier work on school choice in
> Philadelphia, where race was found to be a factor in whites'
> evaluations of the quality of a school. Unlike blacks, who judged
> schools on the basis of such outcomes as their graduation rates and
> students' test scores, whites initially eliminated any schools with a
> majority of black students before considering factors such as schools'
> graduation rates. When they analyzed a national data set of whites and
> non-Hispanic blacks to see if the level of their education would have
> an impact on their school choice, Emerson and Sikkink found a similar
> pattern. "Whites with higher levels of education still made school
> choices based on race," explains Emerson, "while blacks did not."
> 
> The researchers found that regardless of income, more-educated whites
> in their data set also lived in "whiter" neighborhoods than
> less-educated whites. Higher-income African Americans also lived in
> whiter, but more racially mixed, neighborhoods than lower-income
> blacks. "The more income African Americans made," Emerson says, "the
> more likely their children attended more racially mixed schools than
> did African American children of less-educated, lower-income parents."
> This, he explains, is because more highly educated or higher-income
> African Americans often live in areas with racially mixed local public
> schools, close to high concentrations of whites that have undergone
> desegregation plans, while African American children of less-educated,
> lower-income parents attend largely black schools. When separating
> income from their analysis, however, the researchers concluded that
> unlike whites, African American parents' higher-education levels don't
> affect their school choice.
> 
> "Our study arrived at a very sad and profound conclusion," says
> Emerson. "More formal education is not the answer to racial
> segregation in this country. Without a structure of laws requiring
> desegregation, it appears that segregation will continue to breed
> segregation." Titled "School Choice and Racial Residential Segregation
> in U.S. Schools: The Role of Parents' Education," the study will be
> published in an upcoming issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
> 
> http://www.rice.edu/sallyport/2006/fall/sallyport/segregation.html


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