Sacrificing a Child's Education on the Altar of Diversity

The promise of racially integrated public schools, dating to the Brown v. Board of Education case remains just that… a promise. Efforts to integrate schools first produced white flight… to the suburbs. Then, in cities like New York, affluent parents did everything in their power to send their children to private schools. Finally, the charter school movement has improved the quality of education for those who attend, but those schools are not integrated.

In New York City today, public schools are still largely segregated. The best public high schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn admit children on the basis of a single test. It's called meritocracy. The result: their students are mostly Asian, with a minority of white children and very few minorities.

The mayor and his new schools chancellor have been trying to introduce more diversity into these schools and into some of the public middle schools that have the best records. They are facing a rebellion by disgruntled, angry parents.

Erin Aubry Kaplan sees the same trajectory in the Los Angeles public school system. She writes in the New York Times:

Today Los Angeles and California as a whole have abandoned integration as the chief mechanism of school reform and embraced charter schools instead.

She continues:

Integration did not happen. The effect of my father’s and my foray into those white schools was not more equality but white flight. Largely white schools became largely black, and Latino schools were stigmatized as “bad” and never had a place in the California good life.

Kaplan believes that the fight for diversity in public education must be continued. After all, it promotes social justice. And we are all for social justice… right?

To which, a letter writer from California offers a dissident view. To its credit the Times has promoted this letter, which is a good thing for those of us who do not spend the time to read all of the letters written to the Times.

A parent writes:

Is the idea that I should sacrifice quality education for my own children on the altar of nebulously defined “social justice”?  Sorry, not going to happen. My kids grew up in a house full of books. Their father and I were involved in their education, trying to model curiosity, love for learning and academic success in our own lives. Why should my kids study in the same classroom with children who come from broken households with no books, no appreciation of learning, and no discipline? I don’t care whether these children are white, black or green. I tried to do the best for my own kids. Your kids are your responsibility.

Some will denounce this as a function of white privilege… assuming that the letter writer is white. And yet… sacrificing children on the altar of diversity… is the point where many American families have drawn a line in the sand.