Mich. public, charter schools segregated

[deadparrot]

LANSING, Mich., Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Sixty-percent of African American students in Michigan attend a racially segregated school, down only three percent in the past decade.

A study by Michigan State University's Education Policy Center shows the number of schools with 80 percent African American enrollment or more has increased by 137 since the 1992-1993 school year, Booth Newspapers reports.

Of that jump, 87 schools were charter schools, most in the more impoverished Detroit, Flint and Pontiac areas.

David Plank, co-director of the MSU center, said charter schools aren't to blame but they "are exacerbating the problem."

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060215-090200-8628r

[Erika]

1. But we've been told the Charter schools are the answer

for better education of minority students?

[SoCalDem]

2. This is the ugly side of "desegregation"

They STARTED it, but never completed the job.

In the old "separate-but-equal" days, they were separate but NOT equal, so instead of FIXING the schools that were in black areas, they just used a bus to "equalize" things.

Guess what? It put the bodies in the "right places", but it turned a lot of school sinto battlegrounds, and created a caste-system within schools.

In the old days when the schools were segregated, at least the kids had real role models to look up to. They had black teachers and administrators, and there was a REAL desire to teach these kids.

When kids are bussed into areas where they do not live, they become automatic outsiders.

The way to really desegregate schools is to have all kinds of housing and jobs within school districts, and until that is accomplished, to FIX UP and spend money on schools in poor areas.

[f-bush]

3. That would require some thought...

a concept foreign to this adminsitration. Not only, this administration is on a war against the public school teachers because in both the 2000 and the 04 elections, they voted against shrub by about 78-22%