Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 14, 1993 TAG: 9312140098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Schools composed mostly of minority students are more likely to have a high poverty rate - an obstacle to a sound education, the Harvard Project on School Desegregation reported Monday.
The study found that 66 percent of black children attended schools where minorities were more than half of the student population during the 1991-92 school term.
In comparison, 77 percent of black students attended predominantly minority schools in 1968, the report's author Gary Orfield said. With the help of court-ordered busing, the percentage dropped to about 63 percent in the early '70s and stayed at that level through most of the '80s.
"This report reflects what may be the beginning of a historic reversal," Orfield said. "The civil rights impulse from the 1960s is dead in the water, and the ship is floating backward toward the shoals of racial segregation."
Orfield called on the federal government to stop the trend by enforcing civil rights laws.
In response, Education Secretary Richard Riley said he was working with other agencies to find ways to bring change through federal law and leadership.
"The report raises serious questions about the disturbing trend toward racial and economic isolation of students in our public schools," Riley said in a statement.
In 1991, one of three black children attended schools where 90 percent or more of the students were minorities, the study found.
The same percentage of Hispanic students attended such overwhelmingly minority schools. Almost three-fourths of Hispanic children attended schools where more than half the students were minorities.
The flight of white students to suburban or private schools is often blamed for segregation in public schools, but Orfield rejected that explanation.
He pointed out that public school enrollment grew 7 percent between 1984 and 1991, while private enrollment fell by 9 percent. And he cited increasing polarization in suburban schools, too.
The key causes of segregation are segregated housing patterns and "a huge change" in birth rates and immigration - coupled with school districts' failure to strive for integration, Orfield said.
He also cited a trend during the 1980s of courts lifting desegregation orders on public school systems, especially with the encouragement of the Reagan administration.
There is disagreement among parents and educators about the need for racial balance to achieve quality schools. Some argue that children need contact with people of other races and cultures.
But parents of minority students in inner-city schools "are less concerned about issues of numerical segregation than they are the quality of education," said Mike Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation's 50 largest urban school systems.
by CNB