An alarming report by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project has revealed that New York has the most segregated schools in the U.S.
The report, titled New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future, examined enrollment and segregation on both state and regional levels from 1989 to 2010. It paid special attention to New York City, focusing on specific practices that upheld "racial imbalance and educational inequity" in schools.
This news is hardly surprising, but it's still unsettling:
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It gets worse:
Across the 32 Community School Districts (CSDs) in New York City, 19 had 10% or less white students in 2010, which included all districts in the Bronx, two-thirds of the districts in Brooklyn (central to north districts), half of the districts in Manhattan (northern districts), and only two-fifths of the districts in Queens (southeast districts).
John Kucsera, the report's lead author, pointed to "dramatic demographic transformation coupled with a lack of diversity-focused policies" as the reasons for the pockets of segregation. So, while the city's population swells, racial isolation in its schools grow.
Saying this is a glaring issue that's unlikely to be addressed anytime soon would be stating the obvious.
