Racial Mix Differs for Schools of Choice
Posted on: Wednesday, 9 April 2008, 09:00 CDT
By Dave Flessner and Kelli Gauthier, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.
Apr. 9--White students in Hamilton County are five times as likely as their black counterparts to attend private schools, according to a new report on Tennessee school desegregation.
While Hamilton County and 11 other school districts have won court approval of their public-school desegregation programs, enrollment in most private schools remains overwhelmingly white, according to the report by the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Schools Superintendent Jim Scales said white families may choose private over public education partly because of misconceptions about public school quality.
"Some of it is based on perceptions that you get a better education if you go to private (school) rather than going to public," he said.
Hamilton County Board of Education member Debra Matthews said more white students left public schools after the 1997 merger of the predominantly black Chattanooga City Schools and the mostly white county system.
"In Hamilton County, there's white flight, and it has increased since the merger," she said. "It has nothing to do with the quality of public education, but it's based on (the skin color) of who students sit next to."
In the Tennessee counties with the biggest black student enrollments in public schools -- Memphis's Shelby County, Nashville's Davidson County and Chattanooga's Hamilton County -- nearly one of every three white students opt to attend private schools rather than the more racially mixed public school system, according to the advisory committee report issued this month.
School board member Rhonda Thurman said her decision to send her own daughter to Chattanooga Christian School "had nothing to do with race or anything like that," but rather her dissatisfaction with the Everyday Math program implemented in public schools. But she acknowledged that fear drives some parents toward private education.
"Perceived violence is really the No. 1 reason parents put their kid in private schools," she said.
Among 45 private schools operating in Hamilton County, the enrollment in a majority of those schools is more than 95 percent white, according to data compiled by Private School Reports, a Web site with statistics and data on private schools nationwide.
Eddie Holmes, a former president of the Chattanooga NAACP, said whites are more able to afford private schools and are lured away from public schools by perceptions of poor quality and safety as well as race.
"I don't think that whites are necessarily fleeing to private schools today strictly because of race. The motivations today are different, but it still removes many whites from our public-school system and hurts the support for our public schools," he said.
Supporters of private schools insist they are trying to diversify their enrollment.
Six years ago, Baylor School added a director of multicultural affairs to help draw a more diverse student population. Since then, Linda Cooke, Baylor's director of multicultural affairs, said she has helped bring the school's non-white population up from 8 percent to 14 percent. Still, she said, the school remains only 6 percent black.
Through outreach programs, she is trying to change the perception that Baylor is for whites only, Mrs. Cooke said.
"They have this picture where they think it's only for white families and it's mainly because of the circle they travel in, where they're going to church, where they're playing (sports)," she said. "The private school idea they have in their head is that you have to be rich."
Although the Tennessee Advisory Committee report states that while Hamilton County has legally gone from a segregated to a desegregated system, schools still exist in the district that are more than 90 percent white or 90 percent black.
In November, a court order was lifted requiring Hamilton County to offer busing for students wishing to attend schools where they are not in the racial majority. Fewer than 200 students take advantage of the option, and the school board has not decided whether the school system will offer it next year.
Dr. Scales admitted Hamilton County officials need to continue striving for greater diversity, but to an extent, it was out of their hands.
"The system does not promote segregation, but we have schools in neighborhoods, and schools reflect the neighborhood population," he said.
Bernie Miller, pastor of the New Covenant Church in Brainerd and chairman of the state's advisory committee, said he urged the report to be prepared primarily to update the progress on public-school desegregation. Dr. Miller said the analysis of private-school enrollment was done for perspective on racial trends in local schools, but government is limited in what it can or should do with private schools.
"Overall, I'm kind of happy with the results and disappointed at the same time because after all these years we still have school systems in Tennessee that have not achieved racial diversity or unitary status," he said.
Chattanooga public schools were judged to have achieved unitary status in 1986, 24 years after James Mapp, a black real estate agent, originally sued the city system for illegal racial segregation.
Mr. Mapp agreed that segregation has not improved in Hamilton County Schools since the court dismissed his case in 1986.
"I definitely think the situation is worse," he said.
In order to increase public school diversity, Dr. Scales said Hamilton County must continue to make its schools safe and secure to erase the perception that they are somehow lesser than private institutions.
"The private schools here have a legacy and it would be difficult to overcome," he said.
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Source: Chattanooga Times/Free Press
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