Discriminations

A reader sent a link to a fascinating article in yesterday’s St. Petersburg Times reporting the results of a large survey of parents regarding what was important to them in choosing schools for their kids.

St. Petersburg euphemistically refers to its school assignment policy as a “choice” plan. But note:

In the four years since the choice plan began as a way to voluntarily integrate schools, Pinellas’ busing costs have surged from $26.6-million to $47-million, an increase of 77 percent.

A citizen task force will use the survey as it prepares a final report to the School Board later this month on the future of the choice plan. The plan’s strict race ratios, which cap the number of black students in any school at 42 percent, will expire in May as part of a federal court settlement that brought a gradual end to 30 years of busing. [Emphasis added]

The results of the survey will not surprise many people, except school officials and liberals, who have followed the debates over school assignment. “Even among most black families,” the SPT reports, “race is a distant concern in school selection.”

Far more important to black families, the survey indicates, are factors such as a school’s academic reputation, its proximity to home and the presence of special programs in math, science, art, music and other areas.

Pinellas black families were about five times more likely than whites, and twice as likely as other minorities, to consider the racial makeup of a school’s staff and student body. But when asked to list the top three reasons for choosing a school, those factors proved to be secondary at best.

Only 16 percent of black families put the racial makeup of schools as a top-three concern. Even smaller numbers said that having more black teachers and administrators was that important.

Taken together without racial breakdowns, 68 percent of Pinellas families said the racial makeup of a student body does not impact their choice of schools. More than 75 percent said the racial makeup of a school staff does not factor into their decision

The USF [University of South Florida] researchers who analyzed the survey detected a sense that many Pinellas families had grown weary of categorizing students by race.