Are SFUSD parents racists?
"Everyone's a little bit racist sometimes/According to Chuck Nevius in today's Chronicle, it's SFUSD parents who are a little bit racist, because schools that have more African-American students get fewer applicants in our all-choice district.
Doesn't mean we go around committing hate crimes..."
— "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," "Avenue Q"*
That's "proof," the headline says (disclaimer: writers don't write the headlines).
No it's not.
I'll back up. Anecdotally, it's undoubtedly true that some parents choosing schools in SFUSD's all-choice system incorporate racism in their decision. School staff (like Starr King Principal Chris Rosenberg, quoted in Chuck's column) who lead parents on school tours get an earful — hints and codes and sometimes overt comments.
But science doesn't accept anecdotal evidence. If the study is as described in the column, it doesn't provide proof that parents are making racist choices. It fails to control for confounding factors and reverse causation that are obvious even to a methodology meathead like me. I can't figure out if it could control for those things.
1. The study shows that what parents want most are high test scores and special programs such as language immersion. Most of the SFUSD schools with high African-American populations have (I'm sorry to say) low test scores, which is what all the talk about achievement gaps is about. And few SFUSD schools with high African-American populations have special programs such as language immersion. So how do we know that it isn't the lack of high test scores and desirable programs, rather than the students' demographics, that deter non-black parents from applying to schools with higher percentages of African-Americans? We would only know that if the study used control schools with high APIs, popular programs and high African-American populations.
2. The study shows that African-Americans, along with Latinos, are less likely to utilize SFUSD's choice process. A child whose family doesn't choose a school will be assigned by default to a school with openings. That means, by definition, a less-popular school, because that's why it had openings. In other words, it's not that the school is less popular because more African-American kids are there; rather (and sadly), more African-American kids are there because it's less popular. Isn't that what reverse causation is?
The woman who did the study may impress the media with her deft use of regression analysis, but that doesn't account for the two factors above (and maybe more that aren't obvious to me).
Of course, as a non-black SFUSD parent I also think it's pretty rich to spotlight those of us who choose to send our kids to SFUSD schools as racist. What about the families who move to places like (ahem) Walnut Creek, and the high percentage of San Francisco families who bail out and head for private schools, none of them exactly celebrated for their high percentages of African-Americans?
"I'm a little bit racist; you're little bit too/
I guess we're all a little bit racist; admitting it is not an easy thing to do..."
-- "Avenue Q"
— Caroline
Labels: Enrollment, SFUSD Politics
8 Comments:
ok caroline. let's talk about choices. i've long thought it was conceived by some parents that lived in fringe areas of san francisco that didn't want to be forced to send their kids to schools with lots of african americans. prove me wrong.
I don't understand what you're saying, James. What's a fringe area of San Francisco, and are you saying that parents came up with the choice system?
a fringe area of san francisco would be anywhere under the old neighborhood assignment process that put your kid into a school in the bayview, ingleside, bernal heights, the mission, alemany, hp, and so on.
So you're assuming that nonblack parents in those neighborhoods "conceived" SFUSD's choice system so they wouldn't have to send their kids to school with African-American kids?
But you're missing the decades (literally) of permutations of assignment plans aimed at diversifying schools, which went on between the era of "everyone go to your neighborhood school" and the current system.
A number of those plans resulted in kids from what you call "fringe" areas having easier access -- and sometimes automatic or default assignment -- to schools in other neighborhoods. So your concept really doesn't make sense.
Plus if you're talking about nonblack, middle-class parents (presumably they would be middle class if they had the clout to make SFUSD accede to their wishes) living in those "fringe" neighborhoods, in your hypothetical scenario they were already choosing to live in heavily African-American neighborhoods. So if they didn't have a problem with that, why would they suddenly turn into bigots when it came to the classroom?
Your scenario doesn't make sense for multiple reasons.
are you suggesting this is possible? it would be the ultimate racist institutionalization in decades if so. it's only a theory of mine, nothing more. i only have a gut feeling it was done this way by a few bitter parents living in bad parts of town that could not afford to live in the better parts of town. please tell me there is not chance this is true. i would love to believe you.
No, it's not possible; the facts resoundingly contradict your scenario.
The situation you envision is: all families are assigned to neighborhood schools; some families forced to live near races they don't like convince SFUSD to implement a "choice" program so they can avoid sending their kids to school with those races.
BUT THAT'S NOT THE SITUATION. Actually, there have been many permutations of desegregation/busing plans over at least 30 years in SFUSD. No families living in low-income neighborhoods have been "stuck" in those schools if they chose to exercise another option for many, many, many years. The youngest kids who last came through SFUSD schools in an era of all-neighborhood schools would be probably 40-45 years old now. SO no, James, your scenario is just wrong; it doesn't match the facts. It makes no sense in multiple ways.
ok caroline. so the origin of choices lay in the 40 years of attempts at desegregation and we cannot point to a single group of dissatisfied parents to blame them for the current mess. how convenient.
Hi Anonymous; sorry I missed your comment.
You're right; you can't "point to a single group of dissatisfied parents to blame for the current mess." I'm not sure what the snide "how convenient" means. It WOULD be convenient to have a single scapegoat for everything we didn't like, but life is more complex than that.
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