The Washington Post: The Changing Face of Classrooms

With the start of the school year, the Washington Post has done a few articles focusing on different issues involving urban school districts. I’ve enjoyed them, because it’s interesting to see the things we’ve learned about in different classes in practice and to see what does and doesn’t work in different school systems.

Two articles in particular focused on diversity in schools. The first article was about two different school districts in Colorado; Denver, which has a highly segregated school system due to historical housing patterns and redrawn district lines, and Roaring Forks, a suburban school system in the mountains that has increasingly diversified in the past 10 years and has worked hard to keep their schools as diverse as the community.

These school systems diversity is similar to other urban and suburban areas. One theory the article suggests as to why suburban schools are more diverse is because white people in newly diverse areas are more accepting of POC moving into newer neighborhoods and have fewer objections than their historical counterparts. Also school lines have usually already been drawn. In urban school districts, due to laws or social pressure neighborhoods are often historically self-segregated, which leads to less diversity in schools. The article doesn’t really address how things might be changed in urban districts to address this issue, but does mention the need to consciously maintain the diversity in suburban areas.

Some of this article reminded me of Loudoun County, VA which has had a huge population increase in the past 10 years due to tech jobs and new construction. This has caused a previously predominantly white county to become very diverse, mostly with Hispanics and Asians. Although it’s all suburban, you can see in areas where everyone is new, such as eastern Loudoun, people, on the surface, have fared better at being a diverse community, while western Loudoun, which has been settled for longer, has not been as welcoming.

 The second article was about how African American and Hispanic parents in urban school districts are often left out of PTOs, even when their children make up the majority of the schools population. A non-profit organization in DC is trying to change that by holding workshops with parents to change attitudes. There was a quote from an African American father that described how he viewed the parent-school relationship, “I always looked at the school as an authority figure instead of a service provider.” I never thought about it that way, but that’s exactly how I view the school, as a service provider, so I’m curious how do you view the school and/or how do parents you interact with view the school?

Article 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/12/more-students-are-going-school-with-children-different-races-schools-big-cities-remain-deeply-segregated/

Arrticle 2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/as-cities-gentrify-and-schools-diversify-ptos-grapple-to-ensure-all-parent-voices-are-heard/2019/09/20/50314488-7277-11e9-8be0-ca575670e91c_story.html