Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
Over the past few weeks, events have conspired to place race squarely at the center of the debate over public education in the District of Columbia. After appointing Michelle Rhee the first ever Chancellor of District Schools, Mayor Fenty found himself faced with a barrage of criticism and innuendo from the Washington Post drawing attention to the fact that she was not black, and neither were three of Fenty’s other key appointees. Hardly had the ink dried on the latest Post piece when the Supreme Court, feeling its conservative oats, decided against integration policies in Louisville and Seattle, calling into question the future ability of school systems to generate mixed-race classrooms where the forces of poverty and history have left concentrated black communities stranded amid a larger sea of affluence.
The intersection of the news stories prompted the Post’s Colbert King to write this week about the dual challenge facing Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee: not only must they face down decades of rot, inefficiency, and neglect, but they must also make sure that success in the resulting school system serves the current—and overwhelmingly black—student population. If instead they simply wait for the forces of gentrification to move to the eastern edge of the District, whitening the schools in the process, then they will have failed. It’s a damnably hard problem to take on; not only must Fenty and Rhee bring to heel the most reluctant bodies in the city’s bureaucracy, they must also struggle against the economic tide sweeping the city. They must somehow successfully educate students of all backgrounds while managing to keep poor families inside a city where the value of space continues to rise.
King’s column cites a number of arguments made by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent, including that, “black children from segregated educational environments significantly increase their achievement levels once they are placed in a more integrated setting,” and, “black alumni of integrated schools are more likely to move into occupations traditionally closed to African-Americans, and to earn more money in those fields.” These points hint at a larger truth underlying the debate over education and policy in the District. That is, the problem is not necessarily that our schools are insufficiently integrated, it’s that our communities are insufficiently integrated, and no matter how hard we fight for affordable housing or against neighborhood change, until children of poor neighborhoods can participate in the local knowledge economy, they will continue to find themselves under pressure from new settlement by richer households. We cannot simply integrate our schools; we have to integrate our neighborhoods and our economy.
Picture taken by hey-helen.
