De Facto School Segregation Research Articles

Living with difference: Refugee education and school segregation processes in Greece

Global challenges and recent changes in conflict areas in the Middle East, Asia and Africa are reasons for the contemporary forced migration into European countries, which have become places of destination or transit posts for a great number of refugees. Cities have become the focus of the socio-spatial debate, as the main units for receiving refugees, either in state camps or in social housing in city centres. In this article, the focus is on the social-spatial configuration of refugee accommodation in local communities and the way these formations generate urban and school segregation. We argue that the placement of urban refugees in large, camp-like structures with low housing standards, mainly in areas outside cities or in rural areas, provides ground not only for social exclusion and ‘territorial stigmatisation’ but also for de facto school segregation. Furthermore, the attempts to house refugees in small cities, through United Nations and NGO-supplied houses, may also raise concerns about the way dispersal policies are implemented, with the distribution of refugee children in specific schools as a result of territorial social-spatial segregation. In both cases, the school segregation of refugees is connected not only with the implications of immigration and education policies but also with the social practices of local communities and the social-spatial characteristics that determine school education. The empirical material of this study is based on information on the socio-economic profiles of neighbourhoods at the census tract level and on qualitative research, through in-depth semi-structured interviews in two different cities in Greece.

Unification and Its Discontents

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis

The nicest kids in town: American bandstand, rock 'n' roll, and the struggle for civil rights in 1950s Philadelphia

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Making Philadelphia Safe for WFIL-adelphia Television, Housing, and Defensive Localism in Bandstand's Backyard 2. They Shall Be Heard Local Television as a Civil Rights Battleground 3. The de Facto Dilemma Fighting Segregation in Philadelphia Public Schools 4. From Little Rock to Philadelphia Making de Facto School Segregation a Media Issue 5. The Rise of Rock and Roll in Philadelphia Georgie Woods, Mitch Thomas, and Dick Clark 6. They'll Be Rockin' on Bandstand, in Philadelphia, P.A. Imagining National Youth Culture on American Bandstand 7. Remembering American Bandstand, Forgetting Segregation 8. Still Boppin' on Bandstand American Dreams, Hairspray, and American Bandstand in the 2000s Conclusion Everybody Knows about American Bandstand Notes Index

Legally White, Socially “Mexican”: The Politics of De Jure and De Facto School Segregation in the American Southwest

The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de jure segregation because school officials implemented various policies that had the intended effect of segregating Mexican Americans. Rubén Donato and Jarrod S. Hanson argue in this article that although Mexican Americans were legally categorized as “White,” the American public did not recognize the category and treated Mexican Americans as socially “colored” in their schools and communities. Second, although there were no state statutes that sanctioned the segregation of Mexican Americans, it was a widespread trend in the American Southwest. Finally, policies and practices historically implemented by school officials and boards of education should retroactively be considered de jure segregation.

Ethnic school composition and peer victimization: A focus on the interethnic school climate

Does de facto school segregation have an impact on ethnic minority and majority pupils’ chances of being victimized by their peers? Moreover, does the interethnic climate at school mediate the relationship between the ethnic school context and peer victimization? To answer these questions, this article examines the association between the ethnic composition of a school—as measured by the ethnic school concentration and the school's ethnic heterogeneity or diversity—and self-reported peer victimization. Multilevel analyses on data based on a survey of 2845 pupils (aged 10–12) in 68 Flemish primary schools revealed differential effects for natives and non-natives. In line with the imbalance of power thesis, and disconfirming the group threat theory, we find that non-native pupils report less peer victimization in schools with a higher minority concentration—that is, in schools with higher proportions of non-native pupils. Our findings indicate that this relationship is mediated by the interethnic school climate. In contrast, for native pupils, the concentration of ethnic minority students is not associated with peer victimization. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the literature on interethnic relations and educational policy.

Remedies to de Facto School Segregation: The Case of Hartford

(1998). Remedies to de Facto School Segregation: The Case of Hartford. The Black Scholar: Vol. 28, Black Social Issues, pp. 29-35.

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional and Empirical Analysis

De Facto School Segregation: A Selective Bibliography

De Facto School Segregation: A Selective Bibliography

Comparative Analysis of the Eight Cities

Our purpose in this concluding analysis is to point up the various patterns which seem to emerge in these case studies. We are well aware that eight cities represent a small sample. They were selected more with reference to scholarly access than representativeness. As a result, all of the cities have universities in them. In the three cities which emerge as “most successful,” universities play a significant role—if not a dominant one—in the life of the community. Although direct participation of these universities, as such, is not emphasized in the case studies, their indirect influence may have been extremely significant in producing atypical results. Clearly we cannot hope to present any final and ultimate conclusions, but it is nevertheless possible to make a number of suggestive observations about why the school boards in some cities were able to respond to the problem of de facto school segregation more successfully and effectively than others. While there is, of course, virtually no invulnerable or uncontroversial method for measuring the relative success and failure of school boards confronted with racial imbalance in their schools, three possible yardsticks come to mind. First, do the statistics show either a decrease in the racial imbalance in some or all of a city's schools or a decrease in the trend toward increasing racial imbalance? Second, has the school system actually implemented some sort of desegregation program? Third, did the school boards (or superintendents) resolve conflict by satisfying or placating the various disputants?

California Suggests De Facto School Segregation Must End: Constitutional Law. State Action. Equal Protection. School Segregation

California Suggests De Facto School Segregation Must End: Constitutional Law. State Action. Equal Protection. School Segregation

The Decade of School Desegregation Progress and Prospects

It is now nearly a decade since the Supreme Court handed down its first opinion in Brown v. Board of Education,' the School Segregation Cases. Southern disaffection to the side, there are abroad in the land, by and large, two sets of attitudes about the events of the decade. One large body of opinion, while avoiding complacency, feels on the whole encouraged by progress achieved, and by prospects for further progress. Another, no doubt smaller,, but highly articulate group is outraged by the passage of a decade during which we have witnessed in the South little more than token compliance with the law declared by the Supreme Court; a decade, moreover, which has seen in the country as a whole the merest beginnings of any effort to grapple with the cognate problems of de facto school segregation, de facto housing segregation, and de facto employment discrimination. In the words of the song from which James Baldwin borrowed the title of his famous best-seller, and with all the urgency and all the alarm bordering on despair that those words connote in Baldwin's usage, many people feel: No more water, the fire next time !