Desegregation of Public Schools in Boston Essay

Desegregation of Public Schools in Boston - Essay Example On the other hand, desegregation in Boston has brought about mixed responses. The opponents of desegregation argue that busing has resulted in an increased white-flight, considerable decline in white enrollment, increased racial imbalance, low levels of educational quality and paved way for more of racial tensions and violence in the Boston public schools (Buell & Brisbin 151-160). Many white-flight studies have pinpointed that school desegregation has resulted in white enrollment drop off and that court-ordered busing was partly instrumental in the â€Å"steep decline in white enrollments during the first two phases of Judge Garrity’s program† (Buell & Brisbin 152). On the other hand, one can never undermine the positive impacts of desegregation on the lives of many black and other minority Bostonians. This paper seeks to explore how desegregation of public Schools in the 1970s has affected the Bostonian society and in doing so the paper addresses key issues pointed ou t by the opponents of desegregation. ... A comparison of the statistics regarding the racial imbalance in Boston Public Schools according to District Court Guidelines in 1975 and 1980 reveals this. In 1975 schools with too many whites were 20 (35 in 1980); schools with too few whites were 47 (44 in 1980); schools with too many blacks were 43 (21 in 1980); schools with too few blacks were 24 (37 in 1980), schools with too many others were 41 (34 in 1980) and schools with too few others were 52 in comparison with 57 schools in 1980 (Buell & Brisbin 155). As evident from these statistics desegregation has considerably reduced racial isolation in the Boston schools. The opponents of desegregation also hold that the system has declined educational quality and has increased high school drop-out rates. For them, desegregation enhances racial achievement gaps as they believe that the pace of white instruction needs to be slowed so as to accommodate such black slow learners (Buell & Brisbin 161). It is also worthwhile to analyze the teacher perceptions of educational quality and to know whether the percentage of high school graduates pursuing higher education has undergone any positive changes. While the number of high school graduates has considerably increased most senior faculties are not so happy with the student performance since judicial intervention: â€Å"almost half of the senior faculty saw decline while only 13 percent reported improvement† (Buell & Brisbin 163). On the other hand, the magnet schools specially designed for desegregation came out with so many success stories of Boston busing and very often the media and press evaluated desegregation progress based on