Will you miss the voluntary deseg program?
The areawide voluntary school desegregation is nearing an end — and it seems to be passing quietly.
Faced with the end of the deseg program after this school year, participating school districts a couple years ago voted to extend it five years. At the time, the Lindbergh School District in south St. Louis County said it would let already-enrolled transfer students from city schools move through the pipeline but wouldn’t be accepting new students.
As it turns out, it has accepted a few. Education reporter Steve Giegerich tells me the district reports taking seven new transfer students this school year.
Nonetheless, the program is winding down. When it disappears, the racial diversity it has brought to classrooms there will pretty much disappear as well.
The program has its costs — financially to the state and to the districts, to the transfer students who endure long rides to and from school, to students who struggle to participate in afterschool activities.
Still, I am struck by the silent acceptance of its demise.
I asked my daughter, Christine, 23, who attended Lindbergh schools from 1991-2003, for her thoughts on the program. She emailed back:
“The desegregation program wasn’t something that I noticed as a child in the Lindbergh School System; the black students sitting next to me were just other kids, and I remember being quite surprised that they had come all the way from the city to attend my school.
“To me, the fact that I did not notice race and continue to function without seeing color or socio-economic differences in school and the workplace is perhaps a side-effect of the program, but a powerful influence on myself and every person I encounter. What would life have been like for me if I had encountered nothing but students from South County?
“It would have been a sea of whiteness; most students in the school district come from similar backgrounds, have parents that are fairly well off (working class or white-collar jobs) and find themselves in cliques based on style and sports interests. If I had not grown up with inner-city children as my peers, albeit a small percentage of them, I would most likely see blacks and black culture as something “other”.
“As a result of the desegregation program, I became aware of cultures outside of myself, and also the issues that face St. Louis City. When a boy (12 years old) was shot in his home by a drug dealer who was owed money by his older brother, I felt shock and deep sorrow; he was a friend, and we spoke every morning. He wasn’t just an unfortunate statistic, or a connection between drugs and violence, he was a friend, and I went to his funeral.
“To end the desegregation program is to deprive students of a richer life, a culture experience, and a broader view than South County.”
We’d like to hear your views of the program’s benefits and drawbacks as it nears an end. Farewell to something good? Or good riddance?
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
I have mixed feeling about the deseg. I can see a valid reason for keeping it. But also it put a tremendous burden on the city students involved. The true solution should have been force deseg, one Black to the county one white to the city. But that didn’t happen and if it would have, then you would have seen the White flight like no other urban city in the country. Lincoln, Jefferson counties would have been the fastest growing counties in our area. We all seen St. Charles and all the I 70 corridors cities grow because of Deseg. We seen the Metro being voted down to points west.
The only reason Deseg has come to an end is MONEY.
The way I look at it is, if you don’t like the district in which you reside then MOVE or send your kids to private school. What, you don’t have the money to move or send your little cherubs to an elite private school? Get another job. Retailers at the mall, McDonald’s and hospitals are always hiring. If you put in enough hours you can afford to live in a more affluent neighborhood. Oh, I forgot, those who complain the most are much too good to work at the mall or fast food joints. It’s better to let the government help so you can wallow in self pity and cry about how your ancestors were made slaves. Get over it. My husbands great grandparents were made slaves. There is a little known story about how if you were born pauper, you were basically born a slave. Color didn’t always matter.
You’re not poor because of genetics or because of racial profiling or even because you were born into a certain socioeconomic status. You’re poor by choice. Every morning you make a decision to either rise above the influence and do better today than you did yesterday or to sit on the couch and sniff another line and feel sorry for yourself while you wait for the mail to deliver your food stamp vouchers.
• What is the alternative to the deseg program?
• Who is working on an alternative that would be effective and financially practicable?
A few people on the Urban League education committee are working on these questions. We would like feedback on a proposal:
Create events that bring students together for events at different school districts. We call these events HOT Bowl (Higher-Order Thinking Bowl).
The goal is to give students from different schools the opportunity to build community and think together about ways to make St. Louis a more collaborative community.
HOT Bowl is a culminating event for students from different schools who are taking similar courses. The course could be in algebra, biology, literature, or other subjects. Different schools bring students together to collaborate in answering one or two open-ended questions that are essential to the subject. Students, teachers, and parents evaluate the students’ presentation of their answers using a rubric that assesses their ability to work together on a presentation of their knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
These events differ from the usual “knowledge bowl” events that use closed-end questions and reward quick, short responses. The questions for the HOT Bowl events are broad, open-ended questions that require an extended response.
Unlike the familiar team-format that pits students from different schools against one another, students from different schools are on the same team in HOT Bowl events. For example, one or two students from school A would be on the same team as a student or two from school B. Therefore, the students have to get to know strangers and work together to explore their different perspectives on an essential topic from their comparable courses.
The measure of success or failure is in the rubric used to assess the content and the clarity of the presentation of the answer that the students from different schools give together. When quality of the collaborative performance is measured, then the natural tendency is to strive to improve skill in working together.
The format of the presentation of the answers also differs from the “knowledge bowl” because the students must divide the answer into parts such that each team member gives a portion of the response. Therefore students need sufficient time (although a limited and prescribed time) to decide who presents each portion of the answer. The challenge is to work together in giving a consistent, complete, and mutually supportive answer.
The HOT Bowl questions can be defined and announced by teachers weeks or months in advance of the date of the event. These questions should be the essential questions for the courses they teach. The questions should be broad, thought-provoking questions that stimulate the imagination of the students and motivate them to seek mastery of the subject. Students are evaluated based on a rubric that considers both the content of the response and the quality of their collaborative presentation of the answer.
ted@enteam.org
Do you really want to show the disparity of the Majority of the students that attend city schools? Plus you used the word “Rubric” twice.
Who will set the standards? The outgoing administration (Bush no child left behind) set the standards in our public education and the teachers have screamed to high heaven over it. The system has been teaching for the test MAP to acquire and maintain funds. The students still fail in the city and county district that has a significant African American student body.
Can you give us all a valid reason? Our system has to come to the realization that not all children are suited for College.
Will I miss this program? Probably not. I grew up always going to a private school, not just for religious purposes but because my mother wanted me to get a better education then the one the city public schools offered.
When I moved out to the county one of my friends from the city came up to visit me and see if she could be registered at my school and take a bus from the city to the county. Her mother wanted her to go to a better school, and to be in a safer environment. However my friend was turned down because she was not black.
The kids that were bussed in did not bother me, of course I lived in the city most of my life and I was used to a mix bag of culture and race. In fact those kids being there made me feel more at home. I generally hung out with them more then with the county kids. Not because of their race, but because we understood the difficulties of life. The county kids were busy complaining that they didn’t get the more expensive cell phone they wanted. Mean while me and the rest of the city kids that were bussed in were just feeling blessed to be there every day.
I was both happy and disappointed with the busing. Happy that people I understood and related to were at my school, and disappointed that my friend could not be there because of the color of her skin.
In my opinion everyone deserves a better education no matter what color you are.