Voluntary Busing Brings Integration, but Achievement Lags

The Latino girl put her right foot on the side of the desk in front of hers, where the white boy untied the new Reebok sneaker. She then retied the shoe, placed it back by his desk, where he untied it again.

Over and over they played their private game during the 55 minutes of eighth-grade world history, oblivious to teacher Jack Vallerga’s animated lecture on post-war Europe. When the bell rang, they left hand-in-hand for their lockers at Correia Junior High School.

The girl buses to Correia under the San Diego city school district’s integration program. The boy comes from the upscale Point Loma neighborhood surrounding Correia.

“Well, they’re having a marvelous time, but the point to school is to get a good education,” Principal Mike Lorch said. “Less and less are we having (racial) problems, but we’ve got education problems.”

Judging Veep

That classroom scene last month illustrates the dilemma faced by district officials in judging the oldest, and most significant component of their integration plan, the voluntary busing program. Under the program, commonly known as Veep, more than 7,000 minority students, from kindergarten through 12th grade, ride each day to schools in predominantly white areas of the city.

In a major accomplishment, the 10-year-old program has eliminated ethnic isolation at schools throughout the San Diego city system. Racial diversity, without fear or violence, is now the norm, not the exception, on a majority of district campuses, and most students readily accept the cross-ethnic mix, and even cross-ethnic friendships. The district school population itself has become increasingly multiethnic over the past decade, with the white student percentage declining from 70% to about 45% and numbers of Latinos and Asian students rising rapidly.

However, the results from intermixing have not been matched equally in academic improvements among minority pupils, a secondary goal when integration programs were set up.

The Veep students ride buses for as long as an hour each way away from neighborhood schools, in large part because their parents believe, right or wrong, that the children will receive a better education in a safer environment. But a mosaic of test scores, dropout rates, and teacher evaluations shows no clear overall sign of improved student achievement.

In some cases, peer pressure among Latino students, especially at the junior high level, causes students to tune out to even the best of teachers.

In other situations, teachers have a difficult time adapting to a multicultural classroom and they underestimate the potential of minority students. And new evidence shows that students who bus are, on the average, in greater need of second-language and other skills training and come from poorer economic backgrounds than their counterparts who stay in the neighborhood.

Second Wave

“I think now, after 10 years, we’re at the second wave of the program,” said Robert Stein, the new vice principal at Pershing Junior High School who previously served as the district’s Veep coordinator and as one of its first race/human relations counselors.

“The first wave was to mix kids, resulting from the (1977) court order that ordered an integration plan, and early efforts were to mix quickly and safely. But now the issues are how to get to equitable academic outcomes as well as (equitable) social outcomes, to get from desegregation to true integration.”

And Lorch and Stein believe that solutions to those questions of curriculum and classroom instruction, if they can be found, will benefit all students, not simply the bused minorities, because of the district’s growing multiethnic makeup.

“We’ve simply ignored the bulk of all of our regular students for too long, whether they are Hispanic or come from Point Loma,” Lorch said. “In the particular case of minority students, we’ve made the sales pitch to them to come to class, take books home, listen to the teacher, for which in return we will give them a piece of the action of society.

“My concern is whether we can fulfill that promise.”

District counselor Greg Morrill told a group of sixth-graders at Lowell Elementary School in Barrio Logan last month that 50% of them, or more, will drop out of school by 12th grade, based on statistics for black and Latino pupils.

“I’m going to say that a number of times to you because I think it’s a real tragedy,” Morrill said in his presentation to the predominantly minority students, most of whose parents will have them bus to Correia this fall instead of walking to nearby Memorial Junior High in the heart of Barrio Logan.

Morrill counsels Veep and other minority students at Correia, who compose about 48% of its seventh- and eighth-grade population, making Correia one of the district’s most popular Veep schools, especially for Latinos. Correia has a waiting list of more than 100 minority students because the school, if it accepted all applicants, would become as much as 70% minority.

“I’m here to show you how to succeed in junior high school so you will be on the inside looking out,” he said, telling them that while integration is important, they must do much more than simply mix on another campus if their future is to be brighter than many of their peers.

School district officials assumed from the beginning that parents from inner-city schools in poorer neighborhoods would send their children into predominantly white areas because the schools were seen as academically superior. And the parents have responded. From about 3,500 Veep students in 1979, the number has doubled to about 7,000 today. Of the major ethnic groups, 53% are Latino, 30% black and 13% Indochinese/Asian. Only eight white students participate in the program.

How Veep Works

Under Veep, a school in a minority area is paired with one or more in a predominantly white area, and students can choose to attend any of them. In the case of Correia, the school draws from students promoted from 14 elementary schools, eight in Point Loma and six from the Veep-defined downtown and Southeast San Diego areas. About half of Correia’s Veep students attended elementary schools in the Point Loma area under the program before entering junior high.

(Veep is distinct from the district’s magnet plan, where special academic enrichment programs have been set up primarily in inner-city schools, both to improve the academic performance of minorities and to attract several thousand white students whose parents otherwise would not send their children to ethnically balance schools in a poorer part of town.)

“The schools in my own neighborhood are crazy,” said eighth-grader Harry Monzon, reflecting the views of almost all Veep students at Correia who feel that the drugs, crime, and occasional gang activity in their neighborhoods permeate the local school environment as well.

“The parents assume because there are bodies in the parking lots (a recent gang shooting took place next to Sherman Elementary School in Barrio Logan), that the schools are as bad as the neighborhoods,” Morrill said.

“The safety consideration is often accurate concerning the neighborhoods,” Memorial Principal Tony Alfaro conceded, though he has statistics on suspensions and discipline to show that students can learn on his modern, well-equipped campus, secure behind a high wrought-iron fence from most neighborhood influences. More than 1,200 students who would otherwise attend Memorial bus to one of 10 other schools.

“If I were a parent living around Balboa (Elementary), I would bus my kid to Correia rather than letting him walk (up to) three miles to Memorial past drug dealers and the like,” Alfaro added.

“I think many parents believe that by putting the kids on a bus, they get them away from the bad elements, from a lot of pressures,” said Luz Cornejo, a science teacher at Memorial.

To a certain extent, that improvement takes place at Correia, but far less than parents may hope.

Eighth-grader Robert Acosta received the principal’s award at Correia last week for showing the most academic and social growth during the year. Acosta, from a heavily Latino area just north of downtown between Interstate 5 and the railroad tracks, is the type of student who officials want to turn on to school but sometimes have a hard time reaching.

“Many of these kids expect the system to fail them, and you have to show them that they can make it,” Morrill said. “The fallacy is to think that it will work automatically for them at a place like Correia.”

“Out here (at Correia) I feel calm and I wish all neighborhoods were like this,” said Acosta, whose older brother was killed in a gang-related fight near Chicano Park a couple of years ago. “I think I would have gotten into a lot of trouble if I hadn’t gone here.”

Peer Pressure

But Acosta talked about the many factors even at Correia that work against academic success, symbolized by the “schoolboy” label. Latino students, especially males, are often called “schoolboys” by peers if seen taking books home on the bus or regularly turning in homework. At Memorial, students fold their homework papers into little squares to carry to school, hidden in their back pockets.

“At first, I never carried my books either,” Acosta said, referring to pressure from friends not to study. “But I just can’t listen to friends, (especially) since I see a lot of them not getting very far when they drop out.

“I am myself. I don’t think I’m a schoolboy but I get good grades.”

Acosta praised some teachers at Correia for treating Latinos and blacks the same as white students, but criticized others for what he said “was just not liking us (in some cases) and just not understanding us (in other cases).

“And you can make friends with other students if you try, although a lot of white kids sometimes move away from you automatically because somehow they see you as Mexican and think, ‘Oh, man, he must really know how to fight!’ ”

It bothers Acosta that more of his friends don’t try harder to do well in school. It also bothers Dora Islas, the unofficial “ombudsman” for the Latino students at Correia in her position as a bilingual guidance aide. Many of the Veep students, especially those still uncomfortable with English, crowd around her door before the first morning school bell to trade gossip, to talk about problems. In return, each day they get as much encouragement and support that Islas can muster.

“There are some Veep kids excelling, but they are a small percentage of the total, unfortunately,” Islas said. Throughout the district, the vast majority of minority students are not in advanced classes.

“I’m able, maybe, to influence a few out of the whole bunch,” Islas said. “I fear that a lot of kids don’t mix as much (as they might otherwise) because they still don’t have a good sense of self-esteem and of their (academic) capabilities. So a lot of kids come here not because of books or teachers but because they want to be with (other) friends who bus.”

“We somehow have to keep the expectations of white kids high and raise those of Veep kids as well,” Sam Wong, a Correia vice principal, said of plans to improve curriculum. “But of course, that’s easier said than done.”

Lorch and his two assistants, Wong and Bob Saunders, are given high marks both by Correia teachers and by district officials for setting a positive tone on campus and enforcing discipline fairly. With a high turnover in top administrators over the past four years, the school has not always been as tension-free as observers credit it today. Lorch introduced an extensive intramural sports program at lunch to encourage more mixing and set up leadership groups for influential students of all backgrounds to talk about improving the campus.

But that is not enough for Lorch, a former vice principal at La Jolla High, who expresses impatience that schools haven’t yet found the key to push more students to achieve.

“Sure this campus is a safe place, but so would be sitting in a refrigerator,” Lorch said.

Lorch has set up a committee of four teachers to plan new teaching methods to begin in September. They will include additional content for regular courses, such as special lectures on the thrill of an archeology discovery or similar topics to show that a subject is studied for more than test results.

“I want kids to see the teachers excited about their subject,” Lorch said, “that we’re making school work for them and not going into a class and saying, ‘We just expect you to jump through some hoops for minimum standards.’

“Today we just don’t expect as much from regular students. And if we are seeing these kids with low expectations and setting low standards, then how are we ever going to tempt them out of the ‘schoolboy’ syndrome?”

Lorch said magnet programs are able to turn on so-called “regular” students through an enriched curriculum and selection of teachers who push students to their maximum. The special bilingual magnet at Correia, with 50 majority and 50 minority students, has become highly respected during its four years for turning on participants to the fun of learning. A pilot program this year at Correia by San Diego State University graduate students, designed to interest minority pupils in science, resulted in a Correia team winning the Eighth-Grade Science Olympics competition last week.

“I see the effort (to improve achievement of Veep students) in line with the proposal by school board members (Jim) Roache and (Dorothy) Smith to boost the curriculum offerings across-the-board in the district,” Lorch said.

Parent Meetings

Lorch, with the help of Islas, instituted this year regular meetings with Veep parents in their neighborhoods, to talk to them about specific academic programs and encourage them to push their children. Minority parents rarely participate in the Veep schools’ PTAs because of distance, lack of transportation and, in many cases, language barriers.

At the same time, Lorch has worked with Point Loma parents to convince them that special programs for minority students do not come at the expense of resident white students. He believes strongly in maintaining advanced classes for qualified students, which helps counter opting for private schools, leading to “white flight.”

Lorch and other Veep school principals must also deal with varying levels of enthusiasm among teachers for working with Veep students.

“Some teachers here don’t believe in Veep, but I do think philosophically that things have gotten better over the years,” said Jack Vallerga, one of those helping to plan new teaching methods.

Islas wishes more minority students would be called in by counselors to talk about their future plans. “The students only get called when there are discipline problems, for negative reasons,” she said. “That doesn’t raise expectations much.”

Kathy Balakian, who teaches English classes for non-native speakers, said that more teachers need to “push these kids, to let them know you care and expect them to do well.” Balakian criticized the lack of a second-language student to speak at promotion exercises last week. “They always have a (white) student in the bilingual program give a brief welcome in Spanish but not the reverse. That shows the need to be fairer.”

History and French teacher Marilyn Kneeland talked of having to be always aware that her “cultural values are often out of sync with those (of Veep students) . . . I’m not always as fair as I ought to be.”

Physical education teacher Tom Warner, nicknamed “smurf” by students, said he is “conscious not to be either prejudiced or condescending. I like to overhear students saying that I’m OK because I treat everyone fairly.”

Vallerga told of seeing black students in his history class for the first time several years back and wondering how to teach the three-fifths compromise in the original U.S. Constitution, where a black was considered three-fifths of a white person for purposes of population representation in the House of Representatives.

“I flat out tell them that history is imperfect, that reality clashes with our ideals, but that if we don’t know what ideals should be, we’ll never get to them,” Vallerga said. “I’ve learned a lot from teaching Veep students, that basically, people are people.”

But other teachers criticized the large amount of money--about $11 million a year--spent on transporting students for integration. Some said that the Veep students have only added to problems of motivation and discipline that existed on a smaller scale at Correia with students from the economically mixed Ocean Beach area.

“The kids come in, I teach them; I’ve got no strong feelings one way or the other,” one teacher said, adding that discipline and motivation problems constantly bedevil her.

Teachers at schools in minority neighborhoods, such as Memorial, say they are better equipped emotionally to give Veep students a better education. “I don’t think the teachers at Veep schools can be as aware of needs,” said Memorial’s Cornejo. “For example, they think they have the kids paying attention because they don’t hear any talking going on (between students), but the talking is taking place in Spanish and the teachers don’t tune in on it.”

Memorial ninth-grader Jesus Pulido took the bus to Pacific Beach Middle School but was sent back to Memorial last year because he did not get along with a teacher. Pulido said he thought at first that “it meant no more school for me because of (the bad reputation) that Memorial has.

“But I’ve done well at Memorial. I think now that there’s something bad and something good at every school, even though my friends (who bus) still talk about how bad they think Memorial is.”

But officials expect the Veep program to remain popular, and they will continue to encourage participation to maintain mandated integration goals while wrestling with the questions of achievement.

“The bottom line is that a lot of parents believe that Veep will give their children a better education,” Christina Baca, the district’s Veep coordinator, said. “So (to make the belief reality) the schools have to do better.”