PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOL DESEGREGATION : . . . And It Shows Acutely in Los Angeles

Many students who rioted in Los Angeles last year attended schools more segregated than those in the deep South. The city is a perfect example of both vast demographic change and early abandonment of desegregation efforts. In 1981, Los Angeles was the first major urban area to dismantle its desegregation effort in a futile attempt to retain white students. Today, its schools have become overwhelmingly minority. There has been little effort to integrate either schools or housing, and fixing this would not be a short or easy process.

Many hundreds of millions of state dollars intended for desegregation efforts have been spent trying to upgrade the city’s segregated schools, with little visible effect. Los Angeles’ black and Latino students attend schools with much lower achievement and graduation rates than the region’s Anglo students and most of the growing Asian communities. (Asian students are an immigration anomaly. Many of them come from highly educated families and continue that tradition here. Generally, for purposes of school integration, they are part of the middle-class majority.)

San Francisco has an instructive program. The city schools have no majority group and Chinese students are the largest minority. Each integrated school must have at least four ethnic groups. A recent study for the federal courts showed that both transfer of low-income black and Latino students to high-achieving schools and a total shift of staff and shuffling of students to truly integrate former ghetto schools produced clear, measurable educational gains for low-income minority students.

There should be choices offered, as there are in a number of big cities such as St. Louis or Milwaukee for students in areas such as South-Central to transfer voluntarily to suburban districts across the Orange County line or to Beverly Hills or Santa Monica. Thousands of students have voluntarily transferred within the Los Angeles Unified School District since the late 1970s; this program should be expanded to include other districts and more students. More magnet schools with serious integration goals and a wider area to draw from could be part of this.

Income and housing subsidies should be tied to providing low-income families with opportunities to escape non-functioning schools isolated by race and poverty. A federal court order in Chicago has permitted thousands of poor minority families to move into private suburban apartments using rent vouchers; their children have had positive experiences in more demanding schools. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is urging other cities, including Los Angeles, to try this.

The assumption in Southern California that nothing can be done about the race issue is a lot like that of Southern moderates before the civil-rights movement was launched. And the situation is just as ripe for change.