Send your children to a White school?

This article suggests that parents who want to increase thier childdren's chances of gaining admission to top schools, at least top California schools, parents ought to send their children to a school where the majority of children are White.



What a choice, but too often, the choice too many of us have to face. We agonized over where to educate our children. In an idea world, there would be a public school, with excellent academics, a solid core of parents committed to the school, a good racial and ethnic mix, economic diversity, and quality extracurricular programs. I don't live in a community where any of the schools come close to being ideal. So what's a parent to do?



Where I live, the public schools have very good academics, but there is very little economic diversity and even less racial/ethnic diversity. By moving just four blocks from where we now live, my children could attend a school rich in diversity, but deficient in academics, often close to the line between being "academically acceptable" and "academically unacceptable" based on standardized testing. It does have an excellent "school within a school" for gifted and talented children, but few African-American students take advantage of the program, and those who do, suffer some ostracization for being "too white". In addition, something about teenage girls going into labor in the cafeteria (which has happened) is not particularly conducive to the educational process.



So what did we do? We chose a small private school. It has absolutely the best academics in town, with many of the other things I've listed above as being my idea of ideal. But what it very clearly doesn't have is diversity of any type. That a family with two parents with professional careers is one of the "poor" families says much about the economic diversity. Plus, at various times in recent years, my children have comprised 50% of the African-American student body.



My children have thrived in their school, but it has come at a cost, without a doubt. The lack of diversity is just a part of it. And I feel a tinge of guilt. One of my white friends, a doctor married to another doctor, once told me that she chose to send her children to the barely acceptable high school I described above because she believed, as a Christian, she had an obligation to use her means and influence to make the school better for the children whose parents weren't as well-placed. She explained that she and her husband could afford to send their childrento any school of their choosing, but she felt in important to not just look out for her own children, but to take an interest in the education of other children in the community. She is a far better person than I am.


I don't know what the solution is. I am stumped. But I don't like believing that attendance at a white school is the key (or at least a better key) to success.