In two recent blogs, I urged the state of Washington to create a state version of the federal “Student Improvement Grants” program to be applied to Washington’s schools with significant “income disparity” from the state averages. I used “income disparity” because the concept avoided the mine field of “racial preferences.” I alluded to five facts I found, while researching articles about “resegregation” of schools. That brought about a much appreciated response from a fellow Mainstream Republican. He alerted me to an article written by Drs. Thernstrom and Thernstrom, that contradicts an article about “resegregation” by Gary Orfield.
Now, I may have set off that particular mine by mentioning the concept of resegregation. The article speaks a great deal about the limitations of Brown v. Board and racial preferences. Since the thrust of my two original postings was to avoid “racial preferences”, I felt the Thernstrom article bore little relevance.
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We know we spend more (18% more) on schools with 90% or more white students, as opposed to schools with 90% either black or Hispanic students. We need to refine the data to see the correlation between schools with large minority populations and schools with significant “income disparity.” It needs to be determined if those “minority schools” would qualify as schools with significant “income disparity”. Let that be the place where we start. If a correlation is found, we can craft our own SIG plan for those schools.