Barriers to Integration in the Mississippi Delta: Could Charter Schools Be the New Vehicle for Desegregation?

Abstract

revealed that white parents in Delta County chose not to send their students to the traditional public school because they perceived greater discipline problems, less challenging academics, and fewer extracurricular opportunities ("the barriers"). The black parents, however, were choosing not to send their children to the private academy because it did not, in fact, offer greater educational opportunity. Black parents contended that the three articulated barriers were actually euphemisms for racism. In this current case study, the researcher sought to learn whether a new high-performing charter school, where the three barriers were not present, would encourage racial integration in Delta County. Specifically, the new public charter school offered parents a third option in addition to the private academy and public school. Through interviews and observations, the current case study explored whether the barriers articulated by white parents in the earlier study were simply rhetoric. The current study found that white parents were still not choosing the charter school, even though no barriers were present.The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision held that separate but equal schools are inherently unequal. Despite this ruling, many school districts failed to take action to desegregate. As a result, the Brown v. Board of Education II (1955) decision urged school districts to desegregate with all deliberate speed but,

Consensus-based community development, concentrated rural poverty, and local institutional structures: the obstacle of race in the lower Mississippi Delta

“…In response, the planters withdrew from the towns and their public institutions. Most importantly, they ensured the perpetuation of segregation by establishing a parallel school system of de facto white-only private academies (Eckes, 2006).…”

“…That said, surprisingly few studies of concentrated rural poverty or efforts to reduce it treat race as major causal factor (Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty, 1993). As a result, holes exist in our understandings of the processes that reproduce rural minority poverty and why efforts to reduce it through community development initiatives routinely fail (Barton & Leonard, 2010;Blejwas, 2010;Eckes, 2006;Harvey & Beaulieu, 2010). These lacunae limit the likelihood that effective methods to combat rural poverty will be developed and implemented (Duncan, 1999).…”

The Effects of Educational Policy and Local Context on Special Education Students’ Experiences of School Removal and Transition

“…However, the small body of related research shows no significantly disparate trends. Some charter school discipline policies appear more punitive and others more supportive than in mainstream public schools (Eckes, 2006; Tuzzolo & Hewitt, 2006). One might expect that private schools for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties would be better able to deal with behaviors in ways that do not lead to expulsion.…”

Dispelling the Myth of “White Flight”

“…In addition to minority parents opting for charter schools, there is also the possibility that White families are purposefully avoiding high-minority charter schools (see Eckes, 2006;Saporito, 2003). Originally, it was hypothesized that because higher income parents had higher quality ties to information networks than lower income families, school choice would exacerbate social class differences as privileged families fled the traditional public schools (Schneider, Teske, Roch, & Marschall, 1997).…”