Minorities to schools: Listen to us

And the new "international baccalaureate" program at Hairston Middle School? On hold until parents are convinced it won't become another stumbling block.

"This isn't rocket science," says Carmia Caesar, an attorney with the Advancement Project in Washington."Every parent wants what's best for their child."

These new parent activists see the answer in allowing them to choose where to send their children to school, through the use of either charter schools, vouchers, or other options. A new poll shows that 70 percent of poor black parents want the choice to send their children to private or charter schools. And the growing population of middle-class blacks and Latinos choose private schools at higher rates than whites do today.

For many of these parents, the elusive ideal of diversity is far less important than ensuring that their own children get a quality education. The result, in many cases, has been a return to more segregated schools.

In Charlotte, for example, 80 percent of those who applied for private-school vouchers were black. A large majority of those parents are sending their kids to a new cadre of all-black church schools that require strict discipline and uniforms.

Oftentimes, parents are frank about demanding teachers of their own color for their children. "It's just a fact: Where a white teacher may see a thug, a black teacher will see a kid," says Ms. Brown.

For those who still believe in integration as a means to ending inequity in schools, it's a discouraging trend.

"I don't think there's any maliciousness on the part of people to get away from people of other races, as much as this is an artifact of trying to increase their own security, safety, and their own futures," says Randy Thomson, a sociology professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "The effect, unfortunately, is the same."

But for the small group of black parents and children assembled at the St. James Baptist Church in Greensboro's Smith Hall neighborhood last Thursday, it's time for educators to listen to the needs of parents instead of hewing to well-meaning, but ultimately condescending, social ideals.

They say integration may have worn out its promise, especially as it's hard for the system to argue that new policies, such as zero-tolerance, are not disproportionately affecting black and minority teens.

"People kind of lost track of the idea of improving the quality of education for minorities," says Jay Greene, a scholar with the Manhattan Institute in New York. "Instead, we've been obsessed with the idea of mixing. Unfortunately, mixing is usually done at the expense of minority students."

That's not how Susan Mendenhall sees it. "What we're trying to do is raise standards and put some extra academic emphasis on those schools that are highly impacted by poverty," says Ms. Mendenhall, the chairman of the Guilford County School District.

But Goldie Wells says such statements no longer assuage minority parents. Too often, academics just don't get it, says the retired Greensboro teacher.

"When you look at all the black kids being kicked out and failing, you start to wonder whether they're just pretending to educate our children," says Ms. Wells.

Still, as protests began this week, the emotions swirling around the school board's decisions have simmered down into something approaching communication, says Mendenhall.

"We've had so much division, but, if the end result is getting minority parents involved in the school, I'm glad of it," she says.

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