Word: jeffersons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...court’s decision in the two cases—Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education—may overturn its landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education...
...Jefferson County has worked hard to avoid this first by racially gerrymandering school- attendance zones in the 1980s and then by instituting its 15/50 "managed choice" program in the '90s. This system has maintained not only integrated schools but also community peace. Despite all the long bus trips--the average ride for Jefferson County students is about 45 min.--77% of Jefferson County parents agreed that guidelines should be used to ensure diversity, according to a survey conducted in 2000 by the University of Kentucky. The district also assiduously tracks the percentage of the county's school-age children...
Worse, by stressing racial balancing, critics say, you take the focus off improving educational outcome. Thirty years of seating black students next to white ones has failed to close Jefferson County's achievement gap. Black high school students still trail their white counterparts by 25% in reading-proficiency tests and by 34% in math. The gap is closely linked to factors like parents' education level and income, which no amount of school balancing is likely to fix. "We have the most integrated school system in the country," says Carmen Weathers, a retired Jefferson County schoolteacher. "That sounds good...
...challenge facing the Jefferson County school district is to convince the Supreme Court that racial integration not only does no harm but offers concrete benefits that would be lost without the guidelines. To help make this case, 553 social scientists--including professors at Harvard, the University of Hawaii and myriad institutions in between--have submitted a friend- of-the-court brief detailing how racial integration in schools reduces prejudice and prepares students to enter a diverse workforce. More support will come from a study to be released this week showing that blacks and Latinos perform better academically in integrated schools...
...concerned that she is organizing a bus trip to Washington so Louisville parents can protest outside the Supreme Court next week. "What in the world are we trying to go backward for?" she asks. In a sign of what might be coming, a judge in 2000 forced Jefferson County to stop applying the district's guidelines at an inner-city magnet school because the career academy offers unique programs--like legal services and veterinary science--that students can't get anywhere else. Since then, Central High, a historically black school, has seen its white population shrink from...