Still separate

Study: DPS remains divided along ethnic lines a decade after end of forced busing

Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 20, 2006 at midnight

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A study by a Harvard University researcher shows Denver Public Schools are rapidly resegregating a decade after a judge put a halt to mandatory crosstown busing.

The report, released today, shows Hispanic and black students are less likely now than in 1995 to attend school with white students as a declining number of white families cluster together in selected schools.

Consider Slavens School, a K-8 building in southeast Denver, which draws nearly half of its students from outside its neighborhood boundaries. While just 19 percent of DPS students are white, 89 percent of Slavens kids are.

But white families aren't the only ones sticking together in DPS. Every morning, 17 buses filled mostly with black children drive into an affluent neighborhood a few blocks south of the Cherry Creek Mall and stop at Knight Fundamental Academy.

Its numbers mirror Slavens - while just 19 percent of DPS students are black, 89 percent of Knight's students are.

Such clustering contributes to one of the study's major findings, that Hispanic children in DPS, now the majority of the district's pupils, are also its most segregated.

The typical Hispanic child today attends a school that is 71 percent Hispanic and just 12 percent white, down from 29 percent white in 1990.

Black children also are less likely today than in 1990 to go to school with white children. A typical black student attends a school that is 18 percent white, down from 33 percent in 1990.

Only white students are more likely today to attend school with more white children. Though their enrollment numbers have fallen dramatically in DPS as white families have moved to the suburbs or chosen other education options, white children typically attend schools with 42 percent white students, an increase of 2 percent since 1990.

DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet said he doesn't believe Denver is ready for any type of mandated effort to integrate schools. Instead, he favors improving every school.

"We will see, I hope, diversity restored as people of all backgrounds seek out excellence," he said.

Overall, the study found, 84 percent of Hispanic children and 74 percent of black pupils today attend schools where more than 70 percent of their classmates are minority.

It's no surprise to Eddie Montoya, who graduated last spring from the heavily Hispanic North High School. He saw more diversity in his elementary school than at North.

"Little by little, the parents start separating their kids and taking them away," he said. "Obviously, if North is not doing good, they're going to take their student to another school. If they can afford it, why not?"

A link to poverty

Alan Gottlieb, education program officer with the Denver-based Piton Foundation, which commissioned the study from Harvard's Civil Rights Project, said part 2 of the analysis, due out this spring, will examine how achievement has changed since a judge in 1995 ordered an end to two decades of busing.

He suspects it will show achievement among minority children in DPS has declined as schools have resegregated.

"If we see increasing segregation and dropping student achievement, then the question is: How can you continue to let this happen?" Gottlieb said. "And, what can you do to keep it from continuing to happen?"

The Piton Foundation doesn't advocate a return to busing. But Gottlieb would like to see Bennet consider economic integration, or mixing children of different income levels, in his reform plans.

In Denver schools, as in many school districts, ethnicity tends to be tied to income.

"The issues in schools that are high minority are not that there's something about minority kids that makes it hard for them to learn," he said. "Income is what causes the challenges, not race."

A glance at a chart showing the district's most segregated schools makes the pattern clear:

The five Denver schools with the highest percentages of white students all had poverty rates of 12 percent or less. The five schools with the highest percentages of Hispanic students all had poverty rates of 91 percent or more.

Economic integration

But can DPS, which serves a student body that is 80 percent minority and 65 percent poor, which is growing both increasingly more minority and poorer, realistically integrate its schools?

"It certainly can be better than what it is," Gottlieb said, especially if DPS is successful with plans to recruit the thousands of middle-class families who opt out of city schools.

A number of school districts across the nation are trying economic integration, including Boston, Chicago and Louisville, Ky. But Wake County, N.C., is touted as a possible model for DPS.

That district locates special programs in high-poverty schools in an attempt to attract more affluent families. Since 2000, it also has used income and achievement as a consideration in assigning students.

For example, the district's goal is that individual schools have no more than 40 percent of students in poverty and no more than 25 percent of students below grade level.

But the success of the program is a subject of national debate.

Last September, a front-page New York Times story heralded Wake County's success, lauding big gains in test scores for black and Hispanic students. The next day, a national media critic blasted the report, pointing out statewide scores for black and Hispanic students had increased nearly as much over the same period.

Segregated in DPS

Slavens Principal Greta Martinez did not return calls for comment. But the Slavens Web site showcases the most affluent school in DPS:

Details of an eighth-grade class trip with a price tag per family of $1,000. How to make donations such as "stock or mutual fund shares, life income gifts, bequests" to the school's own nonprofit. An auction at Invesco Field at Mile High for money to help "create a brand new in-school broadcasting studio."

Slavens is located in a largely white neighborhood. But it is among the top picks annually for school choice applications from across the district. A November 2004 report shows 188 of Slavens' 456 students came from outside its boundaries.

That's a sharp contrast to Barnum Elementary, the DPS school with the highest proportion of Hispanic students. Principal Myrella Goff estimated 99 percent of her students come from the school's southwest Denver neighborhood.

She has not heard a concern from her parents about the lack of diversity at Barnum.

"I'm not concerned about it," Goff said. "I'm just happy we're serving a community that we're well-prepared to serve, with qualified teachers who serve Hispanic children with specific strategies, especially students transitioning into English."

Statistics from the DPS school choice office show white students are proportionately more likely to change schools than other ethnic groups, followed by black families. Hispanic students, while 57 percent of all students, made up 47 percent of choice transfers in 2004.

Several community leaders lament the resegregation of DPS schools but don't favor formal action to curb it. Instead, they say, focus on improving every school, entice middle-class families to return to DPS and let integration take care of itself.

"What can be done is the real question," said Denver City Councilman Michael Hancock, who was bused himself as a high school student. "Unless parents decide that, for my children to survive in this ever-changing global economy, they must know how to relate and get along with different cultures, they're not going to choose to send them to a school that's more diverse."

Ricardo Martinez, co-founder of Padres Unidos, said neighborhoods, particularly those in northwest Denver, are becoming more diverse economically and ethnically. But families are bypassing DPS schools.

He advocates a more rigorous academic curriculum that includes a cultural component to reflect the DPS student body.

"The answer is that we have to improve our schools overall," he said. "If the academic rigor is there, a lot of parents here in northwest Denver will send their children to these schools."

At Knight Academy, Principal Leonard Fox said his school is proof that families will flock to schools with academic rigor. Many Knight students ride a bus 45 minutes each way for the school's back-to-basics approach to education.

Fox is recruiting heavily from all ethnicities, and for the first time this year, his school has seven monolingual Spanish speakers.

"In my mind, the goal should be quality opportunities - if you know, when you walk through the doors, you will be educated well, it doesn't matter if you are black, white or Hispanic," Fox said. "That's the way we've got to approach the future."

Study highlights

An analysis of student demographics in Denver Public Schools following the end of two decades of mandated busing shows schools are less diverse today than in 1995, when crosstown busing ended. Among the findings:

CLUSTERING BY ETHNICITY

• Hispanic students are increasingly isolated in DPS. The average Hispanic student attends a school that is 71 percent Hispanic and 12 percent white, down from 29 percent white in 1990.

• The typical black student attends a school that is 39 percent Hispanic and 18 percent white, down from 33 percent white in 1990.

• White students, conversely, are clustering in schools that are increasingly white even as their overall enrollment in DPS continues to drop. The typical white student attends a school that is 42 percent white, up from 40 percent white in 1990.

ISOLATION BY LANGUAGE

• The average Hispanic English language learner in DPS attends a school that is 73 percent Hispanic. The average English speaker attends a school that is 57 percent Hispanic.

LINK TO POVERTY

• Every Denver school with a student population of 10 percent or fewer minority pupils is a low-poverty school, meaning fewer than 10 percent of families are eligible for federal lunch assistance.

• Yet close to all intensely segregated schools, where 90 percent or more students are minorities, are high-poverty schools, where more than half the families are eligible for federal lunch aid.

• 43 percent of Denver schools are intensely segregated and more than half are schools with minority enrollments topping 80 percent. Almost all of these schools - 98 percent - are serving families where more than half receive lunch aid.

• Hispanic, black leaders ask DPS to delay reform plan. 28A

• More online: To read the complete Harvard report, go to www.civilrightsproject.Harvard.edu.The Piton Foundation, A Private Foundation Created By Gary-Williams Energy Corp. As Its Community Investment Division, Commissioned The Study Cond ...

Concentrations of ethnicity

Hispanic students make up the majority (57%) of enrollment in Denver Public Schools, but white and black families (19% of enrollment each) are more likely to exercise school choice, leaving their neighborhood schools for what they see as better options. Here's a look at the most concentrated schools in DPS, by ethnicity:

• Schools serving highest proportion of whites

School % white % poverty State rating<> 1. Slavens Elementary 89 1.8 Excellent

2. Bromwell Elementary 81 7.7 High

3. Cory Elementary 79 8.9 Excellent

4. Steele Elementary 79 12.2 High

5. Southmoor Elementary 78 9.1 Excellent

• Schools serving highest proportion of blacks

School % black % poverty State rating

1. Knight Fundamental Academy 89 66 Average

2. Philips Elementary 83.4 84.1 Low

3. Smiley Middle School 74.2 63.8 Low

4. Hallett Academy 70.8 86.7 Low

5. Stedman Elementary 66 90.7 Low

• Schools serving highest proportion of Hispanics

School % Hispanic % poverty State rating

1. Barnum Elementary 96 95 Low

2. Valdez Elementary 95.4 96.1 Low

3. Swansea Elementary 95.3 95 Low

4. Bryant-Webster Elementary 95.1 91 Average

5. Newlon Elementary 94.4 94 LowSource: Colorado Department Of Education *Poverty Refers To Percentage Of Students Qualifying For Federal Lunch Assistance. State School Ratings F ...

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