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In 2011 Forbes magazine singled out Old Westbury, in Nassau County, Long Island, as one of America’s millionaire capitals, placing the average net wealth of its households at $19.6 million. It isn’t surprising that the schools nearby are rated amongst the best in the nation. Outstanding school districts within five miles from the geographic center of Old Westbury include Jericho, East Williston, Carle Place and East Meadow.
In the midst of this academic excellence stands a glaring exception. Westbury schools (part of the school district is in Old Westbury) are ranked at the near bottom in the county, falling far below every measure of success, from reading and math scores to graduation rates to the number of students attending college.
Here is breakdown of student performance in Westbury grades 3-8:
Grade 3 English - students meeting standards:19%
Grade 3 Math - students meeting standards: 27%
Grade 4 English - students meeting standards: 19%
Grade 4 Math - students meeting standards: 29%
Grade 5 English - students meeting standards: 14%
Grade 5 Math - students meeting standards: 23%
Grade 6 English - students meeting standards: 20%
Grade 6 Math - students meeting standards: 12%
Grade 7 English - students meeting standards: 18%
Grade 7 Math - students meeting standards: 10%
Grade 8 English - students meeting standards:19%
Grade 8 Math - students meeting standards: 9%
This is a dismal record that is even more glaring when all around Westbury school district there are stellar performers. In Jericho, for example, in 3rd grade the percentage of students who pass is 93%.
The disparity in schools reflects the demographic differences in these districts. For a variety of historical reasons, not the least of which was the nearby Levittown’s covenant that initially barred blacks from buying in America’s first suburb to later red-lining and blockbusting, Westbury schools are nearly exclusively African American and Hispanic while the surrounding districts have few pupils from either minority.
Brown v Board of Education put an end of legalized school segregation more than a half-century ago. The reality is that racial segregation in public schools didn’t go away; it continues on Long Island and is the experience of a large percentage of black and Latinos around the country.
Separate was not equal in 1954, as the Supreme Court declared, and it is no more equal today. How we continue to live with the glaring contradiction between ideals and reality isn’t hard to fathom. Parents want the best for their children, so send them to the best schools if they can. (Few children who live in Old Westbury attend Westbury public schools; they attend private schools).
If you don’t have money to live in good school districts, your children need to make do. In the past, prejudice created segregated housing patterns that produced segregated schools. Today economics drives the success of failures of schools—if you have money, your kids go to good schools; if you don’t, they go to schools that perform poorly.
A study by Rucker C. Johnson from Berkley, studied the impact on the lives of students who attended segregated schools. As Nikole Hannah-Jones writes in an article in The New York Times, those students are more likely to be poor, more likely to go to jail, less likely to graduate from high school, go to college or finish if they go, more likely to live in segregated communities as adults and send their own children to segregated schools, thereby repeating the pattern.
There is a straightforward way to solve the problem that is easy to see if you look at Westbury. School consolidation with any one of the surrounding school districts would end segregated education immediately. Many students wouldn’t travel any further than they already do.
Barring that, cooperation between school administrators, teachers and students, and shared extracurricular activities would be tremendously beneficial.
These proposals, and others like them, have little chance of being implemented, as self-interest stands in the way of fairness. However, a long-term view shows that it is in everyone’s interest that matters of social justice be addressed. Behind the wave of unrest around police tactics in black communities is the reality of social inequities that plague society.
The future of the children from, say, Westbury and Jericho, is best served by all children receiving a good education. That can’t be achieved under the present system in which school districts essentially follow residential housing patterns that still remain largely segregated by a combination of race and income.
