Separate and unequal?

From the "no kidding" department comes a new report that says minority children are segregated into high-poverty schools, away from wealthier white peers. DiversityData.org, a project of Harvard University that tracks indicators of diversity opportunity, quality of life and health for various racial and ethnic population groups, has just published Segregation and Exposure to High-Poverty Schools in Large Metropolitan Areas: 2008-09. The report ranks racial/ethnic segregation and exposure to high-poverty schools for public, primary school students in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, and reveals that black and Hispanic children attend very different schools than do white children and are disproportionately concentrated in high-poverty schools. Read the report here.
School segregation comes from housing segregation, and we don't have to go too far to find some shining examples locally. Carmel Unified: 74 percent white, 10 percent low income. Alisal Union in Salinas: 94 percent Latino, 79 percent low income.

And speaking about an educational system that does not provide equally for everybody, the buzz heralding the opening of "Waiting for Superman" is growing louder. Directed by David Guggenheim of "An Inconvenient Truth" fame, Waiting is an exploration of the current state of public education and how it's affecting U.S. children. It opens in Los Angeles and New York this Friday, and nationwide in October. For those of us who care about the public education system, it's an absolute must see.