Sean Reardon and John Yun, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University
June 2002
This report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, written by Sean Reardon of Penn State and John Yun of the Harvard Ed School, starts badly by labeling project co-director Gary Orfield's foreword a "forward," an unmistakable sign of weak editing if not weak thinking. And in 55 pages it doesn't get a lot better. Its central contention is that private schools are more "segregated" than public schools-a claim that is, of course, extra-timely in light of the Supreme Court's voucher decision. That, in any case, is the headline attached to this analysis of federal private-school data (from 1997-98). The actual data, however, don't quite bear out the claim that private schools are worse than public schools for minority pupils. The authors acknowledge that, when it comes to Hispanics, private schools are better integrated than public, i.e. there is a higher proportion of white students to be found in private schools attended by Hispanic youngsters than those youngsters typically encounter in public schools. As for the black-white picture, the authors claim that it's worse in private than public schools, but their numbers undermine that allegation: "[T]he average black private school student was enrolled in a school that was only 34% white [while] the average black public school student attended a school that was 33% white." Not a heckuva difference, and not even in the right direction! None of this shows that private schools are "segregated" in the classic sense, with students barred from some schools and assigned to others, according to their skin color. Moreover, while the authors spin their findings as an argument against vouchers, the central racial fact of private schools is that relatively few minorities can afford to attend them; hence relatively fewer do. If they had more financial aid (vouchers or otherwise), more would attend. This is well demonstrated by much survey data in which low-income parents were asked what school they would choose if money were no object. If more minorities attended private schools, private schooling as a whole would be better integrated. (Today, it's 78% white, compared with 64% in public schools.) That doesn't necessarily mean that individual private schools would be better integrated. (One indisputable fact of school choice is that, given options, some families seek out schools attended by others like themselves even as others opt for more cosmopolitan student bodies.) But it almost certainly means that low-income minority youngsters would be getting a better education than they are today. Which is more important to their futures? You can learn more about (and obtain) this report by surfing to http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/press_releases/private_schools.html.
