White Flight from Public Schools.

“Schools" are a perennial topic of discussion in the Dayton area, both in the media and online, and probably everywhere else. A topic I usually tune out.

But I did make a lengthy contribution to Esrati today on the subject, and want to elaborate a bit.

I was responding to suggestions for a countywide school system, based on my experience in Kentucky. One of the points was that whites would leave public schools if they had to go to school with a lot of minorities (which, in this part of the USA, usually means blacks).

In the case of Louisville/Jefferson County, the school system I was familiar with, there was a substantial minority population due to bussing for racial integration. This has led to more and more whites to opt-out of the public system, until now about a third of the white school age population is in private schools. The public school student population is now around 34.1% black.

Locally, Dayton City Schools also had racial integration. A similar percentage of the white school age population is attending private schools (32.4%), and the public school population is nearly 70% black.

This chart shows the move to private schools for white students based on certain grade groups. What’s interesting is one can see an accelerating departure from public education in Louisville with the younger cohorts, while in Dayton there is a consistent range in the low 30%s



What might account for a fairly stable situation in Dayton is that whites in Dayton are likely to be lower income, thus don’t have the resources to leave the public system. As the Louisville system is countywide there are more affluent whites with the resources to go private, which they apparently are doing.

The question of what is a tipping point in public education for white flight has been addressed elsewhere. From an article on school integration in Charlotte NC , is this passage.

Whites will go to schools that are 60 percent white and 40 percent minority," said Clark. "When it gets down below 50-50, they will not go. Whites will just pull out and if new people are moving to the district, they will look at the school structure in the city and say, 'Well, I can live in a neighboring county.'"

With schools, the move toward the tipping point usually doesn't start with racial discomfort, but rather with a general perception that a school system is somehow inferior. Because middle and upper-middle class whites are typically the first to bypass the system in favor of private schools or public schools in surrounding counties, the system becomes increasingly populated by minority students, and increasingly low-income. At around 50 percent white, race increasingly begins to drive the abandonment of a public school system.

It becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, said Charles Gallagher, an assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University who studies race and ethnic relations.

"The presence of a sizable minority population then becomes a proxy for the quality of the schools," said Gallagher.

Taking a look at a few Dayton suburbs one can see there is somewhat of a correlation between the % of blacks in a district and the % of whites going private (particularly in Huber Heights and Trotwood). The exception is Kettering (the city of Kettering, not the school district), were there is a surprisingly high number of white students going private. One wonders what the explanation for that is (or I should go back & check my numbers)?


It’s also interesting seeing the 9% of students going private in Oakwood, which is said to have the best school system in Montgomery County. One would expect the % to be lower, 5% or less.

In closing it seems this statement from the Charlotte article does sound familiar when talking about Dayton and vicinity:

“With schools, the move toward the tipping point usually doesn't start with racial discomfort, but rather with a general perception that a school system is somehow inferior.”