It’s widely accepted that small class sizes, especially at the very start of schooling, lead to a better education.  And yet, nationwide, minority kids are enrolled in schools with larger kindergarten classes than whites.

So that’s public schooling, what about American private schools?  Well, things aren’t any different there. White kids attend private schools at a rate of 1 in 10, for blacks the rate is 1 in 25.  And in interviews white parents exhibit a clear and unbroken pattern: white families use their financial resources to place their kids in “whiter, wealthier, and less diverse school environments.”

The chairman of Shelby County’s school board, David Pickler, insists that race isn’t a factor and that “socioeconomics” are really what’s behind  his community’s opposition.  But with the median wealth gap between black and white families doubling during the recession and now reaching the point where white families have twenty-times as much wealth as black families, trying to separate the “socio” from the “economic” is at best ignorant, and at worst willfully bigoted.

The court system will shortly rule on whether the planned merger will go forward this year or if it will have to wait until the 2013 school year.  But regardless of this individual ruling, when you look at the deluge of data outlining the vast gulf between black and white educations in America, it becomes all too apparent that not only are our schools still separate, we’re still a desperately long way from equal.

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