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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
White Flight & Schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It wasn’t a revelation that Gwinnett is seeing residents move farther out as communities closer to Atlanta become more heavily minority. But it was interesting to hear longtime Gwinnett school board member Louise Radloff identify the trend by a term you don’t hear much anymore: white flight. Here’s Brian Feagans’ story.
Is there any community factor that drives white flight more than schools? Sure, the Spanish language signs get to some people as does the difficulty of communicating with neighbors who don’t speak English. But dating back to integration, it seems the schools are the real driving factor behind white flight and suburban sprawl. Families will pick up and move if they don’t think the schools are good enough for their their kids. And once the school’s reputation declines, housing prices are at risk of suffering accordingly. That’s enough to motivate even homeowners without kids and empty-nesters to relocate.
Have you been faced with the dilemma of a changing neighborhood? Did you move? Did you stay? Did the schools influence your decision?
(Thanks everyone who participated in this mostly civil discussion. I only had to delete two posts by the same author. Hopefully he’ll go over to www.peoplewithoutclass.com next time he feels the need to participate in a blog discussion. I’m going to let “Juan” have the last word and close the comments. Again, thanks for so much excellent food for thought.)
UPDATE: Scott Elliott, education writer at the Dayton Daily News and blogmaster at Get On the Bus, has this insight to add:
“Schools absolutely were not the first or main motivation for white flight in most places. Flight was well underway long before integration came along. It was fueled most by the federal government, which wanted to spur the economy out of the depression and gave tons of financial support and tax breaks to the housing industry so they could sell America on the suburban ideal. And it was racist federal, state and local government policy that prevented blacks from participating in the housing boom.
When integration came along, it probably accelerated flight. But white flight was already underway and would have continued with or without integration busing.”
Here’s Scott’s interesting Get on the Bus blog post.
If I can figure out how, I’ll reopen the comments. Some folks said I cut them off before they had time to post…
