Sean Reardon Confirms Further Widening of Segregation by Income | janresseger

Sean Reardon Confirms Further Widening of Segregation by Income | janresseger:

Sean Reardon Confirms Further Widening of Segregation by Income

Posted on November 20, 2013 by janresseger

Near the end of their new book, Public Education Under Siege, educator Mike Rose and historian Michael B. Katz describe what they believe is the toughest problem for public education in America: “Throughout American history, inequality—refracted most notably through poverty and race—has impinged on the ability of children to learn and of teachers to do their jobs.” (p. 228)  Today the United States tolerates an alarming 22 percent child poverty rate, by far the highest rate of child poverty in any of the world’s so-called industrialized nations.  At the same time our society is experiencing ongoing segregation by economics and isolation of the poor and the rich.  Growing economic segregation overlays segregation by race and ethnicity, and the trend is mirrored by a widening income inequality school achievement gap.

Documenting these trends in 2011, Stanford University educational sociologist Sean Reardon showed here that while in 1970, only 15 percent of families lived in neighborhoods classified as affluent or poor, by 2007, 31 percent of families lived in such neighborhoods.  By 2007, fewer families lived in mixed income communities. Reardon also demonstrated here that along with growing residential inequality is a simultaneous jump in an income-inequality school