White Students

Last year, students at Taylor County High in Butler, Ga., made history by holding the school's first prom for both whites and blacks, who previously attended separate spring dances in a lingering vestige from the days of segregation. But the good will generated by that first integrated prom, whose theme was "Making it Last Forever," proved short-lived - this year's dance has been split in two again. A group of white students held their own prom last night, while a second gathering, which is expected to draw people of both races, will be held next weekend.

For the fourth year in a row, Maryland ranked No. 1 in the nation in the percentage of its graduating seniors who successfully passed the rigorous Advanced Placement exams, leaping further ahead of other top states. Twenty-nine percent of last year's graduating seniors in Maryland had passed one AP test by the time they walked across the stage last spring, double the percentage of a decade ago and more than one percentage point higher than 2010. The national average was 18 percent.

A series of racial incidents at South Carroll High put state police on alert last week and have left students and staff members uneasy at the Winfield school.On Friday, about 20 white students came to school waving Confederate flags from their pickup trucks or wearing T-shirts with the flag and the words, "You wear your X, I'll wear mine," referring to Malcolm X and the crossed bars of the flag. About 25 of South Carroll's 1,338 students are black."I think the crisis is over," said Principal David Booz, as he watched over a peaceful lunch period yesterday.

Towson University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County are national leaders in graduating black and Hispanic students at similar rates to their white peers, according to studies released this week by the Education Trust. Towson was one of 11 institutions hailed by the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to lower the achievement gaps for minority students, for maintaining low graduation gaps for both black and Hispanic students. At Towson, 69.6 percent of Hispanic students graduated within six years for the classes that finished college between 2006 and 2008 compared with 66.7 percent of white students.

For the fourth year in a row, Maryland ranked No. 1 in the nation in the percentage of its graduating seniors who successfully passed the rigorous Advanced Placement exams, leaping further ahead of other top states. Twenty-nine percent of last year's graduating seniors in Maryland had passed one AP test by the time they walked across the stage last spring, double the percentage of a decade ago and more than one percentage point higher than 2010. The national average was 18 percent.

When Geneva Pope attended the old Bel Air Colored High School in the 1940s, she had to read books no longer deemed fit for white students. But she and her classmates first had to erase profanities and racial slurs that white students had left on the tattered pages.White students caught buses to schools. Blacks had none, even if they lived nearly 20 miles away.When they arrived at the Colored High School, black students found plumbing in disrepair and walked outside for toilets. In winter, they shivered until they fired up the stoves in the morning.

A QUIET BUT noteworthy trend is occurring at historically black colleges and universities around the country: More white students are enrolling. This is a welcome, if ironic, development at institutions founded when racism denied higher education to blacks. White enrollment at these institutions, known as HBCUs, grew 65 percent during the last 25 years, from 21,000 to 35,000. Nationwide, white enrollment at publicly funded HBCUs is at 13 percent. The increase in enrollment by whites and, to a lesser extent, by Hispanic and Asian-American students is the result of outreach by the schools, more affordable tuitions and shifting attitudes and perceptions by whites who once viewed the schools as unwelcoming and of lesser quality.

IT'S ONE of the most pressing crises in Baltimore County's public schools: African-American students achieve at levels far below those of their white counterparts, and the gap is unlikely to narrow soon. The results from the last round of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests starkly demonstrate the width of this chasm. In reading, writing and mathematics, the percentage of black third-grade students doing satisfactory work is about half that of white students. In science and social studies, the distance between the two is even greater -- half of white students are performing to the standard compared with only one-fifth of black students.

At this year's middle school and high school graduations, you may notice something: Our public schools are getting more segregated. Educator and author Jonathan Kozol writes about the troubling trend in his recent book, Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. He notes that in Chicago, by the 2000-2001 academic year, 87 percent of public school enrollment was black or Hispanic; less than 10 percent of children in the schools were white. In Philadelphia and Cleveland, 78 percent was black or Hispanic.

A fight over racial slurs led to the arrest of three Glenelg High School students last week and prompted two days of dialogue between black and white students on racial issues.Hundreds of students had gathered to see the after-school fight, which occurred in a vacant wooded lot on Sharp Road. Police and teachers helped break it up.Police charged a white male student with assault Tuesday after he allegedly pushed a teacher trying to break up the inter-racial fight among nine students.Police arrested two black male students the next day, charging them with possession of weapons.

By the start of classes in August 2011, white students in Howard County are expected to be a minority, joining those in Baltimore County. The two school systems are riding a demographic wave that carries broad implications for how students are taught. Baltimore County two years ago joined Baltimore City and Montgomery, Prince George's, Charles and Somerset counties as Maryland jurisdictions where minorities outnumber white students in public schools, although the development was little noticed at the time.

The 1,000 or so students in Baltimore County's Class of 2009 who have yet to satisfy state test requirements for graduation are going to remedial classes, attending after-school programs and being pulled out during class and lunch for extra instruction as schools strive to help them meet the mark. Administrators and teachers are also making an appeal to parents, reminding them of what's at stake this year and what they can do to ensure that their children get their diplomas. "The message is real clear to kids: 'Now I've got to pass this,' " said Stephen A. Edgar, principal of Parkville High School, referring to the exams that are now mandatory for graduation.

Statewide test scores for African-American and low-income children rose significantly this year and are moving closer to parity with other students, according to data released today by state education officials. The Maryland scores were buoyed by large gains in Baltimore City and Prince George's County, where there are large black and poor populations, but the trend was also seen in Anne Arundel County and other areas of the state. For the fifth year in a row, scores improved across the state on the Maryland School Assessment, a test given in grades three through eight, as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last school year, 86 percent of elementary students passed the reading test and 84 percent passed the math.

More suspensions the wrong answer The adage that experience is the best teacher is an appropriate response to those who believe school suspensions are the way to push children who misbehave out of our school systems ("Discipline's Cost," May 11). History demonstrates that the zero-tolerance policy has failed to act as a deterrent to students. Nine percent of the students in Maryland's public schools were suspended in the 2006-2007 school year, and that figure was up from just 6 percent 15 years earlier.

The faces of Maryland's public school children have quietly been changing over the past several years, and minorities - primarily Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans - now outnumber white students in the state. Maryland public school enrollment data show that 48 percent of the students in the state's 24 school systems are white. African-Americans represent 38 percent of the school population, Hispanics 8 percent and Asian-Americans most of the remaining 6 percent.

A decade ago, Howard County had four schools in which white students were a minority, and two with majority African-American enrollments. Now, there are 27 schools with white minorities, and just one with a majority black student body. What's going on? "Twenty years ago, when we talked about diversity, we were talking about a white/African-American comparison," said county school Superintendent Sydney L. Cousin. "Today we have students from over 80 different nations." While white enrollment dipped between 1997 and 2007, black, Asian and Hispanic enrollments increased sharply, especially outside Columbia, where racial diversity had arrived earlier.

Imagine, for a moment, that Asian teachers dominated the school system in which you live. Imagine they taught white and Asian students, and that the white students were told at every opportunity that Asians scored higher on intelligence and standardized tests.Imagine these white students picked up the morning paper and spotted a headline that read "White Students Continue To Lag Behind Asians." Imagine the Asian teachers had no expectations that the whites could perform academically, that white students were routinely shunted off to special education classes while Asians dominated the gifted and talented programs.

Towson University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County are national leaders in graduating black and Hispanic students at similar rates to their white peers, according to studies released this week by the Education Trust. Towson was one of 11 institutions hailed by the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to lower the achievement gaps for minority students, for maintaining low graduation gaps for both black and Hispanic students. At Towson, 69.6 percent of Hispanic students graduated within six years for the classes that finished college between 2006 and 2008 compared with 66.7 percent of white students.

WASHINGTON -- Under pointed questioning from Democratic House members who decried the lack of federal intervention in the racially charged Jena 6 case, U.S. Justice Department officials revealed yesterday that they are weighing an investigation into allegations of systemic racial bias in the administration of justice in the small, mostly white Louisiana town. U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington also said for the first time that the hanging of nooses from a shade tree in the Jena High School courtyard in September 2006 by three white students - a warning directed at black students to stay away from the tree, which triggered interracial fights in the town - constituted a federal hate crime, but that federal authorities chose not to prosecute the case because of the ages of the white youths involved.

Almost everything about the case of the Jena 6 is a sad and troubling reminder of this nation's racially charged past and its still racially tense present. There was the initial request, about a year ago, by a black student to sit under a tree on the grounds of a high school in Jena, La., where white students tended to congregate. The next day, three nooses were left dangling on the tree. Three white students were suspended for two days. In December, six black schoolmates beat up a white student; they were initially charged with attempted murder.