My first two posts in the Neighborhoods blog series provided a historical overview of my community of choice, Fairwood, located in Prince George’s County, Maryland. As a quick recap, in exploring this affluent predominately African-American community, I learned that a fascinating conundrum exists there: despite the high socioeconomic standing of its residents, most of the elementary schools within the Fairwood school zone are reported to have low academic performance as evidenced by their Great Schools rating. In fact, the schools do not fare much better than other schools in the Prince George’s County Public School District, which is ranked 23rd (on a variety of measures) in a state of 25 school districts.
The schools within Fairwood’s zone present a puzzling statistic for many reasons, two of which I find to be paramount in my investigation: First, research indicates that students who live in financially prosperous communities tend to perform better on academic achievement measures than their peers who reside in low income communities. Second, anecdotally speaking (though I am certain that the research exists), money tends to buy favors and opportunities; yet, when the wealthy Black folks in the Fairwood community banded together in a legal appeal to build an elementary school in their community, their efforts were unfruitful—not once or twice, but on three separate occasions. It all begs the question, what’s going on here? Well, I believe the answer exists somewhere within the layers of the following topics:
Racial, residential segregation– first by force, then by choice
The United States has a well-documented history of housing segregation and discrimination, and this history has received the attention of many social scientists (Charles, 2003; Drake and Cayton, 1946; Duncan and Duncan, 1957; Farley and Frey, 1994; Galster, 1988; Massey and Denton, 1993; Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965) who, in general, have found that African Americans, particularly those in large, northeastern and Midwestern metropolitan areas have been highly segregated from Whites since at least the beginning of the Great Migration (Adelman, 2004). While much of this segregation may be a reflection of force, it is not unreasonable to posit that some of it may have occurred by choice. I believe that the creation of Fairwood is evidence of the latter; Fairwood is a planned community that meets the social and cultural needs of wealthy African American families—giving them access to spaces created by them and for them. In this way, upper middle-class Blacks maintain their ties to the Black world not only as a refuge from racial discrimination, but also because they enjoy interacting with other Blacks.
Economic resources and school choice
Researchers have raised concerns related to differences in the educational resources parents of varying wealth and social status can provide their children (Baker & Stevenson, 1986; Lareau, 1989; Lareau & Shumar, 1996; Useem, 1992). In the case of this study, the elementary schools in the Fairwood community serve students whose families come from various socioeconomic circumstances. One can presume then, that there exists within the school diverse approaches to academic engagement, parental involvement, and resource availability. In particular, upper-middle-class parents tend to be more involved than others in the management of their children’s school careers (Baker & Stevenson, 1986; Useem, 1992). This involvement makes more salient social class and racial differences in parents’ own educational attainment and in their knowledge of the workings of schools. Families of higher social strata are more likely to select college preparatory classes for their children and have their children placed in higher academic tracks (Baker&Stevenson, 1986; Useem, 1992). Perhaps this is what is occurring in Fairwood. When forced to forgo plans for the development of a community elementary school, did these parents then enroll their children in private schools under the belief that the current public school options are of subpar quality? If this is the case, then the elementary schools that are located near the Fairwood community may not necessarily include large numbers of students from the community, thus minimizing the students’ impact on the schools’ Great Schools ratings.
The color of money
I’ve always heard it said that money talks. However, the inability of Fairwood families to create their own school brings a number of questions to mind: what were the actual factors that led to this disappointment. Were they economic factors? Social factors? Political factors? All of the above? We may never know. What I do know is that for all of their successes, many prosperous Blacks still have the blues (Cose, 2009). Cose (2009) asserts that there are several factors: the need to tiptoe around the truth of racism that continues to exist, White’s fear of Black ascension, clichés around race and crime, and a number of other ills.
As I continue to develop my final project, I hope to bring each of these theories to light in the experience of Fairwood community residents.
Hoods, Schools, and People 