Summary Of Always Running Luis

“We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.” said Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 1954, Brown v. Board pushed people to integrate schools and provide all students with an equal education, but recent studies show despite the large efforts made to desegregate that public schools are almost just as segregated, and in the same conditions as they were back in 1960. Segregation has once again started to take over public schools all over the nation, and stories and statistics show that racial and residential segregation are just as a big deal as they sound. For example, test score gaps have grown, and the quality of educations at schools that are primarily white, or black, are alarming.

Is racial segregation in schools coming back from the past to haunt our primary and secondary students? In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” by Jonathan Kozol talks about how racial segregation is making a comeback and is becoming particularly apparent between low-income urban cities and wealthy upper suburban areas. In this essay, Kozol talks about his visits to these urban schools that aren’t getting much attention. These schools where the majority are kids of color and seem to be lacking resources that other “uptown” schools wouldn’t lack. Throughout the essay he gives the reader statistics of the demography of schools in different areas of the east coast. This really helps the reader understand his point of how racial

To begin, in his memoir Always Running, Luis Rodriguez writes about how females are also strong. Female characters are also strong because every year, there’s a tradition where the mexicans and Anglos fight which is where females join too. For example, on page 99, it says,”Girls got into it too, ripping the blouses of the prim and proper “society” girls and wrecking the gym area.” This proves that female characters are strong as well as in the book because they have to do many things such as what guys do in a gang. Showing that they are both powerful and strong.

The segregation system within our laws were thought to be hindered after the Civil Rights era, but finds itself to be subtly instilled in modern times.Students coming from poor families are given less opportunities than those who are privileged and wealthy. Many aren’t given access to schools with stable funding in their education departments. There is a clear division between the rich and poor students within the school systems throughout different cities. In A 'Bleak' Portrait of America's Urban Public School System, author Tanvi Misra says, “in a majority of the 50 cities, low-income and minority students were less likely to attend high-performing elementary and middle schools, take advanced classes, and take the ACT or SAT tests than higher

The Education Department in U.S. has advocated, “tracking perpetuates a modern system of segregation that favors white students and keeps students of color, many of them black, from long-term equal achievement.” (Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley & Wang, 2010) Therefore, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is taking effort to change this system in order to reduce segregation at schools. There are also other effects those minority students’ academic achievement. Segregated schools are less likely to provide a stable and good learning environment, experienced and qualified teachers, and adequate learning materials and facilities for students, and more likely to have unstable enrollment and high drop out rates. These drawbacks will undoubtedly lead to negative and profound impacts to the minority communities and to the whole

In the article Segregation by Newsweek it states that a new form of segregation is emerging in the nation's schools, particularly in the South. Many white students remain cloistered in their own schools, particularly in regions with few non-white residents. Meanwhile, non-white racial groups, Latinos and blacks in particular, are often located in schools with a non-white majority. These schools with non-white majorities are also often located in areas with high crime and poverty rates.

I feel that tracking contributes to the achievement gap because this practice of putting schoolchildren in groups based upon their race and economic status limits children’s educational outcome at early ages. In chapter 8 it states, “Many studies have found that non-white children are more likely to be placed in low-ability groups, beginning in elementary school, whereas white children are more likely to be placed in college-bound tracks in high school.” (PG. 224) This explanation was the most convincing because not everyone is given the same opportunity to learn the same which can have a major effect on how they do when they later decide to further their education. From my personal experience when I transferred from a college preparatory high school to a public school, because of my family’s financial hardships, my educational experience changed tremendously. During my time of attending this school, I noticed that the courses weren’t as difficult as they were at my other high school, nor did the teachers at this public school grade my assignments like they were supposed to. I was constantly given A’s for showing effort in my work regardless if the answers were correct or not. This public school that had a population of majority blacks, also had a low graduation rate and poor test scores. Overall being that I personally experienced tracking by attending a public school, it showed me that children who didn’t have the money to live in a good school district was given very basic education.

Tracking has been a practice of our educational system for about a century. Tracking, or segregation by academic ability, first occurred in Saint Louis public schools where segregation was still a dynamic of the area (Gerber, 2011). Accordingly, blacks were seen as mentally inferior to the whites meaning they were placed on lowest tracks. Soon tracking began spreading nationwide due to the public school superintendent of Boston’s “heralding [of] the new ‘sorting function of schools’” in 1908 (Oakes, 2005). The Separate but Equal Act was enacted in 1896, justifying the racial segregation of public facilities as long as the facilities were equal. It was soon abolished in 1954 after Brown vs. Board of Education revealed that separate was not equal. In 1983, about 30 years later, President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education,

In the story Always Running the beginning tells about Luis and his hard life struggle. He lives in Mexico trying to move to Los Angeles. He was always moving because of his families money problem. Luis was always pushed to the side because he didn't speak English that well. HIs older brother use to do very mean things to him. Then the neighbor would see and do the things Luis's brother would do. Later after he moved he found himself in a gang related culture.

The persistence of segregation [in schools] is a problem because, today as in the Brown era, separate schools are unequal. "Schools of concentrated poverty and segregated minority schools are strongly related to an array of factors that limit educational opportunities and outcomes," wrote the authors of a 2012 report by the University of California–Los Angeles's Civil Rights Project. "These include less experienced and less qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups and inadequate facilities and learning materials." (Barkhorn 2013).

Segregation in education is a large aspect of racial inequality and discrimination in America. The segregation issues are

Poor, black and Hispanic children are becoming more isolated from their while, affluent peers in the public schooling system according to new federal data released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). It shows that the number of high poverty schools serving Hispanic and black students has about doubled between the years of 2001 and 2014. According to this report, the ideal public education created by Brown vs. Board of Education is crumbling.

Schools are not always a good place and a safe place for these minorities. Many of the suffering races are a target for expulsions or suspensions in their schools. Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students(Steven Hsieh). The higher risk of expulsions of minorities such as African Americans limits success in the future and job opportunities. This can make it harder for these future families to succeed causing a continuous poverty loop, which causes unequal access to the american dream. Also Hispanics and Latinos suffer racial discrimination in schools and they have a smaller chance of being chosen for scholarships. 8.2% of hispanics and latinos receive a scholarship compared to the 71.7% of whites. This small percentage for hispanics and latinos makes it harder for them to pay

This leaves a disadvantage for black students, who get less qualified teachers. It’s also a symbolic disadvantage. In schools where tracking occurs, even in suburban schools that host a diverse population of students, students who get tracked into the lower classes perceive themselves as less capable because they often get less challenging work and teachers have lower expectations for them. Except the problem doesn’t just stop there. Schools are so focused on gaining funding from high-test scores that when students are tracked, in order to secure high test scores, students who are in the low performing track are deemed as trouble makers and typically forced to leave schools because of disciplinary actions. According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights “On average, 5% of white students are suspended, compared to 16% of black students.” This feeds into the racial stereotypes that these children were born into and seemingly cannot escape. Instead we need to start equipping schools with administrators and teachers who are aware of these negative implications and believe in the students enough to motivate them.

A study done in 2012 showed that 43% of Latinos and 38% of blacks go to a school where the population of their peers who are white is less than 10%. However, beyond school, systems, neighborhoods,