Last year, Portland’s school board made the decision to limit school choice in order to balance enrollment between Portland and Deering. While this policy change demonstrates progress toward educational equity, white Portlanders must ensure that our mindsets support, not contradict, this arc toward justice.
The policy change responded to incoming ninth-graders disproportionately choosing Portland over Deering in recent years, which was influenced by Deering’s reputation as “unsafe” or “lacking discipline.” But as Deering students explained in a 2019 Press Herald article, this perception rests on exaggerated rumors fueled by stereotypes about Deering’s student body. As of 2021, Deering had 54% students of color while Portland had only 41%, and 60% of Deering students qualified for free and reduced lunch compared to 39% at Portland. The perceptions of the two high schools by white community members are built on internalized racism and classism, and it’s time we address this bias.
As a white student at Casco, I heard claims about the difference between Portland and Deering from my peers, but they were always framed as individual opinions or unbiased observations, never mentioning the schools’ demographics. We need to dissect the pervasive white liberalism in Portland and move away from “colorblind” narratives that obscure the (often subconscious) prejudice that undergirds social dynamics. It is also important to acknowledge that the perceptions of Portland and Deering are not universal – many people of color choose Deering because, as the Press Herald reported, it was “better equipped to cater to the needs of immigrants and students of color.” It is crucial to highlight marginalized perspectives to destabilize the dominant narratives that center Portland’s white majority.
The new school choice policy is a commendable decision to counter the enrollment imbalance and distribute resources more evenly, supported by research that finds that lotteries that explicitly prioritize integration (like the lottery introduced by the new system) can avoid patterns of segregation caused by other school choice models. However, while it is a step in the right direction, it is not a solution to the roots of prejudice that led to the enrollment gap. Policy must be coupled with social change, and white Portlanders should take this opportunity to examine our attitudes.
The comment section on the article about the vote to limit school choice online reveals the mixed reactions from the community to the policy change. Dissenting comments range from calling the new policy “discrimination” to expressing concern for parents losing “control” over their kids’ education, with a recurring theme of emphasis on commenters’ own children. These opinions represent a neoliberal attitude that frames school choice as a “free market” with emphasis on consumer choice. The problem with this market-based model, as Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara explains in her book “Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities,” is that white and wealthier families are positioned as the “valued” customers, while families of color lose agency.
If, as a white parent, you are thinking “Very well, but what about my kids?”, it is your duty to analyze the internal bias that leads you to believe your children are entitled to a “better” education, and why you define a certain school as “better” than another. For these same reasons, it is important that white parents do not lose faith in Portland Public Schools – the district already has a disproportionate amount of students of color and low-income students compared to the overwhelmingly white Cheverus, Waynflete and Baxter. Portland must not follow the pattern of school districts around the country where white families “exit” the public school system, taking funding and resources with them.
Finally, it is more crucial now than ever to challenge racism within our schools, and for white people to be active allies to people of color, as our newly elected mayor plans to reinstate police in schools, which is known to cause unjust discipline against Black and brown students and fuel the school-to-prison pipeline.
People of Portland, let’s dismantle the underlying racism in our community and work towards educational justice for all.
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