School desegregation in Hong Kong: non-Chinese linguistic minority students' challenges to learning Chinese in mainstream schools

The enactment of the revised School Places Allocation Systems at the compulsory stage in 2004 had the aim of desegregating Hong Kong's non-Chinese linguistic minority (NCLM) students by including them into ethnic Chinese-dominated mainstream primary and secondary schools. Because of the presumed cause-consequence relationship between “desegregated” school participation and academic achievement, in specific second language Chinese (CSL) acquisition, the challenges that such students face in participating in mainstream education and learning Chinese, no doubt, deserve to be examined. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 18 secondary students of South Asian/Southeast Asian minority backgrounds enrolled in mainstream schools. Drawing on both cultural and institutional paradigms of explanation for educational achievement, we argue that the reasons inhibiting the minority students' academic involvement are not simply their linguistic challenges but also the institutional constraints in the mainstream education system unique to this population. This study calls for a shift in school desegregation arrangement from one focusing narrowly on physical desegregation to a more comprehensive set of policies that embrace the institutional factors including teacher expectation, resource availability, and bilingual support, crucial to reduce racial differences in achievement.     

School desegregation and white flight: an investigation of competing models and their discrepant findings

The authors test three alternative models that have been developed to explore the relationship between the desegregation of inner city schools and white flight to the suburbs. The results of these models are discussed using recent, more extensive data. Comparisons of white student loss are made between central city districts that did and did not desegregate. The most appropriate models for analysis of white flight are identified, and their ability to forecast future trends is considered     

Making desegregation work: Extracurricular activities

Southern desegregated high schools with high levels of black or white student extracurricular participation have students who report more interracial contact, higher self-esteem, more positive attitudes toward school, more parent visits to schools, and more personal contact with teachers. The results are derived from regression equations based on responses from 10,000 students in 200 schools, controlling on student and school background factors. The author recommends that secondary schools place high priority on encouraging extracurricular participation and argues that this enhances the school's ability to teach because it increases student attachment to the school, reduces student alienation, provides alternative channels for students to develop self-esteem, and increases the opportunity for positive interracial contact.     

Controlled choice assignments: A new and more effective approach to school desegregation

The authors argue that conventional mandatory and voluntary school desegregation techniques have failed to provide minority students with maximum feasible relief from invidious discrimination because they do not redress the root causes of segregation. They demonstrate that residential-based student assignment plans as well as plans that give students limited access to a few educationally enriched magnet schools are not asymmetrical remedies to wrongful segregation and thus work to perpetuate the racial and social inequities that they purport to correct. The authors offer an alternative approach to school desegregation—controlled choice—that operates independently from residential housing patterns and which explicitly seeks to maximize personal choice within a racially unitary, equitable, and educationally enhanced system of public schooling. Controlled choice was originally pioneered in Cambridge, Mass. during the early 1980s and has recently been adopted in Little Rock, Ark., and Fall River, Mass. The policy is also being actively reviewed by several of the nation's largest school districts including Seattle, Memphis, and Boston.     

示范校更需教育创新

示范校面临着新的挑战。一批大型寄宿制高中的建成，标志着学校硬件上了一个新的台阶，学校建设越来越聚焦于软件水平，软件是否足以示范，已成为示范校的生命线。另一方面，信息时代的初露端倪、WTO的加入、市场经济的大背景、素质教育的全面推进、高新科技的迅猛发展，使提高学校的综合实力，办出学校的个性特点，成为所有学校，特别是示范校的当务之急。而这一切在很大程度上取决于学校的创新精神。从这个意义上说，教育创新就成为示范校之所以存在的根本。学校先进的办学理念是学校综合实力提升的导向。要在办学中体现“育人为本”这…     

The role of the school psychologist in school desegregation: A plan for action

The research on the outcomes of school desegregation has been generally disappointing. This paper briefly reviews the historical role of social science in desegregation, and reviews some of the current research on cooperative learning in the desegregated classroom. A comprehensive role for the school psychologist is outlined, in which goals and subgoals, means for achieving them, and anticipated outcomes are clearly delineated. It is proposed that implementation of this role would lead to a much more positive school desegregation experience for all students.