School busing didn’t work. and to say so isn’t racist, Ted Van Dyk argues:
In many places, like in Boston as Sokol describes, there was raw racism involved in protests against busing. In many other places, however, there was non-racist consternation based mainly on parents’ concern for the wellbeing of their children.
This was the case even in liberal Washington, D.C. My wife and I had two sons enrolled in a Northwest Washington elementary school when busing began in the city. School buses would deliver black kids from Southwest D.C. at the Janney School front door at the morning bell. The same buses picked up the same kids, immediately at the end of classes, and took them back to Southwest. They did not participate in any pre- or after-school activity. No black parents took a bus or drove from Southwest to attend evening PTA meetings or to otherwise participate in school-related activity. The quality of classroom instruction fell off markedly. Fourth- and fifth-grade neighborhood students, for instance, were repeating material learned in earlier grades because teachers found their bused classmates had not yet received it. Not surprisingly, parents from the neighborhood began looking for private schools for their kids or moved to Maryland or Virginia suburbs — not because of racism but because their neighborhood school no longer was working.
Unenlightened, working-class whites opposed busing because they were racist, but enlightened, upper-middle-class whites opposed busing because they wanted what was best for their children.
One of those times when you’ve had this screaming thought all article then the last para resolves everything nicely.
It was known fifty years ago busing did not work and yet certain groups persisted in the idea it was a good idea.
Probably those same groups today say it was a noble effort even if they knew it was doomed to fail.