Tylertown Mississippi Resegregating Schools

One could think that this was 1960 instead of 2010 based on what is happening in some school districts across the country. In Tylertown, MS a federal judge has ordered the Walthall school district to change its attendance policies because they amount to racial segregation.

The Obama Administration's Justice Department has been aggressively going after school districts that they believe are seriously violating court orders from decades ago that have ruled against segregating school.

Prosecutors have said that the district was sending about 300 white students out of the district to an identifiable white school called Salem every year. At the elementary level, students are being clustered in classrooms that basically result in all black or all white classrooms in Tylertown.

The two high schools are actually very average schools based on test scores reported on the site Great School.com.

The Act scores which are a national college admission and placement examination are basically identical in Math, Science, English, and Reading. Both schools have a composite score of 17 with the state average being 19 and the national average being 21. The test is scored from 1(lowest score) up to 36 (highest score).

Based on the school test scores, there does not seem to be any educational benefit of attending one school over another school.

According to an article in the Washington Post, some white parents have justified the transfer to the mostly white out of district school by stating that kids would be more comfortable at Salem.

According to the federal judge, allowing the white kids to attend the mostly white Salem through the transfers created racially identifiable schools which is against the law.