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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]9:45 here. People (kids and adults) self-segregate everywhere, in all situations. My point was that SS as a whole was a lot more diverse on a micro level...sure some neighborhoods are more white, some more hispanic, some more black (AA and immigrant), but at the ES level the schools were very diverse. [/quote]

I agree with your post. My kids point it out to me all the time. When we are situation X everybody is white, situation Y everybody is Hispanic, situation Z everybody is black. They ask why. It's hard to explain since I don't really understand it. I usually say I don't know what other people do or why, it is none of my business, I like to have lots of different friends.

I find that Gaithersburg and Germantown are not segregated like the rest of the county.

So if somebody said that MD public schools are segregated I would agree. [b]If they wanted to find a community that is less segregated I would NOT say Silver Spring just like I would NOT say Bethesda or Potomac or Poolesville or a bunch of other places in MD[/b] .

But, I don't believe schools will fix this issue. I would always say if your life is diverse your children's lives will be diverse so work on making lots of friends with different backgrounds and kids will too. [/quote]

What do you consider diverse? I am sure there are a couple of Silver spring elementary schools that 80% black or 80% hispanic. But there are many that are not that heavily tilted in one direction. Plus, I know there are many, many people on DCUM who would think that a school that is "only" 80% white qualifies as diverse. So, a conversation on what places are and are not diverse is meaningless if you don't define diversity. 
BTW, we are an African American/immigrant family, living in a silver spring neighborhood that you would probably consider white and segregated.
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This is a NP - in parts of the US schools are 98% white.  I don't think there are ANY like that in MOCO.  So it all depends on how you look at it.  When we were looking for homes - most of the ES demographics were pretty diverse (meaning no one majority).   We were not looking in Bethesda or Potomac though so not sure about that area.  We ended up in Gburg and it is quite diverse and from what I can tell - not as self segregating as some other areas.[/quote]
The schools in MoCo aren't segregated in the sense that there's one racial group dominating particular schools at that kind of percentage levels; it's really that certain of the schools tend to be overwhelmingly white/asian or black/latino, and those that score well are those dominated by the white/asian demographic (i.e., the W clusters), while those that don't are dominated by the black/latino demographic.  For example, in Gaithersburg you have streets that divide Rosemont ES/Forest Oak MS/Gaithersburg HS from Fallsmead ES/Robert Frost MS/Wooton HS.  The former puts you in a ~70-80% black/asian demographic while the latter puts you in a ~80-85% white/asian environment.  Believe me, the developers at Crown Farm are dealing with this right now trying to sell the new, expensive homes there.

There are many other examples like that along the same corridor.  It's a huge disparity for neighboring districts, and it creates a self-sustaining cycle as people who might otherwise move to the other zone avoid it solely to stay in the "better performing" (i.e., white/asian) one.  If you try to integrate everything through some sort of consortium concept, the people in the W clusters raise hell because they don't want to lose their ability to send their kids to schools where they generally avoid the "undesirables".  It's the subtle racism of supposedly liberal MoCo.

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