{
  "id": "1997-august-separate-and-unequal",
  "slug": "1997-august-separate-and-unequal",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-august-separate-and-unequal.html",
  "year": 1997,
  "month": "August",
  "monthNum": 8,
  "headline": "Separate & Unequal",
  "kicker": "Uplink Update",
  "author_name": "Mark Skertic",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "The Cincinnati Enquirer",
  "summary": "An analysis revealed that Cincinnati's public schools are struggling to retain middle-income families, leading to a disproportionate number of low-income students in public schools compared to state and national averages.",
  "keywords": [
    "Cincinnati",
    "public schools",
    "demographics"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Education",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Demographics & Census"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "CD-ROM"
  ],
  "full_text": "Some school administrators refused to believe it when they read that parents in Cincinnati were less likely to choose public schools than their counterparts in almost every other large city in the nation. After all, the school chiefs argued, walk into any of the district's magnet schools and you see happy children from all over the city working together. But anecdotes don't always give a clear picture. Census Bureau reports make clear that the district's hold on middle-class families is tenuous. Instead of a public school system that mixes together children from different social and economic classes, Cincinnati schools are in danger of becoming a system that exists only to teach the community's poorest children. The analysis that appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer showed that high-income families have given up on public schools and many middle-income earners have opted for private schools or other options. Today, about 78 percent of Cincinnati households with school-age children choose the public schools. That compares to 86 percent on average in Ohio and 87 percent nationally. Parents are more likely to choose public schools in most cities in the nation, including Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami. The news was troubling for public school advocates who see local elementaries and high schools as great melting pots, where different races and social classes come together to learn. Instead, their school system's population is an imperfect reflection of the community, with a disproportionally poor population. More than half the children enrolled in Cincinnati schools come from households where the annual income is less than $20,000 annually.\n\nCensus tracks school kids\n\nSchool administrators had said for years that they didn't collect the information necessary to really know how well the district's enrollment represented the overall population, nor did they know what percentage of parents were using the public schools.\n\nBut it was all there in the 1990 Census files, waiting to be sifted out. For reporters in cities where there have been dramatic population shifts or school enrollment has jumped or plummeted wildly that makes this a difficult story to replicate. Most of it was collected in 1989 and it's just too outdated if your area has changed substantially in that time.\n\nBut if population and enrollment have been stable, the information will prove useful. In this case, I talked with demographers and education researchers at the University of Cincinnati about the validity of the data. They checked elements of the data listed below against some current population estimates. In their judgment, the school-enrollment trends I was preparing to cite were still valid.\n\nThe sources I used:\n\nThe School District Data Book, a series of CD-Roms from the National Center for Education Statistics. That software uses information from the 1990 Census to provide detailed information broken down by school district. Most states are available on a single disk. For details and current prices, call the center at (800) 424-1616. The same information is also available online at http://govinfo.kerr.orst.edu/sddb-stateis.htm.\n\nThe CD-ROM version is user friendly and fast. It operates in DOS, but the menus are easy to use. The reference manual that comes with the disks is expansive, but also easy to use.\n\nThe National Center for Education Statistics also has detailed information on enrollment and poverty trends. Much of this is available on the center's web site: http://www.ed.gov/NCES/.\n\nA series of tables the Census Bureau ran for a Center for Education Reform study on where teachers send their children to school. When I saw that study a few months before doing this project, I realized that before the bureau could break out details on teachers, an analysis had to be done on where the general population sent their children.\n\nThe bureau's analysis for the Center for Education Reform resulted in several tables: A state-by-state listing of the percentage of parents who chose public school and the percentage who chose private, a listing of the 100 largest cities with the same information and similar tables. In all cases, information was provided for the overall population broken down by income bracket. That analysis was paid for by the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisc. But once the Census Bureau created the \"document\" for that study, I got a copy by calling the population division and asking for it. Special Tabulation Package 181 cost $60 for three disks. The text files were easy to call up in a spreadsheet program. Contact the bureau's population division at (301) 457-2429 for a copy.\n\nPutting it together\n\nThe School District Data Book contains more than 100 pieces of information for every school district in the state. The menu system makes it easy to break data down into subsets for analysis.\n\nFor example, I was able to choose between looking at economic information for all households in the school district or households with children. I could examine demographic profiles of children or for all school-age children.\n\nThat allowed me to do detailed breakdowns, looking at where middle income earners sent their children to school.\n\nThe Special Tabulation purchased from the Census Bureau had all the information needed to look at the nation's largest cities, giving readers a larger perspective on the situation.\n\nFinally, the National Center for Education Statistics reports had details about population shifts and trends.\n\nAfter the story appeared, the school district's treasurer got copies of the School District Data Book CDs, hoping to double-check my work and prove how inaccurate I had been. He didn't have much luck.\n\nIn fact, Cincinnati Public Schools recently began doing a series of demographic studies, hoping to take the same sort of research and project it over five years. The analysis will be used to develop a recommendation for some school closing and repair prioritization. I'm already looking forward to FOling their raw data for some analysis of my own.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-august-separate-and-unequal.html",
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