NEW YORK – A recent report shows the state of New York’s public schools are the most segregated in the nation, and it’s largely because of rules that keep students trapped in artificial public school districts.

A report released by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California Los Angeles shows that New York’s public schools are so segregated that many black and Latino students don’t have a single white classmate. Using enrollment data from 1989 to 2010, researchers also found that students without white classmates perform worse academically, Washington Square News reports.

Some told the news site the problem stems from state laws that create public school districts and trap students within those boundaries.  In a state with highly segregated neighborhoods, the school districts will also be segregated.

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“Clearly, affluent neighborhoods will, more and more, have only affluent families; because the DOE has made it quite difficult to move across zones, and absolutely impossible to move across district lines, segregation is a given effect,” Spanish and Portuguese professor Lourdes Davila said, according to the news site.

Groups like the Parent Leadership Project, which “has been fighting segregation and inequality … in the city for many years,” believe certain public school programs benefit mostly whites and perpetuate segregation.  PLP member Donna Nevel cited ‘Gifted and Talented’ programs as an example.

“Gifted and Talented programs work to ‘separate’ the ‘gifted’ from the non-gifted,” she said. “As you can imagine, parents ‘who know’ (mostly from affluent or upper middle class backgrounds) train their children to take this exam, and are also able to give the necessary support that other families cannot. (Gifted and Talented) is then, by definition, a practice of segregation.”

The PLP is working to develop a “controlled choice” admissions policy so schools will “properly reflect the demographics” of a community.

There is a much better way to create diversity in schools, however, than to enroll students based on any sort of racial quotas. That, in itself, seems racist.

Universal school choice – giving every family a voucher so their child can attend whatever public, private or virtual school they want – would undoubtedly result in a drastic increase in the number of minority students who attend more integrated schools.

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Widespread school choice would also encourage all schools – public and private – to improve their academic programs and instruction to court students and the funding attached to them.

That type of market-driven approach would not only help to desegregate schools, it would drive up student performance, lead to the closure of bad schools, and could potentially save taxpayers significant cash.

But if those in the education establishment continue to advocate for more money for public schools, to implement plans similar to those that have failed in the past, then nothing much will change.

It will take a dramatically different approach to create level playing fields for all students.