Discriminatory Distribution of Qualified GATE Program Placements Within LBUSD

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Discriminatory GATE Program Placement Within LBUSD

Purpose of This Document:

Why does this document exist?

To put it simply, this particular page is a result of my attempt to find a Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) GATE program school close to our residence; because we had been told that our child's school would not provide her an education appropriate to her needs. It was further stated by the school principal that, because our daughter was the only GATE-identified child in her school of attendance, we had a choice between two schools; one is twice the distance from our home; and the other is almost seven-and-a-half times as far from our home as her present school. We would have to apply to the schools and hope for our child's acceptance. We would also have to walk or drive our child to the school that accepted her.

We have since discovered that we, as well as the other parents of GATE-identified children, were lied to...OFTEN.

The easiest way to find out where all the GATE schools in the district happen to be is to take the district map and add the information I needed--information the district never provided on their version of the school locator map--which I did. It was during this process of making my own life easier that I discovered that there is a profound difference in the educational services provided to people who live in certain areas of the district versus people who live in other district regions. The areas that I identified as being deprived of equal access to educational services happen to be the same areas of highest poverty within LBUSD.

This document exists to inform others of the pattern of racial discrimination that I have observed in the delivery of educational services by LBUSD.

This web site, and its resources, are intended to inform and empower the parents of children who have suffered the deprivation of a Free, Appropriate, Public Education.

It is also intended to provide a point of unification and communication between the diverse racial/ethnic groups of this district; the end purpose being to confront LBUSD with their discriminatory conduct, bar LBUSD from continued and future discriminatory conduct and, to bring this issue before a state or federal judge--should LBUSD make this necessary.

To Whom This Document is Directed (Intended Audience):

Who am I talking to?

I originally sat down to write this page with the intent of 'speaking' to the parents of GATE-identified children who live in the North Long Beach or West Long Beach areas. That has changed.

As a result of researching numerous stores of information, to develop the reasoning presented in this document, I now believe that my original focus should shift to addressing the parents of children attending any Long Beach school which provides instruction to any combination of grade-levels in the Kindergarten through 8^th grade-span.

I'm not talking to the School Board or to the Superintendent of Schools. They've already been here and will probably be back.

I'm also not talking to lawyers, although they will, eventually, be dealing with the contents of this web site.

I'm talking to you.

I don't know how familiar you are with the various terms and phrases associated with any number of professions, so I'll do my best to abandon the use of the majority of those typing savers. The professionals know enough to be forgiving of this; because it's more important that the issues be understood by all.
As a result, the discussion that you find here will be of a more casual nature than you would find in court documents or in a college or university course, so relax. It's just us.

Discussion:

You can tell that the district is proud of the educational services they provide our youth when you read the following on the LBUSD web site:

"Our Mission Statement
The mission of the Long Beach Unified School District is to ensure the educational success of all students by having high expectations, a commitment to excellence, and a comprehensive program, confirming the belief that all students can learn and become responsible, productive members of a competitive society."

Hold it! All students?

Pardon-me-very-much for being so bold as to observe that the map, up there, doesn't agree with the implication of parity, or equality, in LBUSD's mission statement. Outside of a small group of people--out of the many I've been forced to deal with over the years--who in LBUSD actually believes this?

Just give me a second...I'm wracking my brain to figure-out exactly what this sense of pride is central to. Could it be providing GATE program placements which function--even partially--as a 'value-added' return on a homeowner's property taxes? If so, which homeowners? (As if we can't form a reasonable suspicion.)

OKAY. Maybe I'm just rushing to judgment here--as I'm sure more than a couple of you are murmuring to yourselves--so let's look at the facts.

Looking at the above map, it's pretty clear that Long Beach Unified School District does provide GATE program services to the students attending grades Kindergarten through 8^th within the school district; but let's consider this a bit further:

Blue rectangles, my friend, represent Gifted and Talented Education programs; provided to the children attending a particular school. Gifted and Talented Education programs, you see, represent educational services provided by the school district. Educational services which have every appearance of being allocated within some sort of discriminatory context.

Let's examine how many of these GATE campuses we have in each zip code by simple tally. We'll toss-in the GATE/EXCEL and district-defined 'Gifted' schools as well; but I'll focus primarily upon the blue rectangles which represent GATE-only programs--at least for the time being--because that's where the bucks are being spent.

Zip Code	# of GATE Programs	# of GATE/EXCEL Programs	# of 'Gifted' Programs
90712	1	1	0
90713	0	0	0
90802	0	0	0
90803	1	0	1
90804	0	0	0
90805	0	0	0
90806	0	1	1
90807	1	0	1
90808	4	1	0
90810	0	1	2
90813	0	0	0
90814	1	0	0
90815	5	1	1

Hmmmm...Given what I have in mind, I should probably flip that table on its side for you. In terms of visual continuity, it'll ease the transitions to the other tables of information that I have for you.

	90712	90803	90806	90807	90808	90810	90814	90815
# of GATE Programs	1	1	0	1	4	0	1	5
# of GATE/EXCEL Programs	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	1
# of 'Gifted' Programs	0	1	1	1	0	2	0	1

Much better.

Now, just a glance tells me that 90808 and 90815 are the preferred zip code population areas for whatever selection criteria the district is using for GATE program placements; so, maybe we'd better look to see how desirable the property in those zip codes is...Ya think?

Yup....back to the map...
...and we can immediately see that 90815 has the CSULB neighborhoods; the most expensive of these being those homes North and East of the college campus, East of Bellflower Boulevard, and South of the 405 Freeway. Another rectangle of 'good neighborhood is East of Palo Verde, West of the San Gabriel River, South of Spring Street, and take it on down to the 90815 boundary.

Looking at 90808, we can see the bit of land to the East of Lakewood Country Club. It has Bellflower Boulevard as a traffic-flow barrier to the East. Del Amo Boulevard does the same to the North, and you have LBCC and Heartwell Park to the South. I've been there. Nice neighborhood, BTW.

We also have the chunk of land that sits North of Eldorado Golf Course, with the San Gabriel River covering its back, so to speak. This is another patch of prime hunting ground for realtors. Big-comish territory.

Finally, look how Newcomb is hiding over there in that oasis of land that sits between the 605 Freeway, Coyote Creek & Norwalk Boulevard. Wardlow Road is a natural barrier to hordes of undesirables from the North and West; because Claremore Avenue provides thoroughfare between this neighborhood island and Wardlow on the West, and El Dorado Drive yields ingress/egress to and from Wardlow on the East. Claremore Avenue, Marna Avenue and Lilly Park Avenue are the only other ways in or out on the East and South, and these are spread-out fairly well. It's a pretty good bet that, if somebody is "just passing through," they're lost, looking to buy in the area, or casing the area for robbery potential.

The district doesn't want you to do this; which is good enough reason for me to tell you to do it; click on Newcomb to open-up the SARC for that school. Look at the middle table on page 5. The CBEDS racial/ethnic category data for this school shows them as having a 47.4% White (not Hispanic) enrollment. Do the same for Cubberly, and you'll find a CBEDS of 54.1% White (not Hispanic) enrollment. Be-bop back down to 90815 and do the same thing for Gant (the school right on the North-side of CSULB)...CBEDS says 61.9% White (not Hispanic) enrollment. Prisk: 52.0% White (not Hispanic) enrollment. Stanford: 47.9% White (not Hispanic) enrollment. Do not forget that.

Tincher, Bancroft, Twain and Madison are obviously situated within prime real estate areas. Their positions relative to the university, college and country club make this a matter of self-evident fact.

Down in Belmont Shores, you'll find Lowell, and just to the North-West is Fremont. These are very nice, very expensive, neighborhoods in their own right.

This leaves Longfellow. Longfellow is is in Bixby Knolls, undeniably an area of high affluency situated in close logical proximity to the Virginia Country Club Estates.

So far, it looks like GATE schools like high-dollar neighborhoods, and GATE schools might be skewed toward the melanin-challenged among us. Maybe we should amuse ourselves with the Census data...after a brief word of caution.

ZCTAs
You'll find various levels of detail available for census data requests, with Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) being one of the smallest, geographic areas for which the general public can request statistics. This is, of course, for confidentiality reasons; after all, who really wants the whole world knowing your grandma is Purple, and where y'all live? To get information for smaller regions of the area of interest, you will have to apply for access to the Confidential Census Data Sets. Access fees also apply.

One of the problems in relying on ZCTA data is that many folks confuse them with the zip codes defined by the USPS. They don't strictly represent the same geographic areas. This will introduce some minor geographic shift into our data, but will still allow us to form a general picture of the state of diversity in the areas of concern. A second problem inherent in examining ZCTA data is that, by virtue of the relatively large geographic regions involved (several neighborhood units are represented by a given ZCTA), we'll probably see something that suggests that the ZCTA region itself is more diverse than those specific neighborhoods served by a particular school. This is easily resolved by accessing the confidential census data sets, and creating statistics on smaller geographic units.

Keeping this in mind, let's take a look anyway:

	90712 5-Digit ZCTA	90713 5-Digit ZCTA	90802 5-Digit ZCTA	90803 5-Digit ZCTA	90804 5-Digit ZCTA	90805 5-Digit ZCTA	90806 5-Digit ZCTA	90807 5-Digit ZCTA	90808 5-Digit ZCTA	90810 5-Digit ZCTA	90813 5-Digit ZCTA	90814 5-Digit ZCTA	90815 5-Digit ZCTA
Total:	30,182	27,656	38,731	31,174	43,264	91,456	49,516	31,819	37,062	35,627	62,941	19,198	39,087
White alone	19,402	21,352	18,331	26,807	16,758	27,300	13,284	17,340	30,044	8,734	15,988	12,799	29,267
Black or African American alone	2,382	895	6,844	557	7,257	22,208	9,909	4,898	1,132	5,560	8,480	1,654	1,643
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	192	147	282	143	304	959	482	203	266	279	585	307	154
Asian alone	3,413	2,030	2,034	1,544	6,521	9,635	8,603	4,317	2,173	8,059	9,702	1,362	3,769
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	174	120	212	90	107	2,052	878	85	46	1,057	624	77	110
Some other race alone	2,557	1,782	8,909	942	9,385	24,670	13,148	2,823	1,570	9,604	24,206	2,084	1,888
Two or more races	2,062	1,330	2,119	1,091	2,932	4,632	3,212	2,153	1,831	2,334	3,356	915	2,256

Here we have what is known as the SF-3/P.6 data component. This means that we used the 2000 Census Summary File #3, to give us a picture of P.6 data (which is Racial/Ethnic information); for each ZCTA area. Basically, we're looking at racial totals for each approximate zip code area on the map above.

Looking at the data, you'll probably find your eyes twitching a bit, and notice your grey cells doing the usual gymnastics as you try to crunch the numbers on the fly. I'll make things a bit easier on you by telling you that the focus will narrow-down somewhat; and I'll give you the above statistics in a form that most folks are more accustomed to dealing with--percentages--and I'll highlight any percentage that exceeds 50.000%.

	90712 5-Digit ZCTA	90713 5-Digit ZCTA	90802 5-Digit ZCTA	90803 5-Digit ZCTA	90804 5-Digit ZCTA	90805 5-Digit ZCTA	90806 5-Digit ZCTA	90807 5-Digit ZCTA	90808 5-Digit ZCTA	90810 5-Digit ZCTA	90813 5-Digit ZCTA	90814 5-Digit ZCTA	90815 5-Digit ZCTA
White alone	64.283%	77.108%	47.329%	85.992%	38.734%	29.850%	26.828%	54.496%	81.060%	24.515%	25.402%	66.668%	74.877%
Black or African American alone	7.892%	3.236%	17.671%	1.787%	16.774%	24.283%	20.012%	15.393%	3.054%	15.606%	13.473%	8.615%	4.203%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	0.636%	0.532%	0.728%	0.459%	0.703%	1.049%	0.973%	0.638%	0.718%	0.783%	0.929%	1.599%	0.394%
Asian alone	11.308%	7.340%	5.252%	4.953%	15.073%	10.535%	17.374%	13.567%	5.863%	22.620%	15.414%	7.094%	9.643%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	0.577%	0.434%	0.547%	0.289%	0.247	2.244%	1.773%	0.267%	0.124%	2.967%	0.991%	0.401%	0.281%
Some other race alone	8.472%	6.443%	23.002%	3.022%	21.692%	26.975%	26.553%	8.872%	4.236%	26.957%	38.458%	10.855%	4.830%
Two or more races	6.832%	4.809%	5.471%	3.500%	6.777%	5.065%	6.487%	6.766%	4.940%	6.551%	5.332%	4.766%	5.772%

Frankly, I'm completely blown-away by the percentage results. I simply did not expect that we would find 7 ZCTAs, which are clear-majority Caucasian population areas, to such a marked degree.

Now...what if we highlight those "non-white" population percentages that exceed 20.000%?

	90712 5-Digit ZCTA	90713 5-Digit ZCTA	90802 5-Digit ZCTA	90803 5-Digit ZCTA	90804 5-Digit ZCTA	90805 5-Digit ZCTA	90806 5-Digit ZCTA	90807 5-Digit ZCTA	90808 5-Digit ZCTA	90810 5-Digit ZCTA	90813 5-Digit ZCTA	90814 5-Digit ZCTA	90815 5-Digit ZCTA
White alone	64.283%	77.108%	47.329%	85.992%	38.734%	29.850%	26.828%	54.496%	81.060%	24.515%	25.402%	66.668%	74.877%
Black or African American alone	7.892%	3.236%	17.671%	1.787%	16.774%	24.283%	20.012%	15.393%	3.054%	15.606%	13.473%	8.615%	4.203%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	0.636%	0.532%	0.728%	0.459%	0.703%	1.049%	0.973%	0.638%	0.718%	0.783%	0.929%	1.599%	0.394%
Asian alone	11.308%	7.340%	5.252%	4.953%	15.073%	10.535%	17.374%	13.567%	5.863%	22.620%	15.414%	7.094%	9.643%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	0.577%	0.434%	0.547%	0.289%	0.247	2.244%	1.773%	0.267%	0.124%	2.967%	0.991%	0.401%	0.281%
Some other race alone	8.472%	6.443%	23.002%	3.022%	21.692%	26.975%	26.553%	8.872%	4.236%	26.957%	38.458%	10.855%	4.830%
Two or more races	6.832%	4.809%	5.471%	3.500%	6.777%	5.065%	6.487%	6.766%	4.940%	6.551%	5.332%	4.766%	5.772%

Now, for some of you, this is like watching a train wreck in slow-motion; and you're consoling yourself with fantasies of the many different ways in which I might meet my demise. (By all means, continue.) For others of you...the ones I'm really presenting this information to...I think I'm beginning to get your attention in a positive way.

Of course, when any "non-white" ethnic group breaks the 1/5 barrier, we see the Caucasian population dipping below 50.000%.

I wonder how this will compare to the distribution of GATE program placements?

	90712 5-Digit ZCTA	90713 5-Digit ZCTA	90802 5-Digit ZCTA	90803 5-Digit ZCTA	90804 5-Digit ZCTA	90805 5-Digit ZCTA	90806 5-Digit ZCTA	90807 5-Digit ZCTA	90808 5-Digit ZCTA	90810 5-Digit ZCTA	90813 5-Digit ZCTA	90814 5-Digit ZCTA	90815 5-Digit ZCTA
White alone	64.283%	77.108%	47.329%	85.992%	38.734%	29.850%	26.828%	54.496%	81.060%	24.515%	25.402%	66.668%	74.877%
Black or African American alone	7.892%	3.236%	17.671%	1.787%	16.774%	24.283%	20.012%	15.393%	3.054%	15.606%	13.473%	8.615%	4.203%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone	0.636%	0.532%	0.728%	0.459%	0.703%	1.049%	0.973%	0.638%	0.718%	0.783%	0.929%	1.599%	0.394%
Asian alone	11.308%	7.340%	5.252%	4.953%	15.073%	10.535%	17.374%	13.567%	5.863%	22.620%	15.414%	7.094%	9.643%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	0.577%	0.434%	0.547%	0.289%	0.247	2.244%	1.773%	0.267%	0.124%	2.967%	0.991%	0.401%	0.281%
Some other race alone	8.472%	6.443%	23.002%	3.022%	21.692%	26.975%	26.553%	8.872%	4.236%	26.957%	38.458%	10.855%	4.830%
Two or more races	6.832%	4.809%	5.471%	3.500%	6.777%	5.065%	6.487%	6.766%	4.940%	6.551%	5.332%	4.766%	5.772%
# of GATE Programs	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	4	0	0	1	5
# of GATE/EXCEL Programs	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1
# of 'Gifted' Programs	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	2	0	0	1

Now, let's compress that vertically, a little bit.
We're removing the district-defined 'Gifted' programs because the district admits that these are not equal to GATE (You'll see that later on).
We're also removing those GATE/EXCEL programs because at least 3 of those are not considered to be GATE programs by the district. If the majority of GATE/EXCEL programs cannot be considered to be GATE, then the other 2 can't be considered to be GATE--if we're going to be consistent--can they? (We'll touch-back on this later.)
We'll shade those no-GATE program cells; and have ourselves a little chat about what we're looking at, shall we?

	90712 5-Digit ZCTA	90713 5-Digit ZCTA	90802 5-Digit ZCTA	90803 5-Digit ZCTA	90804 5-Digit ZCTA	90805 5-Digit ZCTA	90806 5-Digit ZCTA	90807 5-Digit ZCTA	90808 5-Digit ZCTA	90810 5-Digit ZCTA	90813 5-Digit ZCTA	90814 5-Digit ZCTA	90815 5-Digit ZCTA
White alone	64.283%	77.108%	47.329%	85.992%	38.734%	29.850%	26.828%	54.496%	81.060%	24.515%	25.402%	66.668%	74.877%
Black or African American alone	7.892%	3.236%	17.671%	1.787%	16.774%	24.283%	20.012%	15.393%	3.054%	15.606%	13.473%	8.615%	4.203%
Asian alone	11.308%	7.340%	5.252%	4.953%	15.073%	10.535%	17.374%	13.567%	5.863%	22.620%	15.414%	7.094%	9.643%
Some other race alone	8.472%	6.443%	23.002%	3.022%	21.692%	26.975%	26.553%	8.872%	4.236%	26.957%	38.458%	10.855%	4.830%
# of GATE Programs	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	4	0	0	1	5

Of course, the correlation between lower socio-economic status and ethnicity has not been disproved since the 1970's; and we can see that very correlation in the following table, which now includes poverty level data (Census Bureau SF-3/P.87 data, 1999 income) which is expressed as percentage of total population.

Here, we've highlighted the below poverty level populations which equal or exceed 20% of the total population for that ZCTA: