Question

5. What are the pros and cons of busing? How are busing and tracking connected? Drawing on Lareau and one other reading present your evaluation of whether affirmative action has a place in college admission policies

Answer 1

Busing also called desegregation busing, in the United States is the administrative practice of transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts as a means of correcting racial segregation. As a procedure of changes, busing has come under severe debates in recent time for its advantages and disadvantages.

Some of the advantages of introducing busing in schools include the following:

It gives all students an equal opportunity to go to schools in the areas with more mone and provides the minorities with greater mobility.

- It increases pluralism in society as it gives students opportunities to interact with students from different socio economic and cultural backgrounds and thus learn to accept social differences and minimise prejudices against outgroups.

- More prominently, busing has helped to eliminate racism in the neighbourhoods in the United States as it makes it manadatory for youth of different racial backgrounds to travel together without any discrimination on the basis of their skin colour.

However, busing has been argued to lead to certain negative effects as well:

A major I’ll effect of busing is it’s here inconvenience as Parents are forced to send their children far away from home for a good education and this may drastically alter the lifestyle of the family especially in instances where both parents are working, or when parents are terminally ill and they cannot fend their children after school on a regular basis without making compromises.

- it does not really change the socio economic ratio of the schools as the rich or elite families tend to send their children to private schools which are beyond the reach of the lower middle class and low income families.

- the long commute to the school make sure it difficult for students to get involved in co- curricular and social activities after school.

- moroever, the distance of the school from the place of residence makes it difficult for Parents to be actively involved in school if it is far away and this in turn may have consequences for the academic engagements of the students without adequate and consistent parental guidance and involvement.

· Tracking and busing are connected because both categorize students based on certain qualities and can further increase the level of segregation and racial difference between minorities.

Tracking starts early and busing is associated with elementary schools,
thus such early placements can lead to a funnelling of students into low or poor quality education that can reduce self-
esteem and contribute to a lower socioeconomic status later in life.
There are wide differences in the curriculum across the different tracks and typically, lower track curriculum lacks rigorous academic engagement and comprehensiveness; This in turn may produce marginalisation of lower track students who may be kept away from competent and more effective learning resources. Like busing, tracking too can influence in group and out group biases in the peer groups and create stigma about lower track students.