Percentages of White High School Students Decline in Silicon Valley

Seven of the area's high schools have been recognized nationally in Newsweek's list of the top 500 high schools in the U.S., with Mission San Jose clocking in the highest at number 147.

Ironically, this dazzling array of accolades has brought with it a great deal of negative press for the area's high schools, which have recently experienced declines in the numbers of white students enrolled.

According to data from the California Department of Education, Lynbrook High School in San Jose has experienced a 34 percent decline in its white student body between 1995 and 2005. Over the same period, Monte Vista High School in Cupertino experienced a 15 percent decline in the number of white students enrolled, and the neighboring Cupertino High School has seen an 18 percent decline in white students. Mission San Jose High School, located in Fremont, Calif., has seen the largest drop in any white student body, with a 61 percent decline over the past decade.

A Nov. 29, 2005 Wall Street Journal report called the phenomenon a "new white flight," where, instead of fleeing districts that are failing academically, white parents are actually pulling their children out of schools because they are performing too well. The report found that many of these parents feel that the schools are too narrowly focused on academics, and on math and science in particular, at the expense of liberal arts and extracurricular activities.

Instead of citing the absolute figures showing the drop in white enrollment, which are far from huge, the report cited the much more impressive statistics that show how the white student bodies have dwindled as percentages of the whole.

The proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half over the last 10 years, to 25 percent of the student body. At Monte Vista, white students account for under a third of the student body, down from 45 percent 10 years ago. At Cupertino High, the proportion of white students has also fallen by a third, from roughly 60 percent to 40 percent. The most drastic change has been seen at Mission San Jose, which, in 1995, had a student body that was 53 percent white. Today, the school is 20 percent white.

White students are accounting for a smaller slice of the enrollment pie because of a combination of two factors - the declining number of white enrollees and the swelling class sizes that are the result of an influx of Asian Americans.

"It does help to have a lower Asian population," Mary Anne Norling told the Wall Street Journal a year ago. Norling is president of the PTA for Homestead High School, a Cupertino high school whose white student body has held steady at around 50 percent of the total for the past 10 years. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monte Vista."

A year since that interview, a lot has changed at the Fremont Unified High School District. For one, Steve Rowley, the district superintendent, was fired. Some, including Norling, think it was over his controversial comments to the Wall Street Journal reporter, and the incendiary letter he wrote to the Journal after the publication of the report.

Another effect of the report has been that district officials and school administrators have fallen silent on the subject of white flight. District spokeswoman Cindy McArthur told India-West that no administrator could spare time for an interview in the foreseeable future. Norling told India-West that she could not comment on the subject of white flight, explaining, "You get burned once and you learn your lesson."

The Wall Street Journal report has faced much criticism from local residents, school districts, and even sociologists, who say that the news article is a biased report that misuses data and a few scattered anecdotes to support an argument that a new form of white flight is occurring throughout Silicon Valley. Many white parents are saying that they have chosen to move their children to different schools, not out of fear of competition with Asian students, but due to a desire for less of a focus on academics.

In the midst of an online furor over the white flight report, one Cupertino resident who used the screen name "soccer dad," posted on a message board, "There are a few local families that don't send their kids to Monta Vista, and I think the WSJ found them all. Most often it's because the kids have special needs; only a handful leave over simple racism."

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