Pettigrew Urges Educational Parks To Remedy De Facto Segregation

Negro educational achievement will not significantly improve until de facto segregation, now actually on the rise, is abolished, Thomas F. Pettigrew, associate professor of Social Psychology, said last night.

Speaking in a Design School series on urban problems, Pettigrew said the only remedy to segregation is the creation of "educational parks" -- school complexes outside urban areas serving both city and suburban students.

He based his conclusions on the recent report he and a group of experts prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It found that improving Negro ghetto schools did not increase educational progress as much as placing Negro students in predominantly white schools.

The educational parks, accommodating 15,000 students, could cost $50 million each, Pettigrew said. Eighty to ninety per cent would have to come from the federal government, he added, but that would be entirely possible considering the sums the government now spends to improve individual schools.

Critics of the parks have claimed that impersonality would be inevitable in such large complexes. But Pettigrew was confident that adequate planning and architecture could conquer that problem. Each unit within a complex must be designed to have individuality, and yet easy access to central facilities, he said.

Pettigrew called other criticisms of the parks, such as busing students to the parks and phasing out old schools, insignificant.

"No one really worries about busing. The real issue is what's at the end of the line," he said.