Fifty years later, many people have only a vague idea of the details of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. But since 1954, the implementation of that school desegregation ruling in towns, cities, and schools has left indelible personal memories on just about anyone who has taught, attended school, or raised children in the United States. And many would say that although great progress has been made, the promise of educational equity still remains to be fulfilled.
A Slow Road to Integration
The Supreme Court's landmark Brown decision, which ruled on four lawsuits brought by black parents attempting to enroll their children in white-only schools, forced states to act to integrate their schools. Integration, nonetheless, came slowly in many districts.
Donald Davis, who heads ASCD's African American Critical Issues Network, recalls that schools where he grew up did not integrate until the late 1960s. Davis graduated from John M. Tutt High School in Augusta, Ga. Although Tutt High School was created after the Brown decision, Davis notes, it served only black students in a building already housing grades 1–8. Only two senior classes graduated from Tutt before a new, fully integrated school opened in Augusta. Since then, many white families have moved away, and the Augusta schools now predominantly have black students, notes Davis, who is principal of Thomson Elementary School in Thomson, Ga.
Although the Brown decision struck down public school segregation laws, the Supreme Court could not, of course, control where people chose to reside. So de facto segregation based on neighborhood demographics continued—in both the South and the North. Court-ordered busing in places such as Cleveland and Boston attempted to redress this situation in the 1970s.
Thelma Spencer, a member of ASCD's Board of Directors, was a teacher in a Cleveland elementary school at that time. Like other Cleveland teachers, she first fought for the integration of school teaching staff as part of a coalition of civil rights groups called the United Freedom Movement. "We called the Cuyahoga River [which bisects Cleveland] the city's ‘Mason-Dixon Line.’ No black teachers were given the option to teach on the predominantly white West Side," says Spencer. In defense, school board members argued that black teachers chose to teach in black schools. Spencer countered those claims by taking a teaching job that involved a daily commute from predominantly black East Cleveland to a white West Side school.
She recalls that later, when busing began, black and white students had little contact with one another and were taught in segregated classrooms. "In the morning, black kids were bused in after others were already in their classes, and in the afternoon they left school after the other students. Black kids also had to stay in their classrooms to eat lunch." The letter of the law may have been fulfilled, but grudgingly, she notes.
Lauding the great strides of the civil rights movement, Spencer wonders whether the United States will ever again see groups who will "call to task the powers that rule this country" for not doing enough to end the immorality of racism and to aid poor people seeking a decent education.
Halting Resegregation
One group that closely monitors the legacy of Brown is the Harvard Civil Rights Project. The project's report—Brown at 50: King's Dream or Plessy's Nightmare?—reveals that although desegregation has succeeded in many districts, others are abandoning such plans and are backed by recent court rulings that favor a return to neighborhood school plans. Black and Latino students, especially in large urban areas, often attend what amount to "intensely segregated minority schools" that "face conditions of concentrated poverty, which are powerfully related to conditions of unequal educational opportunity," according to the report.
The trend toward resegregation "seems to be a vicious circle," Davis comments. "The segregation issue is an economic issue—it's economic more than racial. When you look at income levels, you see that whites have higher pay than blacks—and it's education that leads to higher salaries."
If you're poor, you can't get into affluent neighborhoods, which support the best schools with a solid tax base, Davis reasons. Although "schools play an important role in bringing about change," U.S. society needs to look at broader ways to break that economic cycle that's fueled by issues of race and discrimination, he adds.
The Harvard report's authors, Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, point out some integration success stories but contend that much work still needs to be done. Their report calls for appointing judges and civil rights enforcement officials who will continue to fulfill the wider mandate of Brown; providing educational choice programs, such as magnet and charter schools, and pro-integration vouchers; and using housing subsidies to better advantage so minorities can attend middle class schools.
Tackling the Achievement Gap
Researchers Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, authors of the book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, say that integrated schools won't necessarily end the "morally unacceptable" achievement gap between black and Latino students and white students. The 1999 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math scores for 17-year-olds show that black and Latino students are about four years behind white students in skill levels. Urban schools, especially, need to take bolder steps to hold all students to high expectations, they say.
"I don't buy the argument that the schools are helpless. We argue that there are very good inner-city schools that do a great job of education," says Abigail Thernstrom. "What the great schools have in common is a vision that goes beyond math or reading reforms. That vision includes a demand that kids engage in disciplined work, do their homework, listen to teachers, and organize their work." Even if poor urban students are not getting the academic support at home that the middle class takes for granted, schools still have to demand from them the self-discipline needed for study, she says.
Such demands might also include a longer school day, week, and year—in other words, "more time on task and less time watching TV," she adds. The KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academies—public charter schools in Houston, Washington, and New York that are featured in the Thernstroms' book—offer a rigorous core-subject program, hold weekday classes from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and also require Saturday sessions.
Improving the Climate of Integration
If getting students of different races to attend the same school is one goal, the other is ensuring they'll learn in an environment of mutual understanding and respect. For integration to yield the full benefits of a better education for minorities and greater friendship between students of different races, a healthy school climate must be cultivated, according to William Preble, an education professor at New England College. With Stephen Wessler, Preble coauthored the ASCD book The Respectful School: How Educators and Students Can Conquer Hate and Harassment. He was hired as a consultant by a Tennessee school district under a federal court order to improve school environments that were hostile to black students.
"The district had lots of problems. Black kids were being verbally harassed. There were racial slurs and graffiti, and the court deemed that the schools were not taking their [black] families' complaints seriously," Preble says. Among the 100 integrated schools from Maine to Tennessee that he or his colleagues have visited as consultants, such student behavior is, unfortunately, typical, says Preble.
Over the next several years, Preble and his college students will work to train school staff and student leaders in the Tennessee district's 36 schools to create plans to improve the climate in each school. Preble has seen a student leadership model succeed in other states with similar problems. Based on his experience, he expects the school climate to improve once each school has 40 student leaders signed up to come to the aid of kids being bullied.
Although Preble says he was "shocked" at the amount of de facto segregation he witnessed in this particular district, he stresses that "the issue is not one of not letting blacks in, but what happens once they join a school."
