tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/school-segregation-18468/articlesSchool segregation – The Conversation2022-07-25T12:07:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1835822022-07-25T12:07:55Z2022-07-25T12:07:55ZAlcohol use more likely among Black youths at racially segregated schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467714/original/file-20220608-25-5i4dwt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C20%2C4580%2C3400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could structural racism in U.S. schools lead more young African Americans to drink?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/jet-of-a-bottle-of-cold-beer-of-crystal-on-a-black-royalty-free-image/584320758?adppopup=true">Jose A. Bernat Bacete / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Black youths who attend racially segregated schools are more likely to have drinking and behavior problems during childhood than Black youths in less segregated schools. This is according to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2021-055952">new study</a> we conducted using <a href="https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/GettingStarted.aspx">national survey data</a> from 1997 to 2014.</p>
<p>School segregation, defined as the physical separation of students in schools based on their race, was ruled unconstitutional in 1954 as part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v. Board of Education</a> decision. Consequently, about 1,000 districts nationwide were under court orders to desegregate. </p>
<p>However, school segregation <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-return-of-school-segregation-in-eight-charts/">has increased since 1991</a>, when the first of a series of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21649">court decisions</a> allowed districts to be released from court-ordered desegregation. Highly segregated schools – where less than 10% of students are white – <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-62-school-segregation-by-race-poverty-and-state/Brown-at-62-final-corrected-2.pdf">increased from 5.7% to 18.6% of all schools</a> – from 1988 to 2013. </p>
<p>Our study is among the first to explore how this recent segregation affects the health of Black children. It examines whether the health of Black children in districts that were released from court-ordered desegregation earlier is different from those in districts released later. </p>
<p>Our research team analyzed data on school segregation levels and health outcomes for about 1,248 Black children ages 5 to 17. We measured school segregation using the dissimilarity index, which indicates the proportion of Black or white students who would need to move to a different school to make all schools in a school district have the same student racial distribution.</p>
<p>We found that the more segregated a school district, the more likely Black students were to have behavioral problems, and the more likely Black students older than 12 years were to drink alcohol. For Black girls, the more segregated the school, the likelihood of having drunk alcohol rose at twice the rate it did for Black boys.</p>
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<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Earlier studies about school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s found that it led to improvements in Black people’s well-being, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w16664">higher educational and occupational attainment, better self-rated health</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.12.029">reduced teen pregnancy rates</a>.</p>
<p>Yet some scholars have argued that segregated schools can have certain <a href="https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2021.7.1.10">benefits</a>. For example, school segregation may have protective effects as Black youths in predominantly Black schools may face less interpersonal racism from white students and teachers than if they went to desegregated schools. </p>
<p>On the other hand, school segregation is a manifestation of structural racism, such that highly segregated schools are often <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807876770_boger">underfunded, with more crowded classrooms</a>, less experienced teachers and high teacher turnover. Segregated schools also tend to have <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/brown-v-board-students-criminalized-msna324866">harsher school discipline</a>.</p>
<p>These stressful environments can increase mental and emotional challenges for Black youths, making them more likely to develop unhealthy coping behaviors like drinking alcohol. In addition, segregated schools are more likely to be in segregated neighborhoods, which are more often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00004-6">targeted for alcohol advertising and have substantially more liquor stores</a>, making it easier for Black youths to obtain alcohol.</p>
<p>The results of our study suggest that the effects of structural racism and low school resources in segregated schools may be greater than the potential for reduced interpersonal racism. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>This study did not examine why well-being was worse among Black youths in more segregated schools. For example, it didn’t examine whether it was because of fewer school counselors, higher stress levels or broader systemic factors. It also did not examine health among other groups like white, Hispanic or Asian children. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Our team’s next steps are to explore the reasons school segregation affects young people’s well-being, not only for Black youths but also for white youths and other youths of color. Additionally, we plan to examine the long-term impact of school segregation as children transition to adulthood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rita Hamad receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guangyi Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis shows that Black students at more racially segregated schools have a greater tendency to turn to the bottle.Guangyi Wang, Research Specialist, University of California, San FranciscoRita Hamad, Associate Professor of Family Community Medicine, University of California, San FranciscoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849132022-07-01T13:01:45Z2022-07-01T13:01:45ZDecades after Brown v. Board, US schools still struggle with segregation – 4 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469081/original/file-20220615-10596-ka8yii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3402%2C1925&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Millicent Brown, left, was one of the first two Black students to integrate a South Carolina public school, in September 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/USAMillicentBrown/deb2f7f4e4f1406aa001d2be2b246af6/photo">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, handed down in 1954, was supposed to end racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. But that work remains undone, as evidenced by a U.S. Department of Justice collection showing <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/educational-opportunities-cases#race">dozens of active school-desegregation cases</a> even in 2022.</p>
<p>To take a more in-depth look at the prevalence and nature of contemporary school segregation in the U.S., The Conversation sought scholars who could discuss the topic from various standpoints – from its legal history to its current status and modern-day efforts to make schools inclusive beyond racial identity. Here are four selections from our past coverage.</p>
<h2>1. The Brown case wasn’t the beginning</h2>
<p>The fight for full equity in schools first went to the courts in 1947, when a group of Black parents in South Carolina wanted their kids to be allowed to ride the bus to school, as the white students could. When the case finally went to federal court in 1951, writes equity scholar <a href="https://news.clemson.edu/our-experts/roy-jones/">Roy Jones</a> at Clemson University, a federal judge suggested more – a suit against school segregation itself.</p>
<p>“A month later, [civil rights lawyer Thurgood] Marshall brought a new case, Briggs v. Elliott, … arguing that school segregation in South Carolina was unconstitutional. This was the first lawsuit in the country to challenge school segregation as a violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Jones writes. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fight-against-school-segregation-began-in-south-carolina-long-before-it-ended-with-brown-v-board-177418">The Brown v. Board case</a> eventually grew out of that South Carolina case.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fight-against-school-segregation-began-in-south-carolina-long-before-it-ended-with-brown-v-board-177418">The fight against school segregation began in South Carolina, long before it ended with Brown v. Board</a>
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<h2>2. Still segregated</h2>
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<img alt="A group of young adults with varying skin tones socialize outside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C43%2C4091%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DesegregationAfterBusing/8b893af637dc4f649c093e983c0d005f/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span>
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<p>The Brown decision declared that public schools could not be segregated by race anymore, but the process took years and is still incomplete, writes <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8z4YFq0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Pedro Noguera</a>, an educational sociologist at the University of Southern California.</p>
<p>“American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-schools-are-not-racially-integrated-despite-decades-of-effort-177849">many of the nation’s public K-12 schools</a> are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another,” he writes. </p>
<p>In fact, Noguera explains, “in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, 42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-schools-are-not-racially-integrated-despite-decades-of-effort-177849">US schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort</a>
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<h2>3. Economic segregation</h2>
<p>Racial differences aren’t the only way U.S. schools are segregated. Education policy scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NOT4bMEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Kari Dalane</a> at the American University School of Public Affairs and a collaborator looked at how students are split up into classrooms within schools.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/students-are-often-segregated-within-the-same-schools-not-just-by-being-sent-to-different-ones-179266">We found that … economically disadvantaged students</a> were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school,” Dalane writes.</p>
<p>That’s a problem because, as she explains, “more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average. However, novice teachers are frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.”</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/students-are-often-segregated-within-the-same-schools-not-just-by-being-sent-to-different-ones-179266">Students are often segregated within the same schools, not just by being sent to different ones</a>
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<h2>4. Children with disabilities</h2>
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<img alt="A teacher speaks with students who are raising their hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C0%2C5207%2C3257&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Learning support teachers such as Sabrina Werley in Pennsylvania are common, but schools’ services can vary widely.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sabrina-werley-works-with-her-4th-grade-students-in-a-math-news-photo/1312861050">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the wake of the Brown decision came another effort – to include children with disabilities in the nation’s classrooms, rather than sending them to specialized schools focused on addressing their weaknesses.</p>
<p>A 1979 lawsuit ultimately asked the Supreme Court to interpret a 1975 law that said “children have the right to a ‘free appropriate public education’ in the ‘least restrictive environment’ possible in which their needs can be met,” explains education law scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=T3b-g5YAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Charles Russo</a> at the University of Dayton.</p>
<p>The lawsuit didn’t go well. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that a deaf student didn’t qualify for a sign-language interpreter because the student was doing well enough, even though an interpreter could have helped the student learn more and do better.</p>
<p>It took 35 years – until 2017 – for the Supreme Court to rule that schools owed students with disabilities an actually equal chance to make the most of their talents and promise. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-after-special-education-law-and-key-ruling-updates-still-languish-181560">Progress – and potential – were the new standards, not merely getting by</a>,” Russo writes.</p>
<p>But it’s not clear how long it will take before every child has those opportunities.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-after-special-education-law-and-key-ruling-updates-still-languish-181560">Decades after special education law and key ruling, updates still languish</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The effort to give every student equal access to an education has lasted decades and may need even more time before the goal is reached.Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792662022-05-27T12:33:01Z2022-05-27T12:33:01ZStudents are often segregated within the same schools, not just by being sent to different ones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465073/original/file-20220524-22-jiazkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C27%2C6029%2C3983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classmates in grades 3, 4 and 5 are more likely to come from diverse economic backgrounds than their schoolmates in grades 6, 7 and 8.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-pass-a-beach-ball-to-the-next-person-on-the-list-news-photo/1334723214">Paul Bersebach, MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Children from low-income households are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221081853">increasingly being segregated into different classrooms</a> from their peers from higher-income households, according to recent research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NOT4bMEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> have conducted with education policy scholar <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/marcotte.cfm">Dave E. Marcotte</a>.</p>
<p>From 2007 to 2014, we tracked all North Carolina public school students statewide, from third through eighth grades, observing how the students were grouped into math and English language arts classes by each school’s process for creating class groups.</p>
<p>We used course enrollment data to figure out how many students in each classroom were from families whose incomes are at or below 185% of the federal poverty threshold – and how many were not. We found that those economically disadvantaged students were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school. </p>
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<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Often school segregation is thought about as Black and white students being forced to attend <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12010">different schools</a>. This makes sense given the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">history of Jim Crow</a> – a 19th- and 20th-century legal system meant to <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">relegate Black people to second-class status</a> in white society – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043152">court orders to desegregate schools</a>. </p>
<p>Another aspect of this issue is how students are sorted into classrooms within schools. A 2021 study found that more racially diverse schools are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09309-w">more likely to have classrooms that are more segregated</a> than schools that are less diverse overall.</p>
<p>Researchers have recently begun to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216652722">rising levels of segregation between schools</a> based not just on race, but also on household income.</p>
<p>Students from wealthier households are more likely than their less-well-off peers to have <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity">higher academic achievement as measured by test scores</a> and to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416645834">attend and complete college</a>.</p>
<p>Efforts to provide equitable opportunities for all students often focus on comparing funding and staffing between schools. Indeed, lower levels of school funding lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036">lower educational attainment and lower wages in adulthood</a>.</p>
<p>However, resources can also be distributed inequitably within schools, on a classroom-by-classroom basis. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.009">more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average</a>. However, novice teachers are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X13495087">frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students</a>. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We aren’t sure why there is an increase in segregation within schools by household income. One potential reason could be an increase in what is called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4501_2">academic tracking</a>,” which is the process of grouping students into classes based on their prior achievement, such as performance on standardized tests. </p>
<p>If <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.5.1927">low-income students perform worse on standardized tests than their peers</a>, they may be placed in lower tracks. However, standardized test scores may not accurately reflect ability for low-income students, since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2003.09.002">students from marginalized groups perform disproportionately worse</a> on assessments.</p>
<p>If in fact test scores do accurately reflect ability, there may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.5.1739">some educational advantages</a> to track students into certain classes. However, researchers have long argued that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F019263658506948430">tracking perpetuates inequalities between low- and high-tracked students</a>. For example, students who are placed on lower tracks than their peers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3172">suffer from lower self-esteem</a> and are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904816681526">not as well prepared for college success</a> as higher-tracked students with similar test scores.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/09/22/charter-school-pandemic-enrollment-growth">growth in charter school enrollments</a> over the past two decades could also contribute to the increases in within-school segregation by income that we find. Public school principals who fear their students may depart for charters may attempt to retain them <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373715577447">by introducing specialized curricula or expanding gifted and talented programs</a>. If these programs continue to primarily serve students from families with higher incomes, that could increase income segregation within schools. This is a possibility we are exploring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kari Dalane and Dave Marcotte received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation.</span></em></p>In middle school classes, students from lower-income families tended to be concentrated in just a few classrooms, new research from North Carolina has found.Kari Dalane, Ph.D. Candidate in Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826452022-05-27T12:29:48Z2022-05-27T12:29:48ZDesegregating schools requires more than giving parents free choices – a scholar studies the choices parents of all races make<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462572/original/file-20220511-11-l02abw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C3%2C2121%2C1400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial bias may play a role both in the schools that families choose for their children and the experiences their children have.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/child-dressed-in-red-walking-across-red-and-blue-royalty-free-image/1083675448">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/sociology/faculty/ch48723">Chantal Hailey</a> is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.Her work focuses on the role of race and racism in how people choose schools and the other spaces they inhabit, and how racism influences inequality. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chantal Hailey discusses her research about how race and racism influence school choice.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>What do you study?</strong></p>
<p>My research at this moment focuses on <a href="https://integratedschools.org/podcast/s7e14-unpacking-the-racial-hierarchy-in-school-choices/">school choice</a> in New York City, and particularly the role of race in how people choose high schools in New York City. This is important for a couple of reasons. One, New York City is the largest school district in the United States. Over a million kids attend school in this school district. </p>
<p>And in 2014, there was a <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cx4b8pf">study</a> that came out that was completely surprising to me as someone who was new to New York City. It said that New York state’s schools were the most segregated in the country. And that was surprising for two reasons. One, we often think of New York and particularly New York City as this really racially diverse metropolitan area.</p>
<p>The other reason this is surprising is that, for high school in particular, there is school choice, which means students can choose to attend school anywhere across the city. A lot of the reasons we think about or talk about school segregation is that it’s tied to racially segregated housing and neighborhoods.</p>
<p>But in New York City, those two ties are broken up. People can technically choose to attend school anywhere across the city. But yet you still see these really stark patterns of segregation. </p>
<p>I ask in my work, why do we still see racial sorting patterns across schools and really stark racial segregation? I use both data from families’ actual applications to high schools and an experiment to understand why we see segregation in New York City schools.</p>
<p><strong>What’s one thing you want people to take away from your research?</strong></p>
<p>Even though we might think of school choice as a race-neutral policy, the ways in which families interact with school choice policies are very racialized. By that, I mean a couple of things: One, that means <a href="https://chantalahailey.com/working-papers/">families interpret information</a> about schools through what I call their racial prisms – that is, their racial biases toward groups, general cultural stereotypes around groups, other experiences and exposures to different racial groups.</p>
<p>So families are interpreting information about schools through race. They also have racial preferences for schools.</p>
<p>In the experiment and in the administrative data, I examine schools that are the exact same but differ only by their racial demographics. And <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211065179">what I find</a> is that families across different racial groups express racial preferences for schools. So in particular, I find that white and Asian families have had really stark desires to avoid Black and Latino spaces.</p>
<p>I find that Latino families also want to avoid majority Black schools, and I find that Black families often desire not to to attend majority-white schools. So again, I really want to emphasize that even though we might think of school choice as race neutral or even a racial equity policy, the ways in which people are interacting with that policy are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08959048221087211">very racialized </a>and based upon their own experiences and exposures and cultural stereotypes in our larger structure of racism.</p>
<p><strong>What inspired you to study the field that you’re in right now?</strong></p>
<p>My own schooling experiences. I experienced many different kinds of racialized school spaces, from a majority-Black elementary school to racially mixed middle schools to a private, all-girls majority-white school. Across all those spaces, I saw different resources that were available. I saw different racialized treatment of students across these different spaces. </p>
<p>I knew that race was central in both how I experienced those spaces and in my decisions and my mom’s decisions to move me across these spaces. So I wanted to understand the patterns of race and school choice from a larger context and how it influences students’ racialized outcomes and their experiences within school spaces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chantal Hailey receives funding from the Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD042849), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE1342536, the Institute of Education Sciences–funded Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) Program at New York University, and the Ford Foundation Dissertation Grant.</span></em></p>Inspired by her own experience with the education system, a professor of sociology explores how race and racism influence school choice and education.Chantal Hailey, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1778492022-05-13T12:15:36Z2022-05-13T12:15:36ZUS schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C43%2C4091%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DesegregationAfterBusing/8b893af637dc4f649c093e983c0d005f/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v. Board of Education decision</a> in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved.</p>
<p>American society continues to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-census-data-shows-the-nation-is-diversifying-even-faster-than-predicted/">grow more racially and ethnically diverse</a>. But many of the nation’s public K-12 <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/new-report-shows-increased-diversity-in-u-s-schools-disparities-in-outcomes">schools are not well integrated</a> and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8z4YFq0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">educational sociologist</a>, I fear that the nation has effectively decided that it’s simply not worth continuing to pursue the goals of Brown. I also fear that accepting failure could portend a return to the days of the case that Brown overturned, the <a href="https://supreme.findlaw.com/supreme-court-insights/plessy-v--ferguson-case-summary.html">1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision</a>. That case set “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson">separate but equal</a>” facilities for different races, including schools and universities, as the national priority. </p>
<p>The Brown decision was based upon a repudiation of that idea and the recognition that “separate but equal” was never achieved. I remain convinced it never will be.</p>
<h2>A historic push</h2>
<p>In many ways, it would be startling to declare the ideal of integrated schooling a lost cause. Integration was so important in 1957 that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/09/24/14654126/little-rock-remembers-troops-arrival">sent federal troops</a> to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that nine Black students were safe when they enrolled in the city’s Central High School. </p>
<p>Despite the federal government’s intervention, in the 1960s and 1970s, many communities across the U.S. experienced <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-white-students-respond-to-school-integration-after-brown-v-board-of-education-164671">considerable conflict and even bloodshed</a>. Many white citizens actively and violently opposed school integration, which often came in the form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-decision-that-kept-suburban-schools-segregated-120478">court-mandated busing</a> of Black students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Despite the opposition, many Americans <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/children-of-the-dream-why-school-integration-works/oclc/1080251375">worked incredibly hard</a> to make integration happen, and its <a href="https://tcf.org/content/commentary/school-integration-is-popular-we-can-make-it-more-so/?session=1">benefits are clear</a>: Many American children have experienced enhanced educational opportunities and improved academic success as a result of these efforts.</p>
<h2>Separated, if not segregated</h2>
<p>However, in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/15/u-s-public-school-students-often-go-to-schools-where-at-least-half-of-their-peers-are-the-same-race-or-ethnicity/">42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools</a>, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.</p>
<p>Those statistics signal the existence of what is, in fact, a racially separate educational system. But these statistics about race don’t show how common separation by socioeconomic status is in most urban schools throughout the U.S. Low-income Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend schools where the <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/segregating-california2019s-future-inequality-and-its-alternative-60-years-after-brown-v.-board-of-education/">majority of children are poor</a> and the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal">resources available to serve them are inadequate</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2001, education policymakers have made bold promises to close what has been called the “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/broken-promises-what-the-federal-government-can-do-to-improve-american-education/">racial achievement gap</a>.” Yet they have largely ignored the fact that throughout the nation, poor children of color are most likely to attend schools where they are not only separated by race and class, but where the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/concentration-poverty-american-schools/471414/">quality of the education they receive is below</a> that of their white peers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black girl in a white dress walks through a crowd of white people" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1962, Carolyn Roberson, at center in a white dress, was one of the first Black students to attend Pensacola High School in Pensacola, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsSchoolIntegration/6a403b857a864b65bb23a9ed2ce41ffb/photo">AP Photo/Jim Bourdier</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Housing and school choices</h2>
<p>Several factors help to explain the degree of race and class separation and educational inequality that is now pervasive in America. To begin with, many communities throughout the United States continue to be characterized by a high degree of racial and socioeconomic separation. However, while residential patterns pose an obstacle, a 2018 study by the Urban Institute found that <a href="https://www.urban.org/features/segregated-neighborhoods-segregated-schools">neighborhood segregation does not in itself explain</a> current patterns of school segregation. The study identified several cities and suburban communities where schools are significantly more segregated than the neighborhoods in which they are located. </p>
<p>Policies that allow parents to choose which of their district’s public schools their children attend have done little to alter these trends and, in fact, may contribute to the problem. Several studies have shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9030205">public charter schools</a> are <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/do-charter-schools-increase-segregation-first-national-analysis-reveals-modest-impact/">more likely to be intensely racially divided</a> than traditional public schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, in most major American cities, affluent residents are <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc">more likely to enroll their children</a> in private schools than public schools. This includes many affluent parents of color, who often choose to enroll their children in predominantly white independent schools in search of a better education, even when their children <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/11/24/growing-up-as-a-black-male-student-in-white-suburbia-what-i-learned/">experience race-related microaggressions and alienation</a>.</p>
<p>In the past 20 years, cities such as <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Harvard_JCHS_mapping_neighborhood_change_boston_january_2019.pdf">Boston</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/black-homeowners-gentrification.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://303magazine.com/2022/02/denvers-neighborhoods-changing/">Denver</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/15/washington-dc-gentrification-black-political-power-00024515">Washington, D.C.</a>, and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/as-south-seattle-gentrifies-white-people-become-largest-racial-group/">Seattle</a> have seen affluent <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/10/01/more-big-cities-are-gaining-white-population-census-data-show/">white populations increase</a> – but the overwhelming majority of students in those cities’ public schools are from <a href="https://www.cgcs.org/domain/360">low-income Black and Hispanic households</a>. Those sorts of racial imbalances have increasingly become the norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of young Black people sit around tables in a classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High school medical students at the King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles await a visit from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SurgeonGeneralCalifornia/fdcb374b648c4d7e8ed9c211cf628bcd/photo">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Integration can succeed</h2>
<p>When the poorest and most vulnerable children are concentrated into particular schools, it is even more difficult to achieve racial equality in educational opportunity, either through integration as called for by Brown or by pursuing “separate but equal” as called for by Plessy.</p>
<p>There is good reason to be concerned. For decades there has been <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/65766/2000369-Child-Poverty-and-Adult-Success.pdf">consistent evidence</a> that when schools serve a disproportionate number of children in poverty, they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1475">less likely to improve students’ academic success</a>.</p>
<p>The evidence also shows that when Black and Hispanic children attend racially integrated schools, they tend to <a href="https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/?agreed=1">outperform their peers who do not</a>. For example, students who have participated in the <a href="https://metcoinc.org/">Metco program</a>, a voluntary desegregation effort that makes it possible for children of color from Boston to be bused to affluent schools in the suburbs, have <a href="https://pioneerinstitute.org/pioneer-research/education-pioneer-research/metco-merits-more/">fared better academically</a> than their counterparts who remained in Boston’s racially isolated schools. The research doesn’t show whether that is because of the superior resources available in predominantly white suburban schools or the fact that they have parents who are active enough to get them into suburban schools. It may be that both factors play a role.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">2018 study</a> from UCLA found that all the schools that produce significant numbers of Black students who are eligible for admission to the University of California are racially integrated. Unfortunately, the study also found that most Black students in Los Angeles don’t attend integrated schools.</p>
<p>However, the study also found one notable exception: the <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/">King/Drew Health Sciences Magnet High School of Medicine and Science</a> in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. That school, which serves almost exclusively Black and Hispanic students, <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">sends more Black students to the University of California</a> than any other high school in the state of California. </p>
<p>At King/Drew, students have a <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1526142&type=d&pREC_ID=1374191">rigorous, enriched education</a> that includes many honors and <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/ap">Advanced Placement courses</a>. Those opportunities are the norm at many affluent suburban schools, but they are <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/closing-advanced-coursework-equity-gaps-students/">rare at public schools in urban areas</a>.</p>
<p>The scarcity of schools like King/Drew – well-resourced and serving a low-income or majority-minority student body – should serve as a reminder that racially separate schools are rarely equal. When Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP took the Brown case, they knew that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-thurgood-marshall-paved-road-brown-v-board-education-180977197/">funding for education generally followed white students</a>.</p>
<p>That was true in 1954, and it is largely true today. A recent study found that nonwhite school districts in the U.S. receive <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion">US$23 billion less in funding</a> than predominantly white schools, though they serve the same number of students.</p>
<p>For this reason, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Brown decision, I believe it is important to remember why and how civil rights and educational opportunity remain so deeply intertwined. Despite its flaws and limitations, the effort to racially integrate the nation’s schools has been and continues to be important given the type of <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/comm/a-more-diverse-nation.html">pluralistic and diverse nation</a> the U.S. is becoming. It also plays a central role in the ongoing pursuit of racial equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pedro A. Noguera does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling required the integration of public education, US schools remain separated by race.Pedro A. Noguera, Dean, USC Rossier School of Education, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1752092022-01-20T13:45:31Z2022-01-20T13:45:31ZOverruling Roe may not be conservatives’ best strategy – Brown v. Board of Education shows how Supreme Court can uphold precedent while gutting its meaning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441615/original/file-20220119-27-120irna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C29%2C4985%2C3330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Overturn Roe? They might not have to.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abortion-rights-advocates-and-anti-abortion-protesters-news-photo/1236932147?adppopup=true">Oliver Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tens of thousands of anti-abortion protesters <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/18/march-for-life-2022/">are expected to descend</a> on Washington on Jan. 21, 2022, for the <a href="https://marchforlife.org/about-the-march-for-life/">March for Life</a> rally – as they have done annually since 1974 to protest the Roe v. Wade ruling of the previous year.</p>
<p>Whether they have reason to march against abortion in 12 months’ time is uncertain, though. It will likely depend on how the Supreme Court decides the case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a>, which deals with a Mississippi law that bans most abortions in the state after the 15th week of pregnancy. </p>
<p>Speculation about the justices’ anticipated decision, expected by June, seems to be less about whether they will eviscerate the Roe decision – which recognized a <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-roe-v-wade-be-overturned-and-what-would-this-mean-the-us-abortion-debate-explained-173156">constitutional right to abortion</a> without excessive government interference – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-signals-shift-on-abortion-but-will-it-strike-down-roe-or-leave-it-to-states-to-decide-when-personhood-occurs-172934">more about how</a> they might do it. </p>
<p>Prior to justices taking up Dobbs, much of the commentary on how the Court would deal with abortion was that it would kill Roe quietly, bit by bit, in a series of piecemeal rulings. But after <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf">oral argument</a> on Dec. 1, 2021, a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-supreme-court-looks-ready-to-overturn-roe">swift and unambiguous overturning</a> is now thought possible.</p>
<p>In that December hearing, lawyers arguing the case and several justices <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=13">discussed the criteria for overturning</a> established precedent, which is a rule of law created by an earlier case. They referenced some of the “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=36">great overrulings</a>” in the Court’s history, citing 1954’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> – which ended legal racial segregation in public schools – as the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=113">greatest of them all</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/275962">legal scholar</a>, I know that the Brown decision was of huge consequence. But it wasn’t the simple overruling that many see it as today. The care taken by the justices in 1954 in making that landmark ruling might have lessons for the current justices’ forthcoming decision in Dobbs. </p>
<h2>‘Dramatic shift’</h2>
<p>The precedent that Brown supposedly overruled was <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson</a>, the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that created the “separate but equal” doctrine enforced throughout the Jim Crow era.</p>
<p>Plessy held that the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement of equal protection</a> was satisfied by providing facilities of equal quality – in Plessy, it was railroad cars – even when citizens were segregated by race.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown</a>, the Supreme Court came down unanimously in favor of ending public school segregation. But many have assumed that in so doing the justices ruled that Plessy had been wrongly decided and decisively overturned it.</p>
<p>Chief Justice John Roberts asserted as much in his <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CHRG-ROBERTS/pdf/GPO-CHRG-ROBERTS.pdf">own confirmation hearings</a> in 2005. When asked if the Court broke new ground in Brown, he replied: “Of course it was a dramatic shift. And the overruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was exactly that.”</p>
<p>But I believe the Brown decision was actually far more subtle. A careful reading shows that it did not overrule Plessy. Rather, it followed and applied Plessy rigorously.</p>
<p>The Court determined that separating children in public schools on the basis of race in and of itself harmed minority children psychologically. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2979&context=clr">famous footnote</a> in Brown cited social science studies in support of that factual finding.</p>
<p>And that finding of harm was crucial. It meant that racial segregation of public school children could never be “separate-but-equal,” as <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=false&page=transcript&doc=87&title=Transcript+of+Brown+v.+Board+of+Education+%281954%29">required by Plessy</a>:</p>
<p>“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated … are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”</p>
<p>The Court ruled that the moment the government places those children into separate schools, no matter how equal the physical facilities and educational services, the minority children are being excluded, made to feel inferior, and thereby harmed. In short, it failed Plessy’s test.</p>
<p>The Brown ruling did not overturn Plessy. It did not even carve out an exception to Plessy. </p>
<p>Instead, it followed Plessy and its logic to arrive at the conclusion that segregated public schools flunked the separate-but-equal test. Nothing more. The day after Brown was announced, Plessy was still standing.</p>
<h2>Destroying precedent … by following it</h2>
<p>The justices in Brown were doubtless aware of the virulent racism that existed in parts of the U.S. and the controversy around segregation. They were aware that some Americans would <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-brown-v-board-education/southern-manifesto-massive-resistance-brown/">violently resist legally mandated desegregation</a>. </p>
<p>If they were going to begin the process of desegregating America, they knew they had to do it with a minimum of swagger and a maximum of respect for precedent.</p>
<p>But the lesson of Brown is not, or not only, to try to minimize violent reaction. More important for the Court and the law, it is that judges who set out to change the future might be more effective if they can avoid ripping up the past.</p>
<p>Narrow though the Brown ruling was, it provided what Constitutional law expert Justin Driver <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/books/review/justin-driver-schoolhouse-gate.html">described as</a> “a powerful rhetorical and moral weapon that helped to catalyze the nation toward the goal of racial equality.” Brown was cited in subsequent years to help advance the proposition that segregation of other kinds was also unconstitutional – even though Brown itself said no such thing – and its impact expanded and spread.</p>
<p>Brown eventually destroyed Plessy – not by overruling it, but by following it.</p>
<p>Could today’s justices be as ingenious as their predecessors in Brown, and find a subtle and deferential way to bring about the sweeping legal change they might have in mind, while still respecting well-established precedent? We soon shall see. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Saks has donated to the American Civil Liberties Union and to candidates for various public offices. </span></em></p>Brown v. Board didn’t overrule ‘separate-but-equal’ but it had that end. A law scholar explains how there is a lesson there for conservatives on today’s Court looking to end abortion in the US.Michael J. Saks, Regents Professor, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1640162021-10-14T12:11:53Z2021-10-14T12:11:53ZThe first battle in the culture wars: The quality of diversity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423609/original/file-20210928-28-1ek4ilr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=170%2C64%2C6666%2C4551&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voting rights activists protest voter restriction laws being passed in states across the country, in Washington, D.C., July 15, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voting-rights-activists-led-by-u-s-rep-joyce-beatty-and-news-photo/1328936506?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American diversity is in the spotlight as racial discrimination in the United States reemerges as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/politics/residential-segregation-race-deconstructed-newsletter/index.html">a major topic</a> of public discussion, touching everything from <a href="https://www.wwno.org/education/2019-10-11/in-diverse-east-baton-rouge-an-affluent-white-area-seeks-its-own-city-school-district">education</a> to housing to policing.</p>
<p>The context of the quality of American diversity is inescapable as <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/critical-race-theory-critic-conservative-activist-christopher-rufo-debates-joy-reid-115361349904">multiple</a> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/how-americans-see-the-state-of-race-relations/">debates</a> around <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx">race relations</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ta-nehisi-coates-nikole-hannah-jones.html">continue</a> to <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sean-wilentz-fires-back-on-the-1619-project-and-the-climate-of-anti-history/">rage</a>. </p>
<p>We tend to think of diversity in demographic terms, but that’s an incomplete take. It has a qualitative element to it – it exists as a reality with which we all interact.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-black-americans-still-face-obstacles-to-voting-at-every-step-2020-6">debate around voting rights</a>, for example, applies to an American electorate that overwhelmingly lives in racially segregated communities. </p>
<p>Even the bans on <a href="https://theconversation.com/bans-on-critical-race-theory-could-have-a-chilling-effect-on-how-educators-teach-about-racism-163236#comment_2562595">critical race theory</a> – the academic movement that examines how racism has shaped public policy – will be implemented in currently <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/schools-are-still-segregated-and-black-children-are-paying-a-price/">racially segregated schools</a>.</p>
<p>But the quality of diversity is rarely discussed in popular culture. </p>
<p>The meaning of words like “equity” and “inclusion” – used often in discussions of diversity – is difficult to grasp until Americans address what they think “diversity” looks like. That’s because the quality of diversity comprises both a political and moral stance from which equity and inclusion derive meaning. </p>
<p>The quality of diversity is how Americans exist among each other. It can be described in two ways: segregated coexistence and living in community.</p>
<p>These two terms reflect a fundamental battle in American culture between segregation and integration. As a <a href="https://ct.ku.edu/people/nicholas-mitchell">curriculum theorist</a> who studies how race impacts education and society, I believe it is necessary to acknowledge this distinction. </p>
<h2>Segregated coexistence</h2>
<p>Segregated coexistence is a standard of diversity that relies on a surface-level demography that you could call “diverse” because different races all live in one geographic region, such as cities like Detroit or my native Baton Rouge, Louisiana.</p>
<p>Beneath this demography, the reality is a ubiquitous state of de facto racial segregation where enclaves are so numerous in American cities that people easily associate races and ethnicities with certain neighborhoods, schools and ZIP codes. </p>
<p>An August 2021 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/us/census-race-ethnicity-map/">map compiled by CNN</a> based on 2020 census data vividly lays bare the endemic residential segregation in the U.S.</p>
<p>In June 2021, the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research group, <a href="https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism">released a report</a> on residential segregation. “Out of every metropolitan region in the United States with more than 200,000 residents, 81% (169 out of 209) were more segregated as of 2019 than they were in 1990,” the report noted.</p>
<p>It also asserted that “83% of neighborhoods that were given poor ratings (or ‘redlined’) in the 1930s by a federal mortgage policy that denied Blacks mortgages were as of 2010 highly segregated communities of color.”</p>
<p>Segregated coexistence is the racist seed from which many contemporary conflicts about race have their roots. </p>
<p>That’s because segregating where people live is physical confirmation of their forced inferiority. Denying them equitable treatment in other areas becomes easy once they have been denied the freedom of movement.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white supremacist and a Black man argue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423610/original/file-20210928-26-1svu957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A white supremacist and a Black man argue during a protest to demand justice for Daniel Prude, a Black man from Chicago who died after being restrained by police, on Sept. 3, 2020, in New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/separated-by-police-officers-a-white-supremacist-and-a-news-photo/1228332495?adppopup=true">Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Living in community</h2>
<p>Living in community is a different reality. It’s not easily achieved because integration is hard for many reasons.</p>
<p>Before different races can live in community there must first be interracial justice that leads to racial reconciliation. <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814796962/interracial-justice/">Noted scholar Eric Yamamoto</a> describes this process as the recognition of the historical and contemporary harm different racial groups have caused one another, affirmative efforts to address justice grievances and the restructuring of present-day race relations in such a way that broken relationships are healed.</p>
<p>The success or failure of integration depends on whether Americans want to racially reconcile or if they are so accustomed to the conflict that they cannot come together. </p>
<p>This means remaking how <a href="https://blog.dol.gov/2021/05/03/the-departments-role-in-advancing-racial-equity-and-supporting-underserved-communities">governments allocate resources </a>, including providing <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/11/13/460397/quality-approach-school-funding/">equitable funding for schools</a> and, in the private sector, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/business/dealbook/board-diversity-private-companies.html">diversifying executive leadership</a>. </p>
<p>Doing that work means answering the political and moral question that has been with us since this country’s founding: How should we treat those whom we see as different from us?</p>
<p>This question permeates everything from civil rights cases before the Supreme Court to whom we welcome as neighbors or ostracize as outsiders and trespassers. </p>
<p>All these debates have momentous implications for America’s domestic stability. But they are often discussed as a matter of theory and political talking points, with no grounding in the real world. </p>
<p>If we are going to debate diversity in any situation, perhaps we should ask ourselves if we want to live in segregated enclaves or in community, with the full knowledge of what that means and what our answer says about us as individuals and as a nation.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand what’s going on in Washington.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164016/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Ensley Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans tend to think of diversity in demographic terms, but it has a qualitative element to it that reflects a fundamental battle between segregation and integration.Nicholas Ensley Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies, University of KansasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1646712021-10-04T13:08:11Z2021-10-04T13:08:11ZHow did white students respond to school integration after Brown v. Board of Education?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423656/original/file-20210928-23-pu36dn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6920%2C6930&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The collective memory of school desegregation is of anger and division, like in this photo of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walking away from a crowd outside a high school in Little Rock, Ark.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elizabeth-eckford-ignores-the-hostile-screams-and-stares-of-news-photo/517322800">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What did white children have to say about their “all-white” schools integrating? – Julia M.N., age 11, New York City</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brown-v-board#background">Brown v. Board of Education</a> that racially segregated schools violated the civil rights of Black students. Black Americans throughout the country celebrated the decision as a blow to anti-Black racism. </p>
<p>Whites’ reactions to the case varied, depending on where they lived and whether their local communities had a history of segregation, either through laws or just local customs and practices. White students’ acceptance of this social change was significantly shaped by their parents’ political beliefs about school desegregation. </p>
<p>Stories of peaceful transition to integration are less known than stories of white defiance.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court case was named for a lawsuit that originated in Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/brown-v-board-of-education.htm">opposing public school segregation</a>. The segregationist Topeka School Board was embarrassed by the publicity associated with the case because of the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kansas-enters-the-union">history of Kansas</a> as a state where slavery was illegal. So eight months before the landmark Supreme Court decision, the board members reversed their prior stance, resolving “to terminate … segregation in the elementary schools as rapidly as is practicable,” according to meeting minutes. </p>
<p>Those records also showed that some white parents threatened to withdraw their children if they were expected to share classrooms with Black students or Black teachers.</p>
<p>Other white parents embraced the new desegregation policy, like the parents of Clay Elementary School student Nancy Jones. Jones’ parents advised her to “<a href="https://www.cjonline.com/news/20190430/brown-v-board-of-education-in-1954-students-felt-impact-of-integration-in-topeka-elementary-schools">be friendly with the new students and to treat them with kindness and respect</a>.”</p>
<p>Although Black students began attending integrated schools in Topeka in 1954, it wasn’t until 1957 that the city assigned Black teachers to predominantly white schools. And even then, anticipating what it called “social hazards,” the School Board let white parents choose whether they wanted their kids to only have white teachers or to let the district assign students and teachers without regard to race.</p>
<p>The parents of Randolph Elementary School student Mike Worswick were among those who chose the latter. It was a decision that indirectly supported the integration of Black teachers.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.cjonline.com/news/20190430/brown-v-board-of-education-in-1954-students-felt-impact-of-integration-in-topeka-elementary-schools">It turned out to be one of the best things of my life</a>,” Worswick recalled in an interview years later.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several students wave and cheer through a window in a brick building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423659/original/file-20210928-22-1nzd7aj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During Boston’s school desegregation debate in 1974, there was cheering as well as violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AfricanAmericanIntegrationAnti-SchoolMABusingStudents/3b15fdafd763453f81ff9cff371b54d0/photo">AP Photo/PBR</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jones, whose parents had urged kindness, was upset when she found out about violence that erupted in other places across the nation.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.cjonline.com/news/20190430/brown-v-board-of-education-in-1954-students-felt-impact-of-integration-in-topeka-elementary-schools">We never saw anything like that in Topeka</a>,” she recalled in 2019.</p>
<p>Americans’ collective historical memory of desegregation is filled with visual images of white resistance in Southern cities like Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 and northern cities like Boston in 1974.</p>
<p>One iconic photo was taken at Little Rock’s Central High School on Sept. 4, 1957. That day, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to <a href="http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/eisenhower/aa_eisenhower_littlerock_1.html">block Black students’ entry into the school</a>. Local newspaper photographer Will Counts photographed one of the Black students, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, after she was turned away from school. Eckford was surrounded by white students in the picture, as one named Hazel Bryan, also 15, is yelling at her.</p>
<p>The picture quickly spread through national news outlets, and Bryan became the symbolic face of Southern white racism. The notoriety haunted Bryan, who <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/10/02/140953088/elizabeth-and-hazel-the-legacy-of-little-rock">apologized to Eckford five or six years later</a>.</p>
<p>While Bryan and her fellow students became a public spectacle, the fact that most whites did nothing was less remarked upon.</p>
<p>White students who supported integration knew that if they came to Black students’ aid, they risked social repercussions, or worse. Central High junior Robin Woods was “ashamed” of her peers’ behavior outside of school that September day, but did not get involved. When a Black classmate forgot his math book that day, though, Woods shared hers. That act of kindness was met with a “<a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/choices-little-rock/choices-people-made-white-students-and-teachers-central-high-school">gasp of disbelief</a>,” and a year of harassment followed.</p>
<p>Central High School senior Marcia Webb also witnessed her peers’ aggression toward the integrating Black students, who became known as the “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/central-high-school-integration">Little Rock Nine</a>.” At the time she was more interested in high school dances and athletic events than the emerging political storm, a racial privilege that was denied her new Black classmates. </p>
<p>“I’m sorry to say now, looking back, that what was happening didn’t have more significance and I didn’t take more of an active role,” she recalled. “But I was interested in the things that most kids are.” </p>
<p>As an adult, Webb expressed regret for her unwillingness to intervene:</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/what-happened-next-arkansas-national-guard">[H]urt can come from words, from silence even, from just being ignored</a>.” </p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charise Cheney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans’ collective memory of school desegregation involves crowds of screaming white protesters. But less well known are the whites who stood by quietly, and those who approved of the changes.Charise Cheney, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655812021-09-27T12:53:22Z2021-09-27T12:53:22ZHow civil rights activist Howard Fuller became a devout champion of school choice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417270/original/file-20210820-17-1cgcw33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5193%2C3466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Education reformer Howard Fuller has worked with GOP leaders in support of school vouchers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dr-howard-fuller-author-of-the-new-book-no-struggle-no-news-photo/455118800?adppopup=true">Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a longtime civil rights activist and education reformer, Howard Fuller has seen his support for school choice spark both <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/howard-fuller-a-civil-rights-warrior-or-billionares-tool/2014/09/09/3aedeff4-37c1-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html">controversy and confusion</a>. That’s because it aligns him with polarizing Republican figures that include <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/502961-trump-calls-school-choice-the-civil-rights-issue-of-the-decade">Donald Trump</a> and Trump’s former secretary of education, <a href="https://theconversation.com/through-her-divisive-rhetoric-education-secretary-devos-leaves-a-troubled-legacy-of-her-own-152914">Betsy DeVos</a>. </p>
<p>But unlike those figures, Fuller’s support for school choice is not rooted in a conservative agenda to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/20/school-privatization-movement-marches-on-during-pandemic/">privatize public schools</a>. Rather, it is grounded in his <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/we-are-an-african-people-9780199861477?cc=us&lang=en&">ongoing quest</a> to provide Black students a quality education by any means necessary. </p>
<p>I write about Fuller in my new book “<a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Choice-We-Face-P1635.aspx">The Choice We Face</a>,” which traces the history of school choice as well as demands for radical education reform by Black activists. Unlike most other school choice advocates I interviewed, Fuller’s activism predates the current debate and has firm footing in the Black Power movement.</p>
<p>Now 80, Fuller <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2020/06/19/national-school-choice-advocate-howard-fuller-retire-marquette/3223241001/">retired in June 2020</a> from Marquette University, where he was a longtime education professor and founded the <a href="https://www.marquette.edu/education/centers-and-clinics/institute-for-the-transformation-of-learning.php">Institute for the Transformation of Learning</a> to improve education options for low-income students in Milwaukee. During the 1990s he served as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools.</p>
<p>Here are five aspects from Fuller’s career that suggest a nuanced lens into the school choice movement. </p>
<h2>1. Advocated for Black Power in the 1960s</h2>
<p>Fuller first became involved in the civil rights movement when he joined the <a href="https://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/Mss/MOM-Oral%20History/Fuller_Howard_oral_transcript%5B1%5D.pdf">Congress of Racial Equality</a> in 1964 as a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. </p>
<p>In Cleveland, Malcolm X delivered a version of the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-020-09484-5">Ballot or the Bullet</a>” speech <a href="https://www.marquette.edu/mupress/Fuller.shtml">in April 1964</a>. Days later, Rev. Bruce Klunder, a 27-year-old white Presbyterian minister, was accidentally <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/rev-bruce-klunder">crushed to death</a> by a bulldozer as he and several other activists protested the construction of a new, all-Black school. The school was the city’s attempt to avoid <a href="https://case.edu/ech/articles/k/klunder-bruce-w">desegregation</a>. </p>
<p>Fuller later helped establish and lead Malcolm X Liberation University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The independent Black-run school, which operated from 1969 to 1973, offered a unique African and African American studies curriculum as well as technical training for students to work as activists in the freedom struggle. </p>
<p>Controlling and safeguarding a school for one’s own community became a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/we-are-an-african-people-9780199861477?cc=us&lang=en&">defining principle</a> of the Black Power movement. For Fuller and others, education was liberation for Black communities. As <a href="https://www.marquette.edu/mupress/Fuller.shtml">Fuller described</a> it, the mission of the university was to educate students “totally committed to the liberation of all African people.” </p>
<h2>2. Proposed an all-Black school district in the 1980s</h2>
<p>In 1978, Fuller was embroiled in a struggle in Milwaukee to save his alma mater, North Division High School, <a href="https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=etd">from closing</a>. That year, Derrick Bell, who is regarded as the “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-godfather-of-critical-race-theory-11624627522">godfather</a>” of <a href="https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752">critical race theory</a>, delivered an address in Milwaukee titled “Desegregation: A New Form of Discrimination.”</p>
<p>In his speech, Bell criticized education reforms that were more concerned with balancing racial demographics in schools than with improving Black education. He argued that building programs that did not always accept local Black students but made space for white students who lived outside the neighborhood <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1340546">hurt Black students</a>. Much like Fuller’s North Division High School, Black students were not guaranteed admission to the school closest to their home if those schools were designed to attract white students. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white photo of a man wearing a suit walking with a group of students, each one carrying a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3067%2C2023&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417268/original/file-20210820-13-1dnivi1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights leader Derrick Bell fought for equitable education for Black students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/harvard-law-school-professor-derrick-bell-walking-w-a-group-news-photo/50591767?adppopup=true">Steve Liss/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Several years later, Howard Fuller drafted the “<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-09-29-8703130605-story.html">Manifesto for New Directions in the Education of Black Children</a>.” The treatise proposed carving out an all-Black school district within the Milwaukee public school district to serve over <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351313841-13/case-separate-black-school-system-derrick-bell">6,000 students</a>. The district was to be controlled by and geared toward families of color. The plan was a response to a call made in 1935 by W.E.B. DuBois, who argued that Black educators and activists should <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2291871">invest more in building Black schools</a> than integrating hostile white schools. </p>
<h2>3. Supports school vouchers today</h2>
<p>Fuller’s proposal for an all-Black school district <a href="https://www.marquette.edu/mupress/Fuller.shtml">gained traction</a>, but Wisconsin legislators opted instead for a voucher plan in 1989 – the <a href="https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lfb/informational_papers/january_2003/0029_milwaukee_parental_choice_program_informational_paper_29.pdf">Milwaukee Parental Choice Program</a>. The program covered the tuition of students who wanted to enroll in private schools. </p>
<p>The Republican Party seized on the new voucher plan and pushed it through the state legislature. Ever since the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> decision in 1954, when the Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional, the Republican Party has increasingly aligned itself with school privatization efforts through <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2017/07/12/435629/racist-origins-private-school-vouchers/">vouchers</a> and “<a href="https://southernspaces.org/2019/segregationists-libertarians-and-modern-school-choice-movement/">freedom of choice</a>” plans. </p>
<p>Fuller also supported the Milwaukee voucher plan, as did some other Black activists, despite criticism from academics and organizations, <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/origins-milwaukee-parental-choice-program-no-struggle-no-progress-fuller/">including the NAACP</a>. </p>
<p>“If you’re drowning and a hand is extended to you, you don’t ask if the hand is attached to a Democrat or a Republican,” <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED531260">noted Wisconsin State Rep. Annette “Polly” Williams</a>, a Black Democrat who worked with Fuller to propose the legislation for a <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/for-maverick-polly-williams-the-mother-of-school-choice-the-point-was-always-to-empower-parents-and-improve-education-for-black-children/">separate school district</a> and also supported school vouchers.</p>
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<h2>4. Helped build the school choice movement</h2>
<p>Howard Fuller helped build the foundation for civil rights activists who are interested in school choice. As he told me during our interview in 2019, “I’ve always seen school choice from a social justice framework as opposed to a free market framework.”</p>
<p>Many activists saw it the same way.</p>
<p>For example, Wyatt Tee Walker, one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s trusted strategists, <a href="https://www.sisuluwalker.org/history">opened a charter school</a> in New York City in 1999. James Forman Jr., a civil rights lawyer, scholar, author and son of the prominent Black Panther Party organizer, opened a charter school in Washington, D.C. in 1997. Both leaders argued that failed desegregation attempts placed a <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3146/">burden on Black families</a> by catering to white families without promising quality education for Black students. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, education activist Geoffrey Canada was <a href="https://www.wreg.com/news/2013-freedom-award-winners-named/">awarded the National Freedom Award</a> in 2013 for his charter school network, the <a href="https://hcz.org/our-purpose/our-history-zone-map/">Harlem Children’s Zone</a>. And in 2016, Martin Luther King III led one of the largest school choice rallies in the nation. “This is about freedom,” King told the crowd gathered in Florida, “the freedom to choose for your family and your child.” </p>
<p>Support for choice is not limited to a small cadre of activists. A <a href="https://www.federationforchildren.org/national-school-choice-poll-shows-67-of-voters-support-school-choice-2019/">2019 poll</a> by the American Federation for Children estimated that 73% of Latinos and 67% of African Americans support school choice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mother, father and two small children hold hands while walking down street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/423182/original/file-20210924-24-glshmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Polling data shows a majority of African Americans support school choice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-myers-family-takes-a-walk-near-their-home-in-ne-news-photo/1208289093">Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>5. Drew scorn for working with Republicans</h2>
<p>Fuller allied with prominent Republicans on school choice. He <a href="https://archive.jsonline.com/news/opinion/howard-fuller-still-a-warrior-for-children-b99338584z1-273253071.html/">met with George W. Bush</a> in 1999 while Bush was running for president. A year earlier, he debated then-Sen. Barack Obama on the issue of vouchers. His school reform work in New Orleans in the 2000s led him to collaborate with Betsy DeVos, who at that time was a <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_e8dbd575-e6e4-5b1e-b4c3-02596e539cbb.html">GOP financier and charter school advocate</a>. He also later <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYg7jn1KQo8">supported DeVos’ contested nomination</a> for secretary of education. </p>
<p>Fuller drew <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/howard-fuller-a-civil-rights-warrior-or-billionares-tool/2014/09/09/3aedeff4-37c1-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html">strong criticism</a> from the press and some education reformers for his connections with the GOP, who earned a tarnished reputation on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/">civil rights</a>, and for embracing what many defined as a conservative agenda.</p>
<p>In his own defense, he noted in our interview that while he agrees with some Republicans on school choice, he strongly disagrees with them “on voter ID, on drug testing for people getting public assistance. I support the minimum wage. I support Obamacare.”</p>
<p>Though his position on school choice did not curry favors with <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807863466/more-than-one-struggle/">progressive education reformers</a>, Fuller demonstrated that not all demands for school choice are the same. For instance, he believes <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/segregated-schools-are-still-the-norm-howard-fuller-is-fine-with-that/">“mom and pop” charter schools</a> are more emblematic of the long history of the Black freedom struggle than schools proposed by national charter school networks, as these grassroots schools are more often driven by the demands of historically marginalized communities. </p>
<p>“You’re going to be fighting for something for entirely different reasons than some of the people out there who are your allies,” Fuller said in our interview. I believe this difference is imperative to understanding the nuance of school choice today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Hale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Howard Fuller’s support for school choice is connected to the Black Power movement and a pursuit to provide Black students a quality education by any means necessary.Jon Hale, Associate Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1554552021-02-17T19:11:47Z2021-02-17T19:11:47ZAustralian schools are becoming more segregated. This threatens student outcomes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384674/original/file-20210217-21-18mpsn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MGS_Senior_Campus.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian school system is concentrating more disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools, with serious implications for student achievement. A <a href="https://www.gie.unsw.edu.au/structural-failure-why-australia-keeps-falling-short-its-educational-goals">report released today by the Gonski Institute</a> says schools in Australia are more regressive, divided and socially segregated than in most other rich countries.</p>
<p>Our report examines how well Australian education meets our agreed national educational goals. These were most recently articulated in the Alice Springs <a href="http://www.educationcouncil.edu.au/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/Reports%20and%20publications/Alice%20Springs%20(Mparntwe)%20Education%20Declaration.pdf">(Mparntwe) declaration</a> as “improving educational outcomes for all young Australians” through “excellence and equity”.</p>
<p>When governments provide funding to schools, obligations and expectations rightly flow from this. If one of those is promoting “excellence and equity”, it’s time for a serious revision.</p>
<h2>We’re becoming more segregated</h2>
<p>The Australian school system is increasingly concentrating disadvantaged and advantaged students in separate schools.</p>
<p>For example, all Australian schools <a href="https://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/About_icsea_2014.pdf">have an ICSEA score</a>, which stands for the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage. ICSEA provides an indication of the socio-educational backgrounds of students. The higher the ICSEA, the higher the level of the school’s educational advantage.</p>
<p>Our analysis shows that in the government sector higher ICSEA schools are 26% bigger than they were in 2011, while lower ICSEA schools are marginally smaller than they were in 2011. Lower ICSEA Catholic schools are around 10% smaller than they were in 2011. </p>
<p>Our data show higher ICSEA schools in all sectors are not only growing in size, but have an increasing concentration of highly economically advantaged students. The reverse is happening in lower ICSEA schools.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-inequality-in-australian-schools-make-them-less-socially-segregated-95034">To reduce inequality in Australian schools, make them less socially segregated</a>
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<p>While some might think this is just the natural order of things, rising inequity creates major and ongoing structural problems that hold back our national education system. Both the <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/equity-in-education_9789264073234-en">OECD</a> and <a href="https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/995-an-unfair-start-education-inequality-children.html">UNICEF</a> have warned Australia of the risks of our growing educational inequity. </p>
<p>The rise in inequity is not just a problem for the most disadvantaged. It creates a burden with impacts across schooling. The distortions in school growth, according to level of advantage and location, mean management of the school system is unstable — and policies that give all students “a fair go” are actually difficult to implement. </p>
<p>This leads to “needs-based” approaches. But these are inevitably complex and often fail in implementation. The <a href="https://saveourschools.com.au/funding/the-facts-about-school-funding-in-australia">Gonski funding model</a> is one example.</p>
<h2>We’ve gone backwards since Gonski</h2>
<p>The first Gonski review argued additional funding for schools should be allocated on the basis of need. If implemented, this would have boosted equity funding to all sectors. But while funding since the Gonski review pays homage to the language of equity, the data about the overall distribution of funding don’t tell the same story.</p>
<p>Since 2011, the percentage increase in government per-student recurrent funding of Australia’s low ICSEA (under 1,000) schools has been more than the increase to high ICSEA (over 1,000) schools. However, funding aggregated from all sources shows less advantaged schools are no further ahead. And some schools and school sectors have received greater growth in funding – even when needs are matched and accounted for. </p>
<p>My School data also show Australia’s very remote schools, on average, received the same percentage funding increases as major city schools – despite metropolitan areas having clear social and educational advantage. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A school bus sign on a rural road." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384678/original/file-20210217-21-fyrpiy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Remote schools, on average, have received the same amount of funding as metropolitan schools — even under a needs-based funding model.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/school-bus-stop-warning-road-sign-398839681">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>There is no simple answer to why this happens, but it is an inevitable consequence of a competitive system of schools. While the Gonski review recommended independent oversight of the funding arrangements, this was never implemented.</p>
<h2>So, what do we do?</h2>
<p>We acknowledge responses to the report will include the perennial “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/catholic-leader-dismisses-school-funding-reform-as-flight-of-fantasy-20210217-p573a2.html">it’s too hard</a>”. </p>
<p>And while we acknowledge choice of schooling has a strong hold on the Australian psyche, we are calling for a new conversation about what obligations might contribute to more equitable outcomes in all schools. Our report offers ten policy recommendations.</p>
<p>These include fully funding non-government schools with comparable governance and accountability arrangements as government schools, and banning them from charging fees. This means reframing all schools, and consequent funding, as a “<a href="http://www.oecd.org/education/School-choice-and-school-vouchers-an-OECD-perspective.pdf">public good</a>” across all sectors. </p>
<p>The fully funded non-government private schools would still be run by the same organisations as before, and abide by the same educational philosophy. But no student would be turned away. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/03/16/myth-busted--private-schools-don-t-save-taxpayers--dollars.html#:%7E:text=Their%20report%2C%20'The%20School%20Money,culture%20publication%20Inside%20Story%20today.&text=The%20researchers%20said%20this%20is,level%20as%20similar%20public%20schools.">Our previous study</a> revealed combined state and federal recurrent funding of non-government schools is close to, and in many cases exceeds, combined government funding of government schools. </p>
<p>In effect, this means the taxpayer saves little by funding competing systems. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-primary-private-schools-should-be-fully-funded-by-governments-but-banned-from-charging-fees-131753">Australian primary private schools should be fully funded by governments — but banned from charging fees</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>One of the biggest barriers to achieving educational equity is the lack of routine reporting of school education outcomes relating to <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/2017-section-11-equity-groups">equity groups</a>, as is <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/2017-section-11-equity-groups">required in higher education</a>. For example, the ICSEA does not make a single appearance in any annual <a href="https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-2018">national reports on schooling</a>. </p>
<p>To improve equity in schooling, we need clear analysis, monitoring and targeting of inequity. To gain due policy attention the <a href="https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-2018">National Report on Schooling in Australia</a> needs to report on school data and student attainment across all equity groups, across time. We simply cannot allow this growing problem to go unrecognised in our annual national school report card. </p>
<p>Our report team includes two former school principals (one government, one non-government) and a former education minister. We are sensitive to the positioning of diverse interested voices, but we can’t help concluding that something’s got to give. </p>
<p>Rising school inequity means inclusive schooling, providing “a fair go” for all Australian children, is increasingly a pipedream. Growing segregation and residualisation among Australian schools also mean students are less likely to engage with peers from a wide range of backgrounds. In the long term both these issues will lead to shifts in Australian society and character.</p>
<p>We cannot continue to put the important work of structural school reform in the too-hard basket. If we do, countless students, teachers, communities and our nation will continue to suffer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One recommendation to fix inequity in Australia is for the government to fund non-government schools to the same degree as government schools, while banning them from charging fees.Rachel Wilson, Associate Professor in Education, University of SydneyPaul Kidson, Lecturer in Educational Leadership, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1549072021-02-10T13:15:21Z2021-02-10T13:15:21ZFighting school segregation didn’t take place just in the South<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383414/original/file-20210209-21-ego0yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6025%2C3860&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">School boycott picketers march across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Board of Education in 1964.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/collaboration/boards/34ORdnAZ_EWMjlv4alVWIA">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether it’s black-and-white photos of Arkansas’ <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/little-rock-nine">Little Rock Nine</a> or Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of New Orleans schoolgirl <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruby-Bridges">Ruby Bridges</a>, images of school desegregation often make it seem as though it was an issue for Black children primarily in the South.</p>
<p>It is true that Bridges, the Little Rock Nine and other brave students in Southern states, including North Carolina and Tennessee, changed the face of American education when they tested the 1954 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education decision</a> that mandated the desegregation of public education. But the struggle to desegregate America’s schools in the 1950s and ‘60s did not take place solely in the South. Black students and their parents also boldly challenged segregated schooling in the North.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of African American students read books together in a small room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/383374/original/file-20210209-19-10i8p8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Little Rock Nine form a study group together after being prevented from entering Central High School in 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-little-rock-nine-form-a-study-group-after-being-news-photo/514877764?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Mae Mallory, a Harlem activist and mother, serves as an example. Her name may not be the first one that comes to mind when it comes to 1950s school desegregation battles. Yet Mallory made history – and changed the face of public education – when she filed the first <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/strange-careers-of-the-jim-crow-north-segregation-and-struggle-outside-of-the-south/oclc/1156961651&referer=brief_results">post-Brown suit</a> against the New York City Board of Education in 1957.</p>
<h2>Prompted by her children</h2>
<p>Mallory got involved in education activism after her children – Patricia and Keefer Jr. – told her about the deplorable conditions of their segregated school, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/letters-from-prison-the-story-of-a-frame-up/oclc/30500574">P.S. 10</a> in Harlem. Mallory joined the Parents Committee for a Better Education and became a vocal advocate of Black children’s right to a safe learning environment.</p>
<p>The turning point came when she indicted the racist school system in her January 1957 testimony before the New York School Board’s Commission on Integration. Mallory embarrassed the board by remarking that P.S. 10 was “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/exposing-the-whole-segregation-myth-the-harlem-nine-and-new-york-citys-school-desegregation-battles/oclc/7323678892&referer=brief_results">just as ‘Jim Crow’”</a> as the Hazel Street School she had attended in Macon, Georgia, in the 1930s. Her testimony was an integral part of the parental complaints that forced the board to construct a new building and hire new teachers.</p>
<h2>A larger battle</h2>
<p>Encouraged by this victory, Mallory began a fight to end the New York City Board of Education’s segregation practices. Existing zoning maps required her daughter, Patricia, to attend a junior high school in Harlem. Mallory argued that this school was inferior to others in the area and would not adequately prepare her daughter for high school. Instead, she enrolled Patricia in a school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.</p>
<p>The board blocked Patricia’s enrollment. Mallory took action. With the help of a young Black lawyer, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/10/obituaries/paul-b-zuber-is-dead-at-age-60-fought-segregated-school-systems.html">Paul Zuber</a>, she sued, claiming existing zoning policies relegated her daughter – and other Black children – to segregated, inferior schools. Filed three years after Brown, Mallory’s suit forced the Board of Education to face the fact that segregation was a persistent problem in New York City public schools. Eight other mothers joined Mallory’s fight. The press dubbed them the “<a href="http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/jun/15/mae-mallory-often-ignored-militant-activist/">Harlem 9</a>.” </p>
<h2>Making headlines</h2>
<p>Once filed, Mallory’s suit became front-page news in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial-2.html">The New York Times</a>. A year later, however, the case stalled. In an effort to spur the suit along, the Harlem 9 instituted a boycott of three Harlem junior high schools. Zuber knew that the mothers would face charges of violating compulsory school attendance laws. This, in turn, would force a judge to rule on their suit.</p>
<p>In December 1958, Judge Justine Polier <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/exposing-the-whole-segregation-myth-the-harlem-nine-and-new-york-citys-school-desegregation-battles/oclc/7323678892&referer=brief_results">sided with the Harlem 9</a>, declaring: “These parents have the constitutionally guaranteed right to elect no education for their children rather than to subject them to discriminatory, inferior education.” The Harlem 9 gained the first legal victory proving that de facto segregation existed in Northern schools. The decision galvanized local Black parents, causing hundreds to request transfers for their children to better schools.</p>
<h2>A compromise</h2>
<p>The parties reached a settlement in February 1959. The Harlem 9’s children would not enroll in the schools for which they were zoned. Nor would they be able to engage in “open choice” – the parents’ request to send their children to a school of their choosing.</p>
<p>Instead, they would attend a Harlem junior high school that offered more resources, including college prep courses, although it was still largely segregated. The Harlem 9 would be allowed to continue with their ultimately unsuccessful civil suit against the board. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy085">The mothers had also filed a million-dollar lawsuit</a> seeking damages for the psychological and emotional toll their children endured in segregated schools. This was a compromise on all fronts. However, Mallory and the other mothers gained a substantial victory in forcing the court and the Board of Education to confront the segregation that existed in New York City public schools. Their boycott also became a unifying strategy for subsequent struggles, most notably for the <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/nyc-school-children-boycott-school/">1964 New York City school boycott</a>. During this boycott, hundreds of thousands of parents, students and activists engaged in a daylong protest of segregation and inequality in public city schools.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The Harlem 9’s fight serves as an important reminder that school desegregation protests were popular and successful in the North as well as in the South. It also provides insight into the prominent role Black women had in these struggles and the diverse range of strategies they deployed – from championing “open choice” to school boycotts – to help their children have access to equal education. </p>
<p>Even more importantly, perhaps, their fight demonstrates the importance of appreciating the different ways in which Black women compelled schools to make good on the Brown decision – a fight that, nearly 70 years later, is still being fought. The Supreme Court’s mandate in the Brown decision that public schools desegregate with “<a href="https://www.backstoryradio.org/blog/with-all-deliberate-speed/">all deliberate speed</a>” is unfinished. Nationwide, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/learning/lesson-plans/still-separate-still-unequal-teaching-about-school-segregation-and-educational-inequality.html">Black children remain</a> in schools that are <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-getting-worse-data">segregated</a>, <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion">underfunded</a> and <a href="https://www.insider.com/states-with-the-best-and-worst-public-education-systems-2019-8">overcrowded</a> – much as they were when Mallory began her fight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154907/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashley Farmer receives funding from National Endowment for the Humanities</span></em></p>In the 1950s, Harlem mother Mae Mallory fought a school system that she saw as ‘just as Jim Crow’ as the one she had attended in the South.Ashley Farmer, Assistant Professor of History & African and African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1227652019-09-10T12:32:46Z2019-09-10T12:32:46ZWho was the first Black child to go to an integrated school?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291328/original/file-20190906-175714-npgq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">School segregation was the law of the land in the U.S. during much of the 19th and 20th centuries. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/african-american-children-learning-about-thanksgiving-242289637">Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Who was the first black child to go to an integrated school? – Makena T., age 12, Washington, D.C.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>When people think about the time when Black people first began to integrate America’s public schools, often they think back to the 1960s.</p>
<p>But history shows the first court-ordered school integration case took place a hundred years earlier, in the 1860s.</p>
<p>In April of 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, Susan Clark – a 12-year-old girl from Muscatine, Iowa – became the <a href="https://drakelawreview.org/2019/06/06/vol-67-no-1/">first Black child to attend an integrated school because of a court order</a>.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court of Iowa issued that court order when it made its historic ruling in a school desegregation case brought by Susan’s father, Alexander Clark. This was 86 years before the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark <em>Brown v. Board of Education</em> decision, which ordered the desegregation of the nation’s public schools.</p>
<p>In the Iowa case, a judge named Chester Cole ruled that the Muscatine School Board’s racial segregation policy was illegal. The Iowa Supreme Court was the first court in the nation to say that segregation was unlawful.</p>
<h2>Up from slavery</h2>
<p><a href="https://lawreviewdrake.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/clark-reflections-consolidated.pdf">Susan Clark’s parents</a> were Alexander Clark and Catherine Griffin Clark. Alexander’s father, John – this would be Susan’s grandfather – was born to a slave owner and an enslaved woman. Both John and his mother were freed after John’s birth. Alexander’s mother, Rebecca Darnes, was the daughter of emancipated slaves, George and Leticie Darnes. Alexander was born free in Pennsylvania in 1826. Catherine Griffin was born a slave in Virginia in 1829, and was freed at the age of three and taken to Ohio.</p>
<p>Alexander and Catherine married in 1848, and set up their home in Muscatine, a small, prosperous town on the Mississippi River. Alexander was a barber and a successful businessman. He was an outstanding speaker and was so active in the Underground Railroad – a secret network that helped slaves escape to freedom – and other civil rights causes that he has been recognized as “<a href="https://video.iptv.org/video/wliw21-specials-alexander-clark-lost-in-history-1/">one of the greatest civil rights leaders of the 19th century</a>.”</p>
<h2>School board wanted segregation</h2>
<p>The Muscatine School Board didn’t try to hide the reason it rejected Susan’s application to attend Grammar School No. 2, which was the school closest to where she lived. The school said its decision to keep Black and white students segregated was in line with “public sentiment that is opposed to the intermingling of white and colored children in the same schools.” The school board argued that its schools were “separate but equal.” This argument worked in a lot of other courts at the time, including the highest courts in Massachusetts, New York and California. But the argument didn’t work in the Supreme Court of Iowa. </p>
<p>Justice Cole pointed out that the very first words in the Iowa Constitution say “equal rights to all.”</p>
<h2>First black graduate</h2>
<p>Susan Clark didn’t experience threats and taunts like Black children did when they integrated schools <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-story-behind-the-famous-little-rock-nine-scream-image">in the 1960s</a>. There were only 35 Black children in Muscatine at the time.</p>
<p>Susan Clark went on to become the first Black graduate of a public school in Iowa – Muscatine High School – in 1871 and served as commencement speaker.</p>
<p>The Muscatine Journal praised Susan’s commencement address, “Nothing But Leaves,” for its “originality,” observing it was “unpretending in style” and had “many excellent thoughts.”</p>
<p>Susan married the Rev. Richard Holley, an African Methodist Episcopalian minister, and their ministry took them to Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa, and Champaign, Illinois. Susan lived a long life, passing in 1925 at age 70, and was buried in Muscatine’s Greenwood Cemetery. </p>
<h2>Iowa led the nation</h2>
<p>You might wonder why and how the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against segregation at a time when other courts were not doing so.</p>
<p>Each of the four justices on the Iowa Supreme Court was a Republican – the party of Abraham Lincoln – and each had been a strong supporter of the Union cause. Chester Cole was an early advocate for giving black men the right to vote because of their service in the Union Army during the Civil War.</p>
<p>It is important to note that the Iowa Supreme Court never overturned the Clark v. Board of School Directors decision, even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that segregation was legal under the U.S. Constitution. </p>
<p>Fifty-eight years after ruling that segregation was legal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the 1954 Brown v. Board decision that desegregated the nation’s public schools. The Brown decision showed how far ahead the Iowa Supreme Court was when it said segregation was illegal nearly a century earlier.</p>
<p>You can learn more about the stories of Susan Clark, Alexander Clark and Justice Chester Cole in this 2019 Drake Law review article, titled <a href="https://lawreviewdrake.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/clark-reflections-consolidated.pdf">Clark v. Board of School Directors: Reflections After 150 Years</a>, and from the electronic study guide on the <a href="https://libguides.law.drake.edu/c.php?g=696137&p=6080838">Clark decision and its historical context</a>. </p>
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<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am a Professor Emeritus of Drake Law School, where I was a full-time member of the Law Faculty for 38 years (including 10 years service as Associate Dean). I retired in 2014. Drake Law School hosted the 2018 Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Iowa Supreme Court's decision in Clark v. Board of Directors (of Muscatine Schools), which is the focus of the piece I have written for The Conversation. I was a principal author of Drake University's grant application to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which was successful, and the TMCF was a major sponsor of the Sesquicentennial Celebration. I received no compensation from the TMCF grant, but Drake did reimburse me for a small amount of out-of-pocket expenses I incurred from the TMCF grant. I am a volunteer and co-chair of the Legal Redress Committees for the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP and the Des Moines NAACP; I receive no compensation from the NAACP. The Des Moines NAACP also provided funding to the Clark Sesquicentennial as a co-sponsor. </span></em></p>School integration is often thought of as something that took place in the 1960s. But the first Black student to desegregate a school by court order was an Iowa girl named Susan Clark in 1868.Russell Ellsworth Lovell II, Professor Emeritus, Drake University Law School, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1204782019-07-24T11:07:16Z2019-07-24T11:07:16ZThe Supreme Court decision that kept suburban schools segregated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285428/original/file-20190723-110187-mgegal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 1974 Supreme Court decision found that school segregation was allowable if it wasn't being done on purpose.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-MA-USA-APHS279521-African-American-/050ba86ea2e64cd2a8adea8ea081ff59/25/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>America recently marked the 65-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> – a landmark case intended to abolish the “separate-but-equal” doctrine of racial segregation in schools.</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-school-segregation-looks-like-in-the-us-today-in-4-charts-120061">racial makeup of today’s schools</a> actually owes itself to a series of other court decisions – including one issued 45 years ago on July 25, 1974. The <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/73-434">Milliken v. Bradley decision</a> sanctioned a form of segregation that has allowed suburbs to escape being included in court-ordered desegregation and busing plans with nearby cities. </p>
<p>The Milliken decision recognized <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520284258/why-busing-failed">“de facto” segregation</a> – segregation that occurs as a result of circumstances, not law. This allowed schools in the North to maintain racially separate schools at the same time southern schools were being ordered by the courts to desegregate. By giving suburbs a pass from large mandated desegregation attempts, it built a figurative wall around white flight enclaves, essentially shielding them from the “crisis” of urban education.</p>
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<h2>Upholding segregation</h2>
<p>Outside a few voluntary and limited programs such as <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300087659/other-boston-busing-story">METCO</a> in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, or <a href="https://www.wuwm.com/post/history-and-impact-wisconsins-only-school-integration-program#stream/0">Chapter 220</a> in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that enabled a small number of children from cities to attend schools in the suburbs or more affluent areas, northern school districts remained largely segregated.</p>
<p>The decision ruled that social segregation was permissible and therefore exempt from court-ordered, “forced” desegregation plans. That is, the court said, if segregation occurred because of certain “<a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/modern-segregation/">unknowable factors</a>” such as economic changes and racial fears – not a law – then it’s legal.</p>
<p>Originating in Detroit, a major destination of the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190696/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/9780679763888/">Great Migration</a>, the mass movement of southern African Americans to northern cities, the decision dictated how desegregation would proceed outside the South, if at all. </p>
<p>Federal courts had issued rulings that helped eradicate legal segregation - primarily in the South - through the 1968 <a href="https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/civil-rights-movement-virginia/green-decision">Green v. School Board of New Kent County</a> and 1969 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1969/632">Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education</a> decisions, even employing <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-national-guard-deployments-timeline-htmlstory.html">military force</a>. </p>
<p>But the nation largely understood segregation to be an <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history/article/best-defense-is-a-good-offense-the-stennis-amendment-and-the-fracturing-of-liberal-school-desegregation-policy-19641972/AE6D9D272A69B34DA1B0283830DDA315">issue confined to the South</a>. Milliken brought the freedom struggle’s call for integration to the North.</p>
<h2>A new legal front</h2>
<p>Twenty years after the Brown decision, the NAACP, Urban League and civil rights activists documented how segregation led to underfunded and inferior schooling across the North in cities like <a href="https://findingaids.library.uic.edu/exhibits/CULExhibit/Urban%20League%20Exhibit/1_1_body.htm">Chicago</a>, <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/school-boycott-1964/">New York</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-detroit-exploded-in-the-summer-of-1967-81065">Detroit</a>. </p>
<p>Black activists in Detroit like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/27/us/albert-cleage-is-dead-at-88-led-black-nationalist-church.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=C6ED4B32FBE3A1F5C074D7543EEEFF9F&gwt=pay">Rev. Albert Cleage</a>, the NAACP and black parents in segregated housing and schools began to demand education reform as the freedom struggle <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780312294670">intensified</a> during the 1940s. They demanded things that ranged from community control to integration in all schools as opposed to token desegregation. By 1970, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/24/youve-probably-never-heard-of-one-of-the-worst-supreme-court-decisions/?utm_term=.c9cb4ff3e932">the NAACP demanded</a> a desegregated school system as promised by Brown and filed a lawsuit against the governor, William Milliken.</p>
<p>As the Milliken case worked its way through the courts from 1970 to 1974, the nature of public education was changing. Millions of whites abandoned the cities for suburban enclaves. Like the rest of the North, <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/23769/rise_and_fall_of_an_urban_school_system">Detroit</a> experienced dramatic population shifts that decimated public schools. From the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/emeh45jimm/a-declining-population-in-a-widespread-city-13/#28fabcf41daa">1950s through 1970s</a>, <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/23769/rise_and_fall_of_an_urban_school_system">Detroit</a> lost over 30% of its white population to the suburbs, where the population climbed to over 3 million. By the 1970s students of color comprised nearly <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/23769/rise_and_fall_of_an_urban_school_system">75%</a> of a once majority-white system. More affluent whites and the few families of color who fled left behind a depleted tax base that starved public schools, as described in Jeffrey Mirel’s “<a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/444068">The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System</a>.”</p>
<h2>Desegregation dreams deferred</h2>
<p>To address the issue of persistent segregation, the Supreme Court consented in the 1971 <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/402/1">Swann v. Mecklenburg</a> decision to busing students outside their neighborhood schools in North Carolina as a solution to segregation.</p>
<p>Following the spirit of Swann, a United States district judge for the Eastern District of Michigan named Stephen J. Roth, issued one of the most extensive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/15/archives/mass-busing-is-ordered-for-detroit-and-suburbs-busing-ordered-for.html">desegregation orders</a> of the era in 1972. Roth’s plan called for the two-way integration of 780,000 students across not only Detroit, but school districts in a tri-county area. </p>
<p>The plan was never put into action because of the 1974 Supreme Court Milliken decision.</p>
<p>Districts could still voluntarily bus - but busing was so unpopular and politically untenable in 1974 that few attempted it in any serious manner. A narrow 5-4 majority of justices determined that “racial imbalance” in Detroit – and by inference in other U.S. cities – was caused by “de facto” segregation. </p>
<p>Justice Potter Stewart wrote in his <a href="https://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.63.4.u4276l7m406h5262?journalCode=haer">concurring opinion</a> that segregation in Detroit was “caused by unknown and perhaps unknowable factors such as in-migration, birth rates, economic changes, or cumulative acts of private racial fears.” In other words, the justices in the majority – most of them appointed by President Richard Nixon – found that the suburbs should not be subject to busing.</p>
<p>In a scathing dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall, the lead counsel for the NAACP when the Brown case was brought to the court and who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/08/opinion/oh-yipe-said-thurgood-marshall.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=D9FA2DF22BFC38D939D525D8AF724DA3&gwt=pay">appointed to the Supreme Court</a> in 1967, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/418/717">wrote</a>: “After 20 years of small, often difficult steps (toward equal justice under law) the Court today takes a giant step backwards.” He said the Court revived “the same separate and inherently unequal education … afforded in the past.”</p>
<p>Milliken put forth the convenient narrative that segregation in the North was natural and therefore permissible. It also freed northern school districts from being forced to participate in large-scale solutions to segregation and unequal education outside their boundaries. </p>
<p>I believe continuing to ignore Milliken covers up the ongoing segregation of America’s schools today and the nation’s collective, ongoing failure to improve public education in the spirit of Brown. </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Hale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the Supreme Court exempted suburbs in the North from the kind of desegregation orders imposed in the South, it enabled the ‘de facto’ segregation that continues in America’s schools to this day.Jon Hale, Associate Professor of Education, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1172682019-05-26T19:32:30Z2019-05-26T19:32:30ZSome public schools get nearly 6 times as much funding, thanks to parents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276289/original/file-20190524-187185-7j19gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite attempts to the contrary, government schools are far from equal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More advantaged public secondary schools across Australia generate nearly six times the amount of funding contributions from parents than less advantaged schools receive.</p>
<p>Our study, published in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13384-019-00328-0">The Australian Educational Researcher</a> journal, examined private levels of funding in public secondary schools.</p>
<p>We found annual parent contributions per school were on average A$352,956 in schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Schools serving the most advantaged students generated an average A$1,584,974 from parents per year. </p>
<p>Parent contributions in our study included funding for charges such as essential learning items, excursions and specialist programs. They did not include fundraising.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-next-government-needs-to-do-to-tackle-unfairness-in-school-funding-110879">What the next government needs to do to tackle unfairness in school funding</a>
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<h2>Do parent contributions match status?</h2>
<p>This is the first comprehensive study that has examined inequalities in school funding as exclusively generated by parents in public secondary schools.</p>
<p>We examined parent monetary contributions for 150 public secondary schools in Melbourne and Geelong. We wanted to know whether parent contributions were related to school socioeconomic status.</p>
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<p>We used the parent fees, charges and contributions reported on the <a href="https://www.myschool.edu.au/">MySchool</a> website from 2013-2016. MySchool defines “<a href="https://www.myschool.edu.au/glossary/">fees, charges and parent contributions</a>” as “income received from parents for the delivery of education services to students”.</p>
<p>The types of voluntary financial contributions parents can make to public schools differ across states. Victorian legislation mandates the “<a href="https://www.education.vic.gov.au/parents/going-to-school/Pages/school-costs.aspx">standard curriculum program</a>” must be provided free of charge. </p>
<p>But parents are required to pay for what the school categorises as “essential student learning items” and there is <a href="https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/20150211-School-costs.pdf">little oversight</a> in how schools determine what fits this category. </p>
<p>So it varies widely. It could be textbooks, uniforms, stationery or mandatory excursions. It can encompass any additional materials the school considers “essential” for a learning task.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/public-schools-actually-outperform-private-schools-and-with-less-money-113914">Public schools actually outperform private schools, and with less money</a>
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<p>Schools can also request parent payments for “optional items” offered in addition to the standard curriculum. These include extracurricular programs, music tuition, excursions and camps, as well as “voluntary financial contributions”, which are typically delegated for a special initiative such as a building fund.</p>
<p>We compared the parent contributions to the School Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (<a href="http://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/About_icsea_2014.pdf">ICSEA</a>) – a measure that allows a comparison of the levels of educational advantage or disadvantage students bring to their academic studies. </p>
<p>Our study used ICSEA as a proxy for school socioeconomic status. The ICSEA includes parent occupation and parent education, school remoteness and the percentage of Indigenous student enrolment.</p>
<p><iframe id="EoQ7d" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/EoQ7d/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Majorly unequal</h2>
<p>We calculated the <em>per student</em> amount averaged over four years for each school, the <em>per school</em> amount averaged over four years, and the <em>total</em> amount per school, summed over four years. </p>
<p>We then compared this to student enrolment in each school. This enabled us to comprehensively examine the reported differences and gaps, and how these correlate with school advantage or disadvantage across different metrics. </p>
<p>Public schools that serve more advantaged student cohorts generated, on average, 5.8 times greater levels of income, in comparison to schools that serve disadvantaged student cohorts.</p>
<p>The difference was greater when comparing <em>per school</em> parent contributions, in comparison to <em>per student</em>. This is because schools that serve more advantaged student cohorts tend to be larger. </p>
<p>The median <em>per student</em> parent contribution in the most advantaged schools is more than four times greater (A$1,399) than for the most disadvantaged schools (A$335).</p>
<p>Annual funding per school, when averaged over the four years, was A$352,956 for schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Schools serving the most advantaged students generated an average A$1,584,974. </p>
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<p>The majority of schools we examined were not socially integrated, meaning they enrolled mostly students from advantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds, but not both. Only one-quarter of schools enrolled students from both advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.</p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>Parent-generated funding disparities between advantaged and disadvantaged schools are a form of educational inequality associated with socially segregated schooling. </p>
<p>It’s relatively unsurprising schools with more advantaged students report higher annual contributions from parents. But it’s concerning these amounts differ so substantially between advantaged and disadvantaged schools. </p>
<p>These disparities can further fuel school segregation which is already higher in Australia than in most other countries in the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i-9789264266490-en.htm">OECD</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i-9789264266490-en.htm">OECD</a> argues reducing school segregation is one of the best ways to reduce achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students, and improve educational effectiveness more generally.</p>
<p>Previous <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/672011?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">research</a> has linked school segregation with other inequalities. For instance, schools that mainly serve disadvantaged students can struggle to attract and retain <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/educational-opportunity-for-all_9789264287457-en">experienced teachers</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-inequality-in-australian-schools-make-them-less-socially-segregated-95034">To reduce inequality in Australian schools, make them less socially segregated</a>
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<p>Policymakers should consider measures to reduce disparities between schools as part of a larger effort to improve educational equity and effectiveness. </p>
<p>Governments could create additional funding schemes for disadvantaged schools to support special initiatives and programs that in other schools would typically be subsidised by parent contributions. </p>
<p>Alternatively, governments could limit the amount of money schools can ask or expect parents to pay. Whatever the approach, parent contributions need to be monitored.</p>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: this article mentioned a parent-contribution scheme in Canada which was inaccurate. This has now been deleted.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Rowe receives funding from REDI (Research for Educational Impact), Deakin University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public school funding aims for every student to have the same opportunities. But a new study shows parents contributions still perpetuate inequality in government schools.Emma Rowe, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin UniversityLaura Perry, Associate Professor, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1172992019-05-16T20:45:51Z2019-05-16T20:45:51ZThe Brown v. Board of Education case didn’t start how you think it did<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275017/original/file-20190516-69195-1vodby7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thurgood Marshall outside the Supreme Court in Washington in 1958. Marshall, the head of the NAACP's legal arm who argued part of the case, went on to become the Supreme Court's first African-American justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/School-Segregation-5-Things/5e2ed88ec9dd4de1a59dc35bf757dc33/178/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the nation celebrates the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the case is often recalled as one that “<a href="https://www.cjonline.com/opinion/20190515/nicolas-shump-with-all-deliberate-speed">forever changed the course of American history</a>.”</p>
<p>But the story behind the historic Supreme Court case, as I plan to show in my forthcoming book, “Blacks Against Brown: The Black Anti-Integration Movement in Topeka, Kansas, 1941-1954,” is much more complex than the highly inaccurate but often-repeated <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">tale</a> about how the lawsuit began. The story that often gets told is that – as recounted in <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">this news story</a> – the case began with Oliver Brown, who tried to enroll his daughter, Linda, at the Sumner School, an all-white elementary school in Topeka near the Browns’ home. Or that Oliver Brown was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/27/the-determined-black-dad-who-took-linda-brown-by-the-hand-and-stepped-into-history/?utm_term=.a1c02f541f8d">“determined father who took Linda Brown by the hand and made history.”</a></p>
<p>As my research shows, that tale is at odds with two great historical ironies of Brown v. Board. The first irony is that Oliver Brown was actually a reluctant participant in the Supreme Court case that would come to be named after him. In fact, Oliver Brown, a reserved man, had to be convinced to sign on to the lawsuit because he was a new pastor at church that did not want to get involved in Topeka NAACP’s desegregation lawsuit, according to various Topekans whose recollections are recorded in the Brown Oral History Collection at the <a href="https://www.kshs.org/p/brown-v-board-of-education-oral-history/13996">Kansas State Historical Society</a>.</p>
<p>The second irony is that, of the five local desegregation cases brought before the Supreme Court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1953, Brown’s case – formally known as <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=87&page=transcript">Oliver Brown et al., v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.</a> – ended up bringing widespread attention to a city where many blacks actually resisted school integration. That not-so-small detail has been overshadowed by the way the case is presented in history.</p>
<h2>Black resistance to integration</h2>
<p>While school desegregation may have symbolized racial progress for many blacks throughout the country, that simply was not the case in Topeka. In fact, most of the resistance to the NAACP’s school desegregation efforts in Topeka came from Topeka’s black citizens, not whites.</p>
<p>“I didn’t get anything from white folks,” Leola Brown Montgomery, wife of Oliver and mother of Linda, recalled. “I tell you here in Topeka, unlike the other places where they brought these cases we didn’t have any threats” from whites.</p>
<p>Prior to the Brown case, black Topekans had been embroiled in a decade-long conflict over segregated schools that began with a lawsuit involving Topeka’s junior high schools. When the Topeka School Board commissioned a poll to determine black support for integrated junior high schools in 1941, 65 percent of black parents with junior high school students indicated that they preferred all-black schools, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">according to school board minutes</a>.</p>
<h2>Separate but equal</h2>
<p>Another wrinkle to the story is that the city’s four all-black elementary schools – Buchanan, McKinley, Monroe and Washington – had resources, facilities and curricula that were comparable to that of Topeka’s white schools. The Topeka school board actually adhered to the “separate-but-equal” standard established by the 1896 <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52&page=transcript">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> case.</p>
<p>Even Linda Brown recalled the all-black Monroe Elementary School that she attended as a <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">“very nice facility, being very well-kept.”</a></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Linda Brown Smith, shown at age 9 in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-LI-/daad13dbe4e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP</a></span>
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<p>“I remember the materials that we used being of good quality,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">stated</a> in a 1985 interview. </p>
<p>That made the Topeka lawsuit unique among the cases the NAACP Legal Defense Fund combined and argued before the Supreme Court in 1953. Black schoolchildren in Topeka did not experience overcrowded classrooms like those in Washington, D.C., nor were they subjected to dilapidated school buildings like those in Delaware or Virginia.</p>
<p>While black parents in Delaware and South Carolina petitioned their local school boards for bus service, the Topeka School Board voluntarily provided buses for black children. Topeka’s school buses became central to the local NAACP’s equal access complaint due to <a href="http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/50359858-rear-view-of-linda-brown-10-yr-old-african-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=yDBvXkFZSD8CXY2A11A8jtLimoAtZnu8nbiCsIQLNqA%3d">weather and travel conditions</a>. </p>
<p>Quality education was “not the issue at that time,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">recalled</a>, “but it was the distance that I had to go to acquire that education.”</p>
<p>Another unique characteristic of Topeka public schools was that black students went to both all-black elementary and predominantly white junior high and high schools. This fact presented another challenge for the Topeka NAACP’s desegregation crusade. The transition from segregated elementary schools to integrated junior and senior high schools was a harsh and alienating one. Many black Topekans recalled the overt and covert racism of white teachers and administrators. “It wasn’t the grade schools that sunk me,” Richard Ridley, a black resident and Topeka High School alumnus who graduated in 1947, told interviewers for the Brown Oral History Collection at the Kansas State Historical Society. “It was the high school.”</p>
<h2>Black teachers cherished</h2>
<p>A primary reason that black Topekans fought the local NAACP’s desegregation efforts is because they appreciated black educators’ dedication to their students. Black residents who opposed school integration often spoke of the familial environment in all-black schools.</p>
<p>Linda Brown herself praised the teachers at her alma mater, Monroe Elementary, for having high expectations and setting “<a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">very good examples for their students</a>.</p>
<p>Black teachers proved to be a formidable force against the local NAACP. "We have a situation here in Topeka in which the Negro Teachers are violently opposed to our efforts to integrate the public schools,” NAACP branch Secretary Lucinda Todd <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">wrote in a letter</a> to the national NAACP in 1953.</p>
<p>Black supporters of all-black schools used a number of overt and covert tactics to undermine NAACP members’ efforts. Those tactics included lobbying, networking, social ostracism, verbal threats, vandalism, sending harassing mail, making intimidating phone calls, the Brown Oral History Collection reveals.</p>
<p>But the national office of the NAACP never appreciated the unique challenges that its local chapter faced. The Topeka NAACP struggled to recruit plaintiffs, despite their door-to-door canvassing.</p>
<p>Fundraising was also a major problem. The group could not afford the legal services of their attorneys and raised only $100 of the <a href="http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/213401/page/1">$5,000 needed to bring the case</a> before the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
<h2>Unheralded legacy</h2>
<p>History ultimately would not be on the side of the majority of Topeka’s black community. A small cohort of local NAACP members kept pushing for desegregation, even as they stood at odds with most black Topekans.</p>
<p>Linda Brown and her father may be remembered as the faces of Brown v. Board of Education. But without the resilience and resourcefulness of three local NAACP members – namely, Daniel Sawyer, McKinley Burnett and Lucinda Todd – there would have been no Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.</p>
<p>The real story of Brown v. Board may not capture the public imagination like that of a 9-year-old girl who “brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America.” Nevertheless, it is the truth behind the myth. And it deserves to be told.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story appeared in The Conversation on <a href="https://theconversation.com/much-of-what-you-think-you-know-about-linda-brown-a-central-figure-in-brown-v-board-of-education-is-wrong-94082">March 30, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charise Cheney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While the Brown vs. Board of Education case is often celebrated for ordering school desegregation, history shows many black people in the city where the case began opposed integrated schools.Charise Cheney, Associate Professsor of Ethnic Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955832018-05-17T10:41:12Z2018-05-17T10:41:12ZWhy America needs a new approach to school desegregation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218902/original/file-20180514-100690-u5m7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite decades of attempts at integration, America's school remain largely segregated.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/schoolgirl-reading-her-desk-elementary-school-667971985?src=jepv4mN_IIlwsOMLIhttdQ-1-1">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite all the time and effort invested desegregating the nation’s schools over the past half century, the reality is <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/american-schools-are-more-segregated-now-than-they-were-in-1968-and-the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-cc7abbf6651c/">America’s schools are more segregated now than they were in 1968</a>.</p>
<p>Keep that statistic in mind as the nation marks the 64th anniversary of <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> – the 1954 Supreme Court decision that famously mandated the desegregation of U.S. public schools.</p>
<p>If the vision of educational fairness expressed in the Brown decision is to be achieved, the nation must deal with the underlying driver of racial segregation in schools: the inclination of white citizens to hoard educational resources.</p>
<p>I make these arguments as one who has <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317606451">studied school segregation up close</a> for over a decade. </p>
<p>Racial segregation has proved resilient over the last half century. It <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/24/youve-probably-never-heard-of-one-of-the-worst-supreme-court-decisions/?utm_term=.d897cda8d606">circumvented court orders</a> and reappeared in housing patterns shaped by school zoning policies. It adapted by moving down to the classroom level to take the form of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/modern-day-segregation-in-public-schools/382846/">tracking</a> students into gifted and talented programs or Advanced Placement classes. It has become <a href="http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/fault-lines/">alloyed with economic segregation</a> so that low-income students and students of color end up concentrated in the same schools. The consequences have been predictably dire for students relegated to these increasingly underfunded and racially isolated schools.</p>
<h2>Why school segregation persists</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-resistance-to-school-desegregation">historical record</a> shows that the desire for predominantly white educational spaces has <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-boston-busing-crisis-was-never-intended-to-work/474264/">undermined desegregation orders</a> from <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/massive-resistance-9780340900222/">1954</a> to the <a href="https://www.theroot.com/watch-room-filled-with-rich-white-nyc-parents-gets-bi-1825600194">present</a>. For example, <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2004/04/12/660/all-deliberate-speed/">willfully resistant interpretations</a> of the charge to desegregate “with all deliberate speed” in Brown v. Board delayed substantive action on school segregation for over a decade.</p>
<p>This resistance has only increased in sophistication and effectiveness over time. Carefully choreographed legal and political strategies <a href="https://psmag.com/education/will-americas-schools-ever-be-desegregated">slowed desegregation of schools</a>. The 1992 <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095834369">Freeman v. Pitts Supreme Court decision</a> made it easier to lift desegregation orders and opened the way for a national <a href="http://cepa.stanford.edu/content/brown-fades-end-court-ordered-school-desegregation-and-resegregation-american-public-schools">swing back toward racial segregation in schools</a>.</p>
<p>This new segregation is not directly enforced by law, but indirectly through <a href="https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-62-school-segregation-by-race-poverty-and-state">school zoning, housing patterns</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/27/16004084/school-segregation-evolution">recently by neighborhood secessionist movements</a>.</p>
<p>All of this permits affluent white families to continue to <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23411">monopolize premium educational resources</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/charters-as-a-driver-of-resegregation">Charter schools</a> have not been able to slow this resurgence of school segregation. Neither did the federal <a href="http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/02/in_this_month_of_black.html">No Child Left Behind</a> law. In fact, there are reasons to believe both have <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/charters-as-a-driver-of-resegregation">made segregation worse</a>.</p>
<h2>Corrosive effects of segregation</h2>
<p>Students of color in racially isolated schools <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED580373.pdf">experience lower academic outcomes</a>. Their <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/08/28/when-school-districts-resegregate-more-black-and-hispanic-students-drop-out/">dropout rates increase</a>.</p>
<p>My own research has shown how school segregation <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Resegregation-as-Curriculum-The-Meaning-of-the-New-Racial-Segregation/Rosiek-Kinslow/p/book/9781138812819">communicates corrosive messages</a> to students of color. My colleagues and I spent 10 years interviewing students in an Alabama school district that had its federal desegregation order lifted. These children watched as the district’s predominantly white leadership moved immediately to rezone and resegregate their schools. </p>
<p>Students assigned to the district’s underresourced all-black high school reported concluding that they were <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Resegregation-as-Curriculum-The-Meaning-of-the-New-Racial-Segregation/Rosiek-Kinslow/p/book/9781138812819">regarded as “bad kids,” “garbage people,” or “violent or something,” and therefore not worthy of investment</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps worse, the black students in the newly resegregated school read the harm being done to them as intentional and often saw no hope of redress. One student remarked: “I feel like this is an injustice, the way we were brought here to fail. And now it is becoming a reality. I think five or 10 years more down the line it’s going to be horrible. Seriously, it’s going to be horrible.”</p>
<p>Where schools have been desegregated, <a href="https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/">the negative academic effects are significantly reduced</a>. Rucker Johnson, associate professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that desegregation <a href="https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research/working-paper-series/the-grandchildren-of-brown-the-long-legacy-of-school-desegregation">raises income levels and wealth accumulation across generations</a>, and even improves health outcomes across students’ lifespans.</p>
<p>The psychological effects of desegregation, however, are more complicated. Desegregating schools provides more balanced access to resources, but puts students of color in schools staffed primarily by white educators who still often <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038040712444857">harbor implicitly and explicitly racist attitudes</a>. Children of color <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2013.850412">pay a price for this</a>.</p>
<p>For white students, school desegregation has no measurable negative effects on academic performance and graduation rates. Meanwhile, school desegregation provides <a href="http://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2004/march/how-desegregation-changed-us-the-effects-of-racially-mixed-/">many positive social effects for all students</a>, including reduction of racial prejudice and generally becoming more comfortable around people of different backgrounds.</p>
<h2>Possible remedies</h2>
<p>So, what lessons have been learned from America’s failed efforts to desegregate its public schools?</p>
<p>The first is that the desire for racially segregated schooling evolves in response to efforts to promote racial equity in schools. This implies that lawmakers should not presume integration of schools will help communities “outgrow racism.” Desegregation orders, where needed, need to be permanent.</p>
<p>Second, geography has always been used as a <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199982981.001.0001/acprof-9780199982981-chapter-4">proxy to preserve school segregation</a>. Communities need housing policies that effectively inhibit the creation of racially and economically segregated neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Third, adequate and equitable funding is needed across school districts. There is nothing magically educational about sitting next to a white person in school. The <a href="https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp15-12v201510.pdf">primary problem</a> is the way resources <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/public-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/">disproportionately follow white bodies</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, the teaching profession must be fully diversified. Fifty-one percent of students entering public schools are persons of color, but more than <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017072.pdf">80 percent of teachers are white</a>. Placing children of color in predominantly white schools and counting on color-blind professionalism to protect them is not an adequate plan. Research conducted by my colleagues and I reveals how this approach <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317606451">misunderstands the way racism operates</a> and leaves children of color exposed to psychological and pedagogical harm.</p>
<p>America’s school systems need to recruit, support and retain teachers who identify with the experiences of the students they serve. Additionally, all teachers must be educated to recognize the constantly evolving forms of segregation in the nation’s school systems, to protect students from its worst effects and to join the struggle to build a better system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95583/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jerry Rosiek receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education, although not related to the topic of this article. Rosiek serves as Principal Investigator on a grant that provides fellowships to Native American students becoming teachers.</span></em></p>Better funding, integrated neighborhoods and a diverse teacher workforce are among the things needed to dismantle a long-standing racially segregated school system, a scholar argues.Jerry Rosiek, Professor of Education Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883522018-04-12T10:55:41Z2018-04-12T10:55:41ZResistance to school integration in the name of ‘local control’: 5 questions answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214343/original/file-20180411-543-1ugb8fd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The nation has struggled with school integration since school segregation was outlawed in 1954.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-FILE-OH-USA-APHS373460-African-Amer-/0ae5644309554156a2df11f4b765c3d0/283/0">AP </a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: The word “secession” is often used in reference to states or countries that wish to break off and form their own government. But here in the United States, there are communities that want to secede from their school districts to form their own. One of the latest examples is a case in Gardendale, Alabama, where a court recently ruled that the community’s attempt to leave the Jefferson County, Alabama, school district was motivated by racial discrimination and therefore unconstitutional. In order to gain more insight into what’s driving school district secession efforts, The Conversation reached out to Erica Frankenberg, who has examined the effect of the school secession movement on school segregation in Jefferson County and throughout the nation.</em> </p>
<h2>1. Why are some communities trying to break off their schools from larger school districts to form their own districts? Is it about educational efficiency or are race and ethnicity at play?</h2>
<p>Seceding communities often argue they want more local control. They also argue that secession will assist community development efforts and increase home values. But secessions imperil desegregation by creating additional boundary lines that separate <a href="http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/2018-01-10-Education-Inequity.pdf">resources</a> and students by race and class.</p>
<p>Gardendale’s secession materials don’t mention race at all, but two recent federal court <a href="http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201712338.pdf">decisions</a> stated that race indeed was a significant factor. The materials warned that the community didn’t want to become like other communities in the county that didn’t gain local control of schools. Even though they didn’t mention the racial composition of these communities, the courts found this to be evidence of racial discrimination.</p>
<p>This is an example, repeated in communities across the South, of how <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0002831217748880">“local control” may sound racially neutral</a> but is also used to justify more narrowly defining a community and its resources to educate what is typically a majority white group of children. Such moves further segregation.</p>
<h2>2. It’s almost 2020. Why are we still dealing with court desegregation orders that were issued in the 1950s and 60s?</h2>
<p>In some states like Alabama, desegregation didn’t even start until 1963, almost 10 years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/case.html">decision</a> that called for an end to segregation in public schools. Districts resisted integration to the extent possible, and it was up to <a href="http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2014/10/federal_court_document_traces.html">judges</a> and black plaintiffs and lawyers to accomplish desegregation.</p>
<p>The court in Gardendale’s case noted the challenge of trying to desegregate with a continually changing size and enrollment due to secession. Seven school districts enrolling more than 27,000 students have seceded from the Jefferson County district since its desegregation order in 1965. Trussville was the most recent district to secede in 2005. Our <a href="https://cecr.ed.psu.edu/research/school-district-secessions">research found diversity</a> in Jefferson County’s school district has decreased as school districts secede. The white percentage of students would be 10 percentage points higher if including the enrollment of districts that have seceded since 1970.</p>
<p>So, while the court orders began more than 50 years ago, they must be updated to reflect today’s demographic and policy realities. In many cases, judges are doing that work – as are the plaintiffs and the Department of Justice. Today’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-agreement-st-james-parish-louisiana-school-district-desegregate">desegregation orders</a> not only ensure that black and white students go to school together to the extent possible, but that there is equality within the school as well.</p>
<h2>3. What does the research about academic and social outcomes say about the importance of whether black and white children attend segregated or desegregated schools?</h2>
<p>Research finds integrated schools are critical for students’ <a href="http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf">academic</a> and <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED571629">social</a> outcomes – and <a href="http://www.school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo3.pdf">our multiracial democracy</a>. </p>
<p>Desegregation is <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED571621">beneficial for white students</a>, who have the lowest exposure to students of other races. For white students in diverse schools, attending schools with students from different racial backgrounds relates to lower prejudice and greater comfort working across racial lines. These skills are important in today’s diverse workplace. </p>
<p>Even more <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/race-conscious-policies-assigning-students-schools-social-science-research-and-supreme-c">research</a> shows that black students – and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013161X14549957?journalCode=eaqa">Latino</a> students, where studied – benefit from attending desegregated schools compared to segregated schools because diverse schools tend to have more resources that improve educational opportunities. In other words, on a large scale, we have never made separate, segregated schools equal.</p>
<h2>4. Are there sociological reasons to be concerned about desegregating the nation’s public schools?</h2>
<p>One of the rationales of school desegregation is that it will result in more integrated communities. And indeed, secession not only furthers school segregation but <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2009.01166.x">inequality</a> among communities as well.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://cecr.ed.psu.edu/research/school-district-secessions">research</a>, we found that growing, affluent, highly educated white communities often exist next to communities with declining populations, lower income and higher percentages of black residents. School funding is affected when home values in neighboring school districts diverged sharply like they have in Jefferson County, particularly after school districts formed. More specifically, in the decade immediately after the formation of a new district, the community’s values are most likely to surge as they now offer a separate district as an additional “amenity.”</p>
<h2>5. Even though Gardendale ended its bid to secede from Jefferson County school district, there are <a href="http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2018/03/district_secession_proposal_ma.html">other efforts afoot in Alabama</a> and throughout the nation for communities to secede. How much more of this will we see in the future, and how likely are secession efforts to succeed?</h2>
<p><a href="https://edbuild.org/content/fractured#national">State laws vary</a> as to when and how district secession can take place. In Alabama, district secession is quite permissible. Other southern states, which often have countywide districts, have also recently <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X17732752">made it easier to secede</a> or are <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/why-southern-schools-are-talking-secession/553517/">contemplating</a> such actions, although North Carolina recently postponed any effort to make district secession easier.</p>
<p>Since courts have ruled that districts have eliminated existing segregation and released them from judicial oversight, today <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/a-bittersweet-victory-for-school-desegregation/554396/">few court orders remain</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, many school districts may find an easier path to secession. Unless courts step in to prevent future Gardendale-type secessions, allowing new districts to form may have harmful implications for racial justice and democracy. As a result, it will be up to political leaders and the residents of local communities to fully examine whether proposed secessions will further educational segregation and inequality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some communities are seeking to secede from larger school districts to form their own school districts in the name of ‘local control.’ But court rulings find race is often at play.Erica Frankenberg, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Penn StateKendra Taylor, PhD Student, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/940822018-03-30T10:54:58Z2018-03-30T10:54:58ZMuch of what you think you know about Linda Brown – a central figure in Brown v. Board of Education – is wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212533/original/file-20180328-109179-p7pdo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Linda Brown Smith, right, and her two children in their Topeka, KS home 1974.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/LINDA-BROWN-SMITH-FAMILY/69a72e02e3e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/5/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the nation commemorates the life of Linda Brown Thompson – the public face of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case – Brown is being celebrated as a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">heroic young girl</a> from Topeka who <a href="https://twitter.com/GovJeffColyer/status/978380308675481600">“brought a case that ended segregation in public schools</a> in America.”</p>
<p>But the story behind the historic Supreme Court case, as I plan to show in my forthcoming book, “Blacks Against Brown: The Black Anti-Integration Movement in Topeka, Kansas, 1941-1954,” is much more complex than the highly inaccurate but often-repeated <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">tale</a> about the case. That tale is that – as recounted in <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies">this news story</a> – the case “began with Brown’s father Oliver, who tried to enroll her at the Sumner School, an all-white elementary school in Topeka just a few blocks from the Browns’ home.” Or that Oliver Brown was a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/27/the-determined-black-dad-who-took-linda-brown-by-the-hand-and-stepped-into-history/?utm_term=.a1c02f541f8d">“determined father who took Linda Brown by the hand and made history.”</a></p>
<p>As my research shows, that tale is at odds with two great historical ironies of Brown v. Board. The first irony is that Oliver Brown was actually a reluctant participant in the Supreme Court case that would come to be named after him. In fact, Oliver Brown, a reserved man, had to be convinced to sign on to the lawsuit because he was a new pastor at church that did not want to get involved Topeka NAACP’s desegregation lawsuit, according to various Topekans whose recollections are recorded in the Brown Oral History Collection at the <a href="https://www.kshs.org/p/brown-v-board-of-education-oral-history/13996">Kansas State Historical Society</a>.</p>
<p>The second irony is that, of the five local desegregation cases brought before the Supreme Court by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1953, Brown’s case – formally known as <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=87&page=transcript">Oliver Brown et al., v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.</a> – ended up being the lead case. In a twist of fate, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision brought widespread attention to a city where many blacks actually resisted school integration. That not-so-small detail has been overshadowed by the way the case is presented in history.</p>
<h2>Black resistance to integration</h2>
<p>While school desegregation may have symbolized racial progress for many blacks throughout the country, that simply was not the case in Topeka. In fact, most of the resistance to the NAACP’s school desegregation efforts in Topeka came from Topeka’s black citizens, not whites.</p>
<p>“I didn’t get anything from white folks,” Leola Brown Montgomery, wife of Oliver and mother of Linda, recalled. “I tell you here in Topeka, unlike the other places where they brought these cases we didn’t have any threats” from whites.</p>
<p>Prior to the Brown case, black Topekans had been embroiled in a decade-long conflict over segregated schools that began with a lawsuit involving Topeka’s junior high schools. When the Topeka School Board commissioned a poll to determine black support for integrated junior high schools in 1941, 65 percent of black parents with junior high school students indicated that they preferred all-black schools, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">according to school board minutes</a>.</p>
<h2>Separate but equal</h2>
<p>Another wrinkle to the story is that the city’s four all-black elementary schools – Buchanan, McKinley, Monroe and Washington – had resources, facilities and curricula that were comparable to that of Topeka’s white schools. The Topeka school board actually adhered to the “separate-but-equal” standard established by the 1896 <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52&page=transcript">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> case.</p>
<p>Even Linda Brown recalled the all-black Monroe Elementary School that she attended as a <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">“very nice facility, being very well-kept.”</a></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212532/original/file-20180328-109175-1ltjf8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linda Brown Smith, shown at age 9 in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-LI-/daad13dbe4e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“I remember the materials that we used being of good quality,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">stated</a> in a 1985 interview. </p>
<p>That made the Topeka lawsuit unique among the cases the NAACP Legal Defense Fund combined and argued before the Supreme Court in 1953. Black schoolchildren in Topeka did not experience overcrowded classrooms like those in Washington, D.C., nor were they subjected to dilapidated school buildings like those in Delaware or Virginia.</p>
<p>While black parents in Delaware and South Carolina petitioned their local school boards for bus service, the Topeka School Board voluntarily provided buses for black children. Topeka’s school buses became central to the local NAACP’s equal access complaint due to <a href="http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/50359858-rear-view-of-linda-brown-10-yr-old-african-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=yDBvXkFZSD8CXY2A11A8jtLimoAtZnu8nbiCsIQLNqA%3d">weather and travel conditions</a>. </p>
<p>Quality education was “not the issue at that time,” Linda Brown <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">recalled</a>, “but it was the distance that I had to go to acquire that education.”</p>
<p>Another unique characteristic of Topeka public schools was that black students went to both all-black elementary and predominantly white junior high and high schools. This fact presented another challenge for the Topeka NAACP’s desegregation crusade. The transition from segregated elementary schools to integrated junior and senior high schools was a harsh and alienating one. Many black Topekans recalled the overt and covert racism of white teachers and administrators. “It wasn’t the grade schools that sunk me,” Richard Ridley, a black resident and Topeka High School alumnus who graduated in 1947, told interviewers for the Brown Oral History Collection at the Kansas State Historical Society. “It was the high school.”</p>
<h2>Black teachers cherished</h2>
<p>A primary reason that black Topekans fought the local NAACP’s desegregation efforts is because they appreciated black educators’ dedication to their students. Black residents who opposed school integration often spoke of the familial environment in all-black schools.</p>
<p>Linda Brown herself praised the teachers at her alma mater, Monroe Elementary, for having high expectations and setting “<a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/smi0015.0647.098lindabrownsmith.html">very good examples for their students</a>.</p>
<p>Black teachers proved to be a formidable force against the local NAACP. "We have a situation here in Topeka in which the Negro Teachers are violently opposed to our efforts to integrate the public schools,” NAACP branch Secretary Lucinda Todd <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/westhistquar.42.4.0481">wrote in a letter</a> to the national NAACP in 1953.</p>
<p>Black supporters of all-black schools used a number of overt and covert tactics to undermine NAACP members’ efforts. Those tactics included lobbying, networking, social ostracism, verbal threats, vandalism, sending harassing mail, making intimidating phone calls, the Brown Oral History Collection reveals.</p>
<p>But the national office of the NAACP never appreciated the unique challenges that its local chapter faced. The Topeka NAACP struggled to recruit plaintiffs, despite their door-to-door canvassing.</p>
<p>Fundraising was also a major problem. The group could not afford the legal services of their attorneys and raised only $100 of the <a href="http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/213401/page/1">$5,000 needed to bring the case</a> before the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
<h2>Unheralded legacy</h2>
<p>History ultimately would not be on the side of the majority of Topeka’s black community. A small cohort of local NAACP members kept pushing for desegregation, even as they stood at odds with most black Topekans.</p>
<p>Linda Brown and her father may be remembered as the faces of Brown v. Board of Education. But without the resilience and resourcefulness of three local NAACP members – namely, Daniel Sawyer, McKinley Burnett and Lucinda Todd – there would have been no Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.</p>
<p>The real story of Brown v. Board may not capture the public imagination like that of a 9-year-old girl who “brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America.” Nevertheless, it is the truth behind the myth. And it deserves to be told.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charise Cheney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Linda Brown is being celebrated for her role in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case that desegregated US schools, a researcher says the story behind the case is more complex.Charise Cheney, Associate Professsor of Ethnic Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/525262015-12-21T06:24:05Z2015-12-21T06:24:05ZHow schools can help immigrant children to thrive<p>In view of the large influx of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/syrian-refugees">refugees from Syria</a> and the growing concern about their integration in European societies, the launch of a new report on immigrant children in education systems could not be more timely. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/immigrant-students-at-school_9789264249509-en#page8">report</a> from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), noted reassuringly that there was no relation between the amount of immigrants in a country’s education system and a decline in education standards. It’s as if the OECD were pre-empting criticism from populist anti-immigrant politicians that the influx of Syrian refugees will be a disruption to western societies, and in particular a drain on schools. </p>
<p>The main focus of the report is actually on the performance gap between children of immigrant background and their non-immigrant peers and what schools can do to close it. Although the achievement gap has closed across the OECD – by a semester between 2003 and 2012 – on average, immigrant students still perform worse than their peers. The OECD gives some quite explicit advice to politicians if they are serious about enhancing the performance of these children: provide additional language instruction, arrange early childhood education, prevent segregation, don’t force them to repeat grades and eliminate the early streaming (also known as tracking) of children into different ability groups. </p>
<p>While the first two recommendations are uncontroversial, the last suggestion is politically sensitive as there are quite a few states who practice and cherish the tracking or streaming of children. In Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, different tracks coincide with different <a href="https://theconversation.com/german-apprenticeships-are-built-on-a-cohesive-national-plan-not-ad-hoc-partnerships-23210">kinds of schools</a>, while in England, ability grouping is organised within schools in what is called <a href="https://theconversation.com/forcing-schools-to-set-by-ability-is-not-backed-up-by-evidence-31315">setting</a>. </p>
<p>Provocatively the report said: “While ability grouping, grade repetition and tracking are harmful for all students, immigrant students are more likely to be affected by these practices.” This is likely to raise some eyebrows, particularly among political parties advocating early tracking such as the Christian Democrats in Germany <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34535778">and the Conservatives</a> in the UK. </p>
<p>Many education <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00166.x/abstract">researchers</a> have <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/education-equality-and-social-cohesion-andy-green/?isb=9781403987976">stressed that</a> early tracking only reinforces achievement gaps, not only between immigrant and non-immigrant children but also between children of different social backgrounds. As early as 1974, the French sociologist Raymond Boudon <a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED091493">noted</a> that the more tracks a system has and the earlier these tracks start to branch out, the greater the inequality in educational performance and the more difficult it will be for children of modest backgrounds, including many immigrants, to do well in school. In this sense the OECD can be said to be a late convert to the cause of late selection – or comprehensive education as it is more widely known.</p>
<p>The report also noted that early tracking on the basis of ability amounts to social and ethnic sorting and so only adds to school social and ethnic segregation, which is <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2006-02.pdf">an observation</a> widely <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/18688/1/RB76_Selection_segregation_civic_competences_Janmaat.pdf">shared</a> in academia. </p>
<h2>Segregation and achievement</h2>
<p>Segregation is also mentioned by the OECD as another factor contributing to the performance gap. This is based on the idea that large concentrations of immigrant children give rise to peer influences that reduce performance, irrespective of the individual social and ethnic background of children. In other words, when immigrant children are surrounded by peers of the same background in school, they are doubly disadvantaged, both in terms of their own background and in terms of the backgrounds of their classmates. </p>
<p>In mixed settings, by contrast, they should be able to learn from their more privileged peers. Desegregated schools can thus help to compensate for the effect of family disadvantage. Again this theory is not new. In 1966 a <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-ColemanReport.html">famous report</a> by American sociologist James Coleman noted that it makes a great difference who you go to school with. This report greatly reinforced the desegregation campaign that was set in motion by the 1954 <a href="https://theconversation.com/racial-segregation-returns-to-us-schools-60-years-after-the-supreme-court-banned-it-25850">Brown vs Board of Education</a> US Supreme Court ruling declaring that <em>de jure</em> segregation was “inherently unequal” and therefore unconstitutional.</p>
<h2>What’s best for immigrant children</h2>
<p>There is more controversy among researchers, however, about whether segregation enhances achievement gaps. In 2005, American researchers Russell Rumberger and Gregory Palardy <a href="http://education.ucr.edu/pdf/faculty/palardy/Palardy5.pdf">noted</a> that when it comes to student achievement, the social composition of schools matters much more than the racial composition. Taking a closer look at social composition they found that several school characteristics, including teacher expectations of children, the amount of homework that students do, and the number of rigorous courses that students take, explain all of the effect of social composition. </p>
<p>This would imply that in theory immigrant children can perform just as well in segregated schools, provided they are exposed to the very same curriculum and teaching input as their peers in mixed schools. The question, however, is whether equalising these resources across schools can be achieved in practice – as they are so inextricably bound up with the social and ethnic mix of schools. </p>
<p>The OECD report deserves praise for letting the data speak and ignoring possible political pressures to revise the policy messages emanating from its findings on what works to close the achievement gap. It does not deal, however, with two relevant questions of quite a different nature: namely whether the policies it recommends can be adopted in the same way in countries with different educational cultures and whether they will produce the same results across the board. This debate – a hot topic among researchers – so far remains unresolved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52526/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Germen Janmaat receives funding from the British Academy and from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Immigrant pupils do not cause a decline in education standards, according to a new OECD report.Jan Germen Janmaat, Reader in Comparative Social Science, Department of Lifelong and Comparative Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/438962015-07-07T09:00:24Z2015-07-07T09:00:24ZTo see the legacy of slavery, look at present-day school systems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87186/original/image-20150702-11335-17tq5rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let's not forget what the history of this abandoned school tells us.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/atelier_tee/209582519/in/photolist-jwazH-5R4hBA-rycrA6-nHK8LR-5xx4KY-bsp6S5-cmLwXh-8Gze6T-hBpyoD-82MUon-8qGjPp-9E5Z8H-cSbPZ-e938qa-dTXSXV-fNYvhJ-pXDMMV-9xtN8k-5qZfG-6fiqSY-3c3fTs-58CH15-9eCYvh-9uMwc1-cWiaFC-akhki5-6Rd1j4-A1otv-3Gpbfr-5es3oB-94H58b-qVqYKZ-mEaGhn-K1uNX-bkiYKy-7QrxNC-nWLxNS-9yuSeF-8MFJU7-7cbefW-pfviCt-H8xQm-5LjPxU-8uo8HZ-6PpuTz-8BNxg-8UENJ9-PrNFu-q2NQhQ-9uS2in">Terence Faircloth</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>None of us alive today had any direct involvement in slavery in America, but we continue to be affected by its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/slaverys-enduring-resonance.html">legacy</a> and could even be perpetuating it in subtle, everyday ways. One of the ways the legacy of slavery manifests is through the school system. </p>
<p>My recent <a href="http://sre.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/05/04/2332649215582251.abstract">research</a> with <a href="http://sociology.duke.edu/people?Gurl=&Uil=16229&subpage=profile">Robert L Reece</a> suggests the school system has been deeply affected by our slavery history, most notably in ways that relate to present-day school segregation.</p>
<h2>Identifying the legacy of slavery</h2>
<p>One of the many striking aspects of slavery was the forcible denial of education to slaves.</p>
<p>As we detail in our <a href="http://sre.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/05/04/2332649215582251.abstract">paper</a>, there is historical evidence to suggest that the insistence that black Americans don’t need or shouldn’t have the same quality of education as whites persisted even after emancipation.</p>
<p>But how does this history get reflected in the contemporary school system? We find that one of its consequences is greater black–white school segregation.</p>
<p>Using contemporary and historical census data for all counties in the South, we find evidence that indicates a positive relationship between the concentration of slaves in 1860 and black–white disparities in public school enrollment during the 2006–2010 time period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87218/original/image-20150702-11339-1xqv4tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">White private school enrollment is greater in counties where slaves were more heavily concentrated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/santacatalinaschool/5787685972/in/photolist-9Prppb-9PoymM-fwi7Z5-ib9X2z-axPx99-rfVrq1-6xMkPx-dALeWx-ewqvC3-ib9UX4-ebwcaR-9Rciar-ebwckB-ewnmfg-ewqTnq-a5wbnT-ebwcoz-92n9vb-dALezP-dARF4h-dALemp-dARFWb-dALcUH-dARGFA-dARFpN-dALcMe-dARGcU-dAREWG-dALeoX-dARFnE-dARGDG-dAREBy-dALdiZ-dALd5D-dALdPi-dALepH-dARFcw-dARGiQ-dALdaB-dALcVX-dALeuX-dARET1-dARFkb-dALdcT-dARFPU-dALdmZ-dALdFn-dALdAn-dALds4-dARFJE">Santa Catalina School</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most importantly, our results suggest that white private school enrollment is greater in counties where slaves were more heavily concentrated in 1860, thereby leaving black students overrepresented in public schools.</p>
<h2>We need to learn from history</h2>
<p>It is perhaps no surprise that slavery is associated with inequality and disadvantage for the enslaved population. However, what is notable is that this connection persists more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html">rulings and legislation</a> aimed directly at reducing school segregation in the time between slavery and today, it is far from being a distant <a href="http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/americas-public-schools-remain-highly-segregated">issue</a>. And it needs our attention.</p>
<p>Segregation negatively impacts disadvantaged groups but has little effect on those who are already advantaged. As a result, school segregation helps perpetuate the cycle of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/24/how-after-60-years-brown-v-board-of-education-succeeded-and-didnt/">disadvantages</a> that black kids already face.</p>
<p>Sixty years after the historic Brown v Board of Education court case, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/sixty-years-later-we-need-a-new-brown">new</a> conversations are starting about how the dream of an inclusive society hasn’t been achieved. </p>
<p>So, what does our research add to these emerging conversations?</p>
<p>First, as we approach this issue again, we need to keep its historical foundations in mind. The historical depth of segregation’s foundations should remind us that solutions will not be easy and they cannot be short-term. Sustained efforts over several generations may be necessary before real change will be seen.</p>
<p>Second, we need to remember the importance of teaching history. Recent changes in our <a href="https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/your-childs-rights/basics-about-childs-rights/how-no-child-left-behind-affects-your-child">approach</a> to education in the United States have directed an increasing amount of the school day to math and reading while squeezing out other subjects, including history. If we are to understand what’s going on today, history needs to remain among our core school subjects.</p>
<p>Black–white segregation across schools has been a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/brown_v_board_of_education_60th_anniversary_america_s_schools_are_segregating.html">persistent</a> issue in the United States, one with serious ramifications for subsequent inequality. Without addressing its historical foundations, we may never fully address the contemporary consequences of our history.</p>
<p>We may not be at fault for our country’s history, but we are responsible for what we do with it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather O'Connell received funding from the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison through center grant P2C HD047873 and training grant T32 HD07014, and from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research while conducting this research.
</span></em></p>One of the many striking aspects of slavery was denial of education to slaves. How is this history reflected in today’s school system?Heather O'Connell, Postdoctoral fellow, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.