The New York Times has been commemorating the 58th anniversary (May 17) of Brown v. Board of Education with a series of articles dealing with the fact that American schools are still segregated by race (in a beautifully written thick-description feature by N.R. Kleinfield describing the consequences of segregation at a charter middle school in Flatbush, Brooklyn), the apparent fact that the authorities don't seem to see any reason for doing anything about it (David L. Kirk's op-ed asking why school reformers have abandoned desegregation as a way of narrowing the school achievement gaps between racial groupings), and the widespread belief that it really isn't a problem anyway (in an 8-way debate—"Jim Crow is dead, segregation lives on. Is it time to bring back busing? "—about what needs to be done).
Really! That is, some of the debaters thought desegregation was a pretty good thing and worth reviving, of course, but others seemed not to understand why it was even an issue; according to Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute, for instance,
It was amazing to me to see in these essays, as also in the reader comments, how many apparently respectable people don't seem to know that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was decided wrongly; that separate can never be equal. Kirk's article makes it seem, in fact, as if the Supreme Court has effectively overruled Brown and restored Plessy to its original status, in the sense that it has been gradually disallowing all the means for desegregating. (Indeed, the reputedly evil Michelle Rhee was actually on the left side of this one, since she argues in the Times debate for "socioeconomic integration", i.e., for a method of achieving racial integration without mentioning race, which might make it acceptable to the Court and effective at the same time.)
In particular the proponents of various kinds of "school choice" and charter school approaches appear genuinely to believe that separate but equal institutions are possible. They emphasize the spiffiness and modernity of the charter school or Small School of Choice, its advanced electronic equipment, its youthful (underpaid) teachers. Izumi even cites a fraudulent "proof" of the high quality of the new schools in terms of what a spiffy study it was
But if you look at the typical features of these new schools—the high ratio of administrators to teaching staff, the focus on high-stakes test scores and test prep, the elaborate discipline and dress codes, the de-skilling of teachers who are often required to stick to a script—you can see that they are not at all equal to the kind of school you want for your own children, in spite of the bells and whistles. They're not meant to instill habits of critical thinking but of swift obedience. They're not meant for "our kids" but for "their kids". And Brown has not yet become irrelevant.
Really! That is, some of the debaters thought desegregation was a pretty good thing and worth reviving, of course, but others seemed not to understand why it was even an issue; according to Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute, for instance,
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| From Babble Voices. |
Falling back to 1970s-style desegregation policies like busing ignores new schooling options that weren’t available decades ago and which offer better educational opportunities for minority students.As if the original desegregation policies had merely been techniques for wringing inefficiencies out of the system. It's like arguing that there's no point in enforcing anti-slavery laws because there are better ways of maximizing profit for cotton cultivators. School segregation is illegal, according to the law of the land as established in Brown in 1954, and it is illegal because it is wrong—because it deprives people of certain rights guaranteed them in our constitution.
It was amazing to me to see in these essays, as also in the reader comments, how many apparently respectable people don't seem to know that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was decided wrongly; that separate can never be equal. Kirk's article makes it seem, in fact, as if the Supreme Court has effectively overruled Brown and restored Plessy to its original status, in the sense that it has been gradually disallowing all the means for desegregating. (Indeed, the reputedly evil Michelle Rhee was actually on the left side of this one, since she argues in the Times debate for "socioeconomic integration", i.e., for a method of achieving racial integration without mentioning race, which might make it acceptable to the Court and effective at the same time.)
In particular the proponents of various kinds of "school choice" and charter school approaches appear genuinely to believe that separate but equal institutions are possible. They emphasize the spiffiness and modernity of the charter school or Small School of Choice, its advanced electronic equipment, its youthful (underpaid) teachers. Izumi even cites a fraudulent "proof" of the high quality of the new schools in terms of what a spiffy study it was
The study used the most rigorous experimental design, randomized control trial...(It may be a rigorous design, but it's not very rigorously applied; in fact, an absolutely crappy study—I've discussed the work in question at some length here.)
But if you look at the typical features of these new schools—the high ratio of administrators to teaching staff, the focus on high-stakes test scores and test prep, the elaborate discipline and dress codes, the de-skilling of teachers who are often required to stick to a script—you can see that they are not at all equal to the kind of school you want for your own children, in spite of the bells and whistles. They're not meant to instill habits of critical thinking but of swift obedience. They're not meant for "our kids" but for "their kids". And Brown has not yet become irrelevant.
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| Finnish blackboard. From Dipity. |
