Prof Peterson describes the Brown decision as "the signal accomplishment of the 20th century as it transformed opportunity for Black Americans and created the opportunity to create a more egalitarian society consistent with the nation's ideals" (Desegregation III, 9:00mins). Although that decision resulted in both primary and secondary accomplishments for Black Americans, the benefits were not as drastic and immediate as many had hoped at the time. Today, the U.S. still cannot claim racial equality in student achievement and attainment outcomes.
Please describe some of the primary and secondary accomplishments that are associated with the Brown decision. Further, what policies or constitutional changes should we now pursue to realize the goals of racial equality in educational outcomes? Make sure to acknowledge potential implementation challenges that might accompany your proposed policies (such as the interracial violence that erupted in response to forced busing in the 1970s).
Example 1: TA Anna evaluated the effectiveness of a statewide voucher program in its effectiveness at reducing racial stratification in Louisiana's public schools. What's your evaluation of this proposal to use school vouchers as a tool to better integrate both public and private schools? Is that goal worthy in and of itself or should we be more focused on improving test scores of minority students? http://educationnext.org/the-louisiana-scholarship-program/
Example 2: TA Anna also evaluated the effectiveness of teacher-student race matching as a strategy to improve minority students' achievement outcomes. She finds positive, statistically significant achievement effects when Black and White students are assigned to race-congruent teachers in reading and for Black, White, and Asian students in math. What's your evaluation of this proposal as a way to close persistent achievement gaps? http://www.uaedreform.org/representation-in-the-classroom-the-effect-of-own-raceethnicity-teacher-assignment-on-student-achievement/
As Prof Peterson describes in the videos, the Brown decision that 'separate but equal' was unconstitutional was definitely a turning point. Not everyone agreed with the ruling and some schools were closed down rather than be desegregated. But on the whole, the Brown decision fueled the civil rights movement, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also helped to move the desegregation forward. However, interracial violence was still prevalent, especially around 1968 with the Watts Riots and the assasinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy. In the Milliken versus Bradley case in 1974, the courts decided that de facto segregation was ok, as long as de jure (or explicit law) segregation wasn't happening. This distinction has led within district segregation to go down over the years, but between district segregation to go up. Within districts, black and white students attend the same schools and aren't segregated, but black and white families often choose different places to live, and thus the school districts are often segregated in black districts and white districts.
While the Brown decision has had a huge impact, we still have significant racial inequality in educational achievement. Part of this may be because of the between district segregation - but how do we integrate different ethnicities? In the past, bussing has been tried - but people often prefer to go to schools closer to where they live, and is it really the best use of the children's time to have them in transit for hours each day? Perhaps giving families a choice of schools would be the best option? But as the All Over the Map reading (http://educationnext.org/all-over-the-map/) brings up, poor families often don't have the ability or the information to adequately evaluate schools in order to make the best educational choice - or they may value other aspects besides high quality instruction, such as proximity to caregivers or maintaining previous school community connections. And even if schools start to become more integrated, there are often major cultural clashes as the Elephant in the Classroom reading (http://educationnext.org/the-elephant-in-the-classroom/) points out. Different ethnic groups and social classes sometimes have different ideas of what school should be like, and how teaching should happen. I've done some reading about KIPP schools, which can seem very strict to educators more accustomed to progressive teaching methods - but after the Elephant in the Classroom article, I have a better sense of how KIPP's culture fits in with the culture of the students it's trying to serve.
But what do we need to happen in order to achieve racial equity in education? The Lousiana Scholarship program shows that at least in some situations, school choice can result in better integration. While I would argue that integration is a worthy goal for helping students to have a broader perspective and to open up their filter bubble (the LSP article made me more aware of the filter bubble I live in - I had no idea that the government was still monitoring schools for compliance with desegregation laws), I would want to see data on whether the integration actually improves educational outcomes. If integration means more students attending high-quality schools, then my guess is that there would be higher educational equity, but if integration just means moving students around within low quality schools, then even if there's more equity between ethnicities, it wouldn't work if that equity point is low. The goal is not just to be equal - it's to have everyone achieve higher.
The Representation in the Classroom paper in some sense argues against integration, because if students learn better in classrooms where their teacher is the same race or ethnicity, then maybe we should segregate all students into black classrooms and white classrooms with the appropriate teacher? If this would actually result in consistently higher academic achievement, then perhaps it is an option to be made available to families, in a similar way that some schools are all-girls or all-boys. Although I do wonder if only learning one cultural norm may have negative future effects. Students especially in this day and age need to know how to deal with all different types of people in order to move forward professionally. Perhaps if we had high-quality teachers in integrated classrooms who had high expectations for all of their students, no matter what race or ethnicity...
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