Posted on 06/02/2002 3:42:26 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Never mind the sweeping promise posted outside the school district offices. Charlotte, like dozens of cities around the country, is getting out of the school desegregation business.
The U.S. Supreme Court ended the sorting of Charlotte students by race in April. But the ripples from this case extend beyond this city.
Decades after race riots, white flight and ugly battles over forced busing unnerved the nation and changed it forever, court-ordered school desegregation is moving into the history books. Old court cases are ending, schools are re-segregating, and minority parents are looking for other ways to close the achievement gap between their children and those of whites.
The entire civil rights movement, from basic access to public facilities, to voting rights, to affirmative action, drew strength and an army of supporters from the battle to integrate the nation's schools. But there is no consensus on the question of whether legal remedies designed to secure an equal education for black and white children succeeded on any level.
Charlotte is in the spotlight because this is where the Supreme Court first approved busing to achieve racially balanced schools. But meeting the goals of an integrated school system is a major problem for many urban districts, and a still unresolved societal question.
Race-based strategies in public schools are falling under the weight of changing legal doctrine and losing support to other imperatives, such as vouchers and test-driven sanctions against low-performing schools. Many sociologists and civil rights experts believe the pursuit of an equal education has been slowed by an economic divide even tougher to breach than race.
Civil tumult defined the beginning of desegregation, but that era is quietly fading out. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is trying to keep as many cases as possible under federal scrutiny, but even that organization's attorneys concede the end is approaching.
The U.S. Justice Department reports 10 school districts across the country have been declared unitary -- free of all vestiges of past discrimination -- in the past five months alone.
But Americans on the front lines of desegregation's biggest battles, and those raising children today, have mixed feelings about their experiences and the challenges ahead.
"I know there are people that (desegregation) did work for. I know there are people ... it made stronger," said Melanie Jones, a 34-year-old black woman whose experience with desegregation in Boston in the 1970s left emotional scars.
Of course there were benefits, Jones said: Blacks benefited from the economic success due to the education they got by force of court order, and whites benefited by learning racial tolerance because of black children they met in class.
"Does that make up for the rest of us?" Jones asked. "I don't know. But that's the cost."
The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which outlawed the once venerated principle of "separate but equal," was the springboard for the American civil rights movement. And the growth of the black middle class by more than 20 percent since the 1960s parallels the desegregation of U.S. schools.
Creating common ground for people of different backgrounds was one of the founding principles of a public education. American society has learned in the wake of school integration to treat overt expressions of racial bigotry (if not all the more subtle forms of discrimination) with disdain.
But the original goal of court-ordered school integration was equal education, not racial reconciliation. And it's hard for many educators not to view the persistent achievement gap between white and minority students as evidence of failure.
Nearly half a century after Brown, 17-year-old black children, as a group, score 31 points below their white counterparts on math and reading achievement tests for which the average scores are 308 and 288, respectively. The tests, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress and produced by the U.S. Department of Education, report a somewhat smaller gap between Hispanic and Anglo children's scores.
The gap is somewhat narrower than it was 30 years ago, but still daunting.
"Quite frankly, achievement was not something that seemed such an obvious disparity in the '50s," said Cheryl Brown Henderson, a former Topeka teacher whose father was the lead plaintiff in the Brown case.
"Make no mistake, the Brown v. Board decision opened the doors (for black Americans) big-time on an unparalleled scale in this country," Henderson said.
But the achievement gap remains an elusive problem, she said, and she doesn't know if the country has the political will to vanquish it.
"That's the challenge of the 21st century," Henderson said.
The racial revolution in public education started in Topeka, where Brown and other black parents challenged a state law that reserved certain local schools for whites only. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools separated by race were inherently unequal, that black children were made to feel inferior by the separation and denied resources that were the right of all children.
The justices ordered the integration of U.S. schools "with all deliberate speed," but real integration was neither speedy nor easy.
Many communities developed elaborate evasion strategies to quietly avoid the will of the court. Others were openly defiant -- as in the case of Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus' refusal in 1957 to admit nine black students to Little Rock's Central High School.
And while the first Supreme Court decisions were directed at Southern states where school segregation was the law, the court eventually targeted Northern cities when it banned "de facto" school segregation resulting from housing patterns.
But the most sweeping changes thundered across U.S. cities when the Supreme Court approved a plan in 1971 to bus Charlotte children of one race into schools dominated by another. Federal judges now had the means to enforce elaborate school assignment formulas based on race, regardless of the roadblocks thrown up by local school boards.
Many Americans viewed opposition to integration as a problem peculiar to the South. But when buses carrying black children began to roll into the white neighborhoods of Boston in 1976, they, too, were met with screaming, spitting, rock-throwing white parents.
The nation's greatest increase in integrated schools occurred from 1964 to 1970, according to research by Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. But at the same time, large numbers of white parents were fleeing to the suburbs, creating the financial and demographic conundrum that now confounds many urban school districts -- a dwindling tax base and too few white children to have meaningful integration.
For example, the student population in the Houston Independent School District is now 87 percent minority.
Orfield's research shows that in school districts where desegregation has ended in recent years, schools quickly fall back into the old patterns of being predominantly white or predominantly minority.
And the fact that lingers after decades of desegregation is that schools in predominantly minority neighborhoods across the country frequently remain substandard.
Arthur Griffin, chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, was voted off the board in 1986 after he charged that his district was violating the court's wishes by building new schools in the suburbs while those in minority neighborhoods crumbled. Griffin, who is black, was replaced by a conservative, white member.
After winning re-election to the school board in 1988, Griffin eventually persuaded board members to pass a resolution vowing not to build schools in any census tract with less than 5 percent minority population. It was a wasted effort, he said.
"I was fortunate in getting the school board to vote for that, though they didn't support it worth a damn," Griffin said.
When a federal judge declared the Charlotte school district free of the last vestiges of segregation in 1999, it marked the end of an era even though busing continues through the end of this year. Charlotte's busing plan had been the springboard for integration in some of the nation's most recalcitrant cities, and the North Carolina district was still committed to making desegregation work.
The district had a new superintendent, Eric Smith, who was pushing a series of measures designed to equalize school facilities throughout the district and level the performance of black and white students. District officials fought the lawsuit brought by white parents to end desegregation, saying their job was not finished.
"In 1996 we had only 39 percent of our African-Americans reading at grade level in third grade," Smith said. "That's just abysmal."
Only a small percentage of black students were enrolled in advanced placement classes, facilities were bad in predominantly minority schools, and teacher quality was poor, Smith said. He won't criticize the previous boards for allowing those problems to fester, as Griffin does, but points to the huge amount of attention and money that was devoted to race-based student assignments.
Griffin agreed in 1999 that ending desegregation in his city was premature, and the school board voted to appeal the district court decision. Griffin voted with the board to stop appealing after the decision was upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But black parents took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it.
It does not mean Griffin is satisfied.
"We just talked about how we peacefully desegregated in the '70s, and we forgot about maintaining all the other things that the promise of Brown was supposed to present -- kids having great teachers, kids having great facilities," Griffin said. "We forgot about all those things."
Griffin reached into a manila envelope, pulling out a cracked and yellowing page from an accounting ledger -- the Charlotte school district's budget for the 1927-28 school year.
The page was divided into one line of figures for white schools, teachers and supplies, another for "colored" schools, teachers and supplies. The white schools got the lion's share of everything, and when Griffin started school in Charlotte more than 20 years later, many things remained the same.
In 1954, the year the Supreme Court struck down the law allowing segregated schools, black children like Griffin went to school in two shifts of four hours each because their schools were so overcrowded.
Busing children across town, a remedy that came two decades later, didn't eliminate all the inequities between schools that still persist, Griffin said.
People theorized that if white children were bused to inferior schools in minority neighborhoods the community would demand that all schools receive adequate resources. But the district bused far more blacks to the suburbs than whites to the inner city -- and the resources followed the buses.
"Busing did not fail," Griffin said. "The community failed in the support of its schools."
The end of desegregation in Charlotte makes a huge statement to the nation, said Superintendent Smith.
"The world is watching," agreed Terry Belk, the Charlotte parent who appealed the desegregation case to the Supreme Court in hopes of keeping race-based remedies alive for his and other black children.
The school board has re-adopted the pledge to be the nation's "premier integrated school district," but next year's enrollment figures already show a measurable increase in the number of schools where the student population is more than 80 percent minority.
"If (desegregation's end) simply means that the effort is no longer a part of American public education, the effort to integrate is no longer desired, and with that statement is the assumption that we're satisfied ... then it's a catastrophic problem," Smith said. "Because what we have in fact learned here in Charlotte is that there is a next chapter.
"The next chapter is that after 30 years of struggling with integration (we've found) diversity has value. But (education) has to be focusing on the level of outcome, academic achievement and the resources required to provide that for all children."
For the past decade, the high court has been issuing opinions making it easier for school districts to get out from under their decades-old desegregation orders. School districts are not responsible for remedying the segregated housing patterns that may occur locally, the court has ruled, and can be released from court supervision once they have taken all "practicable" steps toward eliminating the legacy of segregation.
And the Supreme Court does not view the "achievement gap" as a measure of unequal education. The fact that minority achievement scores remain below the national average is not a sufficient reason to continue desegregation in a school district, the court has ruled.
But the million-dollar question still facing school districts is whether they can voluntarily use race in determining such things as school assignments -- even if the districts see diversity as a goal worth pursuing for reasons of social development. Appellate courts are split on the question, and many school districts are abandoning race-based policies as soon as a parent claims "reverse discrimination," rather than fight a lengthy legal battle they expect to lose.
For example, the Houston Independent School District was declared free of deliberate segregation in 1981. But the district was still using race as a means of selecting students for magnet schools in 1997.
A group of parents filed suit against the school system, claiming that their mostly white and Asian-American children had been unfairly denied enrollment in some of the district's better schools. Fearing it would lose, HISD settled the reverse discrimination case days before a federal judge was to hear it.
Some education experts argue that the divide in U.S. schools in the 21st century is more a function of income and urban decay than of race. There is a growing migration to the suburbs of middle class minority parents.
And while the original desegregation orders were drawn to benefit black students, the Hispanic population has grown so drastically in states such as Texas that the debate over equal education evolved beyond black and white years ago. Harvard's Orfield notes that Hispanics are rapidly becoming the most segregated of schoolchildren, in part because of demographic changes in urban centers.
Men and women at the forefront of the civil rights movement in education are aging now and are, in many cases, frustrated by public attitudes. Eighty-five percent of white Americans say black children have as good a chance as white children of getting a good education in their community, a number that has remained nearly constant over four decades of Gallup polling.
Black parents are more pessimistic. Only 52 percent believe their children can get as good an education as whites in their community, and minority parents have taken the lead in several cities, asking that desegregation cases be ended.
Instead, they have asked that financial resources earmarked for remedies like busing be used to address systemic problems like crumbling schools and poorly trained teachers.
"But what you are seeing is there's a lot of frustration with the way desegregation worked out," said NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorney Dennis Parker. "I think there is frustration and justified offense taken at the idea that you find yourself ... chasing white students, as the percentage of white students flee the system. And that is insulting."
But even when the request to end a desegregation case comes from minority parents, as it did in Norfolk, Va., Parker said he counsels caution. Remove the lawsuit, he says, and parents lose their only forum to petition for change.
"I ask clients, if you allow schools to be all black or all white, will there be equitable distribution of resources? What do you think will be going on in the future (with your school board)?" Parker said. "I think these are all relevant questions."
After nearly five decades of desegregation lawsuits, there is confusion about just how many school district cases are still pending. The Justice Department reports it is monitoring 395 school districts still covered by desegregation orders, down from a high point of 504. But many of those cases are so old as to have been almost forgotten.
There are countless other desegregation suits still on the books that the Justice Department was never a party to, but there is no way to track them. And sometimes parties to desegregation litigation agree to settle a case without waiting for a judge to declare the district "unitary."
"Staff at the Justice Department changed, school boards changed, NAACP lawyers died or moved on," said Parker. "I don't know how many cases we have. In part, it depends on how you count."
Attorney James Hardiman, co-counsel for black parents who sued the Cleveland Municipal School District in 1973, fears that the struggle for integrating the schools will be nothing more than a political footnote in about 10 years.
"So, I fought the good fight," Hardiman said. "Politics won out in the short run. I don't hear or see anyone standing up and demanding an integrated learning environment."
These "experts" are nothing more than socialists.
Creating common ground for people of different backgrounds was one of the founding principles of a public education.
Silly me, I thought it was to get an education.
The nation's greatest increase in integrated schools occurred from 1964 to 1970, according to research by Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. But at the same time, large numbers of white parents were fleeing to the suburbs, creating the financial and demographic conundrum that now confounds many urban school districts -- a dwindling tax base and too few white children to have meaningful integration. For example, the student population in the Houston Independent School District is now 87 percent minority.
Let me guess, bussing poor kids into the suburbs and the "rich" kids into the city is their solution. They already have the "Robin Hood" property tax gambit here in Houston. It has meant raising taxes in "rich" neighborhoods just to stay even, while millions of tax dollars are handed over to communities with a lower tax base.
"In 1996 we had only 39 percent of our African-Americans reading at grade level in third grade," Smith said. "That's just abysmal."
Perhaps it isn't the school setting but rather the school staff and parental oversight. How do these "experts" think kids learn? Or do they think at all?
People theorized that if white children were bused to inferior schools in minority neighborhoods the community would demand that all schools receive adequate resources. But the district bused far more blacks to the suburbs than whites to the inner city -- and the resources followed the buses.
So with all that money following the buses, why didn't the scores go up? The tests have even been dumbed down along with the entire student population!
School districts are not responsible for remedying the segregated housing patterns that may occur locally, the court has ruled, and can be released from court supervision once they have taken all "practicable" steps toward eliminating the legacy of segregation.
I shudder to think what relief the socialists and educrats were seeking.
"But what you are seeing is there's a lot of frustration with the way desegregation worked out," said NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorney Dennis Parker. "I think there is frustration and justified offense taken at the idea that you find yourself ... chasing white students, as the percentage of white students flee the system. And that is insulting."
How is that insulting? They're fleeing the horrible public education system. Everyone wants to get the hell out of these mickey mouse schools.
"So, I fought the good fight," Hardiman said. "Politics won out in the short run. I don't hear or see anyone standing up and demanding an integrated learning environment."
Thirty years of screwing around with education has brought us to this place. He's right about politics. Socialist politicians have used race as a cover for social engineering and to foment race-baiting campaigns. School unions are the number one supporter of the Democratic Party. They support them with money and campaigning muscle and the Democratic Party keeps the money spigot open.
Democrats, teachers' unions and activist judges regularly join forces to deny voter initiatives asking to return to the basics and English-only classes. More and more money has been inserted into the education money pit. The education of all students has been lost at the expense of this high priced diversity and meaningless zero tolerance focus on the popular "for the children" issue of the day. Today, bumper stickers are sent home in lieu of educated children.
Coming full circle - Charlotte's new system of 'controlled choice' is expected to make most schools predominantly black or white.
And not all of the students there think that's necessarily a positive thing. -
Days of rage symbolized anger about busing - Youngsters paid a steep price for advancing desegregation -
Prior to busing, the black schools didn't have any problems because all the kids knew they would be hanging tobacco if they caused any trouble. After 12 years of age, you were not required to be in school and the school wouldn't hesitate to toss you out. Same with the white schools. They bumped the age to 16 so the classes would have to dumb down to the level of the slowest kids because the administrators assumed that the black kids couldn't keep up with the white kids. The black kids used to laugh because the teachers at the black school knew "Trog" was retarded but the white teachers at the busing school had no idea. They just thought he was black. Geez. What a mess.
This is very misleading and was not the case in Charlotte.
District officials fought the lawsuit brought by white parents to end desegregation, saying their job was not finished.
This cost the school now having to cut many classes, over 40 million tax payer dollars.
"In 1996 we had only 39 percent of our African-Americans reading at grade level in third grade," Smith said. "That's just abysmal."
Proving that the busing experiment didn't work.
Eighty-five percent of white Americans say black children have as good a chance as white children of getting a good education in their community,
And that chance of getting a "good education" is becoming just a dream for both white and black as public schools put more money into social issues and less money into the three Rs.
Even if one is saddled with a lower IQ than the average, he can attain a degree of intellectual acumen that will enable him to be a productive member of society; he just has to work harder at it. The problem, however, is that most blacks are trapped in a culture which disdains academic achievement and self sufficiency in favor of being leaches and parasites on society at large. The fact that our society places more value on the acquisition of material things over being a good person when assessing someone's worth as a human being just exaserbates the problem.
The standards have gotten increasingly lower. Less is required by less competent personnel. Many teachers who would have been good for education have left, burned out by paperwork, student attitude and disgusted by the lack of intellectual stimulation and their restricted control of the classroom. Instead of requiring students to learn the basics, the science of educrat psyco-babble and political correctness has become the focus of hoards of over-priced bureaucrats and administrators.
Now, a quarter of a century and at least one generation of illiterates later, we're quietly throwing the last handfuls of dirt over this treachery. And before the first grass grows on its grave, the liberals will be sending us the bill for a New Vision that will ultimately prove as destructive as this one.
Remember the days when a catalog of failures used to disqualify you from making important decisions?
Kids have got to want to learn, libraries have got to be available to provide them with material other than the sanitized and biased texts they will find in public schools, and parents have got to keep watch and insure that actual learning takes place.
Schooling, public, private, or home, must be a challenge and not socialization (levelling).
Any kid CAN learn, most today don't believe they NEED to learn and all the free computers and feel-good exercises in the current mix only take the challenge farther away from the kids who would accept it.
The lower your IQ is the harder it is to attain the level of knowledge to take advantage of what you have. The person with the lower IQ must be more dilligent in his quest for excellence, no matter what his goals are. That is the way it has always been, and always will be. The problem here, I think, is that our society places more value on a bad physician with an 85 IQ than a good ditch digger with an 85 IQ. In my opinion, excellence itself is closer to God than mere social position and material possessions. An increase in material possessions and honors without a corresponding increase in excellence of the soul is the product of evil and the producer of more evil. This is the state of society today in the US.
Somehow I have a feeling that what Ms Jones states is not true in reality. She might be reflecting brainwashed wishful thinking more than fact of life.
I find it hard to believe that forced integration resulted in racial tolerance. Human nature alone, regardless of race, speaks contrary to her assumption. Acceptance due to fear of punishment is probably more descriptive of what happened and the most important and critical part is not mentioned at all which is resentment. Yes, resentment, in the parents and the children affected. These kids and parents have now been instilled with disdain for people of color as would a child show lifelong dislike of any food that they overate or were force-fed.
And now for the big question. Is this unnecessary animosity worth it? No, because the education level has not improved and now a deep seated feeling of resentment has been instilled that didn't exist before.
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