Urban Education: Separate and Unequal

Tabitha Dell’Angelo

Separate but Equal

Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) The Supreme Court ruled that “separate

but equal” was accepted as a tolerable rationale for the perpetuation of a dual system in American society.

Brown vs BOE

* Topeka, Kansas Thirteen parents volunteered to participate. Oliver Brown, a minister, was the first parent

listed in the suit, so the case came to be named after him.

• The case was filed in February 1951. The U.S. District Court ruled against the plaintiffs.

• Psychological evidence that African American children were adversely affected by segregation. These findings later were quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 opinion.

Contemporary segregation2002-03

Chicago: 87% of public school enrollment was Black or Hispanic

Washington, D.C.: 94% of children were Black and Hispanic, less than 5% White

St. Louis: 82% Black and Hispanic Philadelphia & Cleveland: 79% Detroit: 96%

Abbott In the Abbott II (1990) decision, the NJ

Supreme Court found the education provided to urban school children inadequate and unconstitutional. In this and subsequent rulings, the Court ordered remedies to assure these children a constitutional education. The remedies include standards-based education supported by adequate foundation funding; supplemental K-12 programs; universal preschool education; school facilities improvements; and accountability measures.

Abbott districts…

are classified by the NJ Department of Education as urban;

are in the lowest socio-economic status have "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and

efficient education;”• including "failure to achieve what the DOE considers

passing levels of performance on the High School Proficiency Test (HSPT);”

• have a large percentage of poor students who need "an education beyond the norm;”

• are in communities with an "excessive tax [for] municipal services;" and

have a large percentage of students of color.

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http://www.edlawcenter.org/ELCPublic/AbbottvBurke/AbbottProfile.htm

Efforts to segregate

School Demographics City

Thurgood Marshall Elementary

95% Black, Hispanic and Native American

Seattle

Rosa Parks 86% Black and Hispanic

San Diego

Martin Luther King 99% Black and Hispanic

Los Angeles

99% Black and Hispanic

Milwaukee

97% Black and Hispanic

Cleveland

98% Black and Hispanic

Philadelphia

98% Black and Hispanic

Boston

Dr. Martin Luther King School, NYCBuilt (1975) in the belief that it would draw

large numbers of White students who could just walk to school and Black and Hispanic students would come by bus or train.

“…it was seen as a promising effort to integrate White, Black, and Hispanic students in a thriving neighborhood that held one of the city’s cultural gems.” ~NYTimes

“It stands today as one of the nations most visible and problematic symbols of an expectation rapidly receding and a legacy substantially betrayed.”

~ Jonathan Kozol

Voices

“If people woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had simply died or left for somewhere else … I think they’d be relieved.”

“We do not have the things you have. You have clean things. We do not have. You have a clean bathroom. We do not have that. You have parks we not have parks.”

“We have a gym but it is for lining up. I think it is not fair.”

“I wish this was the most beautiful school in the whole why world.”

Local facts

Language Arts

Below Proficient Advanced

School 46.3 51.7 2

District 48.8 49.3 1.9

State 14.7 66 19.4

Math Below Proficient Advanced

School 79.8 18.8 1.4

District 80.5 18.3 1.2

State 26.6 50.2 23.2

SAT scores

Math Verbal Essay

School 381 386 374

State 509 491 378

Graduation?

In 48% of high schools in the nation’s 100 largest districts, less than half the entering 9th graders graduate in four years.

City Graduation Rate

Trenton 56%

Princeton 96%

Camden 54%

Cherry Hill 98%

FundingQuality vs Investment

District Cost per pupil State/Local Teacher salary

Trenton 15,775 67/12 42,493

Princeton 14.098 42/55 52,947

Cherry Hill 11,019 11/87 51,444

Camden 16,904 90/2 48,647

Solutions?

Focus on Early Childhood Education, Head Start and others

Vouchers, School Choice, Small Learning Communities

Testing and Accountability Standards, School Reform Models, NCLB

Teachers, highly qualified, in-field, support from administrators

There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds and 8 y.o. inner-city child ‘accountable’ for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our gov’t accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years earlier.

Jonathan Kozol, 2005 on early childhood education

The prepackaged lessons were intended to ensure that all teachers – even novices or the most inept – would be able to teach reading.

Nytimes, 1/03 on SFA

SFA has since been discontinued in the NYC public schools, though it is still being used in 1,300 US Schools, serving as many as 650,000 children. Similar scripted systems are used in schools in primarily with minority children.

Since the enactment of NCLB (2002) the number of standardized exams children must take has more than doubled.

The achievement gap between Black and White children, which narrowed for three decades up until the late 1980s (while school desegration decreased) started to widen once more in the 1990s (as mandates of the Brown decision were ignored).

What is the problem?

Poverty?

“…the excuse that students who do poorly do so because of demographic factors, such as poverty, that are beyond the control of the schools. This is like arguing that we shouldn’t expect to be able to fly because gravity is beyond human control.” Stanley Pogrow, University of Arizona

(1996)

Obstacles to Student Learning Lack of students basic skills Lack of motivation among students Inadequate instructional materials Too many students in my classes Too little additional Academic support High student mobility in/out of school Poor student attendance Lack of parent involvement Not enough additional help in class Varying ability of students Not enough time for instruction Students lack appropriate study habits