1. Mario wrote:

It is sad to see how schools are so segregated still. Milliken v. Bradley really ended the efforts of Swann v. Charlotte. I live in Charlotte and I have seen the effects. Schools that were once the pride of the city were threatened of being shut down by a judge. Some have made great improvements but usually when alumni, parents, and administration came together to improve the school. It’s much harder to get teachers and administrators to work in high poverty, majority-minority schools when the same district has affluent schools in affluent neighborhoods that get all of the attention for their high test scores.

I also don’t know how much longer Wake County can hold up busing students by socio-economic status. Despite their schools having higher graduation rates, lower dropout rates, no schools being threatened to be closed, and more success among students from all schools in graduating from college with a good GPA, the parents still complain and want busing to end. I am not a parent of a student but as a student I was bused to schools when I attended public schools. They were a considerable distance from my home when I could walk to others and I didn’t have a problem with it.

2. DCI74 wrote:

Very good piece and just a reminder of how much more work must be done. Ironically this year marks the 20-year anniversary of Sheff. v. ONeill, a lawsuit filed on behalf of 18 Hartford students who’s parents felt their students were being denied the right to quality education. They won the case and since then there have been significant changes made to the school district system in the state but there is still so much work to do.

3. EminemsRevenge wrote:

Being a New Yawker, I’m painfully aware of how the Black bourgies are also intergrationists: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/04/smith-stays-home.html

When Black folk move on Up, nine times out of ten they’re derisively looking DOWN on those of us who couldn’t AFFORD city colleges much less prep schools! No where is this more evident that Okra’s elitist school for girls in Africa when i’m sure that the plight of homies on the South Side is not far from where she Aunt Jemima’s her show.

Has everyone forgotten W.E.B. DuBois’ Talented Tenth edict…or Marva Collins’ innovative work in education??? http://www.marvacollins.com/biography.html

I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe—and those of you who *think* we’ve risen above our own shiite and have OVERCOME because we got a “black” president—think again

4. Damajah wrote:

Blacks have taken their eyes off the ball since Brown. It wasn’t about the “right” to have your kids sit in the same classroom with whites…it was about getting access to the same education and resources as whites. People who use the public schools as a free daycare center and SWS office, will get exactly what they deserve…a sub-literate thug, or a pregnant burden on society. The busing experiment has been a huge social success, but an even bigger academic failure, because it allowed white schools to get access to special education funding and other resources, that they could not have gotten without blaming enrollment of black students for low test scores.

5. R.oB. wrote:

OK just to be the fly in the ointment, I’ll say this: the anniversary has now become, like MLK Day, an occasion to speak tropes about the state of our educational system. Why can’t we have a few ideas on how to fix it?

6. DCI74 wrote:

Well R.oB. in CT I have seen a lot of changes that have improved performance like the creation of magnet schools, specialized academies within schools and while some have mixed feelings on them school uniform policies have proven to have an impact as well. However there is still a wide achievement gap between urban and suburban students but the gap has been narrowed a little. But all of that is only one equation because I’ve come to understand over the past few years is that the problem is really complex and there are so many factors that impact a child’s educational process. I believe it starts at home but certainly doesn’t end there.

7. Mario wrote:

DC174, I’ve wondered if uniforms had any impact on performance. I think other ways to fix schools starts with the grassroots. We have to remember that we are only successful because someone else took the time out of their day to support us, and we need to do the same thing for our students. We need to encourage parents to buy their kids books at a young age and not video games. We as a community need to come together to help kids get exposed to all the different professions and types of schools that exist. We also need to demand that our majority Black and Latino schools get just as rigorous a curriculum as the mostly White schools. I think one way we can achieve that is to put the IB program in more inner-city schools and not make it a magnet so the kids in that area are able to get all the available spaces.

I’m still for integration but even Black students in the better performing schools sometimes achieve at the same level as Blacks in the “priority” schools. Then I hear my grandmother tell me of how close she was with her teachers in segregated schools, and I’m torn in my opinion. However, with schools becoming segregated again I think that we can still make it a positive if we can get the community together to work with the schools. I know DuBois said that even though integration was the goal, segregation could be used as an advantage to build up the Black community. Now that could include the Latino community as well in neighborhoods like mine that have schools almost 60% Black and 40% Latino.