Posts Tagged board of education

American public schools – still unequal (and racist) after all these years

this has been crossposted on several different blogs

In 1949, Black parents and children filed a law suit against the Board of Education in School District #22 in Clarendon County SC, noting the total inadequacy of facilities which were “unprotected from the elements . . .[with] no appropriate and necessary heating system, running water or adequate lights . . . and [with]an insufficient number of teachers and insufficent class spaces.” The white schools were of course more modern and better equipped. That suit led to Briggs v Eliot, one of the cases eventually combined into the landmark Brown v Board of Education case that found schools segregated by race “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional even according to the perverse “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v Ferguson.

If it sounds like all I am doing is retelling ancient history, consider this: in 1999 the South Caroline Supreme Court remanded a case to trial “based on gross differences in resources in the same still-segregated Clarendoun County schools – now serving the grandchildren of the original plaintiffs – and the predominantly White and wealthier districts.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Stormy times ahead for "mumbo jumbo" education talkers

Here is a column widely circulated in Indiana. I particularly note these remarks by Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels. Stormy weather ahead for foundations scholars and other “mumbo jumbo” talkers.

“Arne Duncan could not be superintendent or principal in Indiana,” Daniels said of Obama’s education chief and former superintendent of Chicago schools. “He doesn’t have the right credentials.” The governor enunciated “credentials.”

Asked about how the Ball State University teachers college will have to adapt, Daniels explained, “When the Professional Licensing Board begins starting next week to redefine what is required to get a teaching license in Indiana, the schools of education are going to have to make some major changes of their own. They are not going to need as many people teaching what to me is mumbo jumbo. We’re going to expect students who want to teach spending much more of their time studying the subject they are going to be teaching in the schools.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Brown v Board of Education after 55 years

Fifty-five years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously issued Earl Warren’s opinion in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, in which it stated unequivocally that

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

And yet even after 55 years the promise of the Brown decision we still have not overcome what is effectively a system of educational apartheid.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts