Posts Tagged professional development

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

An open letter to President Obama on schools, education and teaching

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to you as a National Board Certified Social Studies Teacher who voted for your as President even despite my concerns about your approach to educational policy. You were not my first choice, precisely because I, like many educators I know, were concerned both about your approach to some educational issues and some of the people advising you. Nevertheless, we all enthusiastically supported your candidacy, in many cases before you clinched the nomination.

I will not speak for anyone except myself. Others are also writing open letters, as you can see at this website.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Related posts