Posts Tagged quality education

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.

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Getting it wrong again, and again (and again)

So once again two “former governors from different political parties who remain passionate about the quality of education in America” (Chicago Tribune, Perspective, May 3, 2009) have weighed in with a grand proposal about how Arne Duncan should use his “$5 billion to transform education in America” to “improve student achievement and ultimately revolutionize our economy and workforce for the 21st century.”

Neither Jeb Bush nor James B. Hunt Jr. have any background in the field of education, other than being governors. Neither has ever been a teacher, principal, superintendent (although it’s possible Hunt had some personal knowledge of education, having majored in college in “agricultural education”–although he seems to have gone on and immediately got a masters studying how to raise tobacco better, oh, and within two years of college was also studying law–he only failed the bar exam the first time–and was, according to all of biographies I can find on the Web, “an early proponent of teaching standards,” and married a teacher, although she quit her job as teacher to become full-time first-lady–can’t blame her for that!). Yet because they are “passionate” about “the quality of education in America,” and because they believe themselves (implicitly) to offer a balanced perspective (being, after all, “from different political parties”), they think they know how best to spend that money.

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