the biggest gains in educational achievement for minority students occurred in the 1970s.

[Hannah Bell]

It's been more than a half-century since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. "Separate educational facilities," the court ruled, "are inherently unequal." But for all of our celebration of a "post-racial" America, separate and unequal education is still the norm--and by all measures it's getting worse. In his 2008 race speech in Philadelphia, then-candidate Obama recognized the problem. "Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools: we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students."

Look at New York City. The most recent test score data, reported here, give the lie to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chancellor Joel Klein's "mission accomplished" moment a few years ago, when they touted the narrowing of the gap between black and white students (**Note: which turned out to be FRAUDULENT). New York might be one of the richest cities in the world, but its schools are still fundamentally failing. No surprise that New York schools are among the most segregated by race in the country. The grim reality is this: the biggest gains in educational achievement for minority students, especially African Americans, occurred in the 1970s.... It's not because the '70s was a period of great educational innovation. Instead, it was the one moment in recent American history when there was still political will to support educational integration....

But, hey, we have a president who supports integration, don't we? Obama has emphasized education, but his administration is walking down the same rutted path as his predecessors. More funding for charter schools. More teaching to the test in a warmed-over version of No Child Left Behind... bromides about "self-discipline" and "hard work..." One fundamental problem (and there are many more that I can't list here) with the Obama administration's policies is that they take for granted that segregation by race and class is unchangeable. They take for granted that disadvantaged students will remain concentrated together. And they accept as a given the reality of ghettos of wealth in privileged school districts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/school-daze/61526/

[d_r]

1. we've been moving backwards

Raliegh NC is a good example.

Someone had already unrec'd this. Not sure why. Our schools are more segregate today than they were in the 80s or 70s.

[LWolf]

2. "Susan Eaton, a Harvard education researcher, puts it well:"

"Government spends most of its education money trying to make 'separate but equal' work. Separate but equal has never worked. Growing inequalities in the society are replicated in school hallways and classrooms."

For most of American history, we've lived with separate and unequal. And we continue to live with the consequences. Uplifting speeches, school barbeques or a even a handful of successful charter schools won't solve that problem. They make it worse."

[Hannah Bell]

3. it's the hypocrisy, stupid. (not you, lwolf!)

[LWolf]

6. Hypocrisy, dishonesty, and power-mongering. nt

[snot]

4. I'd also like to see inflation-adjusted data on how much was spent per student

then and now, and on what. I wonder if the real problem is that we fund education out of property taxes.

[rucky]

5. I think you just mentioned the elephant in the room.