On the Top Performers blog of Education Week, Marc Tucker has written a compelling post which challenges American complacency on the new “separate but equal.” Despite Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, various statistics show that American schools are as segregated as they ever were before that monumental court decision.
And of course, this sad fact is not due to the overt racism that characterized the United States for its early history, when schools literally would not admit minority students. Now, housing segregation, a result of both lingering racism and well as classicism issues, is the cause of school segregation.
Tucker calls out school leaders and citizens concerned about education for throwing their hands up in the air and essentially saying, “Well, we can’t do anything about housing segregation; we are schools.”
Tucker, leader of the National Center on Education and the Economy, believes otherwise. If American school systems and citizens would be willing to take on the task of reforming the way that schools are funded, then poor areas would no longer continue to have to have poor schools.
Many states and districts already have some methods in place to shift some funds, largely from property taxes, from richer to poorer schools; however, these methods are incredibly diverse and often difficult to pinpoint and even harder to change. Not only that, but many richer areas use other means to provide funding for their already well-performing schools—means that can circumvent property tax rules related to funding schools. This blog discussed this issue here: https://www.coreeducationllc.com/blog2/private-funds-and-public-schools-in-california/
For more information about Tucker’s clarion call to action on American school segregation, please visit: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2014/06/american_schools_back_to_separate_but_equal.html
