In the wake of the exposé about those (five) rapidly-declining, predominantly black neighborhood schools in St. Petersburg, we are confronted by the worrisome reality of “resegregation.” Who would have thought that the ultimate upshot of Brown v. Board of Education and court-ordered integration would be “resegregation”?
Is this the Dixiecrats ironic, Jim Crow revenge?
“Resegregation” is the seeming new normal at certain schools since the Pinellas County School District abandoned its mandatory student-busing-for-racial-quotas policy in 2007 and returned to neighborhood schools. Among those weighing in: U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who flew in to personally rebuke the school district for enabling “education malpractice.”
Some additional context.
Strictly speaking, this shouldn’t be labeled “resegregation.” It’s connotation challenged. This is not a return to Jim Crow when students were actually assigned to schools by virtue of their race. Back in the racist day you could forget about neighborhood boundaries; there were black schools and white schools, and that was that. Just like with restrooms, drinking fountains and lunch counters.
It was de jure racial segregation. Plessy v. Ferguson, as well as George Wallace, still ruled.
Ironically, the eponymous subject of Brown v. Board was Linda Brown, a Topeka, Kansas, third-grader whose parents wanted her to go to the nearest school. They didn’t want her to have to walk six blocks to take a bus to a designated black school. But because the closest school was for whites only, she was not allowed to attend.
Unconscionable.
Schools, as we know, are not mere incubators and pivot points for formal learning. They are, not unlike churches, recreation centers and local businesses, part of a community’s–and neighborhood’s–fabric and synergy and identity.
Where possible, neighborhood schools should be the first option. We’ve already tried the en masse funneling of black and white students into schools miles away, dropping them off for a diversity show-and-tell and then redepositing them in their communities and comfort zones. A yellow Potemkin Village on wheels.
No, this is manifestly still not post-racial America. But before we revisit the usual integration vehicles–from targeted busing to dubious magnets–let’s finally double down on the 14th Amendment, in all of its equal-protection-clause intent. To do any less is to help foster the implicit, insidious stereotype that schools have a critical-mass color quotient. In effect, too many black students is incompatible with academic progress. That’s the societal elephant in the classroom.
That means school districts can’t give platitudinous lip service to schools in poor, black neighborhoods. It means equal-opportunity wherewithal in the form of staff-administration-curriculum-equipment-and-physical-facility quality. It takes, frankly, whatever it takes, to expedite it–from teacher incentives and recruitment bonuses to classroom aides and after-school services to mental health counselors and proper use of federal dollars earmarked for poor children.
It means no unbroken promises and no let-up in maintaining a sense of urgency. Years of negligence aren’t compensated for by a quick pivot after a newspaper’s exposé and an education secretary’s outrage.
And one more variable. This can’t be solely a top-down effort.
Equal opportunity won’t beget equal results unless learning is a community effort. What happens when students–however better taught, motivated, protected and related to at school–leave to spend the majority of their time elsewhere will ultimately be determinative.
The school’s task is undermined if its efforts are not supported beyond its boundary. Strong, dedicated educators can’t ultimately succeed if the work ethic, discipline and dynamics of the classroom are at odds with out-of-school cultural values. Nothing changes, regardless of federal dollars and an influx of seasoned, motivated teachers and administrators, without reinforcement at home and in the community.
The 14th Amendment has its limits.