Urban Education: Separate and Unequal Tabitha Dell’Angelo

1. Urban Education: Separate and Unequal Tabitha Dell’Angelo

2. Separate but Equal • Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) • The Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” was accepted as a tolerable rationale for the perpetuation of a dual system in American society.

3. Brown vs BOE * Topeka, Kansas • Thirteen parents volunteered to participate. • Oliver Brown, a minister, was the first parent listed in the suit, so the case came to be named after him. • The case was filed in February 1951. The U.S. District Court ruled against the plaintiffs. • Psychological evidence that African American children were adversely affected by segregation. These findings later were quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 opinion.

4. Contemporary segregation2002-03 • Chicago: 87% of public school enrollment was Black or Hispanic • Washington, D.C.: 94% of children were Black and Hispanic, less than 5% White • St. Louis: 82% Black and Hispanic • Philadelphia & Cleveland: 79% • Detroit: 96%

5. Abbott • In the Abbott II (1990) decision, the NJ Supreme Court found the education provided to urban school children inadequate and unconstitutional. In this and subsequent rulings, the Court ordered remedies to assure these children a constitutional education. The remedies include standards-based education supported by adequate foundation funding; supplemental K-12 programs; universal preschool education; school facilities improvements; and accountability measures.

6. Abbott districts… • are classified by the NJ Department of Education as urban; • are in the lowest socio-economic status • have "evidence of substantive failure of thorough and efficient education;” • including "failure to achieve what the DOE considers passing levels of performance on the High School Proficiency Test (HSPT);” • have a large percentage of poor students who need "an education beyond the norm;” • are in communities with an "excessive tax [for] municipal services;" and • have a large percentage of students of color.

7. Asbury Park • Bridgeton • Burlington City • Camden • East Orange • Elizabeth • Garfield • Gloucester City • Harrison • Hoboken • Irvington • Jersey City • Keansburg • Long Branch • Millville • Neptune Twp. • New Brunswick • Newark • Orange • Passaic • Paterson • Pemberton • Perth Amboy • Phillipsburg • Plainfield • Pleasantville • Salem City • Trenton • Union City • Vineland • West New York http://www.edlawcenter.org/ELCPublic/AbbottvBurke/AbbottProfile.htm

8. Efforts to segregate

9. Dr. Martin Luther King School, NYC Built (1975) in the belief that it would draw large numbers of White students who could just walk to school and Black and Hispanic students would come by bus or train. “…it was seen as a promising effort to integrate White, Black, and Hispanic students in a thriving neighborhood that held one of the city’s cultural gems.” ~NYTimes

10. “It stands today as one of the nations most visible and problematic symbols of an expectation rapidly receding and a legacy substantially betrayed.”~ Jonathan Kozol

11. Voices “If people woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had simply died or left for somewhere else … I think they’d be relieved.” “We do not have the things you have. You have clean things. We do not have. You have a clean bathroom. We do not have that. You have parks we not have parks.” “We have a gym but it is for lining up. I think it is not fair.” “I wish this was the most beautiful school in the whole why world.”

12. Local facts

13. SAT scores

14. Graduation? • In 48% of high schools in the nation’s 100 largest districts, less than half the entering 9th graders graduate in four years.

15. FundingQuality vs Investment

16. Solutions?

17. There is something deeply hypocritical about a society that holds and 8 y.o. inner-city child ‘accountable’ for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our gov’t accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years earlier. • Jonathan Kozol, 2005 on early childhood education

18. The prepackaged lessons were intended to ensure that all teachers – even novices or the most inept – would be able to teach reading. • Nytimes, 1/03 on SFA • SFA has since been discontinued in the NYC public schools, though it is still being used in 1,300 US Schools, serving as many as 650,000 children. Similar scripted systems are used in schools in primarily with minority children.

19. Since the enactment of NCLB (2002) the number of standardized exams children must take has more than doubled. The achievement gap between Black and White children, which narrowed for three decades up until the late 1980s (while school desegration decreased) started to widen once more in the 1990s (as mandates of the Brown decision were ignored).

20. What is the problem?

21. Poverty? • “…the excuse that students who do poorly do so because of demographic factors, such as poverty, that are beyond the control of the schools. This is like arguing that we shouldn’t expect to be able to fly because gravity is beyond human control.” • Stanley Pogrow, University of Arizona (1996)

22. Obstacles to Student Learning • Lack of students basic skills • Lack of motivation among students • Inadequate instructional materials • Too many students in my classes • Too little additional Academic support • High student mobility in/out of school • Poor student attendance • Lack of parent involvement • Not enough additional help in class • Varying ability of students • Not enough time for instruction • Students lack appropriate study habits