Jeremy B. Landa
I. The Coleman Report
In 1966, the Coleman Report was released as a product of the Project Talent study commissioned by the Office of Education in the federal government. The study was led by James S. Coleman and is one of the most comprehensive educational studies ever conducted with over 600,000 elementary and secondary students as part of the sample. It included "student attitudes and family social and economic circumstances; it also included math and reading test items."
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The study was expected to find that a gap existed between the performance of whites and African-Americans. It also expected to find a lack of equity in opportunity for young black students in the United States. While the first expected finding was indeed confirmed, the second was not. It found small differences in funding, but "the association between resource differences and a racial achievement gap was surprisingly small".
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The most central finding made was that integration was the most effective method of changing black children's achievement levels. However, this only happened when they were integrated in schools that were composed of a majority of middle-class students.
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That finding was unique, yet popular culture cared little. The New York Times included a description of the report on July 2, 1966, with a damning headline, "Negro Education is Found Inferior."
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While this article did address the acknowledgement of an achievement gap between whites and blacks, it did not address that socioeconomics and race were linked regarding improvement in school outcomes. The article also buried a centrally crucial finding about families being more important in the development of children, which again links to socioeconomic status of families as high income families are positioned to support their children differently than low income families.
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Overall, the lack of acknowledgement of some of the key findings in this report allowed many leaders to make policy mistakes that continue today.
Regardless, as a stepping-stone towards the development of a pathway of change for our educational system, this report was important. It marked the first extensive study on the intersection of schools, race, and economics. However, the findings that were most relevant to what could alter the outcomes in schools, parents and socioeconomic integration, seemed to be ignored. This choice should not be surprising as schools, especially Southern schools, were still reeling from judicial decisions about racial integration in 1966. Southern schools were not alone as Northern cities were left dealing with extensive migration of blacks from South to North. This complicated mess helped focus the political discourse on race rather than linking socioeconomic factors with race. It also helped prevent people from connecting integrated socioeconomic schools as a way to navigate through the issues that society faced. This quagmire made the Coleman Report's key finding not mean a great deal to the fate of public schools in 1966.
II. Richard Nixon's Speech on Busing: Did his policy lead to the fates of Cities being disconnected with the fates of the Suburbs?
In March of 1972, the nation was intertwined in a deliberate and important educational battle regarding how to best improve the public schools.
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Some judges had determined that the fate of schools within cities was intertwined with the fate of schools within the suburbs. The debate was leading towards a path where busing and the integration of central cities and suburbs was at stake. Important leaders noticed the trend in central cities of de facto segregation in housing leading to de facto segregated schools. This was noted in Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James Ryan, when powerful individuals such as Lewis Powell, a future Supreme Court Justice said the following in 1969: "[i]n our larger metropolitan area, there are income deficiencies and a racial mix which result in serious educational disadvantages."
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While Powell thought this problem had a clear solution of integration, he was mistaken.
While Powell was focused on integrated schools as a solution, Richard Nixon's White House was entangled in a debate over the fate of public schools. George Romney, Nixon's secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1968 – 1972 was a leader for improving the integration of housing in all cities. He designed a program called the "Open Communities Initiative…trying to put teeth into the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which prohibited housing discrimination".
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Meanwhile, Nixon was trying to stop Romney because integrated housing was a stepping stone for integrated schools. This battle was one Nixon wanted to avoid because of his suburban white constituents. Nixon won the battle with Romney and followed that with an important educational policy speech which paved the path for the Supreme Court to follow his lead.
Nixon's speech on March 17, 1972, laid the foundation for separating the outcomes of students in central cities from those in the suburbs. There was strong political reasoning for Nixon to do this. He had run as a candidate that would restore order to a tumultuous period in America history, one where the Civil Rights of individuals previously marginalized were slowly evolving. This was a scary proposition to many individuals as they felt their own rights were under attack. Nixon, after reflecting on the events happening in the Courts in both Richmond, Virginia in Bradley v. Richmond School Board (1974) and Detroit, Michigan in Milliken v. Bradley, determined it was his turn to weigh in as the President. He was intent on protecting the rights of individual parents who had staked a claim by buying a home in a certain community because of the quality of their schools.
Nixon said in a television address to the nation, "it is time for us to make a national commitment to see that the schools in the central cities are upgraded so that the children who go there will have just as good a chance to get quality education as do the children who go to school in the suburbs. What I am proposing is that at the same time we stop more busing we move forward to guarantee that the children currently attending the poorest schools in our cities…be provided with education equal to that of good schools in their communities".
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Logically, one can conclude that Nixon was not just setting up the schools to prevent busing across districts. He also was trying to separate the outcomes of the white majority, which had mostly migrated to the suburbs at this point, from that of the minorities, mostly black, that resided in central cities.
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That his speech also happened in early 1972 signified a victory for him within his bureaucracy, as he mitigated the impact of Romney and his HUD goals with Romney's resignation. Ultimately, Nixon's speech came at a time when two schools of thought had emerged. One group, led by judges, advocated improving the deteriorating status of cities by linking the metropolitan region with busing their schools. The other group, led by politicians and home-owners, wanted no part of busing, but rather wanted to focus on improving schools using funding mechanisms to compensate schools serving students who needed more support. This speech was a marker, not because it ended the conversation about busing, but because it gave people, including the Supreme Court, permission to believe that busing as a means of integration was a poor use of funds.
III. The Supreme Court, Detroit, and Separating Central Cities from the Suburbs
Detroit, Michigan is a controversial city to examine; it is representative as one of the greatest failures of an American cities. The city that remains today is one that is bankrupt, with decaying institutions and buildings. Yet, that city lays in stark contrast to the suburban landscape, which displays moderate to extreme levels of wealth, most of which come from the ever-present automotive industry.
That this landscape has been shaped by the Supreme Court is surprising, even for me, having spent over twenty years of my life in the city and suburbs of Detroit. Nixon's speech on busing laid the ground for the Supreme Court to review and decide on one of the most consequential education cases following Brown and Brown II. In March of 1972, a judicial case regarding Detroit's Public Schools lay embroiled in the federal district court. Judge Stephen Roth, like Powell, concluded that ordering busing only within Detroit would fail because of the fact that the schools were already predominantly black. He ordered that 53 of the 86 school districts in the metropolitan Detroit region be bused for desegregation purposes.
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This decision, around the same time as Nixon's speech, placed Michigan at the heart of the busing issue. Surprisingly, northern moderates who had supported school desegregation in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement reneged on that issue when cross-district busing involving their suburban constituents was involved. Simultaneously, urban blacks in Detroit offered only small amounts of support for this type of busing. Both parties lukewarm support was unsurprising: blacks had spent many years fighting for fairness within schools, often to end up in schooling environments so hostile that improved education was all but impossible.
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Meanwhile, Judge Roth's decision worked its way through the judicial courts to the United States Supreme Court. The decision, five-to-four in the court, reversed the court of appeals. The following is a summary of the case:
The case was brought to the court asserting that Detroit Public School (DPS) system was racially segregated as a result of the policies of official actions of the state and the city. The court, which challenged the equal protection provision of the 14
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Amendment, found that the DPS had in fact violated the rights of individuals in Detroit by improperly zoning the schools. The District Court required the city to submit a plan to rectify the situation as well as a secondary plan to integrate 53 out of the 86 suburban districts with the city of Detroit despite the fact that the suburbs were not respondents in the initial case. The Supreme Court found that the courts below it had made a mistake in believing that the only way to correct the problems of segregation in Detroit were to include the suburbs in the desegregation plan. They found that the state had not intentionally segregated the school districts because they had not acted to draw city lines. Since suburban cities had not acted by law to segregate their own boundaries, they were absolved from remedying Detroit's segregation within their schools. Altogether, the Supreme Court found that since these outlying districts had not committed a constitutional violation to begin with, the courts could not impose them to complete cross-district busing to remedy Detroit's segregation.
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The case was decided and the suburbs rejoiced in victory. Meanwhile, the black populace was a mixture of disappointment and defiance. Some were disappointed because of the missed opportunity for their children. Others were defiant; Mayor Coleman Young along with many other blacks believed that "the issue was equal educational opportunity, which could be achieved with greater funding. There was no magic…in having white and black kids sit together."
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The end result was a central city, Detroit, left to fend for itself. One way that they and many other cities did this was by seeking large amounts of compensatory funding to make up for the racial and socioeconomic segregation that existed for the students in the schools and the problems that result from living in these conditions. Milliken, unfortunately, became a case that was part of my life as a public school student in the suburbs of Detroit in the mid-1980s through late 1990's. My school, largely white, affluent, and less than a mile from my home, had outstanding educational outcomes. Only 2 miles away in Detroit, students headed to schools that were racially and socioeconomically segregated. These schools often could not overcome the circumstances of the students they served. While it appeared that my own fortunes had risen with the Milliken decision, not growing up around people with vastly different racial and economic experiences could not have helped me be empathetic.
More importantly, the people who suffered most as a result of this decision were those who were born into central city zip codes that were segregated racially and socioeconomically. Where one was born would remain the best predictor for school success. As these arbitrary lines that separated cities became walls, it would become harder for school systems to discover ways to integrate their schools and change the landscape. Cities today have been largely shaped by Milliken and the ideas and attitudes carried by people that agreed with this decision.
IV. The Schools today: Implications for the future
Segregation between central cities and the suburbs is visible today, although less so than when Milliken was decided just over 40 years ago. Yet, we are also arguably more tolerant as a people today. How else can we explain electing Barack Obama the president if this were not true? Yet, schools have followed the trend of segregated cities and not of the improved outcome of individuals like Barack Obama. Our schools today are segregated racially with more students being hyper-segregated than 1970. They are also often socio-economically segregated starting in kindergarten.
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The questions that remain have existed since schools first attempted to integrate by race. Does integration improve schools and what kind of integration improves schools? Racially most of the problems that were addressed long ago still exist within the schools. However, because of decisions like Milliken schools have progressed away from the racial composition of these places towards issues of funding. The Supreme Court itself has established a rule of strict scrutiny regarding race that has prohibited schools from purposefully sorting students using race as a criteria. The most recent case to do so was Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007).
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With race all but dead as a mechanism for changing the structure of schools, most districts have resorted to socioeconomics and funding as policy tools for improving schools.
Beginning with the early 2000's many schools have began turning towards socioeconomic status as an indicator to improve schools. In Connecticut, the home to the students in my class, the Connecticut Supreme Court decided the case Sheff v O'Neill (2001) around the idea that the "extreme racial and ethnic isolation in the public school system deprives the schoolchildren of a substantially equal educational opportunity".
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The end result, while avoiding the socioeconomic question was a clear initiative to improve the educational outcomes beyond race and including ethnic background. Currently, that decision has provided little traction towards actual change in education, but has pushed magnet schools, not unlike Coop High School as a way to improve racial and ethnic isolation.
Some other examples worth mentioning are the debates in finance equity covering inter-district, intra-state, and inter-state funding in schools. While all three exist, the focus of this unit is on one particular district, so two more interesting examples of integration are relevant. The first is the Wake County Schools, which developed a plan of socioeconomic integration that was practiced until controversy arose in 2010. The policy promoted schools with no school having more than 40% free and reduced lunch students (a federal indicator of poverty) and no more than 25% of the students performing below grade level.
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Equally intriguing is the Charlotte-Mecklenburg public school system, which successfully integrated its schools racially in the 1970s under court order. Despite the mandate, more affluent whites were able to use their political and social capital to prevent integration in their schools. Once this became known to citizens in Charlotte and Mecklenburg, "less affluent whites resented this exemption" that more affluent whites schools were left untouched, a coalition of integrationists successfully lobbied the district to increase the amount of busing. It helped that the district court judge, James McMillan was also committed to socioeconomic integration. Eventually, Charlotte-Mecklenburg achieved integration that was so meaningful that parents believed it was desirable and essential to society.
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Race, socioeconomics, law, and schools are issues that currently create a systemic debate about how to improve schools. While many cities are exploring different ways to solve the complicated puzzle that these topics present, many others are ignoring the unresolved issues of our nation. While schools must do better for our students, we have an obligation to not forget the initial ideas that the Coleman Report found in 1966 – outcomes are best improved by mixing low and high income socioeconomic students with majority middle-class students. Considering our great nation has put a man on the moon and built an atomic bomb, we have an imperative to improve our educational system drastically. The future of our country is at stake if we do not figure out a way to resolve the fraying of the binds that connect those in urban, suburban, and rural environments.