The State of Public school integration Essay Example for Free

The State of Public school integration Essay Abstract The public schools, more than any other area of society, received the most attention concerning desegregation in the early 1950s. Fully aware that black had been admitted to white colleges and that numerous cases concerning the public schools were being argued in the federal courts, school officials in many parts. Brown vs. Board of education was the ultimate triumph that placed the rights of blacks before the law, on equal footing with whites. The story of Brown vs. Board of Education is a half-century old now and has been retold many times bye historians, legal scholars, sociologists, and others. A number of social forces during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s continue to shape school social work practice. The 1954 Brown vs. Board of education of Topeka, KS decision concluded that separate educational facilities on the basis of race are inherently unequal and unconstitutional. The State of public school integration In recent anthropological study of a California school, John Ogbu makes the point that relationships between the school and the community are sporadic and limited in scope. Parents and community involvement in the schools, he writes, normally mean participation in such extracurricular programs as PTA, open house, and social entertainments rather than more vital matters such as making decisions concerning the pattern: The extent of community participation or control over the schools may vary, but, in general, parents and other community members are content to leave schooling to the teachers and school administrators. (Fein, 1971). This traditional separation between school and community often breaks down, however, when the schools become actively involved in contemporary social and political issues. Large numbers of parents or other groups may not organize committees or attend meetings when a mathematics or history curriculum is on the agenda, but they are aroused when the topics for decision include drawing school boundary lines or busing pupils. School integration—the deliberate placing of previously separate minority and majority groups within the same school building—is surely the prime recent example of how social and political issues bring the school and its various communities into a more direct relationship. (Amir, Sharan, Ben-Ari, 47) Most of the literature tracing the response of local communities to school integration concentrates on the experience in the United States during the past quarter century. Social scientists have analyzed the complex processes that accompany integrated previously segregated Black and White schools in both the North and the South. Not surprisingly, these studies have primarily explored the political problems and processes arising from school integration. This point is emphasized in a recent study of integrated schools. Rist (1979) states: The most ambitious study along these lines is Crain and Associates monograph entitled The politics of School Desegregation (1968). Focusing on an entire city rather than a particular district or neighborhood, the authors analyze the complex interplay among civil rights advocates, boards of education, school officials, and local political and business elites in 15 U.S. cities, as they struggle and bargain with one another while seeking to implement (or delay) voluntary or court- ordered school desegregation. The authors conclude, for example, that school boards are more important than school superintendents in developing integration policies, and that the political style of the city and its elites is particularly critical. This emphasis upon political processes is also apparent in Gerard and Millers (1975) longitudinal study of the outcomes of Black—White school integration in Riverside, California. Hendrickss describes a rash of meetings, demonstrations, boycotts, and violent episodes (a school building was deliberately set on fire) that accompanied the onset of desegregation in Riverside. However, the Riverside schools were quickly integrated, and the demonstrations and meetings came to an end. Indeed, the Riverside case exemplifies rapid community acceptance and cooperation. (Amir, Sharan, Ben-Ari, 48) The New Millennium Atlanta led the way toward integrated schools in the early 1960s. Under Mayors Hartsfield and Allen, the Atlanta school board complied with federal mandates despite pressures from many in the state legislature to resist integration. In 1960, the general assembly gave some ground and appointed John A. Sibley, a prominent Atlanta businessman and civic leader, to chair a state committee to develop guidelines and more understanding on integration issues in Georgia. The Sibley Committee held numerous meetings during the course of a statewide canvass, and subsequently issued recommendations that Georgia allow local school boards to set their own policies and agenda for federal integration compliance. The effort to achieve integration was a gradual one, beginning with the admission of two African-American students to the University of Georgia in 1961 and the incremental integration of four Atlanta city high schools in 1961 and 1962. In 1963, local high schools, local high schools in Savannah, Athens, and Burnswick followed suit and began integration. Although the move toward compliance took almost a decade, by the early 1970s, public schools in Georgia achieved almost full integration. School integration and the gradual end of segregation in public facilities and accommodations brought a growing white-flight movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Huge numbers of urban whites in cities in Georgia and across the South moved out of the city centers and into growing suburbs. Atlanta was typical during this period. As metro Atlantas population passed 2, then 3, million in the late 1970s and 1980s, its central city population decreased. White migration to the suburbs created an unintended and unanticipated paradox in the march toward full school integration. Inner-city schools in Atlanta and other large southern cities came to have disproportionately high numbers of African-American students, while suburban schools were primarily white. The response to this emerging tend was the federally mandated school busing effort of the early 1970s. Students of both races were bused out of their local neighborhoods to schools in other sections as a most controversial aspect of public education during the period in Georgia and across the United States. Mandated busing to attain balanced public school integration began to subside by 1980, largely due to the overwhelmingly negative response by parents of schoolchildren of both races. The Case of Brown Vs Board of Education (1954): The Inequality of Separate but Equal This landmark Supreme Court decision was actually based on a consolidation of four similar cases from Kansas, South Crolina, Virginia, and Delaware. While they were based on different facts and local conditions, they were considered together because of the common legal question being considered. In each of the four cases, African American children were denied admission to state public schools attended by white children. This racial segregation operated under state laws that permitted or required by the practice. These laws had to that point protected been by the precedent of Plessy v, Ferguson. The schools for blacks and whites in each case had been or were being equalized in terms of buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other tangible conditions. The question before the Supreme Court was whether or not the segregation of black children and white children resulted in the children being deprived of the equal protection guaranteed by the fourteenth Amendment. A related question was whether or not the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson could be applied in the area of public education. (Meyer, Weaver, 181) The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education (1954) The event: On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared racial segregation illegal in its landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. For more than half a century, since its 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, the high court had upheld as constitutional all separate but equal accommodations and facilities for blacks. Schools, public transport, restaurants, hotels, and other public facilities were rigidly segregated throughout much of the country, especially the South. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought a series of suits against segregated school districts. In these early cases the Supreme Court ruled that because the tangible aspect of schools for blacks and those for whites were equal, the laws providing for segregated schools were constitutional. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, however, the NAACP lawyers, among them Thurgood Marshall, presented expert testimony on the debilitating effects of segregation—testimony that proves to be extremely important in the courts ruling, which this time held that segregated school systems were inherently unequal because of intangible factors. (Axelrod, Philips, 280) Implication for school social works School social workers draw on a number of diverse roles and tasks to meet the unique needs of each school and the priorities of each building principal. Using the ecological framework as an organizing principle, these tasks include advocating for risk students and their families; empowering families to share their concerns with school officials; maintaining open lines of communication between home and school; helping families understand their childrens educational needs; consulting with teachers about students living situations and neighborhood conditions; making referrals to community agencies; tracking students involved with multiple agencies; and working with the larger community to identify and develop resources to better serve the needs of at-risk students of their families.11 Impact of the Brown vs. Board of Education upon the School social work was great. As a result, schools were faced with the daunting task of desegregating classrooms and educating increasing numbers of students whos lifestyle and language differed from the middle-class orientation of the school (Germain. 1999, p.34). At the same time, a flurry of federal educational legislation during the 1960s and 1870s significantly increased in federal governments role in public education. For example, the: Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibited discrimination in federally assisted programs based on race, color, or national origin, assisted school staff in dealing with problems caused by desegregation. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), through Title I, authorized grand for compensatory education in elementary and secondary schools for children of low-income families. 1972 Education Amendment (Title IX) was the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination in the admission and treatment of students by educational institutions receiving federal assistance. Title IX also prohibited schools that were receiving federal funds from discriminating against pregnant teens and teen mothers. Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) covered students who have a disability and may need special accommodations but not special education and related services as specified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Children with attention deficit disorder with hyper activity (ADHD) and students infected with the AIDS virus are often served under a 504 plan. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, enacted in 1974, provided federal financial assistance to states that had implemented programs for the identification, prevention, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. A component of this act was the creation of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect. Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 provided resources to develop and implement programs to keep elementary and secondary students in school (Dupper 10). Focus on school social works responsibility to help modify school conditions and policies that had a detrimental impact on students by incorporating general systems theory and the ecological perspective as frameworks for social work practice (Costin, 1978). It was also during this time that group work methods were incorporated into school social work practice. However, despite this renewed emphasis on school and community conditions as targets of intervention, the vast majority of school social workers continued to focus on traditional casework models (Dupper 10, 17). Brown v. Board: The Ruling In the first three cases, black children were challenging ruling that denied them admission to white-only public schools. In contrast, the Delaware school system was attempting to regain such segregation. In each case, students had at one point or another been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting separate but equal segregation. The court ruled: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of children to learn. Segregation with the sanction of the law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system. (Brown v. Board of Education) (Meyer, Weaver, 309) As a graduate student completing the Master of Social Work degree at Tulane University in New Orleans, I had my first exposure to ADC. I had come to social work through entirely different routes and had no idea that welfare assistance, which we studied and researched, was synonymous for many people discussion; even poverty and disadvantage were rarely mentioned. The assumption appeared to be that all of that was behind the nation after the reforms of the New Deal and the economic development of the World War II and postwar years. But by 1960 and the presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, welfare had become a substantial public issue. Kennedy talked about poverty and welfare assistance in the presidential campaign. He focused on the great needs of West Virginia people and others in Appalachia. One began hearing discussions of Pockets of poverty, rather than hearing need addressed as a pervasive and national human problem. Kennedy also founded the Peace Corps, another effort that raised public consciousness about disadvantage and its consequences. Perhaps the most salient event that brought public attention to the problems of poverty was the publication of Michael Harringtons The Other America (1962). Harrington wrote that during the Depression, President Roosevelt spoke of a nation in which one-third of the people were poorly housed, clothed, and fed. But by the 1960s, he showed, one-fourth of the people were living in poverty. He said that the poor were isolated from people with power, which perpetuated their poverty. Their only contact with people in authority was with social workers who, Harrington suggested, also lacked power. So the roots of welfare reform are found in the early 1960s, and that is true for both sides of the welfare reform efforts—those who want to make welfare more generous and more humane for the recipients and those who want to reduce its availability and its generosity. Some observers might suggest that there were other factors operating in the origins of the welfare reform debates. Although the earliest proposals were those designed to improve welfare from the perspectives of clients, there was a consistent backlash, and the most global pro- client reforms did not pass Congress. Part of that backlash may have been correlated with the advent and growth of the Civil Rights movement. The Brown vs. Board of education school desegregation decision in 1954 spawned the grass roots efforts to end segregation in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Dr. Martin Luther King and many other African American leaders as well as civil rights organizations took various postures and strategies to end the separation and discrimination that operated from the end of official slavery until mid-century. One might speculate that the new concern about welfare was a surrogate for concern about civil rights. The disproportionately large percentage of African Americans who received assistance (although, like the whole population, the majority of recipients were and are white) seemed to serve as a way of criticizing minority group members without doing so directly.(Nackerud, Robinson 3) Conclusion Public school integration became an explosive issue in New Orleans because it forced into conflict both racial and class interests. The city was roughly 40 percent Catholic in 1950 and in 1962, some 39,000, or 47 percent of the citys white students attended Catholic schools. The city had well established private, Catholic, and public schools; all three systems were segregated. Although the quality of schools varied throughout the city, depending upon the affluence of the neighborhood involved, black public schools were acknowledged to be inferior to white public schools. Black children often attended schools on half-day platoon shifts in buildings that were dilapidated and in need of basic supplies. Black PTAs had protested these conditions throughout the 1950s, and the NAACP leadership hoped that school integration would equalize opportunities for the citys black children. But the public schools were the most vulnerable educational institutions in the city. Affluent whites preferred to send their children to elite private or Catholic schools, and ambitious black parents tried to educate their children in rather private institutions like Gilbert Academy, or in the black Catholic system. It was not surprising that working –class segregationists interpreted school integration as class exploitation and victimization in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many went to drastic measures to avoid the loss of status that racial integration signified. In the fall of 1960, their collective actions included demonstrations, picketing, acts of terrorism, and boycotting of integrated schools. In 1956, Judge J. Skelly Wright rendered a decision on the Bush case. He ordered the OPSB to cease requiring segregation in the citys public schools with all deliberate speed. A lengthy series of appeals followed, while the school board and the state legislature sought to stall school integration. Reference Amir, Yehuda. Sharan, Shlomo. (1984). School Desegregation: Cross Cultural Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publisher. Pg. 47, 48 Dupper, David. (2002). School Social Work Skills and Interventions for Effective Practice. Wiley .com Publisher. Pg. 13 Marger, Robinson. Nackerud, G, Larry. (2000). Early Implications of Welfare Reform in the Southeast. NY: Nova Publishers. Pg. 3 Meyer, G, Robert. Weaver, M, Christopher. (2006). Law and Mental Health: A Case-Based Approach. NY: Guilford Press Publisher. Pg. 307 Philips, Charles. Axelrod, Alan. (2004). What Every American Should Know about American History: 200 Events That’s†¦. US: Adams Media Publisher. Pg. 280 Rogers, Lacy, Kim. (1993).Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. NY: NYU Press Publisher. Pg. 50, 63