While driving home for Fall Break, I listened to a podcast from "This American Life" that focused on segregated schools in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Narrated by Nikole Hannah-Jones, an African American woman who has researched issues revolving around school segregation for the past ten years, the episode highlighted the unequal access to quality education that the mostly black students in the Normandy School District (which borders Ferguson, MO, where Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer) have received for the last two decades. Concentrating on a few stories from affected students, the narrator told a powerful story, one that was thought-provoking and illuminating.
The Normandy School district offered an education so horrible that it lost its state accreditation. Because they lost this status, they were forced to cover the costs for students to attend other nearby schools in the early 2010s (that is, until the State of Missouri interfered within a year and found a loophole for the district to regain accreditation), which essentially forced integration. Ultimately, one of the students whose story was uplifted -- Mah'ria -- was able to find a way to attend a different school, a school that was 85% white. She first took advantage of the bussing program and then found another way to commute. Mah'ria made new friends, earned good grades, and starred on the volleyball team. This is great for her. But, as the narrator alludes, she still did not really have access to an equal education -- all because of her skin color and her economic status.
Mah'ria and others were forced to wake up at 5 a.m. in order to catch the bus to school. They had to go to a neighboring county in order to receive a quality education. White students, on the other hand, often lived within walking distance of a top-notch, publicly funded school. Even though Mah'ria was eventually given access to a good education, she still had to make immense sacrifices in order to receive this right. This is in no way equal, and the needs of black citizens were not -- are not -- being met to the same extent and quality that those of white citizens are.
I'm glad that Mah'ria was able to find a way to get a better education. Despite her success, something must be done to improve access to quality education for black children. The narrator's answer was to further integrate more schools, to take steps to mix black and white children. But even if this is done -- and studies have proved that it is effective in raising test scores of black children because it ensures that they are receiving the same level of education as their white peers -- it is likely that the black students will be the ones bussed to new locations in order to integrate, creating another burden on these children. I honestly don't know what the answer is, but we must do something as a society to increase education equality.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with
In my opinion, education inequality remains in society because of the legacy of segregation. While the education system in the United States was crafted by legal segregation, it was simultaneously used as an entryway by African Americans to eliminate segregation. In 1954, the Brown v Board of Education case deemed that “separate but equal” had no place in public education. However, while segregation in schools became unconstitutional, integration was not accepted and did not occur for many years after the decision was made. Both the initial segregation of schools and the resistance to school desegregation – I believe – has led to the inability of African Americans to gain greater access to quality education. Also, housing discrimination within American society can be related to education inequality. In his post, Brooks noted how most African American students, who want to attend better schools, had to take long bus rides in the morning from their majority African American neighborhoods to their school in majority white neighborhoods. Past housing segregation and discrimination divided neighborhoods by race, which ultimately divided schools by race. The African American neighborhoods did not get the same amount to spend on education and resources like the wealthier white neighborhoods; therefore, education inequality is still able to exist at high levels in the United States today.
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