A STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY ABBY LEVIN AMY NEWCOMB DAVID OH KIMBERLY SIEVEKE LUCINDA PHILIPP RICHARD PRESICCI TERRA MAKOWSKI CI 565 – Dr. Gayle Y. Thieman, Portland State University

Social Context in the 1950’s  Postwar baby boomers are hopeful  Schools expected to inoculate children from disease, protect them from nuclear threat and prepare them for a technological future.  There were, however, severe inequalities. Springfield Public School

Severe Inequalities in 1950  African Americans Segregated by Law: 17 States  Average Schooling for Mexican Americans: 5.4 Years  Disabled Children Not Enrolled in School: 72%  Women Athletics Teams, Scholarships and Professional Schools and Colleges were unavailable. Eastport School, Annapolis

Racial Segregation in Topeka, Kansas  Fight Began in Topeka, Kansas  High Schools  Integrated on the surface  School activities were segregated  Elementary Schools  Strictly segregated  18 white schools, 4 African-American schools  African-American Teachers held Master’s degrees and were highly qualified. They had vastly limited resources compared to white schools. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas

Beginning the Fight for Equality: Parents and the NAACP  Parents fight for their children  School Board meetings  Wanted the same education  Separate, but equal court decision upheld  NAACP efforts  School was the platform to end segregation  13 parents attempted to enroll children (1950)  Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education (1954 verdict)

Problems with the Implementation of the Brown vs. Board Ruling A Failure to Integrate  10 years after Brown vs Board of Education ruling, 90% of schools were still segregated.  Example: The Little Rock Nine Civil Rights Act of 1964  President Lyndon Johnson  The act withheld funding if schools failed to integrate, and gave funding if schools successfully integrated.  The monetary incentive was enough to make most schools comply  Within 8 years, 91% of schools were integrated

The Bilingual Education Act  Congress Passes the Bilingual Act of 1968  Crystal City, Texas. Chicano students demand to be allowed to speak Spanish, study Chicano history, and be taught by Chicano teachers.  Lau sues San Francisco's school district. Lau v Nichols US Supreme Court 1974: Specialized instruction in English; Access to core content; and Access to all other district programs and services  National Association for Bilingual Education is founded. Walkout in Crystal City School in San Francisco

Gender Equality  In 1970, only 1 % of Medical and Law degrees were awarded to women and 7.4% of high school athletes were female  In 1972, Title IV was passed. Like the previous civil rights laws, enforcement was still an issue  Dorothy Raffle: 14 year old female basketball player. Filed lawsuit against federal government for failing to enforce the law  Within 20 years, 40% of all high school athletes are female, and over half of higher level graduates are women  Title IX had an impact broader than just K-12 education; it swept to professions, which changed the workplace

Children with Disabilities  Civil rights movement extended to children with disabilities, based heavily on the Brown vs. Board decision  Not enough to treat everyone equally, had to provide resources and training to make learning possible  Changes were costly and controversial  Widely implemented

Busing and Zoning Discrimination Persists  1971: U.S. Supreme Court ruled that busing children within a city’s limits was lawful and a solution to the school segregation issue.  Detroit, Michigan was not one of those successful cities. In 1972 a federal judge ordered an unconventional solution: Bus inner city students (black) out of Detroit and into the suburban schools (white) and vice versa. This was due to the “white flight” that stemmed from Detroit’s riots of the 1960’s that now had caused severely underfunded inner city schools while the suburbs – due to a rich tax foundation – offered a rich variety of academic and extracurricular activities.  This affected approximately 800,000 students  1974: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs of Detroit were not responsible for the school conditions in the city.  Thurgood Marshall was outspoken against the ruling: “In the short run, it may seem the easier course “to allow our great metropolitan areas to be divided up into two cities – one white, the other black. But it is a course, I predict that our people ultimately regret.

The Debate Continues Years later the debate for educational equality continues! Busing as an example was used successfully to create more racially balanced schools in many cities But it failed in places like Detroit - the numbers were out of sync to promote quality education for all Did the lawsuits and litigation work? Some think the debates and action were needed to address the social injustice in a democratic society Yet there is a doubt that the best ideas about common schools and public education have not been tried So where did we get in 30 years of radical changes? We sometimes forget where we were in 1954 and some do see a net gain for the society as a whole. We got the laws in place that can allow us to move forward and develop a healthy system - but will we?