Home > Fulfilling
the Promise of Brown vs. Board of Education
María Cuca Robledo
IDRA Executive Director
years later, the promise of Brown remains unmet. In fact, the
promise of Brown may be slipping further out of reach.
to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, public schools in the
United States are resegregating. As we began the new millennium,
40 percent of Black students attended schools that were 90
percent to 100 percent Black. This is up from 32 percent in
1988. In nine out of 10 of these schools the majority of children
were poor. This is not the promise of Brown (IDRA, 2003).
are the most segregated, and they attend the poorest schools.
They receive the poorest preparation by the least trained teachers
and have little access to rigorous curriculum that would prepare
them for college. This is not the promise of Brown.
percent of the 4.5 million students who speak a language other
than English have a seat in the classroom but are left out
of the class because of English-only policies that are concerned
with politics instead of learning (Kindler, 2002). This is
not the promise of Brown, of Mendez, of Lau,
or of Plylar. This is not the promise we have made to
do we make good on this promise? It seems to me that we must
secure three foundations: We must keep the public in public
education; we must press for accountable schools; and we must
fund schools for the common good.
Public Schools Must Stay Public
Americans support public schools. Poll after poll shows
overwhelming support for public schools. But there has always
been a vocal minority that has fought the integration that
comes with public schools.
education was first conceived and began to take shape in our
country, various groups raised opposition: Why did everyone
need to go to school? Why did they need an education? Wouldnt
ex-slaves and their children be more comfortable in their own
schools? Why spend money on immigrants who didnt even
speak English? Well
maybe spend a little bit
of money, but only enough to keep them out of the streets.
But surely, those children were not going to attend
school with our children. And so it went.
After the Brown decision,
in the Jim Crow south, White institutions dragged their feet,
and private White academies became commonplace. Separate but
equal would, in this way, stay in place. Today, private schools
funded by public sources are a reality in some states.
to be moving from dual schools to dual systems, one public,
one private with our public money diverted to privatizing
through vouchers, private charters, home schools, virtual schools
and tax credits.
At the same
time, I see an emerging pattern of large private foundation
dollars going into public schools not to encourage innovation
and bold action but to replace diminishing public dollars.
already have dual systems one well-funded private system
for children of the rich, the privileged and the few deserving
poor, and another separate government system for the poor,
the disenfranchised, and anyone who cannot get their children
out of public schools. We should not follow their lead.
States is still uniquely committed to one system that prepares
us all for living in a great democracy. We should preserve
It is not
OK to turn our public schools into poorly-funded government
schools; public schools belong to all of us. It is not OK to
turn our public schools into private schools, accountable to
private boards; public schools are accountable to all of us.
It is not OK turn to our public schools into charity schools;
public schools are civic institutions, a central part of our
So, as we
move forward, keeping the public in public schools is
essential. To work in the public interest, a system must be
responsive and responsible to the public it serves. This brings
us to the second foundation: we must press for accountable
Schools Must be Accountable
There is much discussion today about whether the accountability
required by the No Child Left Behind Act is about
responsibility or about blame. Many have suggested that the
pressure put on schools is causing more problems than it
two important things to remember: The first is that in an environment
of blame, nothing gets done. The second is that accountability
pressures have not caused high dropout rates or low achievement.
before accountability ruled the day, Latino and African American
children were systematically pushed out of schools and consistently
undereducated to an even greater extent than today.
line is: schools are responsible for the education of children for
all children, be they Black, Brown, White, poor, rich, female,
male, disabled, non-disabled, English-speaking or not.
throughout the country, some represented in this room, have
demonstrated that a no excuses, all children
can learn approach produces results. Tests can play an
important role in this kind of school accountability system one
that accepts the responsibility that schools have toward children
accountability should not and need not mean that high-stakes
decisions in childrens lives are made on the basis of
tests nor that tests dictate what children learn.
federal policy requires that 95 percent of children be tested.
This was intended to assure that groups of children are not
systematically excluded from the tests in order to make schools
look good. This is not a bad thing.
as a matter of fact, the disaggregation of data by racial and
ethnic group did much to emphasize that schools are responsible
for educating Black and Latino children. However, these provisions
also encourage using tests to punish children who are not being
quality experts test a river, they do it with just a sampling
of drops. States could continue to measure their schools ability
to educate different groups of children and could do it more
efficiently and inexpensively by testing a stratified sample
not allowable under current federal policy, but it is the right
direction, and one we should pursue.
then, is a foundation of quality schools that work for all
children. Accountability encourages and ensures public support.
Schools Must be Funded Equitably
A third and last foundation that we must secure to make
good on our promise to children is to fund schools for the
common good. In this time of budget deficits, budget shortfalls
and fiscal austerity, the way we fund schools is once again
cast into the limelight.
formed 30 years ago in order to address this critical issue.
Working closely with Al Kaufmann, the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, a small group of school districts,
and others who believed as we did, we successfully changed
school funding in Texas.
some of the wealthiest school systems in Texas spent $10,000
per student and had low school tax rates. Poorer systems could
only spend $3,000 per pupil and had much higher taxes. This
meant that the neighborhood in which you happened to live dictated
the quality of your childs schooling (IDRA, 2002).
we have progressed from having one of the most unequal funding
systems in the nation to a funding system that is considered
one of the most equitable.
are those who want to turn the clock back on equity and return
to the good old days the days of haves and have
mistakenly call Texas recapture program, Robin
Hood. Unfortunately, the Robin Hood label
has stuck, encouraging stereotypes of needy Mexicans and Blacks
benefiting from what rightfully belongs to others.
could be further from the truth.
is that recapture helps 95 percent of school districts in the
state. If recapture had been eliminated during the last legislative
session, 867 school districts would have immediately lost more
than $940 million in funding or about a $230 loss per student.
the 116 wealthiest districts in the state would have received
$1,969 per student. Texas does not have Robin Hood, Texas has
fair funding for the common good.
Highland Park school district has a property wealth per weighted
student of $1,042,419 compared to only $11,735 for the Boles
school district in East Texas.
If the Texas
Legislature, in the special session planned for this spring,
eliminates the recapture provisions of the Texas school finance
system, a wealthy minority of districts will profit, while
the majority of school districts, 888 to be exact, and the
majority of children, more than 90 percent of Texas students,
states today there is a move afoot to address questions of adequacy rather
than equity of funding. I am afraid that it will again
be Latinos and minorities who will be educated at minimally
adequate levels, while the rich and privileged can again tax
themselves at lower rates and generate and keep substantial
an appellate court in New York ruled (and was later reversed)
that the state constitution only obligates the government to
offer a modest level of education to its children (Gehring,
2002; Karlin, 2002).
this thinking goes, it is OK for minority children in New York
City to receive a minimal education with minimally adequate
funding, while non-minority children in Upstate New York receive
more funding and a more than adequate education.
Lerner wrote: The skills required to enable a person
to obtain employment, vote and serve on a jury are imparted
between grades eight and nine.
on to write that society needs workers in all levels
of jobs, the majority of which may be very low-level. High
school graduation, he concluded, was therefore unnecessary
is a dead end, it is not a path to equity. We need fair funding
for the common good.
Keeping the Promise of Brown
How can we together create a future in which the color
of a childs skin, the language a child speaks and the
side of town that a child comes from are no longer barriers
to a great education and a good life?
that we can make good on the promise to children by building
on these foundations: keeping the public in public education,
pressing for accountable schools, and funding schools for the
Why is this
so important? Two years ago, on September 11 we were jolted
for a brief moment into a profound and unmistakable sense of we. People
reached for each other across color lines, language barriers,
and class boundaries.
as civic institutions that work for everyone may yet make permanent
that which felt so right.
Gehring, J. N.Y. Appeals Court Rebuffs Lower Courts
School Aid Ruling, Education Week (July 10,
Development Research Association. 30 Years of Advocacy in
Education for All Children (San Antonio, Texas: Intercultural
Development Research Association, 2003).
Development Research Association. Fair
Funding for Texas School Children (San Antonio, Texas:
Intercultural Development Research Association, 2002).
R. Burger skills case inflames advocates:
Appeals ruling extends debate on minimum education standards, Times
Union (July 22, 2002).
A. Survey of the States Limited English Proficient
Students and Available Educational Programs and Services: 2000-2001
Summary Report (Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse
for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational