Education Law

Brown v. Board at 55

This past weekend marked an anniversary that  is arguably one of the most important cases ever heard by the Supreme Court.  Sundaywas 55 years to the day that the Supreme Court decided the Brown v. Board of Education case, unanimously ending segregation in public schools based on race, changing forever the dynamic of public schools across the nation.

Argued by an already legendary attorney, a young Thurgood Marshall won the case for the NAACP and African American children nationwide.  He went on become the first black Supreme Court Justice thirteen years later, serving until 1991.  Despite the Court’s ruling, many states fought the law and continued to segregate based on race.  President Eisenhower had to call in federal troops in Little Rock, Arkansas to keep the peace when nine black children attempted to go to Central High School.  And 55 years later, things have changed.

Nobody in 1954, white or black, could have predicted America electing a black president in 2008.  Things have changed indeed, but discrimination in schools and our culture at large has be lowered dramatically, due largely to the struggles of millions of Americans throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  Color barriers have been broken in almost all professional fields, with diversity in corporations and the workforce at large on the rise.  But we still have a ways to go.  A recent report from the Schott Foundation titled Lost Opportunity: A 50 State Report on the Opportunity to Learn in America notes that “only eight states are providing a moderately proficient, high access public education to all.”

NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) is constantly looking at how large and diverse districts are grappling with the reality of race based student assignment.  Districts are still working through how to handle it, and CUBE provides guidance as updated information comes from the Supreme Court, as it did in 2007.  In fact, at CUBE’s upcoming Issues Seminar in Chicago, CUBE will be looking at some of the reforms Chicago Public Schools have made and how they will impact federal policy (since Secretary Duncan just left there) as well as a continued “Conversation on Race” where school board members and superintendents from around the country will look at options that school boards have under the current law with the implications of the Seattle/Louisville cases in student assignment plans and other race based decision-making–yes, 55 years after Brown.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on May 20, 2009 (boomark / email).