In his column entitled “Rights, Wrongs and the Real Task for D.C. Schools” for the Washington (DC, US) Post, Colbert I. King discussed the difficult issues that the Washington schools face. He casts the column as a conflict among the visions of three men who are well known to Washington and much of the US—Mayor Adrian Fenty and Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas.
Although the majority of students in DC are Black, many of them attend schools where the student body is nearly exclusively Black. Of equal importance, according to Mr. King, is that student achievement levels iin DC are markedly lower than in other, nearby, majority-White localities. This establishes the crux of the problem that Mayor Fenty must solve.
How will he achieve his “world-class” school system? Will it be the system of integrated primary and secondary education the court envisioned in ‘54? Or will the measure of success be top-quality teachers; renovated buildings; and test scores, graduation rates and college acceptances that match or exceed those in neighboring majority-white districts?
Of course, we can hope that the solution will embrace both the social equity and the educational benefits outcomes. But, as Mr. King notes, the demographics of many urban local education agencies may make it impossible to attain the social equity outcomes. Failure to achieve the social-equity outcome, which schools simply cannot be expected to accomplish under current demographics, should not deter educators from pursuing the educational outcomes.
Thanks to Mr. King for forthrightly presenting this issue. His column should be required reading for educational policy makers throughout the US.
Read Mr. King’s column.
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Thank you for your comments, JL. I have always said that, regardless of the demographics, a school must strive to provide the best education that it can provide for its students. I think that our urban schools need to invoke the teachings of Malcolm X. Perhaps that is where it all went wrong: urban schools placed social equity before educational equity.
Miss, thanks for the feedback. It’s nice to have confirmation from others about this. In fact, I’ve been thinking a good bit about this topic. I’ve recently read Enough! (long subtitle omitted) by Juan Williams and Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? by Charles Barkley. Both of them make a strong pitch for focusing on kids’ schooling. Eventually, I shall post an entry on my personal blog about these books.