Brown V. Board of Education Succeeded, in Part: Now It Must Succeed in Full

Summary

---

"It was another Emancipation Proclamation, a magical moment," naively thought Rod Paige, U.S. Education Secretary when, as a college student, he heard the news. Now he says he's realistic: "We didn't anticipate the vigor and voracity of the push-back from the system," he said this month.

Of course affirmative action has improved diversity in higher education. It's succeeded in the military and in corporate suites, too. But it's failed to integrate low-income African American students, who are more concentrated in poor urban schools than ever before, separated from their African American middle-class counterparts and from whites as well.

One answer lies in the fact that education is still founded on states' rights principles. Local control and property taxes prevail in the nation's 3067 counties and 15,000 school districts. In the vastness of their governance, they simply do not provide rigorous means for equal educational opportunities for all children.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Brown V. Board of Education Succeeded, in Part: Now It Must Succeed in Full

This is a solemn day, this May 17, 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case.

In its solemnity it's a day tha...

See the full content of this document

---