Beyond Brown v. Board
VUE Number 4, Summer 2004

Beyond Brown: The Legacy and the Challenge Ahead
By Robert Rothman, Principal Associate & Editor of VUE
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University

This spring, innumerable books, magazine articles, and television programs have commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education  the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared the segregation of schoolchildren by race unconstitutional. The authors and producers of these memorials have taken a variety of positions  some applauding the advances in educational opportunity for African American students since 1954, others pointing out how far we have to go to achieve true equality.

Because of its iconic status, it is fitting to commemorate Brown and consider its effects in the last half century. In many ways, the project of ensuring equity is even more salient today than it was fifty years ago; "leaving no child behind," for instance, is now federal law.

But the nation has changed substantially since 1954, and measures that might be used to evaluate a decision like Brown are no longer appropriate. For example, the assumption behind the ruling was that providing access to equal educational opportunities would improve outcomes for African American children. But the disparities in outcomes persist; now, the focus is squarely on improving outcomes and closing achievement gaps.

In addition, the waves of immigration that began in the 1960s have transformed the United States, particularly its cities. The dynamic that drove the Brown case  the relations between Black Americans and White Americans  is now much more complicated.

Consider Hartford, Connecticut  an important site in post-Brown civil rights litigation and the setting for one of this issue's essays. In 1989, the plaintiffs in Sheff v. O'Neill charged the state with maintaining racial and ethnic segregation in Hartford public schools and have continued the litigation into the present. A noteworthy difference in the context of this case compared with Brown is that, according to the 2000 Census, Hispanics outnumbered Blacks in Hartford; there were 49,260 Hispanics or Latinos in the city, compared with 46,264 African Americans. And the mayor, Eddie Perez, is Latino as well. The effects of this increased diversity, unanticipated by Brown, are profound.

The authors of this issue of Voices in Urban Education examine some of the challenges urban education faces fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education. Michael K. Grady, Ellen L. Foley, and Frank D. Barnes point out that three generations of children have enrolled in public schools since Brown, and the nation is now in the third generation of policies aimed at achieving the decision's promise of equal educational opportunity. The major challenge in education today  improving learning conditions for children attending historically neglected and underfunded schools  requires new approaches to resource distribution and support.
Read article

Elizabeth Horton Sheff recounts her role as one of the named plaintiffs, along with her son, Milo, in Sheff v. O'Neill. She describes the conditions in the Hartford public schools that led her to join the civil rights lawsuit and charge the state with perpetuating racial segregation and educational disparities. Her article makes clear that educational inequalities did not end in 1954; the struggle to overcome them continues to this day.
Excerpt

Richard D. Kahlenberg contends that pursuing racial integration  the Brown strategy  may no longer be appropriate. Instead, some school districts are attempting a new strategy of integrating students by income, which, he argues, holds more promise for improving achievement.
Excerpt

Ricardo Dobles asks what the Brown decision means for Latinos. Examining his own experience, as well as that of students in a largely Latino city in Massachusetts, he concludes that the decision has proven irrelevant to most young Latinos, who remain in separate and unequal schools.
Excerpt

Rossi Ray-Taylor examines how, since Brown, equality in outcomes has replaced access to resources as the imperative to achieving equity in public schools. As she points out, districts that are addressing achievement gaps are finding that additional resources may not be enough; what is needed are learning communities that support high achievement for all students.Excerpt

In different ways, all of these essays suggest that the challenges schools and communities face in 2004 are, perhaps, more profound than those of fifty years ago. To be sure, breaking down the walls of legally enforced segregation and overcoming massive and, at times, violent resistance took a titanic struggle. Thurgood Marshall and the many others who led the fight for equal opportunity are true heroes. Although there may be disagreements about the long-term effects of Brown, almost everyone agrees that those involved in the effort were incredibly courageous in defying decades of legal and social barriers. And nearly everyone agrees that the decision and its enforcement helped advance the cause of civil rights throughout society.

But improving the quality of education for every child is a colossal undertaking that will require new thinking, new learning, new structures, and new designs for schools and systems of schools in nearly every community. And putting all these in place will require the diligent and concerted efforts of millions of teachers, school and community leaders, and parents, over a long period of time. Fortunately, over the past few years, educators, community leaders, and funders have begun to ask what it would take to produce a high-quality education for every child, and some communities are beginning to take on this challenge. We can only hope that in 2054, when our grandchildren look back on our work of today, they see the groundwork for results more unambiguously successful than those we see in 2004, fifty years after Brown.