Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Tatum Page B
Authors: Beverly Tatum
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hard to get out of your mind the plaintive voice of a Black male from the city school as he talks about wanting to enroll in an honors algebra class and twice being closed out because of limited space. His comment is positioned alongside that of a suburban White student who, in her privileged environment, rattles off quickly—as if to suggest that so much is available that she might miss something if she goes slowly—the range and diversity of course offerings, in addition to numerous honors and AP classes in virtually all content areas.
A
Boston Globe
article from November 26, 2006 (Tracy Jan, “School Makeovers, Fueled by Middle Class”) focused on White middle-class parents, some of whom were registering for their neighborhood schools as a group and raising money for their respective schools once their children had enrolled. One group of parents had raised $90,000 to expand the activities, offerings, and budget of their local school. The article’s focus was on the benefits of bringing White middle-class parents back into the Boston public schools, while briefly alluding to the issues that might arise from this fund-raising activity; that is, the White parents having too much control and power at the schools. Neither the article nor the subsequent letters to the editor focused on the questions this scenario raises about the public’s commitment to equal educational opportunity, about our contemporary vision of public education, and how race figures into this vision.
In 2005, in
Hancock et al. v. Commissioner of Education
, a case emblematic of school financing and equalization lawsuits across the country, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected the claim, brought on behalf of students from nineteen school districts, that the state was not meeting its constitutional responsibility to provide equitable funding for an adequate education for children from the low-wealth school districts. In a 5–2 ruling against the plaintiff class, the justices noted, “A system mired in failure has given way to one that, although far from perfect, shows a steady trajectory of progress.” “Progress” was the watchword, not “equal educational opportunity.” Essentially, the court allowed the government to back away from its responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity for all students. (See Cindy Roy, Michael P. Norton, and Amy Lambiasa, “SJC Applauds Education Improvements, Rejects Hancock Case Plaintiffs,”
State House News
, February 15, 2005.)
Charter school advocates—business leaders, policymakers, and educators—extol the virtues of charter schools as an option for the children and youth of urban America. And yet, throughout the country, some of the buildings in which these schools are housed would be considered unacceptable learning environments for children in middle- and high-income school districts. Some charter schools are devoid of gyms, science labs, auditoriums, libraries—all the facilities that African Americans in their historic struggle for equal educational opportunity demanded and often financed themselves when state and local funding was not forthcoming. Has personal choice replaced both the collective demand and the public will for equal educational opportunity for all? A group of Black middle school students in Atlanta provided an apt commentary on the conditions of the charter schools that they and their friends were attending, calling them “bootleg schools.”
From Baltimore, Maryland, to Los Angeles, California, Black and Latino students are demanding AP and honors classes, clean bathrooms, up-to-code buildings, books, universal access to a college preparatory curriculum, teachers who hold high expectations of them, and more. Even as these youth engage in struggles for equal educational opportunity, for quality education as a civil right, an ideological discourse holds sway in the public domain that blames these students, their peer groups, their parents, and their
A
Boston Globe
article from November 26, 2006 (Tracy Jan, “School Makeovers, Fueled by Middle Class”) focused on White middle-class parents, some of whom were registering for their neighborhood schools as a group and raising money for their respective schools once their children had enrolled. One group of parents had raised $90,000 to expand the activities, offerings, and budget of their local school. The article’s focus was on the benefits of bringing White middle-class parents back into the Boston public schools, while briefly alluding to the issues that might arise from this fund-raising activity; that is, the White parents having too much control and power at the schools. Neither the article nor the subsequent letters to the editor focused on the questions this scenario raises about the public’s commitment to equal educational opportunity, about our contemporary vision of public education, and how race figures into this vision.
In 2005, in
Hancock et al. v. Commissioner of Education
, a case emblematic of school financing and equalization lawsuits across the country, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected the claim, brought on behalf of students from nineteen school districts, that the state was not meeting its constitutional responsibility to provide equitable funding for an adequate education for children from the low-wealth school districts. In a 5–2 ruling against the plaintiff class, the justices noted, “A system mired in failure has given way to one that, although far from perfect, shows a steady trajectory of progress.” “Progress” was the watchword, not “equal educational opportunity.” Essentially, the court allowed the government to back away from its responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity for all students. (See Cindy Roy, Michael P. Norton, and Amy Lambiasa, “SJC Applauds Education Improvements, Rejects Hancock Case Plaintiffs,”
State House News
, February 15, 2005.)
Charter school advocates—business leaders, policymakers, and educators—extol the virtues of charter schools as an option for the children and youth of urban America. And yet, throughout the country, some of the buildings in which these schools are housed would be considered unacceptable learning environments for children in middle- and high-income school districts. Some charter schools are devoid of gyms, science labs, auditoriums, libraries—all the facilities that African Americans in their historic struggle for equal educational opportunity demanded and often financed themselves when state and local funding was not forthcoming. Has personal choice replaced both the collective demand and the public will for equal educational opportunity for all? A group of Black middle school students in Atlanta provided an apt commentary on the conditions of the charter schools that they and their friends were attending, calling them “bootleg schools.”
From Baltimore, Maryland, to Los Angeles, California, Black and Latino students are demanding AP and honors classes, clean bathrooms, up-to-code buildings, books, universal access to a college preparatory curriculum, teachers who hold high expectations of them, and more. Even as these youth engage in struggles for equal educational opportunity, for quality education as a civil right, an ideological discourse holds sway in the public domain that blames these students, their peer groups, their parents, and their
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