A Right to Equal Education

De Jure to De Facto Segregation

In the wake of the iconic supreme court ruling of Brown v. The Board of Education that ended state-sponsored, or de jure, segregation in public schools across the United States, many communities found ways to avoid integrating public schools. These practices targeted minorities, encouraged the “white flight”, and contributed to the trap that is the cycle of poverty. One of the ways that school districts avoided integration was through the practice of redlining, still something that we can see the effects of today, 50+ years later.

Redlining

While the effects of redlining are less blatant today than they were 50 years ago, they are still ever present. With the history of placing property tax caps on areas with higher minority populations, it is no wonder that public school districts, funded through property taxes, struggle to provide quality educations to the students within that district. With poorer quality schools, families who can afford to leave the often urban areas (referred to as the “white flight” throughout this chapter) for the suburbs do. A precedent for this trend in growing suburban school districts was set in the court ruling of Milliken v. Bradley that excused the continuation of this style of avoidance of desegregation rulings stating that “without an interdistric violation and some interdistrict effect, thee is no constitutional wrong and there is no constitutional basis for an interdistric remedy” (Schumaker, 2019). This ruling dismissed the rapid expansion of majority white suburbs as enough evidence to back up the claim for a need for state intervention in continued integration. This movement of affluent white families from the cities to the suburbs in turn decreased property values of the homes within these urban areas, decreasing property taxes, and ultimately decreasing the funding of the schools within these districts even further. This created the ongoing cycle of de facto segregation that can be solved over time with reworked funding of public education.

Moving Forward

In upcoming blogs, I will be looking at the ways that countries with the highest rates of success in promoting equal education have achieved this success. It is evident that the United States education system has work to be done. What programs and processes can be implemented in the United States that have worked elsewhere? How do we change for the better to ensure a brighter future?

Citation

Schumaker, K., 2019. Troublemakers: Students’ Rights And Racial Justice In The Long 1960S- Chapter 4: A Right To Equal Education. NYU Press, pp.131–170.

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