American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal

When President Bush decided to intervene last month on behalf of plaintiffs in a pair of lawsuits against the University of Michigan, he reignited a contentious national debate about affirmative action. But the discussion will be incomplete unless it also addresses the most serious civil rights issue in America today: inequality of education.

In a world of equal opportunity and funding for elementary and high school education, affirmative action would wither in importance in higher education. But in America today, vast numbers of children don’t have access to the kind of elementary school and high school educations that prepare them for college admissions.

Twenty years ago, reformers embarked on a campaign to improve the nation’s schools. At that time, suburban schools were strong, and urban and rural schools were poor. Today, suburban schools are even stronger; urban and rural schools remain poor. In two decades, with Houston perhaps a hotly debated exception, the nation has failed to turn even one urban school district around.

So what has been accomplished? The school reform movement gave the middle class more choices. There are now charter and magnet schools and public schools with selective admissions policies. Most cities now have a smattering of quite strong elementary schools, and with their good consumer skills, middle class parents have done well in identifying and getting their children into them. There are also more lower-cost private schools -- usually Catholic or otherwise religiously affiliated. And with suburban schools stronger than ever, middle-class families can move if no urban options are appealing.

The result is that most students left in failing inner-city public schools now come from low-income and minority families. They attend schools funded at lower rates, which means their teachers are paid lower salaries than suburban teachers. They are far more likely to have teachers who lack certification, and their curriculum materials are likely to be inadequate in number and in poorer condition than at suburban schools. Their facilities are in far poorer shape.

There is a huge gap in achievement between minority and majority students and between students attending urban and suburban schools. We have two school systems: one for affluent children, another for the poor. We have a set of schools largely for black and Latino students and another, far better, largely for whites. Once again, we have created, not by design but by happenstance, a system of separate and unequal education.

We are unlikely to do much about it. The economy is weak and cuts will certainly be made in domestic programs. Tax cuts seem more popular than investments in urban schools and low-income children anyway. But for the sake of our future, the country needs to be shaken from its complacency. Providing a quality education for every child needs to be seen as a national obligation, not a future hope or an impractical utopian ideal.

If we are to bring about this change, what will be necessary is a civil rights movement in which the goal is to establish a quality education as the right of every child. There will need to be litigation aimed at getting the courts to require not equal funding for urban and suburban schools but adequate funding for urban and rural schools. Because working conditions will always be more difficult in urban schools, they will need additional funds to pay higher salaries in order to compete successfully for the best teachers in the country.

We will need campaigns in every state for an educational bill of rights for children, guaranteeing each child the essentials of a quality education -- a well-prepared teacher, up-to-date curriculum materials, a safe physical plant and a school that has demonstrated it can prepare students to perform at grade level. Students at schools failing to meet these criteria should be allowed to transfer, at state expense, to schools that do.

To bring these issues to the fore will undoubtedly also require voter-registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns, as inner-city residents are less likely than those in the suburbs to go to the polls. Parents in poor communities with failing schools should stand firm in voting as a bloc for whichever political party offers the strongest platform for improving urban education. They should make clear that if promises are not kept, even more voters will show up the next time to turn them out. This could be a very potent force. It would also be valuable to organize local communities to take to the streets, peacefully, to demand better schools.

Hand in hand with voting and demonstrations needs to come parent education -- teaching parents how to use consumer skills in choosing schools, how to advocate for their children, ask questions about education and how to understand their educational rights and options.

Finally, charter schools need to be used as a weapon against failing schools. Most states now have laws allowing for the creation of new public schools with greater flexibility. Parents whose children are consigned to poor schools need to be able to establish such schools to move recalcitrant school bureaucracies.

Affirmative action comes too late for the many low income and minority children who drop out of failing schools before completing high school. They need opportunities that begin in kindergarten -- the kind affluent children already have.