by DM Rumley
Brown v. Board of Education, still today, 60 years later has unmet business that few choose to acknowledge. While the championed highlights of the landmark decision are often recited to make and support outdated arguments, the same stagnant, isolated, and hollowed educational realities are the same today as they were years ago for far too many black, and now also, brown people.
The circumstances in 1954 produced the understanding that segregated schools were unequal; suggesting the likelihood of future and sustained success was comparably unequal. Today, in 2014, our educational outcomes for black and brown students suggest that segregated schools weren't the real problem or the ultimate challenge. The response that generated amenities to access the white schools wasn't the only answer. The first and final fight was, and still is, the choice, to analyze and access, high quality education. Brown v. Board of Education now lives in the notion that an educational option to serve a child the way a parent's convictions suggest is, and forever will be the proper choice.
There is a great deal of good in the schools as we know them. I don't believe anything ill about public education; I just believe the system that delivers education is broken. Gaps in achievement begin before children arrive at the schoolhouse door, yes, this is true. But, rather than organizing our educational system to ameliorate this problem, we organize it to exacerbate the problem. Too many children that show up behind, often leave further behind.
A high percentage of our traditional public institutions have lost the capacity to meet our students where they are. This unfortunately serves as a foundation of quicksand for the hopes of educating them successfully. I believe this reality has less to do with the core of adults in the schools but more to do with the system they are expected to function within.
The delivery mechanism needs transformation. We need the option of schools that operate on a contractual basis. The contract would set educational achievement agreements and if the agreements weren't met, the school would close. Also known as a Charter School.
Brown v. Board of Education can't be captured by the finite ruling of a human. It embodies a spirit of its own. It embodies a spirit that empowers educational choice within a public space. A choice that can serve those who seek it, and gives those who recognize their purpose as an educator the autonomy to reach their students, regardless of where life puts them.
As much as desegregation meant 60 years ago, today, the right of a parent to choose the educational space to meet their children's needs now speaks to the spirit of Brown. If you're low income and/or black or brown, and the only zoned schools for your area are home to underperforming statistics like ......under 20% 4th grade proficiency in reading and under 10% 8th grade proficiency in math, then your child's imagination for what's possible in life is extremely limited. What are the values of someone defending a system that delivers these results?
Segregation was a severe social ill, but within education, it has proven to be only a hurdle to achieving educational relevance. Exercising the concept of educational choice, 60 years forward-- is the challenge that Brown v. Board of Education has offered this generation. Meet the challenge or no, we have a CHOICE.
Daniel Maurice Rumley is a Fellow with the Black Alliance for Educational Options (www.BAEO.org) and a native of Birmingham, AL.