U.S. Public Education
U.S. Public Education
The U.S. public education system is under scrutiny in recent years. This scrutiny is informed by deeper issues of race, social justice and in more recent years, rising classicism. The debate over education, particularly public education, has gained further significance (as is evident in current presidential race) given how education has become critical in recent years for social mobility, a central ethos in U.S. culture. Given a long history of racial segregation, black students continue to experience different modes of visible and invisible segregation in U.S. public education system. In earlier periods, black students were simply segregated in black ghettoes in most improvised communities in urban areas in big cities or distant schools in Deep South. The historical decision by U.S. Supreme Court on Brown v. Broad of Education in 1954 (Russo, Harris III & Sandidge, 1994) has been hailed as an end to racial segregation in public education. Today, invisible forms of segregation still persist in current public education system. In lieu of color-based segregation in specific communities and in identifiable schools and colleges, modern day discrimination is well embedded in broader political, economic and social structures well beyond immediate classroom settings. To argue for equal education opportunity in U.S. public system based on growing representation of ethnic, particularly black, minorities on campus is at best a misleading argument. The segregation now in place in current public education system is assuming invisible forms as to render immediate identification a futile effort for promoters of social justice at all micro and macro levels of community activities. This paper aims, hence, to make a case of deep segregation practices among black students in U.S. public education system.
The increasing enrollment rates of minority, particularly black, students in U.S. public school system at school and college levels is an argument supported by numbers and assuming a canonical U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Broad of Education (Russo, Harris III & Sandidge). The argument is based on a rationale assuming isolation of students from socioeconomic contexts in which each and every student is raised in (and might continue to live in or not) after completing a phase in her public education. Put differently, by assuming black students have already "made it" to GED and, increasingly, to a public prestigious college, supporters of a complete equal opportunity among all students is at best flawed. This argument fails to entertain a longer span of analysis. That is, having reached a specific phase in public education in school or college should not be considered an achievement per se but should be viewed in perspective by considering for support networks, household living standard and, not least, future professional prospects. More explicitly, broader socioeconomic contexts black students experience on a daily basis are simply brushed aside in favor of momentary victories achieved in court in rare historical incidents or based on indiscriminate lumping of black headcount on campus.
In contrast, access to public education in U.S. remains a highly stratified process. In an interesting study conducted in Massachusetts and New York on public education policies adopted in order to limit access to specific programs for minority students and/or raise entry bar for prospective students, findings show adopted policies contribute to increased scarification of both programs and students at different levels of education offerings (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003). By controlling access to public education, "gatekeepers" maintain socioeconomic structures long existing in broader society and is only resumed in just another context.
For one, black students start off school or college at much lower starting point compared to white students (Cook, 2015). If anything, education expectations for black students are at best limited. This is attributed not simply to specific limitations in back student's ability for learning but, indeed, for her household setting. Typically, a majority of black students is raised in households in which parents do not hold a college degree, violence is common, negative peer pressure is high and, not least, dropout rate is high. These variables, when accounted for, influence a black student's education immensely compared to peers from different ethnicities. Second, black students are more likely to have classmates who are also minority students (Cook). This pattern is likely to not only confirm negative peer pressure influence in classroom setting but also confirm (unfair) stereotypes about students placed, involuntarily, in settings beyond anyone's control. Third, dropout rates among black students is well above dropout rates among different ethnicities even before joining college (Cook), a pattern which only sets up a barrier to college entry.
References
Bastedo, M. N., & Gumport, P. J. (2003). Access to what? Mission differentiation and academic stratification in U.S. public higher education. Higher Education, 46(3), 341-359. Springer Link. doi: 10.1023/A:1025374011204
Cook, L. (2015, January 28). U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal. U.S. News. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/
Russo, C. J., Harris III, J., & Sandidge, R. F. (1994). Brown v. Board of Education at 40: A Legal History of Equal Educational Opportunities in American Public Education. The Journal of Negro Education, 63(3), 297-309. JSTOR. doi: 10.2307/2967182
