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The impact of the desegregation process on the education of black students: A retrospective analysis
Abstract
This article is a retrospective analysis of a commentary we published in The Journal of Negro Education 25 years ago in which we discussed the interrelationships between and among the interpersonal, institutional, community, and African American achievement variables before and after the historic 1954 Brown decision. We discuss in this piece contemporary factors that have modified these variable, such as rising segregation in our nation's schools, decreasing numbers of African American teachers, increasing federal involvement with decreasing autonomy of African American schools, changing definitions of the African American community, and emerging conservative African American voices.
... In recent decades, suburban communities and public schools have become more integrated (Diarrassouba & Johnson, 2014;Frey, 2003;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Logan, 2003), which some interpret as a success linked to the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision (Collins, 2009). However, as suburban demographics change, African American students face a growing achievement gap (Chapman, 2014;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Kafele, 2009;Ogbu, 2003). ...
... In recent decades, suburban communities and public schools have become more integrated (Diarrassouba & Johnson, 2014;Frey, 2003;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Logan, 2003), which some interpret as a success linked to the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision (Collins, 2009). However, as suburban demographics change, African American students face a growing achievement gap (Chapman, 2014;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Kafele, 2009;Ogbu, 2003). ...
... African American students often feel alienated in school settings where they are marginalized (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986;Ogbu, 1990Ogbu, & 2003Ogbu & Simons, 1998), and need to connect to the learning environment. Connections can increase through hiring and retaining teachers of color, but since the historic Brown decision, there has been a decline of African American educators entering the profession (Collins, 2009;Ingersoll & May, 2016;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;St. John & Cadray, 2004). ...
... While critical race scholars have often framed interest convergence within a loss-gain binary that demands that whites give up material resources and/or social standing (Milner, 2008), Chapman and Antrop-González (2011) highlight a different kind of loss: "Interest convergence allows minority groups to gain greater access to social equity, but often by sacrificing something yet unknown and unforeseen" (p. 791; see also Irvine & Irvine, 2007). Their study of school choice in Milwaukee denounces policymakers' attempts to promote market-based reforms while evading race, an approach that undermined earlier interests shared among differentially-positioned politicians and progressive African American leaders in Milwaukee (Chapman & Antrop-González, 2011). ...
This article presents a meta-ethnography (Urrieta Jr and Noblit (eds), Cultural constructions of identity: meta ethnography and theory, Oxford University Press. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190676087.001.0001) of school choice across education sectors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. A site of intense contention and experimentation around school choice, Milwaukee constitutes a unique case that can offer insights into similar education reforms increasingly being implemented on a global scale. In synthesizing six book-length qualitative research studies, I engage key differences among the texts and then offer a lines-of-argument synthesis (Noblit and Hare, Meta-ethnography: synthesizing qualitative studies. Sage Publications, 1988. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412985000) that reinterprets the studies as stories about whiteness’ right to exclude across school sectors (Aggarwal, in: Fernandes (ed), Feminists rethink the neoliberal state: inequality, exclusion, and change, New York University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479800155.003.0003; Harris, Harv Law Rev 106(8):1707–1791, 1993. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787). Lastly, I engage various layers of interpretation in the studies (via the interconnected avenues of theory, researcher positionality, and methodology) to describe race taming discourses that attempt to make race, racism, and white supremacy manageable and containable through insufficient education interventions. I suggest that both exclusion and race taming can offer cautionary lessons about the tenuousness and possibilities of interest convergence during a time of apparently renewed cross-racial support for public education in the contemporary Milwaukee education scene.
... A problem arises when schools are dominated by the attitudes, beliefs, and value systems of one race and class of people, as has happened in American classrooms (Pine & Hilliard, 1990). The problem becomes a cultural mismatch between students and their schools which can then lead to hostility, alienation, diminished self-esteem, and eventual school failure (Irvine, 1990(Irvine, , 2007. Currently, the White middle class continues to dominate the teaching field, which perpetuates a Eurocentric value system while the ethnic and racial demographic of students changes rapidly. ...
Investigated in this study was whether a university education course that covers the topics of diversity and cultural responsiveness would change teacher candidates' existing prejudicial attitudes. The major variables reported in this study were exposure to diversity coursework which served as the independent variable and teacher candidates' prejudicial attitudes, which served as the dependent variable. Using the Yoder-Hartman Survey of Beliefs Scale, three research questions were addressed: (a) Are there differences in prejudice level between preservice teachers who have taken a diversity course and those who have not taken a diversity course? (b) Are there differences in prejudice level in preservice teachers before and after taking a diversity course? and (c) Do preservice teachers who have taken a diversity course and those who have not taken a diversity course display different pre/post levels of assessed prejudice? No differences were found between students who had taken a diversity course and those who had not. The current study suggests that one diversity course is not sufficient to have a significant effect on prejudice reduction among preservice teachers. Analyses of the current study results suggest that the coursework designed to reduce prejudicial attitudes was ineffective. Continued investigation will be required to: (1) refine and develop a program that will reduce prejudicial attitudes among teacher candidates and (2) refine and develop measures of prejudice reduction.
... As schools desegregated in the decades following the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision, Black teachers faced different structural barriers in their attempts to provide Black students with an emancipatory education. These barriers included job losses that decimated the number of Black teachers and administrators (Irvine and Irvine 2007), as nearly 40,000 Black educators lost their jobs (Ethridge 1979), and the overt racism that remaining Black teachers now faced from colleagues and parents (Foster 1991(Foster , 1997. Because of these barriers, Black teachers sometimes created alternative spaces to help Black students see what was possible for them, including extracurricular activities and programs outside of school that encouraged Black students to excel academically (Foster 1997). ...
This paper presents the findings of a research study that sought to understand the perspectives of exemplary Black teachers utilizing emancipatory pedagogies to help Black students navigate systems of white supremacy in a contemporary American social landscape where racism is simultaneously invisible and hypervisible. Using critical race theory, the findings of this narrative inquiry indicate that participants made their students aware of the ubiquity of racism and the inevitability that they would experience it. Findings also show that participants provided their students with opportunities to speak back to their oppression, shifted the ways they practiced emancipatory pedagogy based on the teaching and social context in which they found themselves, and learned to engage students in these ways at various points in their lives but not through teacher education. This study has implications for teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, and researchers.
... Kamu politikası analizi alanında kabul görmüş kitabında Dunn (2017) politika analizini, uygulanmış politikaların analizi (retrospective, ex post) ve uygulanacak politikaların analizi (prospective, ex ante) olarak iki ana gruba ayırmaktadır. Bir çalışmada bunlardan herhangi biri uygulanabileceği gibi, her iki yaklaşım da kullanılabilir (Irvine ve Irvine, 2007;Villegas ve Lucas, 2004). Bu iki yaklaşımı aynı çalışmada kullanmak geçmiş ve gelecek politikalar arasındaki bağı daha iyi anlamamızı sağlayabilir. ...
Türkiye'de öğretmenlerin mesleki özerkliği uzun yıllardır sınırlı olmakla birlikte son dönemde Millî Eğitim Bakanlığı tarafından geliştirilen birçok üst politika belgesinde öğretmen özerkliğinin geliştirilmesi hedeflenmektedir. Var olan ve olası politikalar temelinde Türkiye'de genel ortaöğretim düzeyinde öğretmen özerkliğini öğretmen görüşleri aracılığıyla çözümlemeyi amaçlayan bu araştırmada karma araştırma desenlerinden açımlayıcı sıralı desen kullanılmıştır. Araştırmanın nicel boyutunda veriler aşamalı tabakalı yöntemle farklı bölge, okul türü ve branştan 12.329 öğretmenden, "Öğretmen özerklik ölçeği" ile toplanmıştır. Nicel bulgulara ait derinlemesine bilgi elde etmek amacıyla maksimum çeşitlilik örnekleme yöntemiyle farklı bölge, okul türü ve branştan 12 öğretmen ile araştırmacı tarafından geliştirilen yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme formu aracılığıyla nitel veriler toplanmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda öğretmenlerin öğretmen politikaları ile ilişkili; mesleki özerkliğin bütün boyutlarını büyük ölçüde veya tamamen benimsediği bulgusuna erişilmiştir. Öğretimsel özerklik, yönetsel özerklik, kişisel ve mesleki gelişim özerkliği boyutlarına ilişkin var olan ve olası politikalar büyük ölçüde uygulanabilir bulunmakta iken mali özerklik boyutu orta derecede uygulanabilir bulunmaktadır. Öğretmenlerin öğretimsel özerkliği sınırlı olmakla birlikte bu sınırlı alanda aldıkları kararların etkileri konusundaki sorumlulukları da sınırlıdır. Öğretmenlerin özerklik ve sorumlulukları arasında her ikisini de olumlu yönde geliştirecek bir denge sağlanması gerekmektedir. Merkezi düzeyde geliştirilen çerçeve öğretim programları doğrultusunda, öğretmenlerin öğretimsel özerkliklerinin artırılması ve bu geniş alanda aldıkları kararlardan sistematik bir biçimde sorumlu olmalarını özendirecek politikalar uygulanmalıdır. Bu politikalar standartlaştırılmış ve test merkezli olmayan esnek ve dengeli hesap verilebilirlik yaklaşımlarını içermelidir.
... Retrospective analysis is conducted after policies are implemented while prospective analysis is conducted before policies are implemented. Each approach can be used in a study as both two approaches can be used as well (see Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Villegas & Lucas, 2004). Using both in the same study can help us broaden our understanding of the connection between the past and the future of policies. ...
... Although many Americans recently have believed the United States to be postracial (Love & Tosolt, 2010;Speri, 2015), only to have that fallacy shattered during the presidential campaign of 2016, Black scholars and teachers have long understood that Black students will face racism in multiple forms throughout their lives. As racism has had a constant presence throughout the history of the United States, Black teachers have used education as a platform to work against that racism, adapting their strategies to the different ways racism has presented itself throughout various periods in American history (Anderson, 1988;Fairclough, 2007;Foster, 1990Foster, , 1991Foster, , 1997Gundaker, 2007;Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Milner, 2014;Walker, 1996;Williams, 2005). Although Black teachers in the Jim Crow era of legally mandated segregated schools taught their students how to deal with the racism that they faced beyond the doors of the school building, Black teachers in schools today find themselves preparing students not only to deal with the racism they experience beyond the school building but also for the racism they experience within it. ...
Black teachers have long been aware that Black students face racism in multiple forms throughout their lives. As racism has consistently been present throughout the history of the United States, Black teachers have used education as a platform to work against that racism, adapting their strategies through different periods in American history. Although Black teachers who taught in the Jim Crow era of legally mandated segregated schools taught their students how to deal with the racism that they faced outside of the school building, those who teach in diverse schools today find themselves preparing students to deal with the racism they experience beyond school and helping students navigate the racism they experience within the school building. The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which Black teachers work to interrupt the racism that their White colleagues inflict upon their students. Findings indicate that efforts to protect Black students from White teachers’ racism led Black teachers to engage their students in emancipatory pedagogies and serve as interceders on behalf of their students. The teachers also found themselves on the receiving end of their colleagues’ racism. Any effort to recruit or retain teachers of color must first consider the experiences of contemporary teachers of color, and the findings reported in this article help researchers further understand the experiences of Black teachers.
... This work aligns with prior work that highlights the negative aspects of desegregation on the experience of Black students, teachers and the Black community (J. J. Irvine & Irvine, 1983; R. W. Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Siddle Walker 1996, 2000Tillman, 2004), but also connects explicitly with Milliken and its focus on forwarding metropolitan desegregation, as well as Milliken II, which began to explore equity in the face of continued segregation. ...
Background/Context
Prior research on Milliken v. Bradley focuses on the failure of this case to implement interdistrict busing in the highly segregated Detroit schools. Much of this work focuses explicitly on desegregation, rather than on equity and addressing individual, systemic, institutional, and organizational challenges that may prevent the advancement and actualization of desegregation to benefit Black students, teachers, and communities.
Purpose/Objective
In this study, we shed light on the impacts of desegregation on Black students, teachers, and communities. We argue that Brown, Milliken, and associated policies that attempt to address segregation focus mostly on student assignment policies. Our focus instead is on highlighting the underconceptualized microlevel realities of desegregation, which include the losses of cultural and community connections, strong role models, and connections to school.
Population/Participants
This study draws from interview data collected from three experts in the field of education whose research focuses on school desegregation. The interview participants have written scholarly articles and/or book chapters about desegregation and related influences on/for Black teachers, Black students, and Black communities spanning the PreK–12 and higher education spectrum.
Research Design
This study employs in-depth qualitative interviewing.
Data Collection and Analysis
Interviews were conducted by phone and lasted approximately 45 minutes to an hour. Participants in the study were asked questions about the impact of desegregation and education on Black teachers’ experience, self-concept, dedication, and retention; Black students’ experience of schools and school-related success; experience and connection of Black communities; and “next steps” in educating Black students. An interpretive perspective was used to guide the interview analyses in this study.
Findings/Results
Analysis of the expert interviews reveals the underexplored microlevel losses and harmful effects of desegregation policies and politics on Black children, families, and communities.
Conclusions/Recommendations
Evidence from these researchers who have studied desegregation suggests that for many Black students and educators, desegregation was unsuccessful— even when there were superficial indicators of success. We suggest that both researchers and policy makers should consider drawing from the potential losses associated with desegregation and focusing on equity, regardless of schooling location and population.
... The compromise is never as altruistic as history textbooks lead children to believe, and it always serves a greater purpose for those holding privileged and powerful positions. Interest convergence allows minority groups to gain greater access to social equity, but often by sacrificing something yet unknown and unforeseen (Irvine & Irvine, 2007;Milner & Howard, 2004). ...
Background/Context
The lack of court-ordered support for race-based policies that maintain and create integrated schools has forced communities of color to seek other avenues to obtain equitable education, such as school choice. Individual states and the federal government, as seen in grant provisions through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, are encouraging the expansion of choice at the very time that options for increasing student diversity, particularly racial diversity, are being narrowed by the courts.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
The article uses critical race theory to examine the outcomes of specific school reforms, based on market theory models of school choice, that were designed to alleviate schooling inequities in urban districts.
Setting
The context of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serves as a microcosm of urban districts that have embraced school choice to create more equitable schooling options. Milwaukee, like most metropolitan areas, has a history of court-ordered desegregation that served as a temporary solution to racially segregated schools. Given the federal and district court turn from supporting race-based desegregation policies in schools, Milwaukee and other metropolitan districts are looking for new models to serve students of color in their districts and cities.
Research Design
This article is a conceptual paper that incorporates data from a variety of sources to support the authors’ conclusions.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data for this project were taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, documents from newly created small high schools, such as Web sites and curriculum designs; current newspaper articles discussing issues of small high schools; archival newspaper articles documenting the creation of the 1990 choice and charter programs; professional experiences as a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates institutional selection and small-school team support system; and an empirical study that documents teachers’ attempts to provide curriculum and instruction in newly created small schools.
Conclusions/Recommendations
In combination, these data sources tell the story of market theory reforms that will continue to struggle to meet reformists’ goals to serve all Milwaukee populations so long as policy makers and the courts continue to deny the irrefutable power that race and class exercise in parental choice in U.S. urban schools.
... A problem arises when schools are dominated by the attitudes, beliefs, and value systems of one race and class of people, as has happened in American classrooms (Pine & Hilliard, 1990). The problem becomes a cultural mismatch between students and their schools which can then lead to hostility, alienation, diminished self-esteem, and eventual school failure (Irvine, 1990(Irvine, , 2007. Currently, the White middle class continues to dominate the teaching field, which perpetuates a Eurocentric value system while the ethnic and racial demographic of students changes rapidly. ...
Investigated in this study was whether a university education course that covers the topics of diversity and cultural responsiveness would change teacher candidates’ existing prejudicial attitudes. The major variables reported in this study were exposure to diversity coursework which served as the independent variable and teacher candidates’ prejudicial attitudes, which served as the dependent variable. Using the Yoder-Hartman Survey of Beliefs Scale, three research questions were addressed: (a) Are there differences in prejudice level between preservice teachers who have taken a diversity course and those who have not taken a diversity course? (b) Are there differences in prejudice level in preservice teachers before and after taking a diversity course? and (c) Do preservice teachers who have taken a diversity course and those who have not taken a diversity course display different pre/post levels of assessed prejudice? No differences were found between students who had taken a diversity course and those who had not. The current study suggests that one diversity course is not sufficient to have a significant effect on prejudice reduction among preservice teachers. Analyses of the current study results suggest that the coursework designed to reduce prejudicial attitudes was ineffective. Continued investigation will be required to: (1) refine and develop a program that will reduce prejudicial attitudes among teacher candidates and (2) refine and develop measures of prejudice reduction.
This research answers the question, “How did pre-Brown African American school leaders lead their schools?” After conducting a metasynthesis on the leadership practices of pre-Brown African American school leaders, I constructed the Pre-Brown African American School Leadership Paradigm (PAASLP) and model. The PAASLP describes a paradigm that bridges a gap between under-researched leadership beliefs, goals, and practices of pre-Brown African American school leaders during segregation and up through desegregation. Aspirational beliefs were grounded in the assertion that through an exemplary education student could develop the skills to move beyond the segregated society and aspire to a different life free from imposed barriers. Resistant beliefs focused on practices designed to prepare students to engage and participate fully in democratic citizenship and to resist the constraints of the society in which they lived. This emergent paradigm offers a basis for African American school leaders’ student-centered leadership as an alternative to contemporary leadership paradigms focused primarily on accountability.
Through the lens of structural violence, Black feminism and critical family history, this paper explores how societal structures informed by white supremacy shaped the lives of three generations of rural African American women in a family in Florida during the middle to the late twentieth century. Specifically, this study investigates how disparate funding, segregation, desegregation, poverty and post-desegregation policies shaped and limited the achievement trajectories among these women. Further, an oral historical examination of their lives reveals the strategies they employed despite their under-resourced and sometimes alienating schooling. The paper highlights the experiences of the Newman family, descendants of captive Africans in the United States that produced three college-educated daughters and a granddaughter despite structural barriers that threatened their progress. Using oral history interviews, archival resources and first-person accounts, this family’s story reveals a genealogy of educational achievement, barriers and agency despite racial and gendered limitations in a Southern town. The findings imply that their schooling mirrors many of the barriers that other Blacks face. However, this study shows that community investment in African American children, plus teachers that affirm students, and programs such as Upward Bound, help to advance Black students in marginalized communities. Further, these women’s lives suggest that school curriculums need to be anti-racist and public policies that affirm each person regardless of the color of their skin. A simple solution that requires the structural violence of whiteness be eliminated from the schooling spheres.
Black teachers have understood for centuries that whiteness is a requirement for full citizenship in the United States (Ladson-Billings, 1998). For this reason, Black teachers have historically taught Black students using emancipatory methods that centered their students’ race and aided their students in navigating a landscape wrought with
overt individual, institutional, and structural racism (Scheurich & Young, 1997). This is also true of contemporary Black teachers, who understand that white supremacy is just as present as it ever has been. Using data from a larger study, this paper focuses on a Black civics teacher who used a critical race approach to structure the American Government course she taught primarily to Black students. Findings indicate that she
rejected the notion of colorblindness in the law, worked to prepare her students for the racism they would experience, and incorporated students’ counterstories into her classes.
Mr. Williams, a student during segregation and educator who began his career in the years following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, sheds light on why Black students succeeded in all-Black schools as well as challenges faced in advancing racial justice. In his context, according to Mr. Williams, Black students succeeded because of the influence of Black teachers and the discipline that was cultivated among teachers and students. However, discipline was conceptualized and practiced in a developmentally supportive manner for students during segregation while it is practiced as a form of exclusion in schools currently. Milner argues that we should change our language of disciplinary practices to punishment practices to more accurately capture current practices. In addition, Milner introduces curriculum punishment as a tool to describe how students are punished when they are not exposed to potentially transformative, racially just learning opportunities that can result in vicarious trauma. Implications for teacher education are discussed.
There is now a burgeoning of literature that addresses the effects of teacher racial identity on school discipline. Scholars have recently found evidence to support the hypothesis that exposure to Black teachers can significantly reduce suspensions for same-race identity students; this being particularly true for Black students in North Carolina at all grade levels. Still, additional inquiries are required to explicate how this can be implemented into reality, with a limited Black teacher workforce. To expand upon this new body of literature, the present study utilizes 12 years of employment data, and historical factors which have influenced the recruitment, hiring and retention of qualified Black teachers in the largest urban school district in North Carolina, Charlotte-Mecklenburg. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings, suggesting that concerted efforts to hire and retain Black teachers should center upon drawing from currently employed teaching assistants, through a multimodal, collaborative approach. It is our intention that this article is read by teachers, school leaders, teacher education programs and policymakers.
In this article, we present for the first rime systematic evidence that the percentage of minority faculty has a significant positive relationship with overall college matriculation rates in urban school districts across the nation. Although there is little discussion in the education literature of how minority teachers might influence achievement by students of all races, there is a widespread assumption that minority teachers improve the performance of minority students. Our data support this assumption, but they also suggest an important caveat. We will explain why this finding could mean that systemic school district behaviors cause the higher rates of college attendance, while the ethnic makeup of faculty acts as a proxy for these behaviors. This finding has important policy implications, as focusing only on the role-modeling hypothesis might lead to incomplete or incorrect reform remedies for urban school districts.
Notes that the six high schools and two elementary schools discussed here are quiet and orderly and maintain high standards. The characteristics of law and order, the character and ability of the principles, and an urban social setting are common to all the schools. (Author/AM)
Incl. abstract Gerald Bracey continues his annual reports on the state of public education in the U.S. Much of this report is devoted to the implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Bracey finds problems with its adequate yearly progress (AYP) and highly qualified teacher requirements. He also examines the past year's developments in the areas of vouchers, charter schools, testing, the 'Texas miracle,' and Edison, as well as noting the 20th anniversary of 'A Nation at Risk.' The report is accompanied by a group of Golden Apple Awards.