54 Years After Brown v. Board: The Deceit of Equality of Education

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) was enacted with the goal of improving academic achievement in public schools through the implementation of assessment and accountability provisions, which are designed to focus increased levels of attention on under-performing groups of students and to close the achievement gap between them and their peers. On its face NCLB appears to be a policy to that recognizes the inefficiencies in public schools and the need to bring about educational equality. However, NCLB is not quite what it appears to be. In the year 2006 the Civil Rights Project at UCLA (CRP) conducted a comprehensive study of NCLB, which made several findings that indicate that NCLB did not have a significant impact on improving student achievement or reducing the achievement gaps.

The CRP reviewed data from six selected states (California, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, New York and Illinois) where the policy had been in effect for six years. NCLB allows states to design and create its own method of accountability assessment known as, Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). One goal in particular requires all schools and students meet the academic standards for mathematics and reading by 2013-14. To reach this goal, an academic timeline scale was developed called, the “annual measurable objective” (AMO) . According to the policy brief, “In all six states, the performance targets were raised in 2004-05 after remaining the same during the previous three years.” For example, in California the performance target remained at 13% for three years, then in 2004-05 it increased to 23%. Many officials believed the higher increase on standard performance levels, the larger increase of schools that would be placed under the “needing improvement” status. Thus subjecting school district’s to state sanctions . “For example, within California and Virginia, the number of schools identified for improvement increased quite dramatically—176% increase in California and a 94% increase in Virginia over five years”.

Secondly, since it’s enactment the CPR found conflicting information to whether the facially well-intended policy was living up to its name. CPR reported it was difficult to know if whether the NCLB was having an effect on improving academic performance. According to CPR, “States may report that more students are reaching proficiency on state assessments, but this does not necessarily mean academic performance is improving.” When CPR compared state assessment tests to analyses trends of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and found discrepancies in the results. State assessment testing in all six states show a higher inflation to the amount of students meeting the proficiency goals, while NAEP report only a third of those scores. For example, in Arizona the state assessment for reading show 71% proficiency rate, while the NAEP report 24% for reading. The CPR reports there are a few possible reasons to explain these discrepancies, that state assessments are limited to the range of domains it can test. “Once these are decided on, teachers in high stakes situations may teach to the test, which leads to inflated results—test scores increase but without a corresponding increase in knowledge.” Another reason is that rather than testing for higher order or complex thinking skills, the test reflects a narrower range of learning goals. This is detrimental to low-performing students because there are more incentives for teachers to teach to the test in order to increase the number of students meeting proficiency.”

The stakes are higher for “improvement schools” compared to schools that meet the AYP standards. Improvement schools receive far less funding from property tax dollars, thus they are far more under-funded to “meeting AYP standards” schools. In addition, sanctions under NCLB force improvement schools to allocate funding to professional consultation and other academic services, which continues to deprive them from meeting assessment goals because student populations in theses schools are far greater in number to “meeting AYP standards” schools. According to the report, “For the 2004-2005 school year, the percentage of students attending improvement was 23.1% out of the total state’s school enrollment.” Students who attend these schools are adversely affected; the CRP found that many of these schools have an increasingly higher percentage of minority students attending.

In the Law Review article, by Robert L. Carter, Public School Segregation: A Contemporary Analysis. Carter writes, “public schools today are still regarded as “black schools” and others as “white schools”, and black schools have the lowest test scores.” Carter’s argument is parallel to the CRP’s policy brief, which shows:

In all 6 states, Black and Hispanic students compromise a higher proportion of enrollment for schools identified as needing improvement than schools that made AYP. In California and Illinois, for instance, improvement schools serve a school body that is more than 75% to 85% black or Hispanic, while schools that made AYP serve a student body less then 40% minority students in California and 20% in Illinois.

Schools listed as “improvement schools” are serving low-income minority populations. While these schools are struggling to meet the standards levels, they also are hit with more sanctions than opposed to schools that meet the AYP requirements. Therefore, the decision in Brown I, and the decree of Brown II have had an insignificant effect redressing the segregation that still exists in public schools today. Carter suggests that the Supreme Court’s recent decision to remove the judicial supervision in public schools would only allow the system to painfully regress.

The length of judicial supervision should not be relevant…federal courts should not run our nation’s educational system, BUT they should have a serious obligation to stand guard for as long as it takes to ensure that the constitutional right of black children to equal education is fulfilled.

After 54 years of Brown v. Board, public schools are still inherently segregated and minority students are still disadvantaged to the education afforded to white students. NCLB attempts to remedy inefficacies and instill accountability for academic achievement for all students attending federally funded schools, but the policy’s means to achieving it’s ends are egregiously flawed. The sanctions imposed to “improvement schools” are far more disadvantaging to students of color. While this policy is facially attempting to bring equality, the only means to address achieving proficiency standards are to allocate more funding to their scarce resources.