Thursday, September 29, 2011

Brown v. Board of Education Article

Here is a link to a current event that is relevant to Brown v. Board of Education today:

In this article from May 2004, Sara Neufield explores the idea that many of the nations schools are re-segregating.  It focuses on Randallstown School in Baltimore, Maryland.  Randallstown High Schools 98% black, while Towson High, 14 miles away, is 78% white. Many people in the Randallstown school community still feel a sense of inferiority when it comes to education.  Some of the factors that contribute to the inferiority of these schools is high teacher turnover, low expectations, lack of high expectations, and tough odds.
There is a high teacher turnover in these majority-black schools because many teachers seek jobs in affluent, majority-white schools, where the pay is the sam for less demanding work.  
There is also the trend of low expectations as a result of many of the brighter students now enrolling in magnet schools.  Students get As and Bs without much real effort, many of the classes are more like a review, and due dates are very lax.
When a teacher has high expectations for a student, the students will feel more challenged.  Many of the predominately black schools lack teacher who have high standards for their students, which goes along with the low expectations, and when the students are not challenged they are more likely to become restless and bored.
Another problem faced by predominately-black schools is that the teachers and the students are up against tougher odds.  In many cases, there is a lack of parental support, not necessarily because the parents don't care, but because they are uninformed and unsure.
Even though Brown v. Board of Education ended state-sanctioned segregation, there is still a divide among schools, and as a result of this divide, there exists an uneven distribution of academic achievement and student success.

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