ICYMI: 60 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation is returning to schools

Tomorrow marks 60 years since the Supreme Court issued Brown v. Topeka Board of Education to desegregate our Nation’s schools  — but a recent report shows that segregated schools are increasingly common in the United States. The report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that “blacks are now seeing more school segregation than they have in decades, and more than half of Latino students are now attending schools that are majority Latino,” writes the AP. The issue isn’t just a problem in metropolitan areas either; it spans to suburbs. And opportunities are not equal in the classroom — segregation in schools affects performance and resources. The AP article tells the story of one student on the South Side of Chicago whose school does not offer physical education, art, or music classes, and Advanced Placement courses are only offered online.  “We barely have the basic classes we need,” the student says.

Last month, President Bush spoke at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Library in Austin and called education reform “the continuing work of the civil rights movement.”

“Quality education for everyone, of every background, remains one of the most urgent civil rights issues of our time… Some have ideological objections to any federal role in education.  Some are too comfortable with the status quo.  The alliance between ideology and complacency seems to be getting stronger.  I fear that the soft bigotry of low expectations is returning.  And for the sake of America’s children, that is something we cannot allow,” President Bush said. “Without meaningful accountability, our sights into reality will be dimmed. Without meaningful accountability, it is poor and minority children who suffer the most.”