Politics

First World Problems: GP North Is Like Racially Segregated Schools, Say Some Pointers

December 17, 2013, 10:20 AM

Times like these make me embarrassed to be from Grosse Pointe.

Detroit News: [A] group of families in Grosse Pointe Farms, one of Michigan’s most affluent communities, feels it is being shortchanged. The families want the district to move their children from North High to South High, claiming their kids have been denied “equal access” to “equal education.”

In seeking a transfer to South, the parents have cited the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed restricting black students to “separate but equal” public schools.

Some facts...

Both Grosse Pointe North and Grosse Pointe South have graduation rates in the mid-90s. The national school ratings organization Great Schools gives North an overall rating of 9 out of 10. They also say North has a 17-to-1 student/teacher ratio. Great Schools rates South a 10, where the student/teacher ratio is also 17-to-1. Both schools offer foreign languages, AP courses, and special education programs. Also, North is air conditioned. 

One obvious difference between North and South is that North has almost twice as many minority students as South. But, yeah, that's just an interesting bit a trivia that has nothing at all to do with these parents' desire to send their precious little snowflakes to South instead of North. 

In contrast, the inequality in segregated schools was, shall we say, a tad more significant.

Smithsonian: In some southern states, white schools received two to three times more money per student than black schools. Black taxpayers in several states not only bore the entire cost of their own schools, but helped support white schools as well.

School administrators often took a hand-me-down approach to black schools. Outdated textbooks from white schools...would be transferred to a local black school.

In South Carolina in the 1930s, expenditures for white schools were literally ten times higher than expenditures for black schools, which were often housed in ramshackle buildings.

Evidence presented in Brown showed educational segregation led to real and verifiable psychological trauma for black students. 

So, yeah, the differences between pre-Brown black and white schools are maybe just a little different than the differences between two well-funded, modern high schools, both with sterling educational reputations, in an affluent suburban community.

If Brown v. Board is used to "integrate" North district students into South than Brown v. Board no longer has any meaning.


Read more:  Detroit News


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