"Therefore, be it resolved that the Twenty-third General Synod of the United Church of Christ: Calls upon the United Church of Christ in all its settings to proclaim public school support and advocacy for the same as one of the foremost civil rights issues in the twenty-first century."  —2001, General Synod XXIII Resolution, "Access to Excellent Public Schools: A Child's Civil Right in the 21st Century"

Public school challenges in the first decade of the twenty-first century exist at the nexus of race, poverty, and segregation.  Over fifty years after the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, our courts and legislative bodies have retreated from policies that bring together children from different racial and ethnic groups. And while most school reform today sets "separate but equal" as its goal, we are far from providing equality of resources and services for children segregated by poverty and race.

The United Church of Christ's heritage of commitment to opportunity in public schools challenges members of the 21st century UCC to help our nation find a way to increase access to excellent public schools for every child.  We are called to find a way to walk in the tradition of our forebears who helped develop the concept of common schools and our abolitionist forebears in the nineteenth century American Missionary Association, who helped abolish slavery and founded educational institutions as the path for the development of all citizens.  Only if we make it possible will public schools continue to be places where our children come together, learn from each other, and experience unity within diversity.   How will we ensure access for all, quality for all, and opportunity for all?

January 7, 2013:  Historically the Title I formula has been a primary tool for equalizing educational opportunity as a civil right for every child. But that is changing.  Specifically the U.S. Department of Education is transforming Title I—the federal civil rights program created in 1965 as the centerpiece of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—from a formula program driving additional funds to schools serving a large number or high concentration of very poor children into a grant competition by which the U.S. Department of Education rewards what it calls innovation.  Read about this in a new Witness for Justice column: A System Where Every Poor Child Is a Winner.

December 2012: Two articles in The Atlantic explore continuing racial segregation in our nation's public schools:  Was 'Brown v. Board' A Failure? and Private Academies Keep Students Separate and Unequal 40 Years Later.

July 20, 2008... The New York Times Magazine in "The Next Kind of Integration," reports on Louisville's developing school integration plan one year after the U.S. Supreme Court Case that rejected voluntary racial integration plans in Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA. 

Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge, the January 2009 report from the Civil Rights Project charges: "Fifty-five years after the Brown decision, blacks and Latinos in American schools are moresegregated than they have been in more than four decades. The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in the Seattle and Louisville voluntary desegregation cases has not only taken away some important tools used by districts to combat this rising isolation, but this decision is also certain to intensify these trends. Segregation is fast spreading into large sectors of suburbia and there is little or no assistance for communities wishing to resist the pressures of resegregation and ghetto creation in order to build successfully integrated schools and neighborhoods. Desegregation plans that were successful for decades are being shut down by orders from conservative courts, federal civil rights officials have pressured communities to abandon their voluntary desegregation efforts, and magnet schools are losing their focus on desegregation...  Although there are serious interracial conflicts in schools and neighborhoods shared by two or more disadvantaged minorities, very little research or assistance has been provided to solve those urgent problems. The percentage of poor children in American schools has been rising substantially and black and Latino students, even those whose families are middle class, are largely attending schools with very high fractions of low-income children who face many problems in their homes and communities. As immigration continues to transform many sectors of American society this country is falling far behind in building faculties that reflect the diversity of American students--44% of whom are now nonwhite--and failing to prepare teachers who can communicate effectively with the 20 percent of homes where another language is spoken as immigration continues to transform many sectors of American society. Millions of nonwhite students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate...."   

June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court turned away from desegregation of public schools...

On June 28, 2007, in a split 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found unconstitutional two programs that used race as one of a number of factors for voluntary school desegregation. The two cases folded into one for purposes of the decision, called Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, involved programs in Louisville, Kentucky and in Seattle, Washington.   

The United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries was party to an amicus brief in this case on behalf of the Jefferson County, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington school districts,

What will this ruling mean in terms of steps school districts can continue to take to promote diversity?  To an important degree the majority decision turns away from the precedent in Brown v. Board of Education, although it does not ban entirely all programs to promote inclusion and diversity.  Here are resources to help you explore the implications of the overall decision and the specific points of view in the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions.

• July 20, 2008: The New York Times Magazine in "The Next Kind of Integration," reports on Louisville's developing school integration plan one year after the U.S. Supreme Court Case that rejected voluntary racial integration plans in Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA. 
• Reversals, Nicholas Lemann's analysis of U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.
• Commentary from the Civil Rights Project, The Integration Decision: What's Next for Educators, and for Society, After the U.S. Supreme Court's Ruling?, on the state of resegregation  across public schools in the United States in 2007 even before this Court decision.  Article features expert advice about how school districts can create diversity despite the constraints of the June 28 Supreme Court decision.
• "Joint Statement of Nine University-Based Civil Rights Centers on Today's Supreme Court Rulings on Voluntary School Desegregation..."was released by The Civil Rights Project, Harvard and UCLA; Center for Civil Rights, U. of North Carolina School of Law; Institute for Race and Poverty, U. of Minnesota; Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, U. of Cal, Berkeley; Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard; Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, U. of Illinois; Center for Multicultural Education, U. of Washington; Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Ohio State U.; Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia U.
• "No Turning Back,"commentary on the June 28 decision from Dr. John H. Jackson, President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
• Justice & Witness Ministries Regrets Supreme Court's June 28, 2007, Decision Turning Away from School Integration , the June 28, 2007 statement of Justice and Witness Ministries in response to the Supreme Court's decision.
• The majority, concurring and dissenting opinions released by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2007.

Recent and important books that explore issues of school integration, desegregation, diversity, and why separate so often means "unequal"...

The Children in  Room E4 (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007).  Susan Eaton weaves together the history of public education civil right law since Brown v. Board of Education with the stories of Connecticut’s on-going nineteen year Sheff v. O’Neill case; third grade class star, Jeremy Otero; 28 year veteran teacher and Hartford Teacher of the Year, Lois Luddy; and national Blue Ribbon Award winning Simpson-Waverly Elementary School.  Eaton also tells the story of UCC activist Elizabeth Horton Sheff, mother of the named plaintiff in the Sheff Case, and also chair of the United Church of Christ’s Public Education Task Force.

 

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (New York: Crown Publishers, 2005). Jonathan Kozol  speaks to the issues in the 2007 Supreme Court decision.  Better than almost any other school critic, Kozol explicates the relation of education to power by contrasting the kind of education given generously to children of privilege with schooling that is made available to poor children in segregated city schools.

Key UCC resources on civil rights concerns in public schools...

• Whose Child Left Behind? Why?  Report of the United Church of Christ Public Education Task Force's work between 2001 and 2005.  Study guide appears in 2006 Message on Public Education.
• 2007 Message on Public Education explores racial and economic injustices in public education in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 
• 2005 Justice & Witness Ministries Message on Public Education traces the history of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act back to its origins as the cornerstone of the War on Poverty in 1965 and into its most recent, and very different version, the No Child Left Behind Act.  The cover story explores the implications of the change in federal philosophy from the point of view of racial justice and civil rights.
• A Reflection on Academic Achievement Gaps in Public Schools  (2002) explores factors that cause academic achievement gaps.
• Separate and Unequal is the report of a 1999-2000 public education task force appointed jointly by the American Missionary Association and the commission for Racial Justice.

Witness for Justice Columns

• A System Where Every Poor Child is a Winner, January 7, 2013
  
• Excellent New Book Explores Racial Injustice in American Public Education (Jan Resseger, March 5, 2007) reviews Susan Eaton's excellent history of civil rights in public education, The Children in Room E-4, with a focus on Connecticut's Sheff v. O'Neill case.
• New Orleans Pledges to Educate Children on Waiting Lists (Jan Resseger, February 12, 2007)
• An Update on Public Education in New Orleans (Jan Resseger, May 1, 2006)
• Dropouts: Children Left Far Behind (Jan Resseger, February 20, 2006)
• Apartheid Schooling in America (Jan Resseger, November 21, 2005) reviews Jonathan Kozol's book, The Shame of the Nation.
• The Legacy of Education (Bernice Powell Jackson, February 28, 2005)
• Students and Testing (Bernice Powell Jackson, September 8, 2003)
• Holding Ourselves Accountable (Jan Resseger, March 3, 2003)

Research Studies by our Justice Partners

• According to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, American public schools have been resegregating across America's big cities for twenty years. 
• Researchers at John's Hopkins University have identified 2,000 urban "apartheid" high schools that fail to graduate 60 percent of their students within four years. 
• Researchers at The Advancement Project and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative have confirmed that rigid, punitive discipline codes at school are criminalizing too many children and putting them on a track to the juvenile justice system.
• Dismantling a Community, a resource from the Center for Community Change, raises civil rights concerns in New Orleans' schools post-Katrina.