DE FACTO SEGREGATION IN THE NORTHERN
PUBLIC S C H O O L S ; ITS ANATOMY
AND TREATMENT*
by
JOSEPH B . ROBISON
Assistant Director, Commission on Law and Social
Action,
American Jewish Congress, New York
D
E F A C T O segregation, as that term
will
be
used
here,
means
segre­
operations.
The
gation which exists in fact but which
is n o t the
(as
in
direct result o f either
the
South)
discriminatory action.
or
law
intentionally
A m o m e n t ' s con­
This paper deals with that
problem as it affects public schools.
most potent generator of de facto
segregation is the ghetto pattern that
distorts
The
the
facts
nation's
regarding
1
living
quarters.
that pattern
are
sideration will show that this particular
familiar
enough.
phenomenon creates its o w n distinctive
housing
segregation
problems.
sistant to change. F a i r housing laws and
Over the years, the civil rights forces
have evolved a well-developed p r o g r a m
government
slowly.
ity
by
financial
governmental
action
and intentional discrimination b y indi­
viduals.
regulations
run
counter
ourselves a n d what we demand o f others.
decades to come.
dealing with
H e r e we are not
discriminators.
We
are
very
to
entrenched
habit,
Thus, the factors that breed de facto
segregation
d o not y e t have this clarity about
work
re­
commitment and deep emotional
cess, we at least k n o w what w e want o f
We
extremely
involvement.
W h i l e we are still far f r o m suc­
de facto segregation.
is
Community pressures f o r equal­
to deal with both discrimination imposed
l a w or other
W e k n o w too that
will
be
in
operation
I t is not
for
surprising
that its victims are impatient with the
logical advice that the o n l y w a y to treat
racially homogeneous public schools, is
dealing with a spillover f r o m discrim­
to
ination elsewhere.
t u r n i n g o n e ' s back on a whole generation
that
this
and
requires
I t should be obvious
involves different
different
principles
methods.
The
persons w e are t r y i n g to influence are
not themselves discriminating.
F o r the
most part, they are p u b l i c officials com­
mitted b y l a w and in f a c t to the p o l i c y
of equality.
The p r o b l e m is to w o r k out
with them j u s t what their p o w e r s a n d
responsibilities
effects
of
are
when
discrimination
the
divisive
invade
their
eliminate
the
ghetto.
This
means
of school children.
The
facts o f de facto segregation in
public schools have often been reviewed,
most
recently
pointed o u t
2
by
Will
Maslow.
He
that almost half the Negroes
i Comprehensive surveys of the problem may
be found in TJ. S. Comm'n on Civil Eights,
1961 Report, Book 4, "Bousing;"
Comm'n
on Race and Housing, Where Shall We Live?
U. Cal. Press, Berkeley, 1958; and other au­
thorities cited in Robison, "Housing—The
Northern Civil Rights Frontier," Western Re­
serve Law Review, Vol. 13, 1961, pp. 101-105.
2Will Maslow, " D e Facto Public School
in A m e r i c a n o w live outside the South
tion.
and that segregation in housing is closely
corrective
reflected in the public schools.
Hence, he d i d n o t have to determine what
This has
H e d r e w his p o w e r t o issue a
decree
from
that
finding.
been made plain b y studies i n such cities
are the obligations o f p u b l i c school of­
as New Y o r k ,
ficials
Chicago,
Detroit,
San
when they are administering
a
Francisco, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Bos­
system which is disfigured b y segrega­
ton,
tion n o t created i n a n y w a y b y official
Los
Angeles,
Youngstown.
Indianapolis
and
W h i l e there is n o t too
conduct.
6
much published data on the smaller—
particularly the suburban—school dis­
De Facto Public School Segregation
tricts, we do k n o w they also face this
problem.
Having
3
Some o f this segregation is undoubt­
edly deliberate. A r t f u l drawing o f school
zone lines, complaisant attitudes toward
transfers
of white children and other
procedures have been used to achieve a
modified Northern version o f "separate
but e q u a l . "
Such practices, however,
The chief problem in dealing with them
which, at least as far as we know, a
pattern
It is important t o note that that is
the issue on which the celebrated decision
in the N e w Rochelle case turned.
4
Al­
though broader questions were raised,
United States District J u d g e K a u f m a n
rested his decision ( a n d was affirmed)
on a finding that the situation
of "racial
before
him was due to past practices adopted
for the purpose of maintaining segregaSegregation," 6 Villanova Law Beview 353,
1961.
3 Thus, in New Rochelle, New York, as re­
vealed in the litigation mentioned below, one
of the more than a dozen grade schools had a
Negro enrollment of 94%, a second was over
50% while at least five others were under 10%.
In Englewood, N. J., where the public school
segregation issue has recently been in the news
as well as the courts, Negroes constitute 36.9%
of the enrollment. The proportion of Negroes
in the five elementary schools is 98.7, 63.1, 11.7,
4.6, and 0.2%. Report to Englewood Board
of Education, Englewood, Its People and Its
Schools, 1960, p. 46.
* Taylor v. Board of Education of New
Boehelle, 191 F. Supp. 181 (8.D., N.Y., 1961),
affirmed 294 F.(2d) 36 (1961), cert, den., 82
S. Ct. 382 (1961).
i m b a l a n c e " exists
entirely without malicious intent or dis­
criminatory
practices o n the
school officials.
part of
6
The first question that arises i s : are
such segregated schools per se u n e q u a l ?
I n the legal sense, that question must be
regarded as open.
is to prove their existence.
preliminaries
a study o f the public school system in
are beyond the scope of this paper. They
raise no issues of either l a w or principle.
gotten all these
out o f the w a y , w e can settle d o w n to
I n the 1954 decision,
7
the Supreme Court f o u n d that education
in legally segregated schools was un­
equal per se.
I t can be argued that the
rationale behind that
6
finding
was in-
This is not to say that the New Rochelle
decision made no important advance over the
Supreme Court's decision of 1954. It estab­
lished a number of important principles in the
application of that decision, including (1) that
illegal segregation may exist even in the ab­
sence of a segregation statute or other formal
regulations, (2) that it may exist even though
separation of the races is not complete, (3)
that it may exist even though the present school
officials have not discriminated and are charge­
able only with failing to correct a discriminatory
situation inherited from their predecessors, (4)
that, in correcting such a situation, a court has
broad discretion and may even modify such
accepted practices as "the neighborhood
school" and (5) specifically, that a system of
permissive transfers is one acceptable way of
dealing with such a situation.
It may be that de facto segregation has
been helped along more frequently by school
officials than this paper assumes. However, as
long as official misconduct cannot be proved,
the situation must be treated as though segre­
gation is entirely the result of outside factors.
i Brown v. Topeha, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
6
dependent of the fact that the segrega­
de facto segregated schools, yet there is
tion there condemned was imposed b y
ample
law.
different.
The
Court's
key
holding,
that
evidence that such schools are
T o begin with, they are or­
" s e p a r a t e educational facilities are in­
dinarily inferior even b y objective phy­
herently
sical standards.
unequal"
(p.
495),
rested
A s a rule, they
are
p r i n c i p a l l y on a set o f six reports o n
older, less well-equipped and
studies o f segregated schools, referred to
less attractive.
in the famous, if not notorious, footnote
inferior teaching staffs when j u d g e d b y
11. W h e n these references are examined,
such objective criteria as the proportion
generally
T h e y are likely to have
it appears that, in f o u r o f the six, nothing
of
limits the finding to the case o f official
the United States Commission on Civil
segregation.
8
Nevertheless, one cannot
licensed teachers.
In
addition,
as
Rights has found, " T h e relative over­
escape the fact that official c o n d u c t was
crowding o f schools that serve the Negro
involved
population in the urban North and W e s t
in
both
decision in the Brown
the
facts
and
the
case. The Supreme
Court d i d refer in its opinion to " s e g r e ­
gation with the sanction of l a w . "
is n o t o r i o u s . "
1 1
One court has
that inequalities in teacher
held
assignments
9
and p u p i l density, which are within the
There is little doubt that this issue
control of the school authority, constitute
will ultimately be decided b y the courts.
a denial o f constitutional rights that the
A n u m b e r o f cases raising it are n o w
courts can c o r r e c t .
p e n d i n g or in prospect.
a
preliminary
District J u d g e
I n one o f these
decision b y
a
Federal
appears to u p h o l d
the
However, the real test o f equality o f
o p p o r t u n i t y in education is in what the
pupils achieve.
view that inaction b y school authorities
inequalities
i n the face of de facto segregation is
pupils
unconstitutional,
their capacity.
regardless o f whether
the authorities contributed to the situa­
tion.
10
12
The physical and other
w o u l d be
were
unimportant
performing
according
if
to
There is ample evidence
that the achievement o f pupils in pre­
dominantly Negro schools lags behind
the general average.
One o f the earliest and most striking
The Evidence of Inequality
W h i l e w e cannot say that the
courts
have resolved the issue o f inequality in
s The only two of the cited studies that dealt
with "enforced segregation" are Deutscher
and Chein, "The Psychological Effects of En­
forced Segregation: A Survey of Social Science
Opinion," 26 J. Psychol. 259 (1948) and Chein,
" W h a t are the Psychological Effects of Segre­
gation Under Conditions of Equal Facilities,"
S Int. J. Opinion and Attitudes Res. 229 (1949).
In the other four, much of what is said applies
squarely to de facto segregation. See, for
example, Frazier, The Negro in the United
States, 1949, pp. 674-681.
» 347 U.S. at 494. And see the lower court
cases cited in Maslow, op. cit. supra at p. 356,
to the effect that the Fourteenth Amendment
does not affirmatively command integration.
loBranche v. Board of Education of Hemp­
stead, decided April 9, 1962 (U.S.D.C., E.D.,
N.Y.).
of the studies reaching this conclusion
was made in N e w Y o r k City.
I t was
conducted b y the P u b l i c E d u c a t i o n A s ­
sociation,
assisted
by
the
New
York
University Research Center f o r Human
Relations.
The
study
considered
elementary school to be a
an
"continental
w h i t e " or " G r o u p Y " school i f its Negro
and Puerto Rican population was below
ten percent.
The school was treated as
a " N e g r o and Puerto R i c a n " or " G r o u p
X ' ' school i f its Negro and Puerto R i c a n
population was over ninety percent.
It
was f o u n d that the Group X schools were
inferior to the
Group Y schools in a
11 U. S. Comm'n on Civil Eights, 1961 Re­
port, Book 2, "Education," p. 113.
12 In the Matter of Skipworth, 180 N.Y.S.(2d)
852 (Dom. Eel. Ct. N. Y . C , 1958).
number of respects, including age, phys­
These
handicaps
operate
independ­
ical facilities, maintenance, teacher ex­
ently o f race.
perience and regular class size. I n p u p i l
description o f a public s c h o o l :
achievement, the difference was striking.
The norms from G r o u p X schools fell 1.2
to 2,7 years behind those f o r G r o u p Y
schools in reading and arithmetic.
is n o w generally
figures
non.
reflect
13
accepted that
It
these
a nationwide phenome­
14
Note, f o r example, this
The parents of at least one-third of the
children are either in penal institutions, are
on probation, or have prison records. At
least 100 children are on probation to the
Juvenile Court. There has not been a day
since I've been at the school that there has
not been one or more children in detention
at the Juvenile Court. . . . i»
This is not a ghetto school.
The Economic and Cultural Factors
I t is a school
in a white slum.
It is a mistake, however, to assume that
Y e t , while economic and social factors
these differences in achievement are due
can impair educational progress regard­
entirely to the racial segregation in
less o f race, there is no doubt that, in our
schools,
the
or even to the all-too-common
society, they weigh most heavily o n the
deficiencies o f the schools in Negro dis­
underprivileged m i n o r i t y groups. Equal­
tricts.
I t seems likely that neither o f
ization o f educational o p p o r t u n i t y to­
these factors is as important as the eco­
d a y does not w i p e out the effects o f past
nomic and cultural handicaps of children
inequalities, particularly the effect they
dwelling in slum conditions.
have o n the c h i l d ' s home environment.
is Public Education Association,
of the Public School Education of
Puerto Mean Children in New
October 1955. The tables on pupil
were as follows (p. 2 4 ) :
The Status
Negro and
York City,
achievement
BEADING
Norms
Norms
3.7
2.3
urbs, published last y e a r .
16
Dr.
Sub­
D r . Conant
conclu­
17
But
this should not b l i n d us to his valid
6.9
4.7
8.4
6.0
I t w o u l d be unwise t o challenge D r .
Conant's statement that " . . . i t has been
established b e y o n d a n y reasonable doubt
TEST
SCORES
Group Y Group X
6th grade-Metropolitan
Achievement (Intermediate)
8th grade-New York Arithmetic
Computation (C)
f o r m e d about civil rights f o r c e s .
observations.
TABLE 19
AVERAGE ARITHMETIC
of
repeatedly that he is noticeably misin­
SCORES
Group Y Group X
3rd grade-Metropolitan
Achievement (Primary)
6th grade-Metropolitan
Achievement (Intermediate)
8th grade-Metropolitan
Achievement (Advanced)
Grade and test
contributions
sions i n that report and its pages reveal
TEST
Grade and test
important
James Conant's report, Slums and
reached some v e r y unfortunate
TABLE 18
AVERAGE
Analysis o f these factors is one o f the
most
Norms
Norms
6.4
4.8
8.7
6.0
« U . S . Oomm'n on Civil Bights, 1961 Re­
port, Book 2, "Education,"
pp. 117-18;
James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs, MeGrawHill, 1961, pp. 12-13; Bichard L. Plaut, "Clos­
ing the Educational G a p , " Journal of Intergroup Relations, Vol. I l l , No. 2, pp. 138-139.
is Conant, op. cit. supra, p. 16.
i« Op. cit. supra.
IT Thus, Dr. Conant attributes the demand
for movement of Negro children into predomi­
nantly white schools to "political leaders" (p.
28) whereas the pressure has come from Negro
and white civil rights organizations. He be­
lieves, quite wrongly, that "Negro leaders and
their friends have placed a taboo on the use
of the word 'Negro' " (p. 38) and that
"Negroes do not like to be designated as
Negroes in the press" (p. 44). He also ac­
cepts the myth that the effort to achieve equal­
ity in the South after the Civil War was that
of a "vindictive Congressional majority" (p.
9).
that community and family background
p l a y a large role in determining scholas­
tic aptitude and school a c h i e v e m e n t "
( p . 1 2 ) . O r the stress he places o n the
fact that, in slum areas, " . . . when the
children leave the school they never see
anyone read anything—not even news­
p a p e r s " ( p . 2 5 ) . These and other factors
are the p r o d u c t o f centuries o f oppres­
sion, o f deeply entrenched and continued
patterns o f discrimination in employ­
ment and housing, o f l o n g practiced
segregation in education. T h e y preclude
the conclusion that the l o w achievement
of pupils in schools in economically
underprivileged areas is due solely to
present de facto segregation.
Indeed, it must be remembered that
these factors operate o n the individual
child. T h e y do not disappear when the
child is placed in an integrated class.
Thus, educators believe that reading in­
struction in the schools is most effective
when it is supplemented b y reading at
home. The child w h o returns to a home
where there is nothing to read, and
frequently n o place to read, loses that
vital p a r t o f his education, no matter
h o w m u c h stimulation he gets in school.
Of course, the environment in the
school is also important.
One o f the
strongest arguments f o r breaking d o w n
de facto segregation is that integration
tends t o ease the intellectual starvation
o f the underprivileged children.
The
segregated school, o n the other hand,
m a y extend the emptiness o f the home
environment. I n fact, we m a y assume
that elimination o f segregation is at
least one o f the prerequisites to equaliza­
tion o f educational opportunity. H e n c e ,
the m a x i m u m amount o f desegregation
that can be achieved at a n y given time
must be one o f our goals.
The Direct Attack on Segregation
There is a number o f procedures that can
be used to reduce de facto segregation.
A m o n g these are ( 1 ) deliberate drawing
o f attendance zone lines to break u p
concentrations;
( 2 ) the
"Princeton
p l a n " or a n y o f its variations under
which, f o r example, two schools, pre­
dominantly Negro and white, and serv­
ing children from kindergarten through
the sixth grade, are revamped so that
one takes all the children f o r the first
three o r four years and the other for
the balance; ( 3 ) " p e r m i s s i v e " transfers
or " o p e n e n r o l l m e n t " under which
parents m a y transfer their children out
of c r o w d e d schools into under-utilized
schools, simultaneously, and almost in­
cidentally, achieving better racial bal­
a n c e ; and ( 4 ) complete abandonment of
zoning. A n y or all o f these m a y involve
transporting children b y bus to schools
far f r o m their homes. A l l involve weak­
ening or abandonment o f the " n e i g h b o r ­
hood s c h o o l " policy.
These procedures have been opposed
on grounds o f both principle and prac­
tice. The objections based o n principle
have been endorsed b y D r . Conant, who
says flatly: " T o m y mind, the city school
superintendent is right w h o said he was
in the education business and should not
become involved in attempts to correct
the consequences of voluntary segregated
housing."
More recently, Dean John
H . Fischer o f Teachers College has ob­
jected to " m a n i p u l a t i n g people to create
a structure pleasing to some master
planner.
I n N e w Rochelle, the majority
of the School Board, in defending their
decision to rebuild the predominantly
Negro school on the same site, insisted
that " t o send the L i n c o l n School chil­
dren to other schools solely beeause of
their race . . . w o u l d be a violation o f the
1 8
19
is Op. cit. supra at p. 30.
is John H. Fischer, "Educational Problems
of Segregation and Desegregation of Public
Schools," paper delivered at Fourth Annual
Conference of the Commission on Civil Eights,
1962.
basic
principle
tion . . . . "
2
of
non-discrimina­
idea.
Educators
have
tried
to
draw
zoning lines so as to make schools rep­
0
resentative of different economic g r o u p ­
Educational Aspects of Desegregation
ings.
The answer to this is that it ignores the
tion measures rest on a fallacious as­
purely educational aspects o f de facto
sumption.
segregation.
civil rights forces cannot w o r k f o r im­
D r . C o n a n t ' s objections to desegrega­
learning
is
I f educators conclude that
impaired
in
segregated
H e seems to believe that the
provement
of
presently
segregated
schools, they have an obligation, o r at
schools if they also s u p p o r t reduction o f
least a power, as educators, to correct it,
segregation.
even if no duty arises out o f the constitu­
cept
tional command o f equality.
c a n w o r k f o r both desegregation a n d im­
This obligation was recognized b y the
New Y o r k City B o a r d of E d u c a t i o n in
this
23
There is no reason to ac­
"either-or"
provement
of
those
approach.
schools
"We
that
are
lagging behind others.
a resolution a d o p t e d o n December 23,
1954, pledging efforts to do away with
de facto segregation.
The Limitations of Desegregation Efforts
I t took this action
on the assumption that " p u b l i c educa­
The argument
that the various p r o ­
tion in a racially homogeneous setting is
cedures f o r desegregation are impractical
socially unrealistic
at­
is more troublesome. Procedures like the
tainment of the goals o f democratic edu­
Princeton plan can achieve substantial
cation, whether this segregation occurs
gains in suburbs a n d other small dis­
and blocks the
b y law or b y f a c t . ' '
2 1
Subsequently, on
January 28, 1960, the N e w Y o r k State
tricts.
I f a district is small enough a n d
the problem not too severe, desegregation
B o a r d o f Regents adopted a statement
efforts
of p o l i c y which took the position that de
Moreover,
facto segregation " m a y damage the per­
probably less o f a p r o b l e m in these areas
sonality o f m i n o r i t y g r o u p
children"
because the m i n o r i t y g r o u p families in­
2 2
volved are higher i n the economic scale.
and
"impair
the
ability to
learn."
A c c o r d i n g l y , it undertook to seek solu­
may
be
completely successful.
educational
retardation
I n the larger districts, complete deseg­
tions to the educational aspects o f the
regation
problem.
the cities, it becomes impossible.
D r . Conant argues that, if racial in­
tegration is per se desirable, the same
must be true o f other f o r m s o f integra­
tion. ' ' One might a r g u e , ' ' he s a y s , ' ' that
all slum schools ought to be integrated
with
schools
in
areas" ( p . 3 1 ) .
economically
favored
This is not so novel an
20 Statement issued by Board, November 30,
1959. Printed in full in New Bochelle Standard
Star, December 1, 1959.
21 The resolution is set forth in New York
City Commission on Integration, Final Report,
Toward the Integration of our Schools, 1958,
pp. 24-26.
22 New York State Board of Regents, State­
ment on Intercultwral Relations in Education,
January 28, 1960.
is
becomes more difficult.
24
In
Limited gains can be made, perhaps,
23 Op. cit. supra, p. 31. He also asserts that
those school districts that have made no effort
to desegregate "are more likely to make prog­
ress in improving Negro education" (p. 29).
However, he offers no evidence to support that
statement.
2 4 The City of Stamford, Conn., recently
applied the Princeton approach to its two high
schools, one of which was predominantly white
and the other predominantly Negro and Puerto
Rican. It directed that one school cover the
ninth and tenth grades for the whole eity and
the other the eleventh and twelfth grades. New
York Times, May 4, 1962. This is certainly
an improvement. Yet one cannot help wonder­
ing what is to be done with the smaller grade
schools. Presumably, de facto segregation will
continue there.
a l o n g the borders of our Harlems, but
the h a r d core o f dense segregation i n
these areas will be broken u p o n l y when
the areas themselves cease to be ghettoes.
Eliminating segregation in the schools
o f a large city, while housing discrimina­
tion continues, w o u l d require daily move­
ment o f tens o f thousands o f pupils out
of the N e g r o area and movement o f an
equal number o f white children into it.
T o repeat,
there is nothing w r o n g in
this, in principle, when done to achieve
legitimate
educational objectives.
Yet
it seems clear that this solution is n o t
practical o n so large a scale.
Apparently
Negro
g r o u p s in large cities have relied
pri­
m a r i l y on systems of permissive transfers
The theory here is
that the de facto segregated schools are
inferior and parents o f children in those
schools have the right, at their option,
to move them out to the superior white
schools.
what
A s s u m i n g they have that right,
is the
practice?
l o n g range
effect
o f this
I t does n o t achieve a n y sig­
nificant degree o f integration.
F o r one
thing, the number o f transfers is neces­
sarily limited b y the n u m b e r o f vacancies
in the receiving schools. M o r e important,
the ghetto school is still there.
its students leave.
O f the 256,968 Negro and Puerto Rican
pupils i n the N e w Y o r k City elementary
schools i n 1961, constituting
Some o f
44.8 per
cent of the total student b o d y , 123,239,
or 21.5 per cent, were in " G r o u p X "
schools.
The 1960 figures were 242,874
Negro a n d P u e r t o R i c a n pupils, o r 42.8
per
recognizing this,
o r o p e n enrollment.
centages may be going up. In 1957, for
example, there were 64 elementary schools
in which the Negro-Puerto Bican enrollment
exceeded 90 per cent. By January of this
year, the number had increased to 102—
constituting about 17.8 per cent of all the
city's public elementary schools as a result
of declining white enrollments.^
cent
of
the
student
body,
with
113,691, o r 20 per cent, i n " G r o u p X "
schools.
26
Undoubtedly,
open
enrollment
does
give a measure of relief to those parents
w h o find the present segregation intoler­
able.
for
P r o v i d i n g such an escape valve
rising tensions m a y be necessary.
Some o f its results are desirable.
But
it can hardly be viewed as a solution.
The hard fact is that the large scale
de facto segregation that exists in the
public schools o f o u r larger cities will
continue until the ghettoes are broken
up.
The most optimistic among us will
agree that this will take a l o n g time.
W h a t is to be done in the meantime?
N o white pupils take
their places.
This is borne out b y the experience i n
N e w Y o r k City.
F o r several years n o w ,
N e w Y o r k has h a d an o p e n enrollment
program.
I n addition, it has been trans­
f e r r i n g pupils f r o m c r o w d e d to under­
utilized schools, with an eye to racial
balance.
Y e t it has n o t even held its
o w n against the factors p r o d u c i n g seg­
regation. O n l y last A p r i l , Stanley Lowell,
chairman
o f the
City Commission on
Overcoming Educational Retardation
The attention o f the civil rights organiza­
tions must be given not o n l y to deseg­
regation but also to the p r o b l e m of educa­
tional retardation in the ghetto schools.
That retardation is an obstacle to the
elimination o f discrimination and seg­
regation.
O n that count alone, it is as
legitimate to our area o f concern as, let
us say, programs f o r public housing or
H u m a n Rights, r e p o r t e d :
Three-fourths of the children in public
elementary schools in Manhattan are either
Negro or Puerto Bican. In the city as a
whole, 40 per cent are from these two groups.
And the latest figures suggest that the per­
25 Stanley H . Lowell, Bemarks Made at
Yeshiva University, Sunday, April 29, 1962.
2« Board of Education—City of New York,
Central Zoning Unit, The Problem of Pupil
Growth, March 1962.
federal aid to education.
A s the United
States Commission o n Civil Rights said
recently:
The Waste of Talent
Whether these handicaps are the result of
segregation in the schools, economic and cul­
tural deprivation, or some other cause, is
immaterial. They exist.
27
Programs designed to deal with this
situation have been started in a number
of school systems; e.g., the Demonstration
Guidance ( J u n i o r H i g h School N o . 4 3 )
Project and the H i g h e r Horizons P r o ­
gram in N e w Y o r k City, the
Banneker
Group P r o g r a m in St. Louis, the Greater
Cities-Gray A r e a P r o g r a m in ten cities,
sponsored b y the F o r d Foundation, and
others described in the 1961 R e p o r t o f
the Commission on Civil R i g h t s .
28
The
basic assumption o f these programs is
that
the
educational
retardation
in
ghetto schools is the product, at least in
part, o f environmental
factors.
basic
overcome those
approach
is
to
Their
E v e n in the short time these programs
have been operating, they have p r o d u c e d
results bordering
the
on the
schools under
the
spectacular.
Banneker
Group P r o g r a m in St. Louis, 74.2 p e r
cent of pupils covered were reading at
the district or g r o u p standard i n 1960,
compared with 46.6 per cent t w o years
earlier.
The striking improvements made in rel­
atively short
are
vastly
periods b y these
encouraging.
But
efforts
it
must
shock us into a realization o f the appall­
ing waste o f talents that n o w takes place
in most de facto segregated schools.
The
simple fact is that hundreds o f thousands
of minority g r o u p children in Northern
public schools are falling one to three
years behind their u n d o u b t e d capacity.
A s a result, they are not getting the basic
training that they are capable o f receiv­
ing—training
they will need in our in­
creasingly industrialized society.
Tens
of thousands o f these pupils fail to get
the college degrees that they could and
w o u l d get i f their p r i m a r y and secondary
school education was all that it c o u l d be.
This waste,
this debasement
of po­
tentially educable citizens, goes on month
factors as far as possible.
In
this background usually show a decrease in
I.Q. as they grow older.so
The number assigned to ' ' Track
1 " (that is, the curriculum f o r " a b o v e average a c h i e v e r s " ) had risen f r o m 7.1
to 20.7 per cent in the same p e r i o d .
29
after
month
cumulating
disaster.
and
the
year after
year,
material f o r
a
ac­
social
Desegregation o f housing will
take a l o n g time.
F u l l desegregation o f
schools i n our larger cities will not be
accomplished m u c h sooner.
D u r i n g the
transition p e r i o d that stretches
ahead
of us, we must halt the present waste o f
talent.
This is n o t in a n y sense a reversion to
the
discredited
philosophy.
"separate
but
F o r one thing,
equal"
this
kind
The Demonstration Guidance P r o j e c t in
of effort is needed even where desegrega­
New Y o r k City has seen similar results:
tion is proceeding.
E v e n there, children
whose education is in arrears because o f
In 1957, 26% of the students had scored
in the 110 I.Q. category and above; in 1960,
58% scored 110 and above; 2.5% had scored
140 and above in 1957 while 12% scored in
that category in 1960. What is particularly
interesting is the increase in the I.Q. in view
of previous findings that boys and girls from
p r i o r segregation and other
handicaps
must get special attention.
Moreover,
this is not a p r o g r a m based o n race.
It
is a p r o g r a m f o r special attention to
those
children
who
are
educationally
retarded, regardless o f race.
The valid­
ity o f such a p r o g r a m is not destroyed
2 7
U. S. Comm'n on Civil Eights, 1961 Report,
Booh 2, "Education," p. 117.
» Id. at 123-137.
2» Id. at 126-127.
2
8
» Board of Education of the City of New
York, Fifth Annual Progress Report of Demon­
stration Guidance Project, p. 5 (1961).
b y the fact that, because o f past dis­
crimination, the bulk of the pupils are
non-white.
I submit, therefore, that civil rights
g r o u p s have to do m o r e than they have
in the past to support and demand p r o ­
grams f o r i m p r o v i n g educational achieve­
ment. I t is not enough merely to equalize
educational opportunity.
Finally, let me return again to D r .
Conant's report.
One o f the facts he
established dramatically is the inequality
among school districts, particularly be­
tween the suburbs and the cities.
Dis­
regarding the matter o f de facto segrega­
tion and of city slums, the rich suburbs
spend more f o r each school child than
do the cities.
I n other words, the sub­
urban p u p i l gets a lot more public educa­
tion than his city cousin.
Program Implications
This has a number of implications. A t
the simplest level, we must address our­
selves to the fact that the necessary
special programs cost money. I need
n o t tell y o u about the competition f o r
the school dollar. M o n e y will not be
allocated f o r special assistance to under­
privileged children—the programs will
not be started or extended—until inter­
ested groups express more than mere
interest.
However, we will have to g o b e y o n d
this. The special problems o f city schools
require special consideration f r o m the
state legislatures which determine the
flow o f state funds.
Discrimination
against city areas b y state legislatures is
an o l d complaint. The civil rights forces
must enter the fight f o r more funds f o r
city schools. T h e y must do so o n the ex­
press g r o u n d that the cities face a spe­
cial problem in overcoming the educa­
tional retardation among economically
underprivileged children. I n addition,
support will be needed f o r aid f r o m the
Federal Government specifically ear­
marked f o r this p u r p o s e .
This is the
result o f a system that we have inherited
from a time when inequalities of wealth
did not show u p so clearly in geographi­
cal distribution.
tablishment
of
school districts
create
vast
A t that time, the es­
hundreds
did not
discrepancies
of
separate
automatically
in
the
way
schools were operated.
This system is not sacrosanct.
is no reason
There
w h y we should p u t
up
indefinitely with a structure in which
some children receive far greater educa­
tional benefits
than others.
from their
government
It will take a long time to
change to a system that channels school
funds
as and where they are
needed.
The sooner the demand is heard,
the
better.
The H i g h e r
Horizons P r o g r a m
and
its various parallels have shown that we
can do better b y our
children.
the
underprivileged
W e have begun to develop
procedures
techniques.
We
should n o w develop the demand.
and
It is
time to stop a waste of human resources
that has already continued too long.
31
3 1
The hill for federal aid to education sup­
ported by the Kennedy Administration provided
that 10% of all sums allotted to any state should
be devoted to special programs designed to meet
public school problems, including "the needs
of deprived or disadvantaged pupils." 87th
Congress, First Session, S. 1021, Section 109.