Dive Brief:
- This Tuesday, during a speech given in Washington, the U.S. Secreatary of Education Dr. John B. King parsed the issue of school desegregation, reiterating his intention to take up the issue as a priority.
- King said figuring out how to address racial and socioeconomic segregation in schools is “a critical question for our country,” and encouraged activists to “seize the moment,” saying the U.S. needs to make more progress and the question is about how to shift direction.
- He also applauded the efforts of federal programs like Stronger Together, an initiative proposed by the Obama administration to allocate $120 million in competitive grants to fund school programs boosting socioeconomic diversity in classrooms.
Dive Insight:
Nationwide, segregation in American schools is entrenched, despite some integration efforts in certain states. The U.S. south has seen re-segregation occur in various schools and racial bias remains a pressing issue. The issue has also pestered higher education, with states being ruled as maintaining separate and unequal public education systems.
In Minnesota, civil rights attorney Daniel Shulman says little has changed. Shulman suspects segregated schools have even gotten "worse" since 1995, when he won a suit charging the state was in violation of its constitution for "allowing groups of students to inhabit separate and inherently unequal schools." Shulman won his first suit, yet the state program created by the suit, which sent 2,000 low-income kindergartners to wealthier districts, wasn't enough to desegregate St. Paul and Minneapolis. An analysis by the Minneapolis Star Tribune found that 19 district elementary schools are now 80% minority students, while two are almost entirely white.
