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Voices in Urban Education
Archives
Equity after Katrina
VUE Number 10, Winter 2006
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EXCERPT:
The Real Crisis in Education: Failing to Link Excellence and Equity
By Charles V. Willie
Charles V. Willie is the Charles William Eliot professor of education, emeritus, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
> Author's Biography
Excellence and equity cannot exist without one another, but the nation has pursued excellence
alone because it lacks the will to strive for equity.
While I agree that the theme of confronting the crisis in education is something of value and should have a high rank on this nation's agenda, I do not identify with the contemporary crowd that is trying to tell us the sky is falling – a metaphorical way of saying formal education is failing us.
I am more inclined to agree with David Berliner, professor of psychology and education at Arizona State University, and Bruce Biddle, editor of the Social Psychology of Education Journal and professor at the University of Missouri. In their book The Manufactured Crisis (1995), they speak of "nasty lies about education" (p. xi) that have flooded this nation. They believe that public schools have been attacked with myths and fraud by some leaders in this country who are "pursuing [an]. . agenda designed to. . . redistribute support for schools so that privileged students are favored over needy students" (p. xii).
The Success of Desegregation
I associate myself with this diagnosis because I have identified the current assault on public school education as a backlash to the court-ordered school desegregation that picked up speed in the 1970s and 1980s in this nation. In August 1976, a report was published on school desegregation in a sample of twenty-nine school districts in more than half of the fifty states, based on a study by the U.S.Commission on Civil Rights. The report revealed that school desegregation in 62 percent of the school districts made "substantial progress" in the 1970s (p. 127). These local school agencies with substantial desegregation in school student bodies by 1976 (the bicentennial anniversary year of the founding of this nation) included school districts located in the north, south, east, and west of the nation.
Only three school districts in the sample of twenty-nine (10 percent) experienced little progress in school desegregation up to and through 1976, according to the report (p. 126). Even Boston, with its angry response to court-ordered school desegregation in the 1970s, had major race-related problems in only a few of its schools (p. 39). The conclusion of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1976 was that "desegregation works" (p. 293).
Archives
Equity after Katrina
VUE Number 10, Winter 2006
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
The Real Crisis in Education: Failing to Link Excellence and Equity
By Charles V. Willie
Charles V. Willie is the Charles William Eliot professor of education, emeritus, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
> Author's Biography
Excellence and equity cannot exist without one another, but the nation has pursued excellence
alone because it lacks the will to strive for equity.
While I agree that the theme of confronting the crisis in education is something of value and should have a high rank on this nation's agenda, I do not identify with the contemporary crowd that is trying to tell us the sky is falling – a metaphorical way of saying formal education is failing us.
I am more inclined to agree with David Berliner, professor of psychology and education at Arizona State University, and Bruce Biddle, editor of the Social Psychology of Education Journal and professor at the University of Missouri. In their book The Manufactured Crisis (1995), they speak of "nasty lies about education" (p. xi) that have flooded this nation. They believe that public schools have been attacked with myths and fraud by some leaders in this country who are "pursuing [an]. . agenda designed to. . . redistribute support for schools so that privileged students are favored over needy students" (p. xii).
The Success of Desegregation
I associate myself with this diagnosis because I have identified the current assault on public school education as a backlash to the court-ordered school desegregation that picked up speed in the 1970s and 1980s in this nation. In August 1976, a report was published on school desegregation in a sample of twenty-nine school districts in more than half of the fifty states, based on a study by the U.S.Commission on Civil Rights. The report revealed that school desegregation in 62 percent of the school districts made "substantial progress" in the 1970s (p. 127). These local school agencies with substantial desegregation in school student bodies by 1976 (the bicentennial anniversary year of the founding of this nation) included school districts located in the north, south, east, and west of the nation.
Only three school districts in the sample of twenty-nine (10 percent) experienced little progress in school desegregation up to and through 1976, according to the report (p. 126). Even Boston, with its angry response to court-ordered school desegregation in the 1970s, had major race-related problems in only a few of its schools (p. 39). The conclusion of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1976 was that "desegregation works" (p. 293).
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