Brown and Educational Policy Making at 40

Abstract

Over the years, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown 1) (1954) and subsequent legal challenges by African Americans have spawned a number of findings governing educational policies and policy making at almost every phase of schooling (Brown, 1979; Crain, 1969; Orfield & Ashkinaze, 1991).(1) Brown I and Brown II (1955) set in motion a series of educational policy changes. However, despite the more positive features of Brown, African Americans have not achieved equal educational opportunities.In the present article, policy making refers to changes in direction made by the federal courts in their holdings regarding school desegregation cases as well as congressional actions affecting the courts. While this article addresses federal action and school desegregation, state action is also important. However, states tend to leave matters affecting school desegregation almost exclusively to the federal courts. Thus, federal action or inaction covers most policy making issues in school desegregation.Several assumptions have been made regarding Brown and the subsequent federal court decisions designed to implement various components of public school desegregation across the nation. The first of these is that social decisions by the courts or other governmental agencies are inherently political. Federal court judges, including Supreme Court justices, are appointed to their positions because of their judicial orientations and or political value systems. These views are reinforced by public opinion and legislative action taken by Congress. Second, the dominant values of federal court jurists typically reflect those of majority rather than minority group members. This is true, with rare exceptions, for both majority and minority members of the federal judiciary, who also serve by appointment. Third, changes in educational policies made by the courts and Congress are always represented by these branches of government as improvements, regardless of whether these changes are positive or negative. This symbolic use of language in politics explains both the lack of action on the part of policymakers and the persistence of negative educational policies (Blase, 1991: Brown 1990; Edelman, 1980; Spring, 1992). Fourth, racism and self-interest have a greater impact on policy making in social matters such as education than do rational goals and objectives (Hatcher, 1992). Fifth, almost nothing involving education is exempt from political motives--this includes testing and the evaluation of pupils and the assignment of students to classes, programs, and schools (Goodlad, 1990; McCarthy, 1990; Mercer, 1973; Oakes, 1990; Page & Valli, 1990; Rist, 1978; Spring, 1976, 1992).Major changes in school desegregation litigation in the federal courts have occurred since Brown (Brown, 1979). The Supreme Court's decision in Brown I, which involved several cases combined by the Court, declared de jure or public school segregation based on race to be unconstitutional. Brown II established the speed with which desegregation would be implemented. From 1954 to 1973, the Court limited its rulings to de jure segregated public schools. In 1973, with Keyes v. School District of Denver, the Court expanded Brown to include de facto segregated public schools in northern cities. In 1974, the Court began making a steady retreat from its positive actions of the 1960s and ended the decade with significant setbacks for school desegregation. The threshold was Milliken v. Bradley (1974), a decision involving the desegregation of the public schools in both the city and suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. In Milliken, the Court ruled that state schools were local for the purpose of Brown, and further decreed that the liberal judicial test of evidence usually granted in cases involving racial discrimination could not be evoked because suburban schools were involved. This test of evidence, strict scrutiny, requires the defendant school districts to carry the burden of proof of nonracial discrimination and not the plaintiffs. …