Innovative solutions in segregated schools

This past week in Hartford, the state Supreme Court announced a settlement in the 30-year old Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation case that adds more than 1,000 new seats to several Capitol region magnet schools and pledges to spend an additional $2 million to support this effort.

As a reminder, it was 65 years ago that Brown v. Board of Education was decided. The lasting sentence that captures the spirit of Brown by Chief Justice Earl Warren (an Eisenhower appointee — oh how the Republican Party has changed) was: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Martin Luther King poetically stated, “Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.”

So while this “settlement” may bring to a close Brown’s legacy in Hartford, it does not and cannot address the fundamental changes that are necessary in order for the state of Connecticut and its cities and towns to address educational performance in still largely segregated urban schools.

Segregation in public education in Connecticut is a life-altering problem, and this settlement represents only a chink in the armor of segregated Connecticut. However, this decision will have only a marginal impact on segregation in the greater Hartford area, and more importantly, it will have no impact on reversing the fundamental problem facing African-American children in urban communities, not just in Connecticut, but across the country.

Unsolved social and economic problems in African-American communities have a way of finding their way into low-income white communities. The current rise in deaths of despair from suicides, alcohol and drugs once relegated to low-income black communities is now endemic in low-income white communities. Low-income whites are realizing that social and economic racial entitlements have limits. Low-income white Connecticut schools will begin to resemble low-income black schools. If you don’t believe this, look at the similarities between the crack cocaine crisis that devastated black communities in the ’80s and ’90s and the opioid/fentanyl/meth crisis in white communities. Solving educational problems of performance in black communities can inform solutions to the social disintegration taking place in low-income white communities across the state and the nation.

Public education has failed African-American children. It is not because teachers, administrators and parents aren’t trying. It is not because we have not spent enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars. It is not because we do not know that the system has failed African-American children. The problem is the system is ripe for real innovation that addresses the unsolvable problems of educational performance within the current model of urban public education.

Public (and private) schools have been organized around a concept that children must fit the system, and not that the system should fit the child. Children start in kindergarten then progress through first grade, second grade, etc. After a year in each grade, at the elementary level, the child meets a new teacher. This system of handing off children each year to a new teacher is a counter-productive way to education kids of all races, but particularly black kids from neighborhoods and families that are on the front lines of poverty. Psychologists agree, poverty traumatizes its victims, particularly the young. Teachers cannot solve the problem of poverty directly, but teachers who are connected to children in a stable, professional relationship will be able to help these vulnerable kids better manage the stresses of life that cannot be hidden from our youngest citizens.

Isaac Asimov said “self-education is the only type of education there is.” If this is true, teachers are at best only guides for students who must learn to learn. This effort is only possible if teachers have a trusted, long-term relationship with students and their families. This takes years, not a semester or two.

Children must feel secure to become effective learners. An innovation solution to building the environment for effective learning is to have teachers assigned a cohort of children in what is now the first grade and then let that teacher be that cohort’s primary teacher throughout elementary school. The effect of having a professional teacher committed to a class of 25 to 30 children for six years would build bonds between those teachers, those children, their families and the communities where they live. More important than what grade the child is in is the impact a teacher can have helping that child know who they are, and that they are capable of greatness.

Some might argue this is social work not teaching. I would respond with a question that all teachers of inner-city African-American children must ask themselves: Why am I here in this classroom with these children? I firmly believe that teachers who cannot make this type of commitment, and administrators not willing to support innovation in the education of black children, need to consider changing schools or professions.

This effort is only possible if teachers have a trusted, long-term relationship with students and their families. This takes years, not a semester or two.

Chris Ehrmann / Associated Press Connecticut Attorney General William Tong speaks outside the Connecticut Supreme Court on the new agreements reached in the long-running Sheff v. O'Neill school desegregation case this month.