What rhetorical strategies or other tools did this piece use that you saw as effective in telling this story?

Major Claims  →

Evidence to these claims

Questions?

Confusions?

Issues to Research?

Desegregation can close the achievement gap between black and white students.

“Separate but NOT Equal” is the reality in segregated schools.

Court ordered integration changed black lives for the better.

“Bad” or ‘Failing Schools” don’t get better.

In 1971 black 13 yr.olds score 39 points worse than their white peers.  That dropped to just 18 points by 1988 at the height of desegregation.

U.S. Dept. of Ed. 2014 data shows that blacks and latinos in segregated schools have the least qualified teachers, least experienced teachers, worst course offerings, least access to AP courses, and the worst facilities.  Couple this with the fact that they also have the highest concentration of poverty, greater numbers of students with educational needs, and have more social, emotional support issues than their white counterparts, it’s no wonder they suffer.

 “There’s a lot of data that shows that black students going through court-ordered integration changed their whole lives.  They were less likely to have health problems.  They lived longer.  And the opposite is true for black kids who remained in segregated schools”.

Normandy is a glaring example of this as the school remained on provisional accreditation for 15 years, which means there are entire classes who started as kindergarteners and graduated twelve years later without  attending a school that met the state standard.

History of school integration

History of busing

School funding and property taxes

Integration at Nathan Bishop in PVD

Voucher systems

“Achievement Gap”

Charter Schools and the affects they have on struggling schools

Black Gold- How many districts affected?  How severely?

The Problem We All Live With

Connection to the Author

(from column one)

SCWAAMP (Grinner)

Bad schools never caught up to the good schools, bad schools are mostly black, good are mostly white.

Whiteness is privileged...

Johnson

“Not a race issue! A safety issue…”

Johnson says that we have to name it, and call it what it is.  “Racist is not another word for bad white people…”

Delpit

“We said integration failed instead of the truth, which is it was working but we decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.”  (Nikole Hannah Jones)

“If we are truly to effect societal change,  we cannot do so from the bottom up, but we must push and agitate from the top down.  And in the meantime, we must take the responsibility to teach, to provide for students who do not already possess them, the additional codes of power”.

Armstrong and Wildman

Parent, Beth Cirami, from Francis Howell speaking about Normandy makes false accusations as to why the district lost accreditation and wants metal detectors and drug sniffing dogs.  Her statement “I deserve to not have to worry about my children (1st, 3rd, & M.S.) getting stabbed, or taking a drug, or getting robbed” shows the stereotypical attitude of many of the privileged whites.

“Whites often aspire to colorblindness, believing that colorblindness promotes equality”.

“All Lives Matter”

Normandy continued its failing ways along with other urban districts with the same racial makeup for decades.  It’s Nikole Hannah Jones question to the third superintendent that resonates with me.  “So knowing that, knowing that in these high poverty segregated districts the students aren’t doing well, is it possible for a black child in Missouri to get an equal education?”

“The real issue is that,while strictly true, “All Lives Matter” is a tone-deaf slogan that distracts from the real problems black people in America face”.