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Education Equality Rally

on May 18, 2009 by CNN Video

On the 55th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, public schools are still separate, still unequal.

A report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, "Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge," found that 40 percent of Latinos and 39 percent of blacks attend "intensely segregated schools":

The Supreme Court concluded in Brown, that Southern segregation was "inherently unequal" and did "irreversible" harm to black students, and it later extended that ruling to Latinos. The inequality rests not on any defect of nonwhite students and parents, who have the same basic goals as whites, but on a system of segregation by race, poverty, and, increasingly, language, in which most black and Latino students never receive similar opportunities, similar peer groups, or any real chance to connect with and learn how to operate comfortably in middle class white institutions and networks. Many are in high schools where there is no real path to college because there are not enough teachers credentialed and experienced in key subjects and not enough fellow students ready to enroll in strong pre-collegiate courses taught at an appropriate level. For those students, there is no way to get the right preparation in their school regardless of their personal talent and motivation.

Al Sharpton, the National Action Network, the National Council of La Raza, and the Education Equality Project hosted a rally to call attention to the high school dropout crisis and the academic achievement gap.

To view the video, please click here.

Categories: Education Equality Day Education News EEP News