Pictured Left: Dr. Frederick Haynes, III, Pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and Vice Chairman of National Action Network speaks to the “power and potential in an educated and liberated mind.”  He stands opposed to the teaching practices and standards miseducating American children, specifically low-income minority students. He sermonizes, “We want our schools delivered from test-based training. Instead we want to educate our children to be the best they can be. When you test base our children that is training, there is a difference between training and educating. You train dogs, you educate children, and you educate minds.” He is speaking to those systems that “teach to test” just to drive statistics and compete. And those test statistics are becoming more and more like the numbers that failed Wall Street. They paint a false picture – the bureaucrats get great numbers on paper, but the outcome will be a lost generation unless we wake up.

At last, the education crisis has heated up and boiled over until it could no longer be ignored. The urban school issues have metastasized to national crisis. That negative contagion surrounding under-education inevitably plagues our entire system. In some areas you might never know the severity, because the disparity is blatant. On one end, for those fortunate enough to be in the privileged public schools, in the better neighborhoods, the upward mobility of the culture tends to boost even the least likely student to a higher standard. On the opposite end, the downward pull is reprehensible and inconceivable – unless a person has experienced both – they may never seek an alternative because within their confines, they are unacquainted with the options. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who has recently taken the education crisis head-on, refers to it as soft racism. However, in New York, where segregation is often covertly and cunningly practiced, school children suffer most. We now see the consequence of these inequities. It seems from where some of us sit the solution is a simple one, once we get the budget balanced; the solution is in truly balancing the system. Our shot at social engineering, for lack of a better term, by educating the elite at the exclusion of some, compromises the entire world. Because when that innately, gifted, brilliant uneducated mind detonates it still multiplies – the imbalance backfires. How can there be language like, “the poorer schools,” “predominantly Black schools,” “high achieving schools” in an equal public education system? 

After interviewing several people, attending rallies and gathering data, the findings were staggering. There were too many ideas and issues to compile into one magazine article so with our focus on Harlem, we selected a small education system with a 32-year-old integration plan that has been recognized as one of the most effective in the nation as our microcosm, and then added the extra slices that make Harlem more complex. Wichita, Kansas abandoned formal segregation before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision came down and opened its first desegregated school in 1954. That was not the end for them or the solution, but they were stepping in the right direction. Ultimately, their city’s mandated desegregation plan led to high achievement and a completely integrated system. And in order for the schools to be successful across the board, it was recommended that schools have no more than 20% low income black students. The National Opinion Research Center at Johns Hopkins University listed Wichita as 1 of only 10 school systems in the United States that was completely desegregated.

Dr. Leonard Wesley, NEA Award winning educator/administrator, was assistant superintendent for desegregation/integration and federal projects, responsible for implementing, supervising and maintaining the Wichita Public School District’s desegregation/integration plan, during their successful desegregation plan.  Dr. Wesley, now retired, explains, “When you bring students together they learn by association. Going to school with different ethnic and socioeconomic groups the exchange is positive for all groups. We continually worked at creating and maintaining equality.”

When they instituted mandatory integration through a lottery system where both white and black students cross integrated, parents from both groups protested, but the city leaders stood together for the change. Once the students completed their mandatory bussing period the majority of those students chose to stay where they initially resisted, black and white students. Integration became natural.

The Office for Civil Rights, after visits to Wichita in 1967 and 1968, recommended several measures including the closing of a predominantly Black Junior High School, accelerated faculty desegregation and a program to end the segregation of seven elementary schools. A supporting independent study in Wichita that sampled teachers’ findings, reported then, in 1969, that teachers were particularly concerned that students of differing racial and socioeconomic backgrounds should have the opportunities to interact. The particular teacher committee’s analysis of the achievement of low and high status children of all ethnic groups showed that the benefits of desegregation were most apparent in the higher achievement and improved self-perception of working class white students. Further, Black students consistently achieved higher scores as the number of whites in their classes increased. During the summer of 1973, further training was provided to aid middle-class teachers in overcoming any prejudices they might harbor toward lower income black children. Gradually teachers became content with the new system.

Fast forward, 2009 Harlem, as the nations become more global, the New York City public school system remains in subtle Jim Crow mode. Even in the 1960’s, researchers knew that separation was harmful, yet, New York has certain districts enrolling nearly 100% Black and Hispanic students with nearly 80% of them at or below the poverty line, whereas certain areas maintain invisible barriers. The largest district in the city, which exists within a higher income setting, has a 20% Black student enrollment and fewer at the low income level, a composition almost certainly designed by administrators armed with the understanding that certain balances achieve better outcomes. As it stands, the existing compositions are maintained by real estate preferences and special enrollment requirements. There also exists within the New York City public education structure specialized public schools, which are magnificent; however, they are educating the elite minority population: Asian and white. Wasn’t there something known as a “literacy test” that kept potential voters at bay?

Perhaps if the specialized schools were required to take affirmative action into their enrollment consideration up to a certain quota, there is the possibility that we can start chipping away at solving our decaying education system. These are still schools that receive federal funding, and a requirement to increase the number of Black and Latino students by a small percentage through an affirmative action  selection can surely be quite impactful. Take into consideration two prominent specialized schools, Hunter College High School, grades 7 – 12 and Stuyvesant High School: Hunter’s composition is 40% white, 50% Asian, 6% black and 4% Hispanic and Stuyvesant is 30% white, 65% Asian, 2% black and 3% Hispanic. Both schools, using affirmative action as a level play could allow up to 15% of black or Hispanic students without extinguishing their potency. Self perception, expectation and natural intelligence then become the equalizer that causes a student to rise to the occasion once accepted. The top testing Black and Hispanic students would rise in those right circumstances and the effect would multiply. That one action, across the board, could make a difference.

The task is not easy in an urban center with more than a million students: 36.7% Hispanic, 34.7% Black, 14.3% Asian and 14.2% white and the added factor that about 40% of students live in households where English is their second language and a third of the city’s citizens were born in another country. However the times call for a better integration plan to ride alongside the holistic education centers like Harlem Children’s Zone that enrich the population with the essentials. There is a certain cultural psychology in schools that fail to cross integrate that causes a negative contagion so mortifying it can devour our most promising children.

Reverend Al Sharpton, Founder National Action Network, said during a rally to commemorate the 55th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education decision, “We have to keep in mind, the goals of Brown versus Board of Education were to integrate America and educate America of which we have done a poor job. Fifty-five years ago, education in this country was separate and unequal – fifty-five years later, it is still separate and unequal. We still haven’t solved the problem. We have to come together and put our egos aside. We have to stand up for these children.” He had recently attended a meeting at the White House to address education issues with a diverse group called together by President Obama. After reading the study that revealed 50% of Black males in the United States were dropping out of high school and only 30% of Black males in Detroit receive their high school diploma, Rev. Sharpton was affected to action. He has since made it his priority to shed light on the crisis.

The Wichita school district didn’t integrate without a fight, but they were well informed on the issues and the laws. They had a powerful coalition. Chester Lewis, an attorney representing the Wichita chapter of the NAACP, filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Education alleging discriminatory practices in violation of Titles IV and VI of the 1964 Civil Right Act, which led to an investigation and then to action with a plan. The difference here, in Harlem, is the challenge to inform parents of their rights and options. But there’s been progress. Each year Selina Wellington, who is a founding board member of BAEO (Black Alliance for Educational Options), takes a group of parents, teachers and students, on scholarship, to BAEO’s annual national symposium, now in its 10th year. Participants come back energized, informed and armed with solutions every time. Change will not come without putting in the work. The failing numbers should stir people to action. And like the Wichita coalition, Harlem can organize to improve their failing districts.

A famous quote by Frederick Douglass summons the troops, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Dr Howard Fuller, Chairman of BAEO, the most progressive educational options organization in the nation, passionately asked at a symposium, “is there anything more painful than seeing our children being mis-educated, undereducated, dropping out of school, or being pushed out of school? How painful is it to have our young not being taught, not understanding that they are indeed "young, gifted, and black?”