Segregation In Education Essay

America gave a formal answer to the question of racially segregated education in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board. Immediately, enforcement proved difficult, so the Supreme Court ruled that the first decision should be implemented “with all deliberate speed” in 1955. Even so, segregation in education continued to afflict the nation, especially as southern states devised methods of ignoring the ruling, whether through the formation of new school districts with incredibly high buy-in prices or failing to provide adequate bussing and funding to integrated schools. Today, though over a half century has passed, de facto segregation continues to afflict schools across the nation, and, more specifically in Alabama, …show more content…
Books such as Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and unfullfilled hopes for education reform by Derrick Bell and Martha Minow’s In Brown’s Wake: legacies of America’s educational landmark will be instrumental in providing historical and cultural context as well as identifying the methods in which de facto segregation has taken place in the past. From there, I hope to use statistical reports of test scores and income as well as a couple of investigative academic articles to narrow my scope and explain just how this process takes place in and around Birmingham. Thus, the information from the books will provide the background and a general description of the ways in which this can occur, while the second half of the essay will grow increasingly pointed, centering on how specific problems identified actually present themselves. I would also love to be able to interview a superintendent of one of the schools or do some digging in the Alabama state legislatures use of education funding to deepen the analysis, but I may not find one willing to provide comment and the money trail left by the education budget is often unclear and difficult to