Report: Segregation Returning To Schools
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(CBS) -- It has been has been 60 years since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court "Brown vs. Board of Education" ruling barring state-sponsored segregation of schools, but segregation has returned in many places, including Chicago.
WBBM Newsradio's Nancy Harty reports the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found steps toward integrating classrooms have been reversed in Illinois and many other states.
A report from the Civil Rights Project found more than half of black students in Illinois, Maryland, Michigan and New York attend schools where 90 percent of students are black, Hispanic, or Asian.
The report also found more than half of Hispanic students in California, New York, and Texas are enrolled at schools where 90 percent of the students are minorities.
Dennis Parker, director of racial justice for the American Civil Liberties Union, said those schools frequently offer a lower quality of education.
"Tend to have fewer resources; tend to have teachers with less experience; tend to have people who are teaching outside of their area of specialty," he said.
Gary Orfield, author of the "Brown at 60" report, said the return of school segregation started two decades ago.
"Beginning in the 1990s, the Supreme Court changed the rules, and we began to re-segregate the South and the rest of the country, year by year, and that process is continuing," he said.
Two students from Chicago's nearly all-African-American Dyett High School in the Kenwood-Oakland area were in Washington, D.C., this week for an education rally. Senior Diamond McCullough said her school doesn't have gym or art, and only offers Advanced Placement courses online.
Classmate Aquilla Griffen said many people blame schools or teachers for failing, but they never blame bad policies. She said its education policies that have failed students.
