Transcripts For CSPAN3 Brown V. Board Of Education History Of Decision 20170612

Good afternoon. Its kind of quiet in here. I walked in and i felt like i was at a funeral. Well have to do something about this. The bodys not here. It was really somber and everything. I know the weather is impacting us, but id like to welcome you. My name is johnny taylor. Im the president and ceo of the Thurgood Marshall college fund. Welcome to our headquarters. This is home for us. We share this building with gallup, our partner in the work that well be embarking upon in the next several years and id like to welcome you to our home. Id like to start up and tell you why we are here and turn it over to the panelists is to introduce a very special person in the room. A whole bunch of special people, but a very special person here is the founder of the Thurgood Marshall college fund, dr. Jois payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ] payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]o payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]y payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]c payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ]e payne. Dr. Payne, please stand. [ applause ] i dont spend a lot of time calling out people, but at the end of the day none of us would be here if it werent for her vision to create an organization that would really focus on the historically black college and university community. Our members are the public hpcus and that is the statesupported institutions, but we represent all of the hpcu community and our advocacy, forts and our scholarship and our programattic, and i cant thank you enough for having the vision and its a wonderful thing when you look to the person who founded the organization and theyre alive, well and vibrant and we left africa and china on a 15day tour and she outdid me, and i was, like, wow. I came in on the back end of the trip and i said god bless t how did she do it . I am so embarrassed, but dr. Payne, thank you. Talking about this not ng, were it not for the charles coke foundation. I know there are representatives of the Koch Foundation and Koch Industries are, in fact, here. This is a very special moment for us. This is our first run at creating what will become, i believe, an iconic and historic institution and its the center for advancing opportunity. Our founder let me see, meredith who hates to be call out, but i have to make sure, as i said yoi dont typically call out people, but meredith, please stand. We have to shout. [ applause ] meredith is an executive at Koch Industries. The first time ive ever gone to wichita, kansas, i met with meredith, and meredith has been a huge supporter on the business side for thisser vent in particular. It was her idea to be candid and by the way she wanted it on may 17th the anniversary. She calleded and said may 17th, we need to have an event and i said and whats the significance of that, we always think 1954, but i had never paid attention to the specific date, but this was her brain child and all of of us collectionively, the Koch Foundation, Koch Industries, the center for advancing opportunity and the Thurgood Marshall fund, we are all committed to this work and i will not forget my good friend here from the charles Koch Foundation, brendan brown. Brendan, please stand up. [ applause ] none of this would happen without the three people who ive had the Great Fortune to work with in the case of dr. Payne for the last ten years and with my dear friends of Koch Industries and the charles Koch Foundation. It feels like just yesterday. So we are here today to really answer the question through a group of specially selected panelists and amazing keynoter, no pressure, steve, at the end of the day to explore brown versus board of education and whether or not the promise was fulfilled. Its a question mark and we were in design of this program today and the first center for advancing opportunity event and we intentionally wanted to get Historical Context and thats one of the things that we in the academy and those of us interested in making sure that we advance good policy that will really make a difference. We need to understand and put things in their Historical Context. So our first panel will be people who either themselves or through their families and their parents were part of the cases and companion cases and they were a part of the series of cases that ultimately culminated with brown versus board of education. The second panel will be going forward. Well look forward and well explore with people from the academy, people who are practitioners and the Charter School space and other Public School education space. We have to determine what really happened. We had a vision. All of us had expectations back in 1954. The question is fast forward, 63 or so years later and how did it all work out. Thats really what today is about and well do it with evidence and well do it with research and this will not be an emotional discussion where people have opinions that they cant support. That will really be the hallmark of the center for advancing opportunity. All of our work will be Research Based and it will be evidence based and we will be able to make a case for any position that we take, and i think and i hope that you will enjoy today because this is going to be a retreat. We hope that ultimately, this will serve as a model for discourse that should occur all over america where people take real data, real results and we can take good policy. We can be fairly assessed, whether or not what we thought might work, did work and thats what todays about in terms of, you know, exploring brown versus the board of education. So i have the Great Fortune. Im quite fortunate, i should say, to bring up our firstever executive director. Her name is jennifer whiter. Jennifer is someone i am so proud of. Do your miss america shake. Do your shake. Come on. Jennifer joined our organizational most a decade ago where she at one point was our chief Development Officer and worked with me and meredith and brendan and we workeded on designing this concept called the center for advancing opportunity. I was so pleased about two months ago when we announced the organization. Maybe three months ago that jennifer was named the executive director. She has a wonderful career first at the United Negro College fund and then at the Thurgood Marshall college fund. Graduate of syracuse university. Okay, syracuse. The orange thing is about all we have in common. Rough. Its been rough. I wanted you all to meet jennifer wider and shell take it away from here our executive director, thank you, jennifer. Thank you very much, johnny. Thank you. [ applause ] great. So thank you all very much for being here today at our firstever official event u our first symposium and today were asking the critical question was the promise fulfilled . The promise of brown versus board of education. I am so delighted to have this distinguished panel, three individuals whose lives and personal journeys and their careers have been impacted by the brown versus board of education decision. So before we get started, let me introduce our panelists. First on the right we have Miss Virginia ford. She has over 20 years of experience in education, and in 1998 she founded d. C. Parents for School Choice. Just last week the piece she wrote about the importance of access to education where she states that when it comes to Residential Real Estate schools often wind up linked to property values. Dr. Alonso smith is a history professor at Montgomery College and he was one of the curators for the 50th anniversary of the supreme Courts School desegregation decision. Thank you for being here, dr. Smith. Finally, seiku biddle is the vp of advocacy and hes also served on d. C. City council and d. C. State board of education. He also has over 20 years of experience in urban Public Education. Thank you all so much for being here today. Thank you. [ applause ] sgroo before we begin, i just wanted to make a note that at the end of the discussion we will open the floor to questions and there are microphones at either side of the room for you to be able to line up and ask questions, and ill let you know when the appropriate time comes. Okay. So we have multiple generations represented here today on the panel and that was important because we wanted to get different perspectives of their experience and so the first question that i would like to pose to each of the panelists is what were the barriers to education opportunity as you saw it either through your own personal experience or through your parents experience or through your families and communities before the brown versus board of education decision and ill start with you, miss ford. I grew up in little rock, arkansas. I was in the second round of kids that went to central after the little rock nine, but one of the barriers before brown is my dads story. My dad was from North Carolina where black kids could only go to the eighth grade, and he made his way somehow to alabama to go to skillmtillman institute. So my dad went to stillman at 13. I used to think i wouldnt let my 13yearold go anywhere, and he just left home and went to stillman and worked his way through and went to stillman Junior College and then went to flanders Smith College and ultimately, he became assistant superintendent of the Little Rock School district, but my life has always been based on my parents. My parents were both teachers and so the importance of education was just talked about all of the time in our family, and i watched my parents teaching in allblack schools where we went and again, when we got ready to graduate from Junior High School at the time, was there no middle school then. It was junior high, we expected to follow our older brothers and sisters to the black high school in little rock and what we were told is wed been picked to go to central to continue the desegregation process, and of course, we didnt want to go. We wanted to follow our older sisters and brothers to the black high school. So 130 of us went into central, and i guess this was after brown and thats what it led to. I was 6 years old when the little rock central was integrated by the little rock nine, but i remember even at 6 years old, i knew the importance of what was going on. I got it, even as a little kid. So we understood that this was a time when schools we needed to be in better education allen vie environments. Thank you very much. Dr. Smith. I grew up in Columbia Heights in d. C. So my first four or five years of grade school were at b. K. Bruce school, which is bruce monroe. People look at me and are surprised, but you know what the onedrop rule was. There was a school that we can see from our front porch, but i went in the opposite direction, ten blocks in the opposite direction to bruce and the white school was undercapacity. Bruce, at that time we had three shifts of students because it was so crowded and my mom was a member of an Organization Called a consolidated parent group which is headed by mr. Gardner bishop who had a barbershop on u street. Several of the kids i grew up with, you know, hugh price, his mother was a member and a number of other women, but it was a very Diverse Group because it was headed by a man who was a barber and there were women who were faculty wives various kinds of people, but i remember hearinging about this all the time. I think that what was going on, really, at the time, well be honest with you, i really didnt understand everything that was happening at the time except that my mom was doing something to help us out and my dad was okay with it and that she was going to naacp meetings and she said dinner is on the stove. Go get your dinner. He was okay with that. I remember a couple of times that charles houston came to the home and some of the Community Meetings and he lived across the street on the sham avenue, and i knew there were moment outsiouss going on and i really didnt understand exactly what was happening. So i had to be honest with you. I was a witness with history without really understanding what was happening. So thats my story, i guess. Thank you. Seiku . I grew up in Columbia Heights also and he talks about sherman avenue and New Hampshire avenue and my parents were here so we lived in that neighborhood growing up and so mine is sort of the next iteration in knowing what the history was and its all stuff you read in books and learn from your parents and the idea that there are segregated schools and i grew up in washington, d. C. And attended Public School and i started in Stephens Elementary School in foggy bottom which was the first school for blacks in d. C. And alice steel junior high and wilson, and they were all fully integrated, black, white, latino, and also integrated fairly deeply along income lines, as well, and you know, what we knew was that brown had happened and therefore had change the world around the way the Public Education is organized. In d. C. , part of the legacy was at times you had two separate School Systems operating and we had a lot of schools located in very close proximity to each other which were hard to understand, like, why do we have so many of them . Why are so many close together . We had the black school here and the white school here and never should the students meet. So you had to have those two systems operating, and so, you know, the story for us growing up was this was going to unleash and create these great opportunities for everyone and it was a lot about changing the systemic imbalance in the way skoos were funded and supported. Thats the world i grew up in and well talk more about what really happened. Thats a great segway to our next question because we now want to the move to brown versus board of education and the decision happens and some of us were aware and some were involved and engaged in the commune in helping to drive this movement. So for you and your families, what did that decision mean . What was the hope and the expectation around brown versus board of education . What was going to change in your lives . Well, you know, one of the things we hoped is that we would have a better opportunity to attend schools that had more resources for our kids. At least that was what my parents hope was. So when i went so central with this group, yes, we had more resources and they had an Amazing Library that i could not stay out of because wed never seen a library like that. All of the books were uptodate and it did bring back the resources that our parents wanted us to have, but it was difficult. It was tough. I mean, we we were invisible. Teachers wouldnt callous and we had to rely on those resources because we were not being taught well and we had to we oftentimes we were the only black kid in the class and they just ignored us. The kids made fun of us or talked about us and every single day for three years i got called an n word, and im pretty light, too, but hey, you know, one drop. And every single day for three years the black kids met at the corner of 18th and park to walk home together so we wouldnt get beat up. I was telling jim earlier. I called callott awols who was my cousin, one of the little rock nine, who was speaking on this panel and she said that they had the crowds. They had the federal escort, but they were invisible as well in class, and she said to make sure that that people understand that because brown, you know, became law or the decision was made that we would have equal education it did not mean that thats actually what we had. I struggled through high school and i came from a Junior High School where people really cared about what happened to us and everybody was involved in our educational experience and we were the top students at that school which is one of the reasons why the 130 of us were picked to go to central and our parents were teacherses and preachers and civil rights activists and we were we failed at central because we were not taught so we had to figure out how to be a part of of thattal and how to be a part of the educational experience. I think i counted down from tenth grade to graduation. Just courted nted it down. I didnt have a calendar, but i might as well have had one. All that said, we did have the Resources Available to us that we had not had at the black schools. We did have the books that were updated that we could selfteach and our parents who were teachers would help us. We did have this big reputation of having graduated from Central High School which probably help us when we were all applying for colleges. So the benefits certainly were there, but the inside story was difficult for us. Just a followup question, how long did it take for things to get better for students there . Central is 99 black now so its changed. When they did the 40th anniversary, was there some conversation about the fact that central was now 90 black and how that was going to look on the media, so i think they highlighted white kids which i thought was just tacky, but you know, it took many years. I was talking to my sisters friends who were three years behind us, and i was saying we had a rough time at central and she said we did, too. So we know three years hadnt changed and i remember one of the times i really got in trouble. My father was the first black superintendent of the Little Rock School district and my father was brown skin and we were light skin and nobody would put us together and a teacher was mean to me, and i remember saying to her do you know who my father is . Youre going to be in big trouble and he probably hired you. My dad told me not to do that, but that was the way we had to survive, you know . We needed a hook. We needed some way to get through it. It took a long time. I dont we had a facebook conversation going recently, and i think the classes up to 1975 were complaining about how they were treated. So i graduated 69, so they were really at least until 75. I dont know beyond that. Thank you. Dr. Smith, same question to you. What were the hopes and expectations . Yeah. Im again, i cant give a really clear answer from what i remember from that time because our family lived in pennsylvania after i left right after the desegregation began. We lived in pennsylvania and i went to a system that was integrated that wasnt that much of an issue. I remember keeping in touch with my friends back here in d. C. , some who went to wilson and other places, and who were telling me about the racial tension that has been alluded to here and the incidents that happened in the schools and the white flight, of course, and this massive white flight that came after the brown v. Board of education decision. What i got from some of my friends that d. C. Was covered by a House District committee and there were a number of Congress Members mostly from the south who really just inflated and exaggerated every racial incident that occurred especially cardoza and some sft other schools where the white students staged walkouts, you know, so that the my impression, and again, this is just an impression. A lot of the racial tension that led to the white flight was also to a certain extent exacerbated by politics, political figures from congress who were interfering in d. C. Politics and thats my sense of what was happening at the time. Thank you, seiku . Fast forward to a d. C. Where i grew up and went to school. In terms of opportunity, we certainly had access to schools that blacks didnt have access to in prior generations, and i think that, you know, through my experience, i had great access to great schools. One of the things that was very interesting, we talked about white flight and it was also teachers, when people were told this is where you work now. There was a group of teachers who decided that wasnt where they were going to work which changed the dynamics of the School System because i went to schools that also had predominantly black teachers, and i think that made for a very different mix in the School System and for many of the schools and for many of the students and while there was a great amount of diversity in the schools in terms of the students, was there even while i was growing up, they were by leaving the city and they were changing the make up of the student body and it was interesting and somewhat unique to have the big city School District that was increasing its percentage of africanamerican teachers, leaders, for most of my teachers and all of the principals of our schools, i think that that in a lot of ways almost recreated some of the types of schools that many black people before me had gone to school with. When they had gone to schools where their teachers are black and the leaders of the schools were black and leaders of the School Systems were black and in this case, you had more of a diverse student population and the leadership throughout the School Districts were predominantly africanamerican. I think that made for a different School District. The other thing that i began to observe as i got older as a student is that wasnt what was going on everywhere in d. C. So there were some schools and you could sort of draw a line north and south across the city as to where that was happening and there were other places in the city that was not happening and the questions around resources and accountability, i think there were issues in placeses that were not getting the amount of attention they needed to be getting as the School System was reconfiguring itself, and i think that for some of us, we were seeing increased opportunity and access and for a lot of folks that wasnt happening. So lets fast forward to today because a lot of the things that you talked about, white flight, integration, those are a lot of the topics. I know, miss ward, you are very much involved in this whole discussion around Educational Opportunity and School Choice and so when we fast forward to today knowing that those were some of the challengeses that you experienced or your families or communities did, where are we now in terms of those those issues . What are you seeing today as it relates to the results of brown versus board of education . Well, in my experience, i do see a lot of changes and i do see a lot of movement that has come about in the last 20 years and i also see there needs to be even more movement. The simple fact that the infamous little rock Central High School is predominantly black surrounded by a white neighborhood disturbs me, you know . Why are kids not coming to this particular school . When you go to central theres this one little group of a. P. Kids who are predominantly white and then the rest of central, you know . Its almost like two schools. And so every time i go over there i get mad. Where are the black kids in a. P. Classes and why are these white kids in these converted, you know, mobile home things outside the school if you go to one side of the school at the end of the day the black parents are picking up black kids or black kids walking home. If you go to the other side the white kids are being picked up. It disturbs me that we havent gotten further than that, but i do think that with School Choice programs around the country i see a lot, you know, more schools more kids getting into it, and more kids getting into schools that are serving them better. My granddaughter is in a Charter School in d. C. And thats where shes thriving in visual arts and art and those kind of things which are her interests and its looking to go to wilson next year, traditional Public School. I like the families i have in those choices and i still see there is controversy in whats going on. I live in arkansas, and they still have so far to go. As far as what theyre doing with black kids and white kids and theyre still bussing kids . White communities outside of the areas where they live. Kids are just really struggling. I live in the inner city. I run a church program. Those kids cant read at all. They come 40 of them every single day to come eat and we give them books and we give them little bibles and they ask us to read them to them. They cannot read and it just makes me angry, and cl is nwhict the word i was going to use, but it makes me angry. Its church so i can rein it in. Those are the things that i think we have to Pay Attention to. What is continuing to go. What did brown fix at all . Are we in schools that are equal . Are we just in Public Schools . Ive said for many years, and he said it, too, are we just keeping our kids in these buildings because we fought to get in the buildings . You know . And that just makes me angry and so, you know, i think that we have to continue to got way were going. I think we have to continue to support changes in the educational environment and School Reform and such and im hopeful. Im optimistic. Im probably the most positive person in the world once i get past going to Central High School. So i think we have a good chance to move forward and to and to, you know, keep the folk that fought hard to get the brown decision a reality in this country. I think well do it. I think we cant stop and we cant stop thinking about it and we have to keep moving and we have to keep working with the children. Thank you. In terms of where we are, i still live in the area, but now i live in rockville, maryland. So i guess you could say that my wife and i had made an educational choice for our sun by living in rockville, maryland because he has graduated from Richard Montgomery high school and gone to college and of course, we are a really strong, Public School system in Montgomery County. So and my students at Montgomery College are products of that School System. It is very strong. Here in d. C. , of course, its a different story. But i would venture to say that the discussions that we have about the state of education in this country are symptomatic of broad, deeper issues in our society as a whole that have to do with the criminal Justice System, that have to do with our national priorities, about how much we spend on defense versus how much we spend on transportation and infrastructure and social programs, and so until we can grapple with some of the deeper problems, i fear that were going to continue to have these discussions about what to do with our educational system because it has to do with what to do with our society as a whole. So i really, ive been i dont want too much of a tangent, very active with the peace movement, with movements that deal with social transformation, and im not talking about, you know, a bang, bang revolution like that. What im talking about is what dr. King talked about. I suggest all of you go back and read where do we go from here . Chaos or community and when he talked about the revolution of the social values and the revolution of the spirit and the beloved community. I think we all need to go back and reread that very carefully. Seiku . Yeah. I think, virginia and i were talking about this earlier in the green room. On the one hand, brown and the decision is certainly a significant step forward and has removed a set of legal barriers and things that were legally alloweded to do to each other that we can objectively agree that are not good, that are bad. I think whats harder is for people to have the willingness to sort of do the day to day grind and hard work to make things better. We removed some barriers and we clearly see in our day to day lives people are able to do a lot of horrible things to each other and we have not been willing to fight the day to day. They can all go to the same schools and its a different fight to make sure that all of the school that we allow anyones children to go to are good, and i think that thats one that weve not been able to take on and drive every single day because thats important, right . We are going to make sure that you can no longer bar children because of the color of skin because of attending a school, but were not going to make sure that we ensure the children who come to the school, and if youre saying we can get in and we can be sure that they learn and thats a longer, day to day thing that requires people paying attention and holding themselves and their elected officials and others accountable for making change, and i think especially for people in my generation. Some of this is recognizing you have opportunities that other people did not and now you have to make a choice, do you utilize the opportunities to help or do you simply cash in and say that im glad that i have opportunities and people have to make that personal decision, and i think that when you reflect on the sacrifices that lots of people have made over the years to open the door of opportunity more and more to others, the question we ask ourselves is are we still involved in that exercise or are we involveded in, were here now and we have the opportunities and every man for himself, and i think that thats sort of the challenge and theres a lot of promise with brown, and im not convinced that every day i see enough people leaning into the wheel of lets continue to push that further out there so that all children and all schools are getting a great education because, you know, one of these is the difference between whats a good school and everyone having access to a good school, and then the school being good for your child. I think thats where you know the questions of choice come in and sometimes a school can be objective and good and its not the right school for your child. Were right now trying to make sure that the schools are simply good. I think theres a lot of work to be done. Lots of folks sacrificed a lot to get us to this point, and i think weve got to continue to put one foot in front of the other and do the hard work to make sure that there are other opportunities and theyll continue to be new fights and new struggles that need to be maintained. Well its sure. One other thing that my dad said to me three or four days after i started central, i think i got a 14yearold, and said im not going back. Im not going. My twin can go and everybody else, but im not. My dad said to me, you have a responsibility to go to central, to do well and for future generations. You have two younger sisters. What happens if you just decide youre not going go there . What happens to them . You know, because you have to be there in order to make changes and that has guided me my entire life. You know, i really believe weve got to be involved. Yep. Youve got to be one of those persons that says, all right, im going to do what i can to make a difference, and i think thats what weve all tried to do is to make a difference. And remember what my dad said. Youre going back. Based on what you all have share side, the Current Conditions and environment and education is, the challenges are overwhelming or they cash overwhelming. Where would you start . Ive heard a number of ideas expressed already, but if you had to try to figure out a way to make some dynamic change around Educational Opportunity, where would you start . Seiku, ill start with you. Yeah, so and you mentioned earlier i started on the board of education in d. C. And where i would start is with people. We need to push ourselves and our friends and everybody we know. You ask people, do you care about education and do you think its important . Everyone says yes. Nobody says no, its not important. Ask them the next question, what are you doing to demonstrate its important or to make it better because when you ask that question people start looking at you, i think my moms calling and all of a sudden those people dont have an answer for things that we say is important. We need to be pushing ourselves and our friends and families and colleagues to have an answer to the question and be acting on it. If it is, in fact, important, know what youre doing to make it better and to demonstrate that its important to others because otherwise this is just an individual exercise where people can say, oh, its important, but you know, ive got other stuff to do, then we are not making the kind of progress we need to have. So its less of a we need to fix this policy or that one. Its more about do we get people involved and engaged . Then one and more do we get people involved. Every single one has to work hard to deliver those opportunities. Dr. Smooth . My sprue view on education i of from an outside or layman. What you have been most involved with in addition to teaching history is criminal Justice Reform in maryland and the state level and the government, county level. This past session of the maryland assembly, i was in annapolis to testify. That would give greater transparency. We are working with civilians on the Police Review boards and bail bond reform. A lot of what is true in the criminal Justice System is true of the educational system. The criminal justice sus stimysa broken system as is the educational system. Look at what earl warren said about Public Schools. He said they are the heart and soul of the democratic society. The job is to bring people together. If is not doing that. It hasnt done that. I think that the reason why were having all this discussions is that the Public Educational system as a hole has not delivered properly. Just as the system of criminal justice has this kind of coercive force mentality, in education and in the prisons, we have to start looking at how do we transform peoples mind and spirits. Thats not just a question of going to school. A part of it has to do with Psychological Services and healing peoples spirits an part of it has to do with reaching into peoples hearts. Those are the kind of questions we need to ask about your schools as we ask about our prisons and our courts. I look around this room and i see center for educational reform and choice and bayo and all these organizations. If i didnt name everybody, i cant see that far. All of these organizations for the 20 years i have been involved to make sure the kid were able to get the education they need. These folks, we need more. You need to stand with them. One of the things that i did 20 years ago was decided to stand with them. These people care about kids and what happens to kid. I think going forward, if we stand with these organizations who have spent so much time over the years supporting families and supporting children, then i think we have got part of the war won. Somebody told me when we lost the battle in the legislature. I was saying, oh, im through with this. Im mad, because we lost. I dont want to do this anymore. I dont like being on the losing side. Somebody said to me, if you give up, you are letting the kids na you say you care so much about down. If you stop, then wouldnt you be doing the same thing that others have done . I was real mad that day. I had to go home and really think about what my priority is or was at the time, and it continues to be, is serving children and serving families and making sure that whatever is out there, whether it is info from crr or info from choice or info from bayo, i want to know it so i can pass it on to families. I think thats ultimately and you are going to hear a lot more about it. I think ultimately, thats what you have to do. You have to be involved. So as we prepare to move into questions, and ill ask folks if you have questions to start moving to the microphones an lining up. It seems to me, one of the key components to having success and moving afrnd Educational Opportunity and School Choices, it goes back to the parents. Do you believe that we have got a sound, good structure for informing parents about what Educational Opportunity is and helping them figure out how to make good choices about education. What are the pieces that are in place or should be in place to help parents navigate through this new world of education . The simple answer to that question is, no. The Doctors Point about the system being broken, parents are an important part of childrens upbringing and their form educational. Still, to this day, schools dont do a very good job of recognizing that and leveraging the parents. Ultimately, you have to know what a parents role and responsibility is, what the schools role and responsibility is. I taught Elementary School for a decade. People will always find a way to blame it on the parents and have a long list of things the parents arent doing. We tend not to tell parents what it is we need them o do. It is hard for them to figure it out. They are really clear, schools that are successful, we need you to do x, y, z. Here are the things we are going to do. Here are the things the child is going to do and how we hold each other accountable. It is a relationship. Relationships of all kind that work require some level of accountability. In a lot of places, we have not been invested in that. If you dont tell the parents what you need from them, you can always blame them. It can always be their fault. The moment you create that accountability, the accountability door swings both ways. If you tell parents how to leverage accountability, when they show up and start demanding of you the things they need you to do to serve their child, thats something that people dont want to have happen. We have created a system in which schools in some cases are quite hostile to parents. They send them a covert message that they arent wanted and need partners in this . D. C. Parents for school of choice, clearly, i believe the parents should be a partner in the educational process. I also run arkansas Parents School of choice and the parents Information Center of arkansas. I really, really am dedicated to bringing parents in and making them understand that they are a part. I used to tell parents when we were here in d. C. , and we had thousands of parents involved in our efforts to get the Scholarship Program passed. I used to tell them all the time, if you dont speak for your child, who will . They would say, but they dont want to hear me. I would say, then make yourself heard. We taught them how to use their voices and they taught them how to speak up and make their voices heard and to make their problems known. That is something i believe. I really dont like it when parents are blamed, because there is not an effort oftentimes to bring parents involved in their childrens educational experience. A parent told me not too long ago, recently, i went to my Childs School and asked what his test scores were, because she was moving out of the city and the teacher actually said you dont need to know these, well send them to the new school. The parent said, i want to know. This teacher refused to the point that she called and said, well go through a process to get the test scores t was the most unreal moment, because it rang everywhere i have ever been around this country talking to parents, thats how they feel. They are not welcome. They are not a part of it. They shupt haouldnt have any investment other than going on field trips or bringing paper and supplies to the school. Im from an area where the village raised me. My teachers, my parents, the neighbors, the church, the store down the street, they raised me. I believe that is something we have to do more of. Thank you, panel. So lets move to questions. Im sorry. Did you have something . Just real quick. Following up on what you just said, back in the days of segregation, we had more of a sense of community between parents and teachers thats been lost unfortunately. Now, there are other things that have been gained but we lost that. Thank you. Lets start with our first question over here on the right. Thank you for your amazing comments and for sharing your personal stories. My name is jennifer mizrahi. I am the president of respectabiilty. We advocate for young people with disabilities. We have been particularly concerned about young people of color and their failure to achieve high school diplomas. Only 65 of students with disabilities complete high school and only 7 complete college. I know that Charter Schools do not have the same requirements for protecting students with disabilities but they also are offering some exciting promise with the mckay scholarship in florida. I wanted to ask each of you please reflect on students of color with disabilities in this new era. What can be done to ensure they dont enter the school to prison pipeline i have been go that today, 750,000 of the people who are incarcerated in america are today people with disabilities. I would like to answer this. My sister is a special educational teacher. She has been really encouraging me to learn more about students with disabilities. In arkansas, we have a bran new Scholarship Program called the success Scholarship Program for children with disabilities. One of the things im in charge to do is to encourage africanamerican families to apply. They were not getting many applications from African American families. So we went into the communities and had some meetings and took people over to apply and took applications with us. Harry harrietta, my twin sister, is retiring this week with ten kids graduating. She worked hard to make sure they would graduate. Their graduation was an amazing highlight, not only for her but for the school. They got awards. She made sure one of her kids got a twoyear scholarship to college. These were kids. She is a selfcontained teacher. These were kids that have been before now not considered much in the educational environment. So i see a lot of states it is kind of backward. A lot of states are passing programs from special needs kids, because it keeps them from passing anything else. They pass the program with special needs kids, because they dont want to be identified as not taking care of them, but it works for us, because then our kids can get scholarships and attend the schools they want to attend, which arkansas, i dont know about other states but arkansas is one of the few states where kids dont get a certificate of completion. They get a diploma. They have to have just as many credits as everybody else. It takes an engaged, involved teacher to make sure that they have those. I think it is something that is close on our hearts and our minds. Dr. Smith . I think, first of all, we have to push everyone who is involved in education in any way, shape, or form, to push everyone on all children. All is everyone. I think oftentimes we get caught in this game, these children are doing well. All children. The moment we allow it to be something less than all children, we start leaving kids hyped of all various sorts. We think about in particular children with disabilities in general. That pushes us to the question of are our schools designed right now and being held accountable to meeting childrens needs . In our society, we lose track of that. We oftentimes think about school is going to impart or do a set of things for children. Thats what it is going to do. If you happen to be in the fortunate band width of kids that us doing enough, thats great. If not, we are not holding the systems allowed. Some children need more. Some children need different. There are a lot of elements to that. We were having this conversation last week over dinner at my parents house. My brotherinlaw coached a Softball Team for students with disabilities at his high school, designed to give kids who otherwise wouldnt have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities. I played sports in high school. My kids played sports. I think thats a valuable component of their experience. We need to be pushing schools and say, children need a certain set of things. It is our responsibility to make sure they get those things. It might look different and it might be harder than we want to work to get to them. If we are really in this for all the children, it is not negotiable, can we give less to a Certain Group of kids . No. We cant. We have to give them into what they need. We are sem pli takiimply taking resources and dividing them up and saying, this is what everybody gets. Thats the wrong approach. We have to push hard on that. The people that have the strongest advocates end up getting what they want and need and the people whose advocacy efforts arent as strong or visible dont. If we are in this for all children, everyone will get what they need. We have to be thinking that way. If we are not thinking about childrens needs, we are doing something thats going to help many if not most kids. We are knowingly leaving children behind. We have to force people to confront that on a daily basis. I can tell you from personal Family Experience that when the government county Public Schools, as advanced as they are could do more to deal with special needs students in terms of personal disabilities. Also, i would suggest that you take a look at a really deep book by Brian Stevenson called just mercy yt which is based his experiences as a courtroom criminal justice lawyer. Mostly in the south and in california too. A lot of his clients who got involved in the criminal Justice System were people who had gone through abusive situations as children, who had gone through high School Situations where their needs were not being properly met. Then they got involved in the school to prison pipeline. The School System and the educational system and the correctional system are not really that separate. They are part of a continuum where many young people rehabilitation rather than punishment, Development Rather than coercion. Love rather than anger. I think all those are factors we need to think about, not only in our children who are in school but once they have the misfortune to get involved in the system to think about what happens to them in the bad event they get incarcerated. All this is a part of formation of human beings and individuals and changing society. Mr. Taylor. I was sitting here. Thank you all for coming out today. So im struggling with something. I think this will get to the crux of some of the issues. I grew up in ft. Lauderdale florida and there was a desegregation effort at or about the time i was coming into middle school and we began busing africanamerican students into majority white institutions. A big battle. We have all seen those in k12 i remember asking. I was a pretty interested young might student. I remember asking this caucasian woman why did she transfer her kids out of the school that people like me were coming to. Her response was, i appreciate the grand vision but my ultimate responsibility is to my children. On an individual level, my job is to insure my kids get the best education they can get. I only get one shot. Thats what i owe them. To the extent they are shipping people into this school and it is going to bring down the overall rigor and create behavioral problems it struck me as very honest but it hurt me. People like me they perceived as being negative. 30 years fast forward, a group of my friends, africanamericans, successful, black doctors, lawyers, and indian chiefs. We talked about where our children were in school. All of us are in d. C. Or in private and the best and most selective private charter. My daughter is at washington, mandarin immersion. We looked around and said, we are doing the very thing we have complained about people doing for years. I was shocked when one of the mothers said to me, and she almost verbatim repeated the words of mrs. Whin, the white woman. She said, i have to do whats in the best interest of my child. How do you deal with that . How do we reconcile that when we talk in terms of brown versus board of education . Thats a tough one. We all ultimately owe a duty of responsibility. While i may want to, i see the benefits of education, of integration, but, to your point, they are the Better Schools there, they are the better books, the better resources, the children behave better, et cetera. How do you reconcile that . I had to look at myself in the mirror and saying, i am doing the very thing that i accused these other horrible racist people of doing. It always comes over to me. I always say, two of my kids went to Public Schools and only one to charter or private school. I think that is really difficult. We have grown into parents who want to have some sayso in how our kids are educated. I dont think you should look at it as the voice from racists past but as the growth of what we are able to do now. Remember, what i said is one of the things i have had trouble doing is convincing parents they have a sayso in their childrens education, that they can ask for certain things or they can send their children to certain schools. Even though that was really, really racist. We all ran into that where kids were pulled out of school, because we went there, even as recently as my own children going to school. I think we have to look at it a different way. I dont think we should look at it as, you know, continuing or duplicating what they say. I think we should just look at it as were more informed about what we are able to say now. My kids, when they were busing kids from little rock out to the country to go to these white schools, because they needed black kid out at the white schools, i remember asking my father, white people were moving further out of little rock further, because the kid were coming to these schools. I remember asking my parents, i was about 14, pretty mouthy. I remember saying, you know, if we go to their schools and they take their kid out of their schools and go to other schools, what does that mean . He said, well, it just means that they are not being thoughtful or they are being racist. We do understand that. I think nowadays, if we dont say, i want my kids in the Better School and we dont go out and get the kids in a Better School, we are missing out on all the information we have been given to have access to Better Schools. My kids all went to different schools. I had f i had five kids. I took them to five different schools. People would say, are you crazy . Yes, but nigel needs this and nathan needs this and william needs this. We pick schools based on the need of the child versus how convenient it was going to be for me who took them all the time. My husband never took them. I took them. He took them sometimes. I think that thats where we are now. So in my opinion, you can forget about that and just keep moving forward. Im going to take a slightly different tactic. Some people who know me know where im going now, specially my mom. So some of this is you have to first of all always make the right choice for you and your child. Im not here to tell anybody not to do that. I will always do that and i will tell everybody i talk to to do that. That said, we are supposed to be smart enough to challenge things that people put out in the universe and sometimes we take a pass on thinking harder and thinking smarter about things. Case in point, so i went through debunked schools my academic career. If you dont get him out of dcps by the third grade, they are not going to college. People are still saying that same thing today. I went off, had a successful career, went through dcps, went to Moorehouse College and have done pretty well. My wife went to stanford. People were saying it then. It wasnt true. They are saying it now. It aint true either. Part of the reason some of these things are allowed to stick is because we dont challenge it. Our friend are sitting around saying if you dont go to this school or that school, it is not going to work out. We could have a reasoned discussion about why a school might be better for a particular child but we can not let go unchallenged these racist notions that this school is not going to get your child ready. My kid are in the same schools i went to. People and even my friends have said, we have to go to private school. I said, look, you can do that but nothing has changed in their experience going to that school. If it is a Better School for them, great. The school they are in right now is a great school. I am watching kids thrive every single day. I also think about the lesson my children learn when i put them in that school and then i show up at that school to make sure that the school is meeting their needs and the other kids they are in class with. I want them to know, this stuff is hard. The school wasnt magically good. People have worked hard to make these schools good and to keep them good and make them better each year. We are having the same conversation with a parent group on the ptso, with the Parent Organization board where the principal wants to move ninth graders into more rigorous math and science courses and parents are pushing back. If you do that, you are going to hold my kid back. No, we are not. We are going to make sure everybody gets the rigorous course work so everybody has the opportunity to pursue honors and a. P. There are not enough of us willing to push back on some of the things that people say that arent supported by the facts. Thats part of this that bothers me. People say stuff all the time that just isnt supported by actual facts. We let it go. I think we have to push harder against that. We have to tell our stories and our truths. At the end of the day, if you are convinced for some objective reason that that school is truly better for your child, great. Some of this also gets to be about my children are now in middle and high school, we started in Elementary School. My wife and i talked about this. The schools are fwogood for our kids and there are a lot of other children in each of those schools who are benefiting, because we are there pushing the school to be better for everybody. I have had hard conversations with principals and teachers who are telling me, whats holding back our test scores are all the out of boundary low income kids at our school. They perform two, three times better in this school than anywhere else in the city. The school is good. We are doing that for them. Stop trying to sell that and convince parents to scare other parents out of the school or to tell people not to come here. A lot more of us have to be willing to take on that daily fight. It us a fight. Sometimes people look up and say, here we have to do dealing with that stuff again. Thats what it is going to be. At least people have the sense around me, dont come with that weak Public School and this and that isnt going to get it done. I dont want to hear it. I am going to keep it super real. It is good for other parents to hear and learn. What we are unwittingly doing is pushing that message to our kids who are going to be the next generation of kid saying, if you go to neighborhood school, you have to go here or here. We have to push back against that a lot more than we are comfortably doing right now. When i go back and read earl warrens opinion in brown versus the board of education, the heart of his argument is the role of Public Schools in a democratic society. I listen to a lot of the debates going on today. It sounds very ideal lis stick. It sounds very aspirational. Yet it is aspirational. It describes a world that could be if we had a deep enough faith in Public Education. So my suggestion would be that a lot of the policy makers who are engaged in these debates about education in this country go back and read what earl warren wrote in 1954. Thank you. Hello. Just want to thank you so much for your time. My name is is sa besabell gonza. I took a class in education and the developing world, finishing my masters. It touches on aspects in developing countries and why are they struggling in education. That can very much be applied to some of the School Districts in the United States. I really sympathize with your comments on familiar will you and how important it is for a childs education, at least for me. I know that my parents sent me to private schools for the majority of my life. I know it was their support and their patience with me that really helped me excel. Just know that even if i failed a spelling test, like in fourth grade, i knew that i wasnt going to get punished, i was going to get sympathy and support. How can we help you succeed . Things like that. Im wondering, what is your experience with that . What are the incentives we can put in place to encourage more parental involvement in a childs education . Not just that but to communicate with teachers and ensure there is this not only the view it is important to put your child first. I do think that. I also think as a society, it is also important to see things in the form of the common good. How can my child benefit but also what can i do . I think somebody mentioned it. What can i do to contribute to society. How can i be involved . I think somebody already mentioned that. Basically, the incentives, whwhat have you seen that works . At his school, he and other parents are really involved. Talking with parents and meeting with parents, those that can do that, those that have those type of skills or organizations, continuing to support parents and making them feel like they can be a part of their childs education. In the programs that i work with, we encourage parents to come along with the children and through the years, ive seen lots and lots of parents who wanted to be involved but didnt know how to. So sometimes it is just a matter of sitting down and talking to them and making them understand what their role could be. Now, when my first child went to school, my mom said, be involved in your childs education. I went an sat in the back of the room and scared the heck out of the teacher, because she thought i was spying on her. When i had a conversation with her, i went back to my mother and she said, be involved. Do something that helps. Be be innovative. What can you bring to this teacher in her classroom . I worked for an international organization. We had lots of people from other countries. I would bring them over. They would bring different food. We had these Great International days. I had to be taught. I had to be told that to be involved, you need to do this and this. We have to tell people what they want, what we need them to do. So i think the schools and parents have to Work Together to make sure everybody is on the same page about what can be involved. It is a lot of pushback in school. Generally, parents are not they dont feel as welcome. So i think we as an Education Society we have to figure out a way to make parents feel they belong as part of their childs education. We actually had workshop that is taught parents how to talk to teachers. We do role playing. Sometimes we would bring in actual principals and teachers and talk to our parents about how they could interact with their teachers. Occasionally, we would site in on meetings between parents and administrators. I was convinced at some point that everybody was saying the same thing. They was just saying it differently. If you give people understanding, they are saying the same thing. The bottom line is everybody wants to help the child. Instead of getting into an argument about it, we are going to intervene and say, thats just what that parent just said. Those people involved in education reform or education period, need to be aware they could play a role in helping parents get involved. Thats an important step in this next era on this next educational journey, is to make sure that we again are involving parents like our parents were involved in our education in the childrens education we are serving now. I think we need to consider parents always have the tools, knowledge and skills, thinking the same way about parents we do about students. All parents are different. All students are different. Sometimes parents need, more, different information to play the roles. A couple of years ago, we did a checklist. Here are the things as a parent you can and should be asking your can hildchilds principles teacher. We are not here to say a school is not doing well. You should abandon it. You should be asking important, critical questions. Most parents, i know some of these things because i have been a teacher. I have peeked behind the curtain and now how it all works. I always out myself to my childrens teachers, hey, i was a teacher. It seems like i am asking hard questions because i know how this all works. A lot of parents dont. When i was an Elementary School teacher, he would give a weekly homework sheet. I am going to send this home every day and it is going to have the assignments they have for homework, a place for you to sign. My expectation for you is that you sign that you have seen they have done these three assignments. You dont have to check that it is right. Just sign it. If i get this tomorrow and it is not signed, im calling you, because youve agreed to do that. It made it simple and ease why you for parents. I made the explanation clear to them. We need to acknowledge their aspirations for their children are very high. We have to help eliminate the path. How do you get from where we are, waar are, walking to school in kindergarten. For many parents, they are unaware, the kids are telling them it looks all right. They are missing major milestones and benchmarks to put them on the path to where they want to be. By the time they find out from somebody they have missed all these things, it is too late. The school is sort of laying out for parents, here are the things you need to be checking. If college is part of your childs plan, you need to be clear that algebra in eighth grade. We can fix that. When you hear you are supposed to take algentlembra in eighth and your kid you had a senior in high school. Could you let a child take two math classes in one year even though they were sequential. If they couldnt take them both, they couldnt graduate. Thats a byproduct of not telling children. Are we giving them the tools to support themselves. A lot of people dont know. A lot of us act as if i know and everybody else should know. A lot of us are beneficiaries of a parent who did know and showed us the way. Let parents check off, i already know this, i already know that, fine. At least we are asking them the question. We dont tell them and we act surprised when they dont know. I suggest, and again, i am speaking as a nonexpert. I suggest one of the things that would be helpful to look at is teacher dissatisfaction. I understand here in the district there has been a very high number of people who have resigned not just at the end but in the middle of the school year, in december and january, and waubed off tlked off the jo. I talked to some of my colleague. I know three people that are currently teaching at Montgomery College that were formerly with Montgomery County Public Schools. One is a biologist. One teaches chemistry. What motivated you to leave Public Schools and come to Montgomery College . One of the things consistently is administrative paperwork. They feel overwhelmed that they dont have time to devote to preparation, to devote to interacting with the students because of regulations and paperwork, much of which comes from the federal government. All kind of forms that have to be filled out, specially when there are special needs students or whatever. I think we really need to look at what kind of environments the teachers have to function in. Thats a really good point. Thank you for your question. I serve as the chair of the board of our local Charter School. That is something that i find to be pretty overwhelming in terms of the amount of paperwork and recording and i understand that metrics and tracking and Holding People accountable is critical. What is the right balance . I would like to echo my thank you as well. My name is john t. Wolf jr. Im associate vice chancellor for Academic Affairs in the University System of maryland. As i listen to you give this briefing on brown v. Board of education, i reflected back on a career thats coming to an end in 29 days, 52 years in in business starting out at a Public Schools Language Arts teacher in the city of chicago and a twotime president of an hcbu, two hcbus. Im intrigued by the many years that i have heard discussions like this on the anniversary of brown v. Board of education. They all seem to focus on the same issues except the point that mr. Smith made it is rare the discussions delve into that. He talked about the criminal Justice System and the socioeconomic and the political. All of you alluded to resources. Ill single out one in Montgomery County. Mr. Smith mentioned a good Public School system. Some of you may know it is working on an Excellent Institution at the universities of shady grove, which 15, 20 years ago was one build. It was a warehouse shared. It is five buildings now. Montgomery county is committed to education, from prek to the ph. D. The question i have related to all of that is if you could have one resource, regardless of how you obtain it, to bring about a change that you have articulated thats needed as it relates not just to k12 and prek and i think the lady asked the question about disability. Thats a mounting question. It is not just physical. It is mental as well. Witness what happened at college park earlier this week. What one resource if you could get it regardless of how you get it would you say you would use to bring about the kinds of changes that you have articulated about education, not just in washington, d. C. , because several of you mentioned educational reform, to bring about the kind of change that was alluded to in the warren opinion but also in the issues of education for the citizens of the United States of america by the founding fathers, who are called the founding fathers. What would that resource be, one resource . Thank you. Who would like to start . My whole thing is parents being able to pick the schools where their children attend. Im a big scholarship proponent. If i had the money, the resources, i would make provisions for every child to go to any school that their parent chose. I believe strongly that we are our childrens first teachers. So we know our children better than anybody else. Thats what i would want to do. I think it would be such an incredib incredible thing to be able to talk to parents and say, my child is at a school where he was thriving. I was able to send him there. I really believe that it should be controlled and overseen by states and local municipalities. I do believe that. I believe it is something that will be incredible in education. Dr. Smith . One of the things that Brian Stevenson says in his book, just mercy toward the end of the book, is he says that we live in a broken criminal Justice System but it is not just criminal Justice System that is broken, it is the society that is broken. This is going to sound perhaps impossible to achieve or pie in the sky or an ideal listic. As we have these conversations which we definitely need to do about how to improve and move forward in education, i think they should be part of some more fundamental kinds of discussions about what happens in north kaur ca care when they have moral tuesdays and what are the roles of clergy, i would say one role is to pay more attention on fuss and psychological resources that has to do with getting kids to reach back into their communities. We live in a secular society, a secular educational system. When i teach in community college, i say, it doesnt matter what church or synagogue or temple that you go, you cant live without spiritual values. I said, those of you specially who are in education i hope you will talk to your students like that. Im not telling you to go to my church or what church i go to. It is none of your business. Look back into your familys roots, your roots, your cultural communities whether they are buddhist or muslim or jewish or whatever and reach back and get s substanence and strength from that. You can go to the university of maryland or howard or au and have a very comfortable career. Thats what some of our teachers could forget. Those are the things we really need to bring back. Thats what we had when we were in the segregated system. We had a lot of teachers that had oldfashioned values when we were part of an educational community. I remember one lady at bk bruce school said, my students are all brilliant. We used to make a joke about her. She was very proud of us. I think we have to try to bring that back. So when teachers interact with students, specially when they interact with parents, they have a special, very special kind of role to play. The same is true whether the person us a psychological counselor in the parole system or whether they are a teacher. They have paperwork, regulations, people looking over their shoulders. There is that other dimension. If that you are is one thing i would really like to see more of, again, i said i had a personal experience. It has to do with one of my childrens in the schools who had a special need. We learned very much in the Montgomery County Public Schools. She is really moving forward, sprouting wings and flying. There was a time when i wanted to see the School System do awe lot more than they did. Well wrap up with you. I probably shouldnt have gone last. So, one, a magic wand for the express purpose of putting everyone who talks about education, claims to care about it, works in it, has kids in it, whatever their reason but they are involved, put them all in one boat until everyone understands we actually. Narrator one boat. Right now, the harsh realities that you are are too many under the mistaken belief, im going to take care of myself over here and yall figure it out. Its going to be a long rude. Some of us are not going to be easy nuts to crack. There is too much of a belief that there are a bunch of escape hatches and i can get out on my little boat and you can get out. We are doing all this stuff to take care of our individual self or a couple of ourselves. We are not owning that we have to make this work. This is our unwillingness to confront that we have to invest in the growth and development of young people until they are ready to be successful in the world. Weve backed into this crazy logic, if we underinvestment and it doesnt work out, well just lock them up. Most people are coming back. Thats an insane way to approach this. We have to understand, we are in one boat. Perhaps the best way to communicate is put us all in one boat and let us stay there until we finally get it through our heads until we start acting that way. Thats not the way we are actually behaving in and around Public Education. With that, we will wrap up the panel and thank you for all of our panels for being here today. From the same event, a discussion on progress after the brown v. Board decision and the current state of choice and integration. This is an hour and 15