Earlier this month, “The Unfinished Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education at 70” conference brought together educators, leading scholars, and legal experts to discuss the current state of racial and economic segregation in American schools, marking 70 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling. The conference was hosted by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and the Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies and co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Stanford Law School.
Throughout the legal panel, “What can the courts do? Legal strategies to promote school desegregation and educational equity,” speakers urged for the integration and increased funding of schools, arguing that state governments should do more in the absence of greater federal involvement. Furthermore, panelists warned about the trend of public charter schools contributing to increased levels of racial segregation in schools across the U.S.
Moderator Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School and the Faculty Director at the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, began the discussion with some stage setting remarks. “[Brown’s] cultural significance cannot be overstated,” he said. Brown was not “really about separation at all, it was about degradation, that was the core . . . Separate education is inherently unequal,” said Banks.
Kimberly Robinson, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and Director of the Education Rights Institute and the Center for the Study of Race and Law, then presented on current efforts to desegregate schools at the federal level. Robinson posed two framing questions, the first of which was focused on what federal courts can do. She suggested that there’s some reason to be optimistic, including the Supreme Court’s recent decision to decline to hear Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, effectively upholding a race-neutral high school admissions policy. Additionally, over 200 school districts still remain under court-ordered desegregation orders.
Robinson’s second framing question asked a tougher question: “How do we define the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, what is it that we are trying to finish, and how can we look to the future to do that?” On the legacy of Brown, Robinson explained the plight of low-quality schools across our nation: “Yes, school integration must be made a part of that definition, but we still have a lot of work to do to improve the quality of schools for all of our students.” She recommended a shift to education federalism, which Robinson refers to as “a balance of power over education that emphasizes state and local authority over education and a circumscribed federal role.” She argued that Congress should guarantee a federal right to a high quality education, something that the Supreme Court has refused to do.
Robert Kim, the Executive Director of Education Law Center, discussed his observations from his experience working on the Latino Action Network v. New Jersey case, which is currently the only state-wide school desegregation case in the country. He said that there is a critical relationship between school funding, poverty, and race in New Jersey, where “Black and Latino students attend districts that are spending significantly less per pupil than what is needed [and] the lack of quality of education due to inequitable funding is exacerbated by racial segregation.” For this reason, Kim argued that we need to address segregation as well as funding gaps, but posed a challenging question: What is acceptable desegregation?
During the final presentation, Myron Orfield, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and Director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, talked about the need to move to state courts for school segregation cases, explaining that “the state courts can act” and have greater tools at their disposal to do so (e.g. broader jurisprudence and education clauses to support legal claims of school segregation that are not available at the federal level). Orfield also discussed charter schools, suggesting that their “business model is single-race [schools]” that have an incentive to target particular racial groups by being “culturally-focused.” He further argued that charter schools by and large underperformed when compared to traditional public schools, though a recent study found that on average charter school students had reading and math gains that outpaced their traditional public school counterparts with variation by location and configuration.
Banks then transitioned the panel to a moderated discussion and asked how we should orient ourselves with regards to the movement for school choice, specifically charter schools and vouchers. Orfield was critical of the misalignment between what charter schools promised and the reality of their intense segregation and expressed concern with the growing trend of privatizing public schools. Kim focused on vouchers, stating that “vouchers are the number one education policy and developing concern that we should all be thinking and grappling with moving forward.” He highlighted the dramatic rise of voucher programs over the last decade and predicted we would see great change in private education and increases in segregation in the coming years. Panelists all agreed that states should do more to ensure that charter schools and voucher programs do not have segregative effects when implemented.
The panelists were then asked for their recommendations on how to overcome the decentralized and localized features of the U.S. school system. Robinson praised the intent of local control policies, saying they are “designed to encourage experimentation, excellence, and tailoring education to the needs of students,” but pointed out that unfortunately, these policies have not served their intended purpose. Robinson returned to the need for education federalism and for the federal government to make education a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution. On the other hand, Kim advocated that state governments should enact more interdistrict policies to increase economic integration across districts.
There was also consensus for an invigorated public consciousness, pressure, and push for integrated schools. Currently, 70% of Americans believe that more should be done to integrate schools throughout the nation. “We have to help the public understand the benefits of public schools,” said Robinson. “Funding is still unequal—with less funding going to schools with higher concentrations of children of color and children in poverty, [yet] states have the power to determine their school integration policies.” When asked by an audience member whether it is more effective to win over the public’s hearts or minds on this issue, Robinson spoke to the financial incentive of integration: “The data is robust that we are paying exponentially for a broken system.”
In his final remarks, Banks connected the enlightening discussion with a call to action: “This is the end of the panel, but not the end of this conversation because this is a conversation that is wildly important to the nation. We have by no measure lived up to the promise of Brown, and our ability to do so will really influence the fate of our nation.”
Isabelle Anzabi (BA ’24) is an intern at the Stanford Center for Racial Justice interested in technology policy and increasing access to justice.
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