School Segregation and the US CERD Review
As noted in an earlier blog, 2014 is the 20th anniversary of U.S. ratification of the CERD treaty. Co-editor Mariah McGill looks at the potential connections between the upcoming CERD review of the U.S. this August and the sobering data on school segregation generated in conjunction with the recent anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Writes Mariah:
May 17th marked the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that ruled segregated schools are unconstitutional. To coincide with this anniversary, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA released a new report assessing the progress the United States has made in addressing school segregation 60 years after Brown.
The report finds that while there was marked progress in integrating U.S. schools in the first decades after Brown, that progress has stalled since the late 1980’s. Although the United States has become a more racially diverse country than it was at the time of the Brown decision, with Latinos making up the largest minority group and in some parts of the country outnumbering whites, schools have become increasingly segregated in the same period. School segregation is a problem across both urban and suburban school districts, in every region of the United States. Schools in the Northeastern region of the United States are the most likely to be segregated by race while schools in the South are the most racially integrated.
Poverty and racial segregation in housing and school are deeply connected. Latino and African American children are much more likely to live in and attend school in low-income communities. White and Asian children are more likely to live and attend school in middle-class or affluent communities. The report notes that the convergence of race and class segregation may explain why schools with a majority of African American and Latino children have fewer resources and poorer student outcomes than other schools.
The report ends by outlining a series of policy recommendations including the commissioning of a national study on school segregation, taking steps to address housing segregation and the active recruitment of Latino and African American teachers and administrators.
While The Civil Rights Project timed the report’s release to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Brown, the release also coincides with the 2014 review of the United States by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In August, the United States government will report to the Committee regarding its progress in implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
In addition to the official report submitted by the government, various nongovernmental organizations, activists and advocates will submit “shadow reports” to the Committee detailing what is actually happening on the ground in the United States. The Civil Rights Project’s report provides important new information and data for education advocates to draw upon in addressing the issue of school segregation during the CERD review. The CERD review provides the international human rights community with an opportunity to speak directly to the troubling trend toward the re-segregation of U.S. public schools.