Coloring with 'Brown'
50 years later, how equal is education for minorities?
Yadira's is the story we like to hear, but her failing friends represent the more accurate and troubling statistic: Not only are dropout rates among ethnic minority students higher compared to their white counterparts, but minorities also have lower standardized test scores, lower grades and lower rates of participation in rigorous courses such as advanced placement.
It's a national disparity that has been dubbed the "achievement gap." And on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in America's public schools, some people argue that the gap is proof that not enough has changed.
In 1954, segregation was a black and white issue, literally and otherwise. These days, inequality may be more subtle and may include other "students of color," as well as students whose lives are complicated by poverty.
Opening literal doors was the crux of Brown v. Board. What the past 50 years have have proved, however, is that an "equal education" isn't just about minorities and whites being in the same building.
Look at the numbers, says William Smith.
Smith, who is African-American, is a associate director at the Center for the Study of Race and Diversity in Higher Education at the University of Utah. He is also the father of a high school senior in the Salt Lake City School District, and there are statistics about Utah schools that don't sit well with him:
- Dropout rates for Utah ethnic minority students outpace those for whites. In 2002, a third of all American Indians and slightly more than a third of all Hispanics and African-Americans failed to graduate, compared to 11.6 percent of white students.
- Results of Utah's core curriculum tests for 2003 measure what percentage of students are "proficient" in subjects like language arts and math. While 82 percent of whites scored in that range on the language arts portion of the tests, only 53.1 percent of Hispanics, 60.9 percent of African-Americans, 63.5 percent of Pacific Islanders and 65.3 percent of low-income students did. National Assessment of Educational Progress tests show similar disparities.
- The state does not keep track of student GPAs by ethnicity, but a look at GPAs of Salt Lake City School District 10th graders in 2002 shows that the average math GPA for whites was 2.9, for Hispanics was 2.1 and African-Americans was 2.3.
- Of seniors taking AP tests in Utah in 2003, 0.2 percent were African-American. If blacks were equally represented, 0.5 percent of the AP tests — more than double the current rate — would be taken by blacks. Hispanics are similarly underrepresented: 2.8 percent of the tests were taken by Hispanics, but 5.2 percent of Utah high school seniors are Hispanic. Stated another way, 7.5 percent of African-American and 10.6 percent of Hispanic 12th-graders took AP exams, compared to 20 percent of white seniors.
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