The Struggle Continues
Howard Fuller, Ph.D.
August 2007
About the Author
Dr. Howard Fuller is Director and Founder of the Institute for the Transformation of
Learning at Marquette University, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Education.
He is a former Superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools. He chairs the Board of
Directors of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), which he and others
founded in 1999.
Dr. Fuller received his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from Carroll College in 1962, his
Master's Degree in Social Administration from Western Reserve University in 1964, and
his Doctorate in Sociological Foundations of Education from Marquette University in
1986.
His positions prior to serving as MPS Superintendent (1991-1995) included: Director of
the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services, 1988-91; Dean of
General Education at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, 1986-1988; Secretary of
the Wisconsin Department of Employment Relations, 1983-1986; and Associate Director
of the Educational Opportunity Program at Marquette University, 1979-1983. He was
also a Senior Fellow with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown
University from 1995-1997.
115
“The drums of Africa still beat in my heart.
They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to
prove his worth.”
Mary McLeod Bethune
Introduction1
The effort to expand parent choice is for many a pariah in the continuing debate about
how to reform education in America.
Conventional wisdom considers the call for parent choice a relatively recent development
in America’s long education history. For example, some observers credit a 1955 essay
(“The Role of Government in Education” by Milton Friedman) for introducing the
concept of empowering parents through government funding to choose what they
perceive to be the best educational option for their children.
For African Americans, however, the quest for more parent choice goes back much
further. Coming out of slavery with a strong belief in the value of education, Black
people were forced to seek out both public and private alternatives in their quest. It was
then, and it is now, all about options. The lessons of our history teach us that we cannot
and must not depend on any one strategy to achieve the goal of educating our young.
This history is not well understood. Indeed, for many citizens the phrase “parent choice”
is merely another entry on a list of possible education policies.
My goal in this essay is to place the discussion of parent choice in a more powerful —
and historically accurate — perspective. Understanding this history addresses directly
the contention by some that African American support for such policies is misguided at
best and the result of being duped by the “right wing” at worst.
Why is our history not well understood? In part it is because many actors in the world of
education policy willfully have obscured and distorted it. An honest portrayal
complicates their effort to curtail the expansion of educational options for African
Americans (and other parents).
It is also true that many critics of choice might understand this history and simply have
come to a different conclusion about its implications. My focus, however, in this essay is
on those individuals and organizations that either ignore our history or consciously
misrepresent it. They thus impede the continuing struggle of African American people to
obtain a quality education for our children. These opponents have placed one obstacle
after another in the path of parents who seek the power to choose the best educational
The impetus for this essay was a presentation delivered at a conference (“Values and
Evidence in Education Reform”) sponsored by the Spencer Foundation in October 2006.
1
215
environment for their children. While cloaking their arguments in the rhetoric of
democracy, equity, and social justice, they are in fact this generation’s power brokers and
are unwilling to give Black people, particularly low income and working class people, the
power they need to determine their own destiny.
Daralis Cross
On June 10 2007, as Milwaukee’s CEO Leadership Academy (CEO) honored its first
high school graduating class, ten young men and women walked across the stage to
receive diplomas.2 When it was Daralis Cross’s turn, she had these words for her mother:
I give special thanks to you momma. Through everything I’ve been
through, you have been there for me, no matter what. There might have
been times when you may have felt like giving up on me. But because you
didn’t and stood by my side I thank you. I thank you for walking down
this long path with me and making sure I never gave up on myself. I also
thank you for letting me know that without an open mind and accepting
education I would never make it anywhere. And because of you I’m on my
way to college to become a whole new person. Thank you. I love you.
These powerful sentiments, and those of the other graduates, marked an emotional
ceremony. I have been active in the planning and operation of CEO since its inception. I
can say with confidence that several members of the Class of 2007 likely would not have
graduated but for their attendance at the school. The fact that many now are headed for
college would have been implausible a few short years ago.
The Milwaukee Parent choice Program (MPCP) is a major reason that Daralis and her
classmates arrived at this important stage. Without the MPCP, they would not have been
able to attend the CEO. In fact, without the MPCP the school itself would not exist. This
program has helped make Daralis, her classmates, and their parents notable exceptions in
urban America.
First, in our nation’s largest cities the majority of African American students do not
graduate from high school.3 The implications of that are staggering. The failure to pass
that basic education threshold closes promising doors and opens dangerous ones.
2
CEO (Clergy for Educational Options) is a three-year old private Christian school that
enrolled 172 students in grades 9-12_last year. Most students attended the school using
educational vouchers through the Milwaukee Parent choice Program (MPCP). CEO has
a waiting list of 100 students for 2007-08.
“High School Graduation Rates in the United States,” Jay Greene, Manhattan Institute
for Policy Research, April 2002 (Revised); “Public High School Graduation Rates in the
United States,” Greene and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research,
November 2002; “Public Education & Black Male Students: The 2006 State Report
3
315
Second, most African American parents have limited options in deciding where their
children go to school. In Milwaukee, however, initiatives such as the MPCP give
parents a wide range of choices.4
The opponents of choice
Why aren’t there more programs like the MPCP? This question is especially pertinent
given evidence that the expansion of parental education options benefits African
American students.5
The scarcity of parent choice in urban America is no accident. That is so because
politically powerful organizations actively oppose the kind of programs that give Daralis’
mother — and other parents like her — the power to choose where her daughter attended
school. In the tortured view of these opponents, it is not in the “public interest” to allow
such a program to exist. Opponents of giving parents more options use lofty terms in
their search for the moral high ground on this issue.6

The nation’s largest teacher union, the National Education Association (NEA),
says the use of vouchers to expand parental education options will “encourage
economic, racial, ethnic, and religious stratification in our society.” This “elitist
strategy,” says the NEA, is aimed at “subsidizing tuition for students in private
schools, not expanding opportunities for low-income children.” Further, it claims
programs such as the MPCP are “a means of circumventing the Constitutional
prohibitions against subsidizing religious practice and instruction.”
 The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) says parent choice “leaves out the
rest of the American public — the majority of whom do not have school-age
children — who would foot the bill but who would have no way of knowing how
their tax dollars are being used…” While the AFT “supports parents' right to send
Card,” The Schott Foundation for Public Education; and “Leaving Boys Behind: Public
High School Graduation Rates,” Greene and Winters, Manhattan Institute for Policy
Research, April 2006.
4
In 2006-07 one in four of Milwaukee’s 130,000 K-12 students used education options
unavailable in 1990.
See “Parent choice: Doing It The Right Way Makes A Difference,” National Working
Commission on Choice in K-12 Education, Brookings Institution, 2003; “Survey of
Parent choice Research,” Gerard Robinson, Institute for the Transformation of Learning,
Marquette University, Spring 2005; The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools,
William Howell and Paul Peterson, The Brookings Institution, 2006; and Parent choice
— The Findings, Herbert Walberg, The Cato Institute, 2007
5
6
See discussions of educational vouchers at www.nea.org and www.aft.org.
415
their children to private or religious schools [it] opposes the use of public funds to
do so. [This] is because public funding of private or religious education transfers
precious tax dollars from public schools, which are free and open to all children,
accountable to parents and taxpayers alike, and essential to our democracy…”
Such propaganda reflects a cynical, poll-driven strategy to define parent choice in
negative terms, i.e., divisive, untested, elitist, undemocratic, and unconstitutional.
In truth, however, the power to make educational choices is widespread, long-standing,
and highly valued — by those who have it. As Richard Elmore and Bruce Fuller
explained more than a decade ago:
“Choice is everywhere in American education. It is manifest in the
residential choices made by families [and] in the housing prices found in
neighborhoods [and] when families, sometimes at great financial sacrifice,
decide to send their children to private schools…. [I]n all instances, these
choices…are strongly shaped by the wealth, ethnicity, and social status of
parents and their neighborhoods.”7
Jeffrey Henig and Stephen Sugarman also describe the “very considerable degree to
which families already select the schools their children attend…. [B]y one plausible way
of counting, more than half of American families now exercise parent choice [and] some
families have more choice than others.”8
In other words, for most Americans parent choice is widespread. Those with limited
options are working class and low-income families in urban centers. African Americans
and other minority group members constitute a disproportionate share of this population.
The effort of opponents to label parent choice as “elitist” is thus laughable and an insult
to these citizens.
Opposition to parent choice is not confined to teachers’ unions. Within the Black
community itself there is a range of opinion. This is as it should be. Not all Black people
will or should be expected to have the same views on such an important issue. However,
it is critical that the discussion not rely on inaccurate information about the origins of the
struggle for parent choice in the African American community. Nor should the
objectives of the school choice movement be misunderstood or misrepresented. We must
appreciate its place in the continuing struggle to ensure that ALL of our young people get
the education they need and deserve.
7
Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal Effects of Parent
choice, Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1996.
“The Nature and Extent of Parent choice,” in Parent choice and Social Controversy,
Politics, Policy and Law, Sugarman and Kemerer, eds. The Brookings Institution Press,
1999.
8
515
What drives the opposition? For the most organized and powerful opponents — led by
the teachers’ unions — the concern is loss of power. More specifically, it is about
controlling the flow and distribution of money. The NEA, AFT, and their allies aim to
preserve their sizeable share of the $558 billion9 K-12 education industry. For them, the
key questions are: Who will teach in the schools? Who will build and maintain the
schools? Who will sell the textbooks? Who will get the research grants?
The economics of choice is also an issue for some African Americans. The reality of
Black America is driven not only by race, but also by class. Many Black people have a
financial stake in maintaining the traditional educational system. In discussing economic
issues related to school reform in Atlanta, Detroit, Washington D.C., and Baltimore,
Henig made the following observation:
Black community leaders are especially leery of any proposed reforms that seem
to undercut the financial stability of Black professionals
employed by the
school system…The bonds that link minority teachers and administrators to the
larger African American community have been forged by shared experiences,
expectations, and concerns. In addition to these powerful psychological links,
there is a broad sense within much of the African American community that
Black educators (and other local public employees) play a critical role in the
economic health of the local community. Thus reforms that threaten existing
educational institutions are seen as carrying real risk to the community.10
At its root, then, the contemporary parent choice debate pits low income and working
class parents against the economic interests of more powerful and established adversaries
both inside and outside of the Black community.
Historical context11
All slave states had a slave code. At the heart of every code was the requirement that
slaves submit to their masters and respect all white men. For example, the Louisiana
Code of 1806 proclaimed:
The condition of the slave being merely a passive one, his subordination to his
master and all who represent him…he owes to his master and to all his family, a
9
Digest of Education Statistics: 2006, National Center for Education Statistics.
10
The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education,
Henig.; Richard Hula, Marion Orr, Desiree Pedescleaux. Princeton University Press,
2001.
This essay’s focus before 1900 is on the educational experience of Black people in the
South. While African Americans also lived in northern states, they constituted a very
small proportion of the Black population.
11
615
respect without bounds, and an absolute obedience and he is consequently to
execute all of the orders he receives from his said master, or from them.
These codes sought to do more than just teach slaves to be obedient. They were, in fact,
also aimed at developing within slaves a fear of all white men. As Kenneth Stampp
explains in the title of the fourth chapter of The Peculiar Institution, the aim was to
“Make Them Stand in Fear.”
Specific codes denied people of color access to education in any form.
For example, the South Carolina Act of 1740 provided, “Whereas, the having slaves
taught to write, may be attended with great inconveniences: Be it enacted, that all and
every person and persons whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach or cause any slaves to be
taught to write, or shall employ a slave as a scribe in any manner of writing whatsoever,
every person or persons shall for every offense forfeit the sum of one-hundred pounds,
current money.”
The City of Savannah, in 1818, announced: “The city has passed an ordinance by which:
any person that teaches any person of color, slave or free, to read or write, or causes such
person to be taught, is subjected to a fine of $30 for each offense; and every person of
color who shall keep a school to teach reading or writing is subject to a fine of $30, or to
be imprisoned ten days and whipped thirty-nine lashes.”
Despite the persistent and ever-present oppression of slavery, and notwithstanding the
explicit ban on education, Black people developed and sustained a belief in the critical
necessity of obtaining an education.
As Jim Anderson explains: “There developed in [the] slave community a fundamental
belief in learning and self-improvement and a shared belief in universal education as a
necessary basis for freedom and citizenship.”12 He describes the historic and powerful
legacy of this belief:
As the masters increased efforts to stifle the slaves’ desire for literacy, the
slaves seemed more convinced that education was fundamentally linked to
freedom and dignity. This distinctive orientation toward learning was
transmitted over time…In the history of Black education the political
significance of slave literacy reaches beyond the antebellum period. Many
leaders and educators [after the Civil War] were men and women who first
became literate under slavery...slaves who had sustained their own
learning process in defiance of the slave-owners’ authority.
As an outgrowth of this history, newly freed slaves — armed with their belief in
education — demanded free universal education. Anderson writes that ex-slaves “viewed
12
The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, James D. Anderson, University of
North Carolina Press, 1988.
715
literacy and formal education as means to liberation and self-determination.” But that
outlook was at odds with the prevailing view of many whites in the South and North.
Explains Anderson: “Blacks soon made it apparent that they were committed to training
their young for futures that [assumed] full equality and autonomy. Consequently, the
assumption [by many whites] that Blacks had no ideas about the meaning and purpose of
education in a free society was quickly replaced with the belief that they held the wrong
ideas about how and for what purpose they should be educated.”
Important elements of this history are not well understood. For example, it was the
demands of Black people that eventually led to the creation of public schools in the
South. This occurred as part of an on-going battle not only about the nature of Black
education but also about whether Blacks should be educated at all. Because of the push
by Blacks during Reconstruction, educational opportunities expanded for Blacks and
poor whites as well. As Heather Andrea Williams explains:
African American insistence on establishing schools transformed education
throughout the southern states. Absurd as it may have first appeared to many
white southerners…the sight of Black children in school became an inescapable
fact. In the decade of the 1860s, freedpeople attended schools by the thousands.
They rebuilt burned-out schoolhouses, armed themselves to protect threatened
teachers, and persisted in the effort to become literate, self-sufficient participants
in the larger American society. …Following freedpeople’s example, poor whites
in the South began attending school and northern missionaries and state
legislatures took action to establish educational facilities for large numbers of
poor whites who had previously gone unschooled.13
After Reconstruction, considerable power in the South returned to the whites who had
dominated prior to the Civil War. A clear manifestation of that can be found in the
Compromise of 1877. As Anderson explains:
Southerners agreed to the election of Rutherford B. Hayes and Republicans
agreed to remove Federal troops from the South. With both state authority and
extralegal means of control firmly in their hands, the planters, though unable to
eradicate earlier gains [by Blacks], kept universal schooling underdeveloped.
They stressed low taxation, opposed compulsory school attendance laws,
blocked the passage of new laws that would strengthen the educational basis of
public education, and generally discouraged the expansion of public school
opportunities.
Eventually white small farmers led the battle for universal public education for
their children. To accommodate this demand the whites in power began to take
money from the Black public schools and give it to white public schools. Black
people were then put between a “rock and a hard place.” They were forced to pay
13
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, Andrea Williams,
University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
815
taxes for schools that they were not allowed to attend and as a result they had to
use their meager resources to support both public and private schools for their
children. They were victims of double taxation.
A 1911 study by W.E.B. Du Bois and Augustus Dill reinforces this history. 14 As
summarized in proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference for the Study of the Negro
Problems, the study found that:

[A]ppropriations for Negro schools have been cut…

[W]ages for Negro teachers have been lowered and often poorer teachers
have been preferred to better ones.

Superintendents have neglected to supervise the Negro schools.

[F]ew school houses have been built and few repairs have been made; for
the most part the Negroes themselves have purchased school sites, school
houses, and school furniture, thus being in a peculiar way double taxed.

Negroes in the South, except those of one or two states, have been
deprived of almost all voice or influence in the government of the public
schools.
Those presiding over the conference said that “as a result of such conditions it is certain
that of the Negro children six to fourteen years of age not 50 per cent have a chance today
to learn to read and write and cipher correctly. Unless we face these facts the problem of
ignorance…will soon overshadow all other problems.”
Black people thus were forced to seek out and develop other options to ensure education
for their children. The conference report described those efforts as follows:
The Negroes themselves are making heroic efforts to remedy these evils
[through]
and
widespread
system
of
private,
self-supported
schools…[P]hilanthropy is furnishing a helpful but incomplete system of
industrial, normal, and collegiate training for children of the Black race.
The continuing struggle for Black education took on new meaning, new definitions, and
new directions after the 1954 Supreme Court decision on desegregation.
“The Common School and the Negro American,” Du Bois and Dill, Atlanta University
Publications, No. 16, Atlanta University Press, 1911.
14
915
Brown v. Board of Education
Observers justifiably viewed the Supreme Court’s decision as a watershed event. In the
words of Martin Luther King Jr., "For all men of good will May 17, 1954 came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of enforced segregation . . .It served to transform
the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope."15
Three years ago, on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown, a wave of conferences examined its
impact. Numerous books and articles supplemented the many papers presented at these
gatherings. A summary of one conference described a prominent theme: “[Fifty] years
after Brown …the unfortunate fact remains that too many African Americans remain far
behind on tests of achievement, creating a Black-white test score gap…about as large and
persistent as it was when first measured in the late sixties.”16
In other words, notwithstanding the historic significance of Brown, educational gains that
many hoped for have not materialized. While there is no single reason, I argue that a key
factor involves the way Brown was implemented in many American cities. Specifically,
consistent with the longstanding experience of Black people before Brown, African
Americans generally did not control the public policies and practices developed to
implement the decision. As had been the case historically, key decision affecting the
education of their children often remained beyond their reach.
Milwaukee’s story vividly illustrates the gap between the spirit of Brown and the manner
in which the decision was implemented. 17 It is described in some detail here.
In 1976, twenty-two years after Brown, Federal Judge John Reynolds declared the
Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to be unlawfully segregated. Reynolds named John
Gronouski, a former ambassador to Poland and a longtime political associate, to develop
a plan for ending segregation. Gronouski worked closely with then-MPS Superintendent
Lee McMurrin and his top deputy, David Bennett.
15
From a 1960 speech to the National Urban League.
50 Years after Brown: What Has Been Accomplished and What Remains to Be Done?”
April 22-24, 2004, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
16
17
Sources for this description of the Milwaukee integration experience include: (1) "The
Impact of the Milwaukee Public Schools System's Desegregation Plan on Black Students
and the Black Community (1976-1982)," Howard Fuller, doctoral thesis, Marquette
University, 1985; (2) “Better Public Schools, Final Report,” Study Commission on the
Quality of Education in Metropolitan Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin Department
of Public Instruction, 1985; (3) "School Desegregation Ten Years Later — Why It
Failed," Bruce Murphy, Milwaukee Magazine, September 1986; and (4) "An Evaluation
of State-Financed School Integration in Metropolitan Milwaukee," Error! Bookmark
not defined., Wisconsin Policy Research Institute report, 1989.
1015
The news media and most members of Milwaukee’s civic establishment strongly
supported the resulting plan. It relied on (1) a system of “magnet” schools to attract
white students to the central city and (2) a large-scale busing program that transported
African American students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods.
A vocal but relatively powerless group of African Americans complained that the plan
had been developed with minimal input from African American families. They claimed
it would place a disproportionate burden on African American students, supposedly the
main beneficiaries of the Reynolds decision. The news media and established community
leaders stereotyped these critics in negative racial terms.
Judge Reynolds sanctioned the plan and MPS began implementation in the late 1970s. By
the mid-80s, most MPS schools were racially desegregated. Milwaukee's political and
civic leaders congratulated themselves. The media celebrated the "peacefulness" of the
process and trumpeted MPS claims that most students were "at or above average" in test
scores. Opponents of the plan continued to be marginalized as racists and/or racial
separatists. That charge, while true in the case of some plan critics, became a means for
summarily dismissing any criticism.
By the end of the 1980s, independent research and reporting (see note 17) had validated
the early critics of the plan. This research demonstrated that the plan:

Gave the best educational choices primarily to middle- and upper-income, mostly
white parents; and

Uprooted a disproportionate number of African American children and assigned
them to distant schools.
The research also discredited MPS claims that academic achievement had improved as
the integration plan was implemented. After an 18-month study, an independent state
task force decried an "unacceptable disparity in educational opportunity and achievement
between poor and minority children...and non-poor and white children..." It determined
that MPS classified students "at or above average" even if they scored substantially
below the 50th percentile. African American test scores were well below the 50th
percentile in almost all grades and almost all subjects.
By far the most troubling aspect of the Milwaukee plan involves the now-acknowledged
motives of those who developed it. Documents relied on at the time of the plan’s
development illustrate how priorities were established.

An internal MPS document stated, “...[T]he psychological guarantee of not having
to attend a school that is predominantly minority will tend to stabilize the
population in the city."

An education professor at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee referred to the
"optimum percentage of minority students in a desegregated school.” He said,
1115
emphasis added, "[Fifteen] per cent is a minimum if the minority group is...to
exert pressure without constituting a power threat to the majority."

Another educator wrote: "[A]s long as the proportion of Black pupils is
small...and expected to remain so, there is no reason for white pupils to
experience stigma, relative deprivation, social threat, marginality, or a change in
norms, standards, or...expectations of their significant others.”
Not until 1999 did one of the plan's architects openly acknowledged the inescapable
meaning of such sentiments. At a forum on race relations in Milwaukee, a former senior
MPS administrator told a startled audience that "white benefit" was a central
consideration in the plan's development.
When news of this circulated, the result was a page one story (“‘White benefit’ was
driving force of busing”) in the October 19, 1999 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The
article’s sub-headline stated, “Twenty years later, architects of MPS plan admit they
didn't want to disrupt city's white residents.” The article began as follows:
In a stunning admission more than two decades after the fact, the architects of
Milwaukee's school busing plan now say the entire plan was set up for "white
benefit" at the expense of African-American children.
"I think it was an unspoken issue with the School Board at the time," said
Anthony Busalacchi, president of the School Board in 1978-'79. "It was an issue
of how do we least disrupt the white community."
This was the offensive racial prism through which "equal educational opportunity" for
African American children in Milwaukee was pursued. The supposed era of peaceful and
voluntary racial integration in fact was a period of forced busing that placed the principal
burden on African American children.18 At the same time, reflecting the plan’s specific
goals, a larger proportion of white students either stayed in their neighborhood schools or
transferred to “magnet” schools, many of which had selective admission practices.
Within a decade of the Reynolds decision, there was growing awareness and resentment
of its impact among African Americans. Their reaction of many Black people echoed a
historic pattern, one that reflected the logical progression of our struggle. As had
occurred so often in the 1800’s and earlier in the 1900’s, African Americans were forced
once again to seek other options for their children’s education. This included an
unsuccessful effort to establish a separate school district, an effort that was successfully
18
The busing pattern in the Auer Avenue School neighborhood was representative of
how African American children traveled up to two hours a day to schools outside their
neighborhood. In the Auer Avenue neighborhood, 1,071 students — two-thirds of all
elementary age children in that area — were transported to 97 different schools in 198788.
1215
resisted by the same individuals who were in charge of implementing the “white benefit”
plan. Following that setback, many Blacks in Milwaukee coalesced to support the 1990
enactment of the MPCP. Their logic was straightforward: the traditional system was not
working; we were not allowed to form our own district; and so the next obvious step was
to demand a way for our children to be educated outside of the traditional public system.
As cities developed plans to implement Brown, the fear of “white flight” was not unique
to Milwaukee. While individual plans varied from one community to the next, efforts to
comply with Brown typically rested on mandatory assignment plans that required long
bus rides for a disproportionate number of African American students.
As in
Milwaukee, in many communities those making the decisions reflected traditional
leadership structures. This, in turn, minimized the involvement of African Americans.
And to what end? In Milwaukee, as in many other cities, levels of racial segregation are
similar to those that existed decades ago. Further, as The New York Times reported
earlier this year:
With Brown v. Board of Education…integration was the big hope for equal
achievement…[Yet] experts of every political persuasion agree that the
achievement gap — the disparity between white children and Black children’s
educational achievement — is the biggest problem in American education.19
Conclusion
Since before the Civil War, Black people have waged a continuing struggle to educate
themselves and their children. As Williams explains, “issues of power” dominate the
history of this struggle.
Time and again, Black parents have been in a position where others had the power to
make fundamental decisions about the education of their children. While those in power
have employed very different means, the net result has left low-income and working class
African Americans with fewer and less adequate educational options.
The current debate over parent choice is but the latest chapter in that struggle. This
debate arises directly from the fact that far too many of our poorest children are not
receiving a quality education. In the starkest of terms, their futures are being snuffed out.
A troubling double standard hangs over this debate. Many who can choose quality
options for their own children question the idea of empowering less affluent families to
do likewise. It is all the more regrettable that some of the most powerful choice
opponents describe their stance as reflecting concerns about “equity” and “justice.”
“Money, Not Race, Fuels New Push to Buoy Schools,” Tamar Lewin and David M.
Herszenhorn, June 30, 2007.
19
1315
There is another aspect to the struggle. Many organizations and individuals in the Black
community are either hostile or indifferent to parent choice. Urban school systems
historically have employed large numbers of African-Americans, and for most of us the
traditional public school has been our only hope for receiving an education.
While the traditional system has served many of us well, that was then and this is now.
Though today's public school systems still employ us, far to few are effectively educating
our children
My own vision for the future of our struggle remains anchored by the belief that we must
give poor parents the power to choose schools — public or private, non-sectarian or
religious —where their children will succeed. As our history illustrates, this is not a new
idea. Rather, it goes to the very heart of the historical quest by Black people to educate
themselves and their children.
We can see in Milwaukee the tangible impact of putting this power in the hands of
families who once lacked the resources to influence the decisions that shape their
children’s education. The graduation ceremony at CEO Leadership Academy is but one
of many illustrations of how this power can change the shape of the future for their
children.
I am proud of the fact that CEO Leadership Academy is just another example of Black
people fighting for an education that will give Daralis and others like her an opportunity
to become economically and socially productive citizens in this country and indeed in
this world. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors who fought against slavery,
resisted “Jim Crow,” and always kept in mind the struggle for freedom and selfdetermination.
Some argue that parent choice serves only a portion of the population, and that we should
expend all our resources on a system that – presumably – serves all. I think we should
take a lesson from Harriet Tubman’s fight against slavery. She fought everyday to end it,
but as she waged that battle, she set out to free as many slaves as possible. I believe we
must work hard to improve the traditional public education system in this country, but in
the mean time, we have a moral responsibility to rescue as many of children as we
can “by any means necessary.”
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