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Past Issues September 2005 Mayor Segregation: Segregation plan keeps federal OK
| Mayor Segregation: Segregation plan keeps federal OK |
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By George N. Schmidt
Both sides (The Bush administration’s Justice Department, which is supposedly representing the interests of minority children, and the Chicago Board of Education, which is supposed to be carrying out a “desegregation” plant on orders from the federal government and overseen by a federal judge) said nothing about the massive segregation that sprawled for miles in two main directions, south and west, from the federal court building where the hearing was being held. More than half of Chicago’s public schools today — nearly 400 schools out of a total of more than 600 — are completely segregated, housing mostly poor minority students. [In calculating “completely segregated” in Chicago, for more than 30 years Substance has meant schools that are between 90-percent and 100-percent minority. Most of Chicago’s segregated minority public schools are 100-percent segregated; there is not one non-minority child in them. Other studies of racial segregation for other parts of the country use lower percentages of minority children as indicators of complete segregation, but in Chicago for more than 50 years, racial segregation has been precise and massive]. For the past decade, Chicago and its mayor have praised themselves for something corporate America — most notably through the news and opinion pages of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times — calls “school reform.” According to the current dominant narrative, “school reform” in Chicago began in 1995. At that time, a Republican government in Illinois gave Mayor Richard M. Daley complete dictatorial control over the city’s public school system while corporate America began a drive to create Chicago as a model for “urban school reform” across the United States. According to the official narrative, “School Reform” has supposedly made Chicago’s public schools better through a combination of dictatorial governance (under the mayor) and massive privatization programs. The proof of “better” in this case is rising scores on so-called “standardized” tests. Standardized (so far, always multiple-choice and computer-scored) tests are presented to the public, no matter what the test and what the year, as representing a legitimate “bottom line” by means of which schools can be measured for success or failure as accurately as a professional baseball player’s success can me measured by batting average or ERO. While the official narrative about the success of these “reform” programs — most recently “Renaissance 2010” — continues, Chicago has been creating racially segregated schools faster than at any time in the city’s long history of intense racial segregation. Those who maintain that test scores do not measure anything meaningful about public schools — in fact, measuring mostly the effects of family wealth or poverty — have been ignored, bought off, or silenced. In recent years, since the federal “No Child Left Behind” act joined local policies to the same end, federal officials and their apologists have added an official narrative about an “achievement gap” that schools can supposedly overcome to the narrative about the success of corporate “school reform.” Critical scrutiny of the impact of racial segregation of this intensity on the city — and especially on its school children — is non-existent in the major media and public debate in Chicago today and has been more nearly a decade. The convergence of racial segregation and ghettoization with intenese poverty is likewise ignored when “school reform” is discussed in official circles. The Chicago Board of Education’s own data show that Chicago’s second Mayor Daley — Richard M. Daley — has been creating racially segregated schools at a faster rate than Chicago’s first Mayor Daley —his father Richard J. Daley — created them during the 1950s and 1960s. The vast ghettos of the 1960s and 1970s — and the segregated schools within them — were created by the first Daley administration at the time of the “Great Migration” of black people from the segregated and racist South. Historians today note the vicious intensity with which Chicago’s first Mayor Daley segregated the city’s communities and public schools between the 1950s and the 1970s. Some of those same historians (among them African Americans) today are praising Chicago’s second “Mayor Daley” — or even joining him in helping to create more segregated schools in the city. Officially, the white people in the Dirksen Federal Building in Judge Kocoras’s courtroom in Chicago on August 31 (and there was only one black person there, out of the more than 40 people in court) were discussing a “desegregation” plan. A careful look at the racial demographics of the Chicago Public Schools in the summer of 2005 would have revealed that during the preceding decade — while the corporate media had hailed the supposed “education miracle” that had taken place in Chicago since Mayor Richard M. Daley took over the city’s public schools in 1995 — racial segregation of poor African-American and Hispanic students in Chicago had increased at a greater rate than at any time in the city’s history. The creation of racially segregated schools for minority children — and in many cases the purging of black children from non-ghetto schools — has been one of the most clearly persistent policies of the two administrations appointed by Richard M. Daley to run the city’s public schools since 1995. Only one or two other phenomena have been as persistent under the Daley administration’s rule over the public schools: claims of relentlessly “rising” scores on standardized tests and the blaming of teachers, principals and children for “low” test scores. Under Board of Education presidents Gery Chico (1995-2001) and Michael Scott (2001-2005), Chicago continued racial policies which most Americans thought had ended. Under CEOs Paul Vallas (1995-2001) and Arne Duncan (2001-2005), the segregation of poor minority children in Chicago’s schools has been as persistent as the public relations spin that claims, each year, that test scores once again have gone “up”. For ten years, while public officials, the courts, and the major media have looked the other way, Chicago has continued to expand its lead in racial segregation of public schools in the USA. CEO Arne Duncan refused to be interviewed by this reporter for this article. Duncan continues to maintain that he is not a “white supremist” (a locution he has been known to use among intimates) and from time to time has told those around him that he is not a racist. Given the evolution of power and the ways in which certain topics are now discussed, that may be true. From Mayor Daley on down through the members of the Chicago Board of Education and the top administrators of the public schools, many of the segregationists who planned the future of Chicago’s public schools have often been minority officials, often with enormous salaries. White officials who promote segregated schools — such as both mayors Daley — have surrounded themselves with minority officials who have often been brought forward at key times to defend their policies. The complex history of racial segregation in Chicago makes it clear that those who would be horrified to hear expressions of racist ideas — let alone the use of words that were once used routinely by racists in the United States — are quite able to promulgate and enforce policies which increase and expand unprecedented racial segregation at the expense of poor and minority children. Many of these individuals have prospered, often in high paying public sector positions (today paying more than $100,000 per year) for helping to plan and expand the racial politics of the city. Others, including a large group of clergy who defend the mayor’s policies, receive public funds in other ways. Contrary to the claims of those who had praised the Daley administration for improving the city’s public schools based on dubious interpretations of even more dubious test scores, the actual data show that one city —Chicago — had created a greater amount of racial segregation for minority children than presently exists in any state in what was once considered the most racist part of the USA. In the vast majority of those schools, there has been no improvement after a decade of carefully crafted headlines and fulsome public praise for the mayor and what in Chicago has been called “school reform.” For the first time since the 1960s, the data that demonstrate Chicago’s massive segregation are being routinely held back from the public. Despite ongoing efforts by officials of the administration of Arne Duncan and the increasing number of $100,000-per-year lawyers who work for the Chicago Board of Education to withhold racial data on the city’s public schools from the public, a six-month fight using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by Substance has successfully revealed half of the racial data that was once released annually. Two other sources of information about segregation in Chicago’s schools have been suppressed by the Duncan administration, and an attempt to get one of those with the assistance of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan was rebuffed when Madigan’s aide sided with CPS officials in refusing to provide the information. What is available at this time is one document, called the “Racial Ethnic Survey — Students” for the most recent school year. What are no longer available are the same annual survey for staff and the annual reports of an entity called the “Monitoring Commission for Desegregation Implementation” which Daley and his appointees have apparently driven out of existence and destroyed the records of. According to the available data: At the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year, Chicago reported that its public school system had 426,812 students. Of these, 37,503 were “White, Non-Hispanic”; 212,502 were “Black, Non-Hispanic”, and 162,194 were “Hispanic.” The annual racial survey is taken by teachers at the beginning of each school year, and in some cases, students are allowed to depict themselves by whatever racial category they choose, although teachers generally report the data based on observation. • 305 Chicago schools last school year (2004 - 2005) were all-black. According to the Chicago Board of Education’s “Racial Ethnic Survey — Students” as of September 30, 2004, during the 2004 - 2005 school year, Chicago had 305 all-black public schools. In this context, “all-black” means that 90 percent to 100 percent of the children in those schools were African Americans. • In 1995, when Daley first took over Chicago’s public schools, the number of all-black schools in Chicago was 215, according to the Racial Ethnic Survey taken as of September 30, 1995. • Today, Chicago also has 77 all-Hispanic public schools, more than double the number in 1995. During the 2004-2004 school year, Chicago had 162,194 Hispanic students. Of these, 59,150 were in 77 public schools that were between 90 and 100 percent Hispanic. • In 1995, when Daley first took over Chicago’s public schools, the number of all-Hispanic schools was 34 , according to the Racial Ethnic Survey taken as of September 30, 1995. Before Hurricane Katrina took them away for other duties, school officials in the State of Mississippi contacted by Substance told Substance that the number of all-black schools in Mississippi last school year did not exceed 100. At the time of the hurricane, Substance was awaiting a list of the all-black schools in the State of Mississippi. The State of Mississippi currently has between 450,000 and 500,000 students in all of its public schools. Last September, Chicago had 426,000 students in its public schools, making the size of the systems somewhat comparable. Some Mississippi officials, before Katrina, were amused to hear that one northern city — a city that was still reminding itself and the world of the evil old days of racial segregation in the South — had more racially segregated all-black schools than in any four of the states of the old Confederate States of America. No Southern state has nearly the amount of racial segregation as one Northern city — Chicago — today. A person could drive 500 miles in any direction in the South today and not find as many all-black schools as the same person could find in a 25-mile drive through Chicago today (from the Oak Park border at Chicago Ave. and Austin Blvd. through the Altgeld Gardens public housing projects at the southern edge of the city at 135th St.). Similarly, segregation against Hispanic students in Chicago surpasses that in any American public school district today except Puerto Rico, where the island has one unified school district. The discussion in federal court in Chicago on August 31 was about a “desegregation plan,” but somehow the desegregation part had been lost. What was really being discussed was how few dollars the Chicago Board of Education could spend this year to maintain a massively segregated public school system in one of America’s most segregated states at the lowest possible cost. Chicago’s public school system this month has three times as many completely segregated all-black schools as the entire state of Mississippi. But to read the Chicago newspapers, the only issues regarding racism and racial segregation relevant to Chicago in 2005 was the murder of a black teenager at the hands of Mississippi racists a half century earlier. The ancient history of racism in the United States is very much on the minds of Chicagoans today. In August 2005, Chicago’s two daily newspapers covered the Emmett Till murder in detail. The Chicago Board of Education at its August 24, 2005 meeting discussed naming one of its 305 segregated all-black public schools after Emmett Till. And while a lesson in how nasty segregationists were in Mississippi a half century earlier was being repeated, Chicago was able to maintain its 80-year-tradition as the nation’s most racially segregated large city. But, whereas, a half century earlier — on August 24, 1955, the day Chicagoan Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi — large American cities from Topeka Kansas across the south all the way to Tampa and Miami Florida were racially segregated. These cities were segregated under laws that were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown decision in 1954. By 2005, most of the vestiges of segregation in the 13 states of the old Confederacy had been ended, although racial segregation continues to exist in many parts of Southern life. In Chicago segregation continues increasing. For the record: For the more than 30 years that Substance has covered the racial politics of public education in Chicago, Substance has never maintained that any of the public officials who have continued the racial policies reported here are ideological “racists.” While a small number may have been overtly racist as late as the 1970s, Chicago has proved that racists are not necessary to maintain racial segregation. One of the many false issues that comes forward when racial segregation is discussed here is whether those who create and sustain segregation at great public financial and social cost are “racists.” |
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To observe the proceedings in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge
Charles P. Kocoras on August 31, 2005, the average person would have
been surprised to learn that when the city’s public schools begin
classes on September 6, 2005, more than 300 of them will be all-black
and an additional 70 or more, all-Hispanic. All of the discussion when
the city’s 25-year-old “desegregation” case was called was about $17
million (perhaps, on the outside, $34 million) out of an annual public
education budget of $5 billion for the third largest public school
systems in the United States of America.
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