Brown…what now?

The USA Today editorial board and Angelo Ancheta of the Harvard Civil Rights Project debate the legacy of Brown. The editors say it’s time to address the minority achievement gap while Ancheta highlights the failure to follow through on desegregation as a cause of educational problems. Really both are right and the Civil Rights Project has done excellent work documenting the extent of segregation and re-segregation in schools. Problem is, the political time has passed for many of their preferred remedies. Complaining about Dowell and other decisions does not do a lot of good now. For the most part, the ideas put forward by the editorial board have more immediate saliency for kids in low-performing schools.