Equity Now: Realizing the Promise of Brown v. Board of Education
By Dr. Tiffany Anderson
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court came to a unanimous ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation was illegal. While the decision promised societal change, it failed to deliver in many ways. State-sanctioned legalized segregation became illegal, but there were no ways to measure what constituted true desegregation, and the hearts and minds of many Americans were not won to the cause.
Although many white Americans believe Brown v. Board ended segregation, today’s school data tells a different story. As Beverly Daniel Tatum recently remarked:
our schools, 65 years after Brown, are nearly as segregated as they were at the time of the ruling — for different reasons, perhaps, but segregated, nonetheless. Nearly 75 percent of Black students attend so-called majority-minority schools, and 38 percent attend schools where 10 percent or less of the students are White. The numbers are similar for Latinx students. And both Black and Latinx students are more likely than White students to attend schools where 60 percent or more of the students are living in poverty — so you have concentrated poverty in many schools. And these schools are likely to have higher teacher turnover, less experienced teachers, and inadequate facilities and resources. Separate is still unequal.
Brown v. Board of Education was the mark of a movement. Like many moments of success in the civil rights movement, the court case sparked resistance that continues into our present and has taken many forms. We still see aspects of segregation in our schools — from how we talk to students to who graduates and goes to college — and we can still see the need to train our educators and communities around bias and racism.
First Seek to Understand
I believe the story of how we’ve increased opportunity and performance in Topeka, Kansas — the district where Linda Brown was denied entry to an all-white elementary school some 65 years ago — is one way to answer the need for further work. I know we’re not alone — there are many educators, schools, and districts realizing the 65-year-old promise of Brown v. Board of Education. In publicizing our work at Topeka, I want to remind those already doing the work of the importance of sharing our story. There are too many who think this work can’t be done and just need examples of real equity work in schools.
There are also too many well-intentioned educators and education leaders who jump to make change without first seeking to understand. Since 2016, our district has improved academic performance each year and last year eliminated the achievement gap in our graduation rate: Latinx, white, and black students are all graduating at a rate that’s above 80 percent and nearing 90 percent. Those changes didn’t happen because I walked into the district and implemented top-down initiatives. Humility, curiosity, and commitment were my most important tools.
To serve the community, I needed to understand it — what exactly was the history of the educational system and where we are now? I began by visiting as many religious institutions in our community as possible. I told them my hopes for the district and I asked for their insights and help. To families and students, I posed the question “Do you feel like you have equitable access to all the opportunities to achieve at the highest levels?” Together our district and school staff met with first-generation college students from the community at the local college, Washburn University, and asked them about their experience at Topeka and how it was serving them in college. This was not a one-time public relations campaign but the beginning of ongoing conversations that continue today. People in our community know we are ready to listen and act on their concerns. They also know we are not going to act without first doing lots of work to understand the specifics on any issue in Topeka, both its history and present context.
Review Disaggregated Data
One step to developing understanding is to evaluate school data. School data is often looked at without the context of disaggregation and the community conversations I mentioned earlier. A decontextualized use of data can lead school leaders to make assumptions or to decide that, on average, the school system functions just fine. But that complacence is a misunderstanding of public education. Our job is to make sure that school works for every child, so we look at data in a variety of ways — from district patterns to patterns for an individual child or teacher.
Disaggregating District, School, and Classroom Data by Race and Gender
- patterns of suspensions and discipline
- patterns of placing students in AP classes and gifted classes
- patterns for students of various races that enter certain classrooms, and how well they do in certain classrooms and in certain schools
Disaggregation in these ways allow us to make targeted effective change. When we see a pattern that is concerning, we now have courageous conversations about what the data is telling us and what we need to change. This initial work is essential to uncovering the layers of systemic challenges to improving academic achievement.
The data doesn’t just inform how we respond to students but also informs our teacher professional development. For example, when we see a high occurrence of suspension rates and misbehaviors, we don’t just say that teachers need help in classroom management. They do need that, but they also need training in culturally relevant pedagogy. Students push back against their invisibility in the classroom even if they can’t articulate that’s what’s happening. However, we don’t start teacher training with culturally relevant pedagogy. We need to change mindsets before we change practice. That’s the only path to true educational equity.
Effective Equity Work for Teachers
The first training introduced in districts I join is always equity training. All school and district staff need to have common language about what privilege and bias look like in schools, and they need to understand the needs within the community we’re trying to serve. That common training sets an expectation of how all staff — new and veteran — will function together and with children.
Of course, not all equity training is equal. When participants feel like they are being bullied to think a certain way, such training inevitably backfires and can make school climate worse than it was before. You must pick the right training, and that begins with knowing exactly what your goals are. When I started, I knew Topeka Public Schools had already received some level of training and that those trainers left some staff feeling shamed for their white privilege without giving them the sense of positive agency they needed to change systems of oppression. It was not where we wanted to be.
So, we restructured and cochaired the equity council with one of the longest-serving educators within the district, Dr. Beryl New, who, not coincidentally, was a former student of the all-black school in 1950s Topeka. Dr. New and I began our school’s equity training by helping everyone have a deeper understanding of our different life experiences. Yes, many white educators had to learn informed humility, and many teachers of color had to be made to feel safe enough to risk conversations about race, but we accomplished this through listening to each other’s stories and learning about how those stories were part of larger patterns in our shared history. Equity training is most valuable when you take time to build a sense of community. Our staff developed an even greater appreciation of what other team members bring to their professional lives.
After life experiences, we focus on language, and then these understandings inform district problem-solving. Our goal is to get everyone to understand that we bring our own biases to the table, and what that looks like when it’s under the table instead of on top. This is ongoing learning for all of us. There is no end destination but rather an expectation that we will keep growing and developing our practice in response to the limits placed on students by the larger society.
Schools can’t do this work alone. I would encourage everyone to partner with universities so that you really are using research-based information and practices. Also, thanks to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, every state has access to an equity center that offers free services to school districts: https://www2.ed.gov/programs/equitycenters/contacts.html.
Making Students True Partners
We ask every student, every teacher, every year, What is your why? Why are you here? Why do you show up? Even our kindergartners start off the year with these questions, and we unpack them a bit together. We use these questions to help students see themselves as confident, capable learners who have every right to access the highest levels of education and careers that they choose to.
We challenge our students not to be comfortable with labels and having their voices silenced. To make those beliefs a practice for students, we created student equity councils in schools. Representatives from those school councils, a diverse body of students, meet with me each month. The disaggregated data I mentioned earlier is shared with students, parents, school staff, and others in the community. They deserve the opportunity to question why there are patterns and to be voices in the problem-solving. Sometimes we come up with an answer that may make us all uncomfortable, but students need to see adults be willing to push past their discomfort to help others. For example, we questioned why so few students of color are not choosing to take AP courses, even when staff had actively encouraged them to do so. One answer was funding — the cost of the AP test and preparing for it — so we’ve eliminated that by using title funds to pay for all testing. Another was schedule, so now all tests are offered during the school day in addition to the weekend. We really look at the challenges and barriers not just from an adult perspective but by encouraging youth to lead the dialogue. If we want them to be tomorrow’s problem solvers, they need to have the opportunity to practice those skills today. And the truth is that we learn more from them than if we were leading the conversation ourselves.
The Necessity of Restorative Justice
So, we put students in the position of being problem solvers, but how do we get at the common deficit perspective that students are the problem? We rely on a restorative justice model, which is not just a process but a way of being in the world. Restorative justice reminds us of alternative behavior choices to the default act of othering that is a toxic part of human nature and the foundation of all bigotry. Restorative justice allows us to get beyond pointing to people as the problem. Restorative justice teaches us that the problem is the problem. What’s really causing the harm?
I asked staff from the equity council if they knew which former students were incarcerated and how many times they’ve visited their former students now incarcerated. No one had, even though Topeka Public Schools oversees the jail and the juvenile detention center. So, we read Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, and took a field trip to the jail and juvenile detention center.
I needed staff to understand that the momentum for these systemic patterns can either be disrupted or continued through them. We saw with our own eyes that the majority of students in prison were men of color, and it’s one thing to read about that, another to see it. Each staff member spent time with an individual student and brought them a gift. Important new information from our visit was that most incarcerated former students were foster care children, students who were lacking deep connections with others. We looked at that pattern and said, “What do we do about that?”
Now, as students are released from the juvenile detention center, they are matched with a mentor who continues to follow their story and their journey. And we’ve made that mentoring exist for every student in our highest-minority, highest-poverty school. Central office staff — in finance and HR and facilities — are all mentoring a student. Their role is to ensure that student will graduate. That first year we had over 70 percent of our students within the program graduate, and the next year we had 80 percent. In fact, it’s part of how we eliminated the racial graduation gap — by having great intentionality with focusing on the individual connection with our students and letting them know that there are people who can surround you with understanding and support and who are willing to remove barriers with you.
To really make this happen, we have had to increase our counselors, so we now have double the counselors that we’ve had in the past. We’ve reprioritized how we spend our budget, our title budget, and our general operating budget to ensure that we have adequate wraparound support for students. There has to be a great deal of intentionality so that when a student says, “I’m done, and I choose to give up,” there is someone ready to say, “I love you, and that is not an option. I’m going to make sure that you make it. We’re going to walk through this together.” We all work to see the individual and to connect to that student in deeper way, so that we truly feel — “if you don’t do well, I don’t do well.”
Works Cited
Rebora, Anthony. 2019. “Widening the Lens: A Conversation with Beverly Daniel Tatum.” Educational Leadership 76 (May): 30–33. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr19/vol76/num07/Widening-the-Lens@-A-Conversation-with-Beverly-Daniel-Tatum.aspx
Dr. Tiffany Anderson, a long-time Kansas resident and the daughter of two pastors, has been a public school educator for over 26 years, with the majority of that time as superintendent. She has improved achievement and closed achievement gaps for students of poverty in rural, urban and suburban public school districts. As a superintendent in Virginia, Dr. Anderson led Montgomery County Public Schools in earning the Virginia Governor’s Competence to Excellence Award and after leading as superintendent in Missouri, the Washington Post referred to Dr. Anderson as, “The Woman who made schools work for the poor.” Dr. Anderson became the first African-American female superintendent of Topeka Public Schools, in Topeka, Kansas where the landmark Brown vs. Board case ended legal segregation. Under Dr. Anderson’s leadership, Topeka Public Schools doubled their college course offerings, student attendance increased above 90%, ACT participation increased, and achievement scores have increased across the district. Recently, Kansas Governor, Laura Kelly, appointed Dr. Anderson to serve on the Postsecondary Technical Education Authority (TEA), which was established in 2007, functioning as part of the Kansas Board of Regents.
