The continuing history of racism in Portland Public Schools
July 1, 2008 12:24 pm
Sixty-one years after Mendez v. Westminster, 54 years after Brown v. Board of Education, 51 years after the Little Rock 9, 48 years after Ruby Bridges, 45 years after George Wallace caved to the national guard at the University of Alabama, 28 years after Ron Herndon stood on the school board desk and demanded equal opportunity for Portland’s black school children, and two years after city and county auditors demanded justification for effectively segregationist enrollment policies, Portland Public Schools have become more segregated than the neighborhoods they serve.
The school board refuses to answer the auditors, and shows no intention of changing the policies that have created the situation.
The segregation (or “racial isolation,” as the district calls it) would not be so objectionable, if it weren’t for the fact that schools in predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods have dramatically better offerings than the rest of Portland.
The desegregation plan hatched by Herndon’s Black United Front and pushed through by then-school board members Steve Buel, Herb Cawthorne and Wally Priestley in 1980 did away with forced busing of black children out of their neighborhoods, added staff to predominantly black schools, and created middle schools out of K-8 schools to better integrate students within their neighborhoods.
For several years, things clearly got better for non-white, non-middle class students in PPS. Then the nation-wide gang crisis hit Portland in 1986, with white supremacist, Asian and black gangs wreaking havoc and contributing to a wave of white flight from Portland’s black neighborhoods and schools. This was followed by the draconian budget cuts of Oregon’s Measure 5 in 1990, which ended the extra staffing brought by the 1980 plan.
Under inconsistent funding and unstable central leadership throughout the 1990s, central control over curricular offerings devolved to the schools, and the gravity of a self-reinforcing pattern of out-transfers and program cuts became virtually insurmountable.
The devolution of curriculum was formalized under the leadership of Vicki Phillips in the early 2000s. Her administration pushed market-based reforms and “school choice” as a salve for the “achievement gap,” and used corporate grants to extend reconfiguration of high schools in poor neighborhoods into “small schools” which severely limited educational opportunities available to Portland’s poorest high school students.
(Small school conversions were tentatively under way at Marshall and Roosevelt when Phillips took office, but didn’t become the de facto model for non-white, non-middle class schools until Phillips pushed it through at Jefferson, against community wishes, and finally at Madison, casting aside the designs of veteran educators who had initiated the concept.)
A bond measure whose revenue was intended to restore music education to the core curriculum was instead frittered away in the form of discretionary grants to schools. Principals in poorer neighborhoods continued to put teaching resources into literacy and numeracy at the expense of art and music, while schools in white, middle class neighborhoods continued to offer a broad range of educational opportunity.
The Phillips administration also began to dismantle middle schools in poor neighborhoods, including, notably, Harriet Tubman Middle School, which was created under the 1980 desegregation plan. This move back to the K-8 model added significantly to the resegregation of middle school students.
It also turns out that middle schoolers in K-8 schools, who are disproportionately non-white and poor, get fewer educational opportunities at greater cost to the district. Predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods have, by and large, been allowed to stick with the comprehensive middle school model, which allows them to offer a much broader range of electives, arts and core curriculum at no additional cost.
So in 28 years, we have moved from a reasonable semblance of equal opportunity, with schools’ demographics reflecting their neighborhoods’, to a demonstrably “separate and unequal” system, with schools more segregated than their neighborhoods.
Current policy makers like to blame Measure 5 and the federal No Child Left Behind Act for the wildly distorted educational opportunities in the district, and they generally refuse to examine district policy in the context of the advances in equity that were realized 28 years ago.
PPS has managed to maintain pretty good schools in white, middle class neighborhoods through years of stark budget cuts, but they have left poor and minority children fighting over crumbs in the rest of Portland. Even as the steady march of gentrification makes our neighborhoods more integrated, our schools are more segregated than they were in the early 1980s.
When today’s school board speaks of “school choice,” the “achievement gap” or “equity,” they appear to speak in a historical vacuum. I hope to remind everybody of the context of PPS’s policies, and the continuum of institutional racism they are a part of. These policies are indeed racist in effect, no matter how they are rationalized or how they were originally intended.
And no matter how much they complain that their hands are tied, or how much they claim to be making progress by “baby steps,” the school board has total control over district policy. They could start rectifying this immediately if they wanted to. Yes, it’s hard — ask Steve Buel or Herb Cawthorne about their late-night sessions trying to push the 1980 desegregation plan through — but it can be done.
I know there are school board members who care deeply about equal opportunity. They may even be in the majority, depending on who is appointed to replace Dan Ryan.
But nobody on today’s school board has demonstrated the political courage or vision necessary to stand up for all children in Portland Public Schools.
With baby steps, we will never get where we need to go. Bold, visionary action is required.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
filed under: Equity, Features, K-8 Transistion, No Child Left Behind, Program cuts, Reform, School Board, Segregation, Transfer Policy
July 1st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Steve,
This post should be a “sticky”. It should be required reading upon first discovering this site.
Thanks
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Excellent!!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for providing some historical context! I agree with Whitebuffalo that this should remain front-page reading on the site. I also like that you added photos from the previous school segregation era to the masthead.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Indeed, Steve, you are right that it is long past time we take this School Board to task over these so-called “baby steps.” They have evidently forgotten that “baby steps” are for BABIES!!! How can these seven ADULTS, who are charged with the educational welfare of over 40,000 children, even say this with a straight face? All of these “baby steps” added together haven’t even gotten them out of the starting gate!
Well, if we’re gonna play “Mother May I,” it’s obvious that we are overdue for some GIANT STEPS.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Good historical overview, Steve, especially the link to the piece about Herndon and the Education Crisis Team.
One part of the desegregation plan hammered out by the school board you failed to mention, however, was the addition of school choice– neighborhood to neighborhood school choice– which bears primary responsibility, as I see it, for decimating the schools it was supposed to help integrate.
And that’s the only element of the plan still in effect. Middle schools in poor neighborhoods have disappeared, as has additional staffing for poor and under-enrolled schools.
I’ve come to believe that segregated schools in and of themselves are not necessarily a bad thing as long as they’re able to attract motivated students with good curricular programs, good teachers, and adequate staffing. That obviously hasn’t happened.
And it will never happen as long as school choice and open enrollment continue to siphon kids away to schools with better students and more comprehensive offerings.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
According to Buel, the school choice piece, as well as the Jefferson magnet program, existed before the Black United Front’s 1980 desegregation plan was implemented.
Like I said in the original, “The segregation… would not be so objectionable, if it weren’t for the fact that schools in predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods have dramatically better offerings than the rest of Portland.”
Honestly, I probably wouldn’t object at all if we had equal opportunities in non-white schools, and if the schools weren’t more segregated than the neighborhoods they serve.
That’s just fundamentally wrong.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Steve:
Powerful, truthful piece on the shame of our school system, and how it is simply indefensible and unjustifiable to continue down this path in the name of “choice”.
Thanks to Steve Buel, Herb Cawthorne, Wally Priestly and Ron Herndon - who had the courage in the past to do the right thing at that time to ensure equity for every child in PPS.
Which current school board member(s) will have the courage to throw out the disastrous policies that have led many of our children to this desolate educational state - with their futures being thrown to the wind?
Thank you Steve!
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Nancy,
You know it ain’t gonna happen. That would be admitting that the Phillips administration was a disaster. Unfortunately, the “business community” still views her as the savior of PPS. Their strong influence was why this Board gave her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted, regardless of the impact on STUDENTS.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Terry, here is a clarification on the original school choice. You could transfer if it didn’t impact the segregation of the school. i.e. a black kid could transfer to a school which was predominately white, and a white kid could transfer to a school which was predominately black, but a white kid couldn’t transfer to a school which was predominately white. It was a transfer policy but there were some controls on it. And it wasn’t part of the desegregation plan — it was in place prior to the plan. Also, there were federal guidelines that were supposed to be met, but we went against these when we put Harriet Tubman in the black community and allowed kids to return to their neighborhood schools in the black community. There were quite a few racist policies going on at the time and we tried to eliminate all these. For instance, if you were white and you transferred to a school in the black community then you could return at anytime if you wanted to. But if you were black and transferred out of the black community parents had to sign a paper saying their children wouldn’t transfer back.
July 4th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Steve B.
Sounds like subsequent PPS “leaders” have gone out of their way to undermine your attempts to provide quality education to students living in poor and minority neighborhoods.
I don’t think “racist policies” is too harsh a term to describe the efforts to undermine equitable educational opportunities for poor and minority kids, whether intentional or not.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I love the new look. Thank you for doing what you do!
July 10th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Steve, I sincerely appreciate your intelligent historical perspective on inherantly racist practices in PPS. I would invite you to witness as I do as someone working on the inside at Madison High School how administrators low expectations for black students plays itself out in the halls from one period to the next. White kids are expected to be in class while our black students are out in the halls with no apparent oversight from the administrator team. Referrals for students of color happen but there is a fear that the school will have a bad rating if referrals result in suspension. Going soft on black students for fear of reprisal is racist as it sends the message that those white adminstrator’s have low expectations for these students. There is a difference between allowing for cutural diversity and tolerating and neglecting a student’s education. Teachers quickly learn that their attempts at accountability are going to be met with neglect when they write referrals on student behavior and so they give up and stop writing referrals and students get away with unacceptable behavior. I have even witnessed our black security guard giving up in discouragement when trying to keep students in class knowing that they are not going to treated in the same manner as the white students. Disgusting, disturbing and frustrating.