Two Steps Backward

In 1967 Kenneth B. Clark, a psychologist, professor at the City College of New York, and a social activist, presented a paper to the National Conference on Equal Educational Opportunity in America’s Cities.

Clark asserted that American public education suffered from “pervasive and persistent” inefficiency, particularly in the schools provided for African-American and other underprivileged children. After discussing the obstacles to “effective, nonracially constrained” education, the author proposed a strategy for providing excellent education in ghetto schools in conjunction with efforts to bring about effective school desegregation. According to Clark, because the current patterns of public school organization were themselves a principal factor in inhibiting efforts to improve the quality of education, it would be necessary, he contended, to find “realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors” to the present public schools.

Clark writes,

“It is now clear that American public education is organized and functions along social and economic class lines. A bi-racial public school system wherein approximately 90 per cent of American children are required to attend segregated schools is one of the clearest manifestations of this basic fact. The difficulties encountered in attempting to desegregate public schools in the South as well as in the North point to the tenacity of the forces seeking to prevent any basic change in the system.”

“The class and social organization of American public schools is consistently associated with a lower level of educational efficiency in the less privileged schools. This lower efficiency is expressed in terms of the fact that the schools attended by Negro and poor children have less adequate educational facilities than those at[1]tended by more privileged children. Teachers tend to resist assignments in Negro and other underprivileged schools and generally function less adequately in these schools. Their morale is generally lower; they are not adequately supervised; they tend to see their students as less capable of learning. The parents of the children in these schools are usually unable to bring about any positive changes in the conditions of these schools.”

“The pervasive and persistent educational inefficiency which characterizes these schools results in:

(1) marked and cumulative academic retardation in a disproportionately high percentage of these children, beginning in the third or fourth grade and increasing through the eighth grade;

(2) a high percentage of dropouts in the junior and senior high schools of students unequipped academically and occupationally for a constructive role in society;

(3) a pattern of rejection and despair and hopelessness resulting in massive human wastage.”

“Given these conditions, American public schools have become significant instruments in the blocking of economic mobility and in the intensification of class distinctions rather than fulfilling their historic function of facilitating such mobility. In effect, the public schools have become captives of a middle class who have failed to use them to aid others to move into the middle class. It might even be possible to interpret the role of the controlling middle class as that of using the public schools to block further mobility.”

“What are the implications of this existing educational inefficiency? In the national interest, it is a serious question whether the United States Government can afford the continuation of the wastage of human resources at this period of world history. Although we cannot conclusively demonstrate a relation between educational inefficiency and other symptoms of personal and social pathology such as crime, delinquency, and pervasive urban decay, there is strong evidence that these are correlates.”

But Clark is careful not to endorse racially segregated schools – for any race. Clark writes,

“Within the past two years another formidable and insidious barrier in the way of the movement towards effective, desegregated public schools has emerged in the form of the black power movement and its demands for racial separatism. Some of the more vocal of the black power advocates who have addressed themselves to the problems of education have explicitly and implicitly argued for Negroes’ control of “Negro Schools.” Some have asserted that there should be separate school districts organized to control the schools in all-Negro residential areas; that there should be Negro Boards of Education, Negro superintendents of schools, Negro faculty, and Negro curricula and materials. These demands are clearly a rejection of the goals of integrated education and a return to the pursuit of the myth of an efficient “separate but equal”—or the pathetic wish for a separate and superior —racially-organized system of education. One may view this current trend whereby some Negroes themselves seem to be asking for a racially segregated system of education as a reflection of the frustration resulting from white resistance to genuine desegregation of the public schools since the Brown decision and as a reaction to the reality that the quality of education in the de facto segregated Negro schools in the North and the Negro schools in the South has steadily deteriorated under the present system of white control.”

“In spite of these explanations, the demands for segregated schools can be no more acceptable coming from Negroes than they are coming from the contention that all-Negro schools, controlled by Negroes, will be any more efficient in preparing American children to contribute constructively to the realities of the present and future world. The damage inherent in racially isolated schools was persuasively documented by the comprehensive study conducted by the United States Commission on Civil Rights. [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967)]”

Clark’s solution to this problem? Alternatives to the traditional public school system, and lots of them.

Clark writes,

“Alternatives—realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors—to the present public school systems must be found. The development of such competitive public school systems will be attacked by the defenders of the present system as attempts to weaken the present system and thereby weaken, if not destroy, public education. This type of expected self-serving argument can be briefly and accurately disposed of by asserting and demonstrating that truly effective competition strengthens rather than weakens that which deserves to survive. I would argue further that public education need not be identified with the present system of organization of public schools. Public education can be more broadly and pragmatically defined in terms of that form of organization and functioning of an educational system which is in the public interest. Given this definition, it becomes clear that an in[1]efficient system of public systems is not in the public interest:

—a system of public schools which destroys rather than develops positive human potentialities is not in the public interest;

—a system which consumes funds without demonstrating effective returns is not in the public interest;

—a system which insists that its standards of performance should not or cannot be judged by those who must pay the cost is not in the public interest;

—a system which says that the public has no competence to assert that a patently defective product is a sign of the system’s inefficiency and demands radical reforms is not in the public interest;

—a system which blames its human resources and its society while it quietly acquiesces in, and inadvertently perpetuates, the very injustices which it claims limit its efficiency is not in the public interest.

Given these assumptions, therefore, it follows that alternative forms of public education must be developed if the children of our cities are to be educated and made constructive members of our society. In the development of alternatives, all attempts must at the same time be made to strengthen our present urban public schools. Such attempts would involve re-examination, revision, and strengthening of curricula, methods, personnel selection, and evaluation; the development of more rigorous procedures of supervision, reward of superior performance, and the institution of a realistic and tough system of accountability, and the provision of meaningful ways of involving the parents and the community in the activities of the school.”

It seems the charter school movement in this country, over 50 years old now, was an attempt to meet Kenneth Clark’s call for alternative forms of public schooling. But much of the charter school system has either turned into boutique enterprises or has produced as many failing schools as the traditional system.

Maybe learning pods and microschools, managed by caring parents, are a better pathway to true alternative public education. But a major roadblock – public funding – lies in the path of poor families, primarily African-American and Hispanic, accessing this type of learning model.

What’s amazing here, and sad at the same time, is that it seems this country isn’t any closer to offering a quality learning experience to all our children – no matter their race or class – than we were fifty years ago.

Til tomorrow. SVB