Panel Sounds Alarm On Future of City’s Schools

The future of New York City’s public schools was up for discussion Tuesday night at a Teachers College symposium on equal education opportunities.

The third annual symposium, hosted by the Campaign for Educational Equity, focused on two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the cases of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.
Both took place this past June and struck down voluntary racial balancing plans.

CEE director Michael Rebell condemned the decisions, but said, “You have moments when you think the game is over, but there is life after bad Supreme Court decisions.”
“Democracy and the role of the economy are dependent on the issue of education,” said Neil Komesar, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin. “The eye of various political groups has been turned when concerned with the judiciary.”

Panelists discussed persistent racial disparities in public education. By the end of high school, black and Hispanic students’ reading and math skills are roughly the same as those of white students in the eighth grade. Members of the audience also pointed out that more money does not necessarily improve student performance and said that other measures should be taken.

“Success must be sustained, there cannot just be a great reform a year after the case,” Rebell said. Rebell was a lawyer for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in its lengthy court battle which eventually succeeded in securing billions of dollars in state funding for New York City public school.

“Without the courts’ help, we can’t solve the problems of inner-city schooling,” Rebell said. “We are at a crossroads. The federal courts seem to be closing the door on possibilities for racial integration at the same time that state judges throughout the country are aggressively enforcing students’ rights to a basic, quality education.”

Those who organized and participated in the symposium said they hoped to find a way to use the law to advance educational equality. “We need to put our heads together and think,” said Susan Sturm, Professor of Law and Social Responsibility at Columbia Law School. “Law is only as meaningful as its implication on the ground.”

Brooke Mazurek can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.