There’s no doubt, as a lawsuit filed against the state of Mississippi alleges, that public education creates unequal opportunities and unequal outcomes.
The question is how much responsibility the state bears for this.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s case, filed on behalf of four black mothers with children in public elementary schools, claims that Mississippi has for more than a century violated an 1870 federal law that allowed the state to rejoin the Union.
The suit says the 1870 law requires Mississippi to provide a uniform system of free public schools for all children. But the suit claims the state’s 1890 Constitution changed that mandate to effectively create a white supremacist effort to deny black students a full and proper education — and the effect continues today.
Where to start poking holes in this trial balloon? Let’s look at the timing first. The lawsuit seems about half a century late, since Mississippi, resistant to the end, integrated the last of its public schools in 1970 after a sharp rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Segregated schools, with larger shares of spending on white students, were inherently unfair. Since then, the many thousands of black students who have graduated from Mississippi high schools — some from the poorest counties in the state — and gone on to better things cast a cloud on the claim that there is no state and local effort to provide a good education.
Put another way, if the white supremacists are still running the show, they have failed miserably at keeping greater numbers of black people from improving their lives.
Now, there’s no sense being naive. Black education achievement in Mississippi is noticeably lower when compared to white students. More black students drop out of school. Standardized test scores of black students are lower, as is overall achievement.
The outcomes certainly are unequal, and there is much work to be done to reach anything near parity. But short of removing all local control of public school districts, it’s hard to see how much difference the state can make.
A big complaint, and the topic of a separate case before the state Supreme Court, is that the Legislature has rarely fully funded the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which directs more state money to poorer districts.
There are a lot more pieces to this puzzle than money, however.
A key element, which the Southern Poverty Law Center overlooks, is the difficult family situations from which many struggling students come: single-parent households in which academics are a low priority. Also, many of the school districts with high numbers of failing students are also poorly managed and poorly staffed. These problems are more rooted in the quality of the labor pool and low expectations and low standards in these communities than it is in the level of school funding.
The state can only do so much, such as put 39 percent of its general fund into education and hold school boards and superintendents accountable for improving their results.
The rest has to be accomplished at the local level. Teachers and administrators have to be creative, and families must expect more of their children and be more involved in their education from Day 1. No lawsuit can force that.
The Greenwood Commonwealth
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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