Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars

by Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Series: Segregation Academies:Decades After Desegregation, Private Schools Still Divide

More in this series

Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.

In North Carolina alone, we identified 39 of these likely “segregation academies” that are still operating and that have received voucher money. Of these, 20 schools reported student bodies that were at least 85% white in a 2021-22 federal survey of private schools, the most recent data available.

Those 20 academies, all founded in the 1960s and 1970s, brought in more than $20 million from the state in the past three years alone. None reflected the demographics of their communities. Few even came close.

Northeast Academy, a small Christian school in rural Northampton County on the Virginia border, is among them. As of the 2021-22 survey, the school’s enrollment was 99% white in a county that runs about 40% white.

Every year since North Carolina launched its state-funded private school voucher program in 2014, the academy has received more and more money. Last school year, it received about $438,500 from the program, almost half of its total reported tuition. Northeast is on track to beat that total this school year.

Vouchers play a similar role at Lawrence Academy, an hour’s drive south. It has never reported Black enrollment higher than 3% in a county whose population hovers around 60% Black. A small school with less than 300 students, it received $518,240 in vouchers last school year to help pay for 86 of those students.

Farther south, Pungo Christian Academy has received voucher money every year since 2015 and, as of the last survey, had become slightly more white than when the voucher program began. It last reported a student body that was 98% white in a county that was 65% white.

Segregation academies that remain vastly white continue to play an integral role in perpetuating school segregation — and, as a result, racial separation in the surrounding communities. We found these academies benefiting from public money in Southern states beyond North Carolina. But because North Carolina collects and releases more complete data than many other states, it offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-style programs.

Called Opportunity Scholarships, North Carolina’s voucher program launched in 2014. At first, it was only for low-income families and had barely more than 1,200 participants. Then last fall, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school, a move that sparked furious debate over the future of public education.

“We are ensuring that every child has the chance to thrive,” Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham argued. But Democratic Rep. Julie von Haefen pointed to vouchers’ “legacy of white supremacy” and called the expansion “a gross injustice to the children of North Carolina.”

So many students flocked to the program that the state now has a waitlist of about 54,000 children. Paying for all of them to receive vouchers — at a cost of $248 million — would more than double the current number of participants in the program. Republicans in the General Assembly, along with three Democrats, passed a bill in September to do just that.

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the measure. But the GOP supermajority is expected to override it before the year’s end, perhaps as early as Nov. 19.

Opportunity Scholarships don’t always live up to their name for Black children. Private schools don’t have to admit all comers. Nor do they have to provide busing or free meals. Due to income disparities, Black parents also are less likely to be able to afford the difference between a voucher that pays at most $7,468 a year and an annual tuition bill that can top $10,000 or even $20,000.

And unlike urban areas that have a range of private schools, including some with diverse student bodies, segregation academies are the only private schools available in some rural counties across the South.

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State, studies these barriers and sees where vouchers fall short for some: “Eligibility does not mean access.”

Of the 20 vastly white segregation academies we identified that received voucher money in North Carolina, nine were at least 30 percentage points more white than the counties in which they operate, based on 2021-22 federal survey and census data.

Otis Smallwood, superintendent of the Bertie County Schools in rural northeastern North Carolina, witnesses this kind of gulf in the district he leads. So many white children in the area attend Lawrence Academy and other schools that his district’s enrollment runs roughly 22 percentage points more Black than the county overall.

He said he tries not to be political. But he feels the brunt of an intensifying Republican narrative against public schools, which still educate most of North Carolina’s children. “It’s been chipping, chipping, chipping, trying to paint this picture that public schools are not performing well,” Smallwood said. “It’s getting more and more and more extreme.”

When a ProPublica reporter told him that Lawrence Academy received $518,240 last school year in vouchers, he was dismayed: “That’s half a million dollars I think could be put to better benefit in public schools.”

If lawmakers override the governor’s veto to fund the waitlist, Smallwood’s district could suffer most. In a recent report, the Office of State Budget and Management projected Bertie County could lose more of its state funding than any other district — 1.6% next year.

Across the once legally segregated South, the volume of public money flowing through voucher-style programs is set to balloon in coming years. Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina all have passed new or expanded programs since 2023. (South Carolina’s state Supreme Court rejected its tuition grants in September, but GOP lawmakers are expected to try again with a revamped court.)

Voucher critics contend these programs will continue to worsen school segregation by helping wealthier white kids attend private schools; supporters argue they help more Black families afford tuition. But many of the states have made it hard to discern if either is happening by failing to require that the most basic demographic data be shared with the public — or even gathered.

This doesn’t surprise Cowen, who wrote the new book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.” He said Southern legislatures in particular don’t want to know what the data would show because the results, framed by a legacy of racism, could generate negative headlines and lawsuit fodder.

States know how to collect vast troves of education data. North Carolina in particular is lauded among global researchers for “the robustness and the richness of the data system for public schools,” Cowen said.

North Carolina and Alabama are among the states that have gathered demographic information about voucher recipients but won’t tell the public the race of students who use them to attend a given school. In North Carolina, a spokesperson said doing so could reveal information about specific students, making that data not a public record under the Opportunity Scholarship statue.

For its $120 million tax credit program, Georgia does not collect racial demographic information or per-school spending. ProPublica was able to identify 20 segregation academies that signed up to take part, but it’s unclear how many are receiving that money or what the racial breakdown is of the students who use it.

“Why should we not be allowed to know where the money is going? It’s a deliberate choice by those who pass these laws,” said Jessica Levin, director of Public Funds Public Schools, a national anti-voucher campaign led by the nonprofit Education Law Center. “There is a lack of transparency and accountability.”

Advocacy groups that support widespread voucher use have resisted some rules that foster greater transparency out of concern that they might deter regulation-averse private schools from participating. Mike Long, president of the nonprofit Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, is among those trying to rally as much private school buy-in for vouchers as possible.

“Their fear is that if they accept it, these are tax dollars, and therefore they would have to submit to government regulation,” Long said. “We’ve lobbied this legislature, and I think they understand it very well, that you can’t tie regulation to this.”

The share of Black students who have received vouchers in North Carolina has dropped significantly since the program's launch. In 2014, more than half the recipients were Black. This school year, the figure is 17%.

That share is unlikely to increase if lawmakers fund all 54,000 students on the waiting list. Because lower-income families were prioritized for vouchers, the applicants who remain on the list are mostly in higher income tiers — and those families are more likely to be white.

More Black parents don’t apply for vouchers because they don’t know about them, said Kwan Graham, who oversees parent liaisons for Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina.

Graham, who is Black, said parents haven’t voiced to her concerns that, “I’m Black, they don’t want me” at their local private schools. But she’s also not naive. Private schools can largely select — and reject — who they want.

The nonprofit Public Schools First NC has tallied admissions policies that private schools receiving vouchers use to reject applicants based on things like sexuality, religion and disability. Many also require in-person interviews or tours. Rather than overtly rejecting students based on race, which the voucher program prohibits, schools might say something like, “Come visit the school and see if you’re the ‘right fit,’” said Heather Koons, the nonprofit’s communications and research director.

Northeast Academy, Lawrence Academy and Pungo Christian all include nondiscrimination statements on their websites.

Back when segregation academies opened, some white leaders proudly declared their goal of preserving segregation. Others shrouded their racist motivations. Some white parents complained about federal government overreach and what they deemed social agendas and indoctrination in public schools. Even as violent backlash against integration erupted across the region, many white parents framed their decisions as quests for quality education, morality and Christian education, newspaper coverage and school advertisements from the time show.

Early on, Southern lawmakers found a way to use taxpayer money to give these academies a boost: They created school voucher programs that went chiefly to white students.

Courts ruled against or restricted the practice in the 1960s. But it didn’t really end.

“If you look at the history of the segregation movement, they wanted vouchers to prop up segregation academies,” said Bryan Mann, a University of Kansas professor who studies school segregation. “And now they’re getting vouchers in some of these areas to prop up these schools.”

More recently, Lawrence and Northeast academies both grew their enrollments while receiving voucher money even as the rural counties where they operate have lost population. Over three decades of responding to the federal private schools survey, both academies have reported enrolling almost no nonwhite children. And Pungo Christian has raised its average tuition by almost 50% over the past three school years. During that time, the small school has received almost $500,000 in vouchers.

None of the three academies’ headmasters responded to ProPublica’s request to discuss its findings or to lists of questions. And none have ever reported more than 3% Black enrollment despite operating in counties with substantial — even majority — Black populations.

One of the Democrats who helped Republicans expand North Carolina’s voucher program was Shelly Willingham, a Black representative whose district includes Bertie County, home of Lawrence Academy. He said he doesn’t love vouchers, but the bills have included funding for issues he does support.

He also said he encourages his constituents to take advantage of the vouchers. If there were any effort to make it more difficult for Black students to attend those schools, “then I would have a big problem,” Willingham said. “I don’t see that.”

Another Democrat who voted with Republicans was state Rep. Michael Wray, a white businessman and former House minority whip — who graduated from Northeast Academy.

Wray, whose voting record on vouchers over the years has been mixed, did not respond to multiple ProPublica requests to discuss his views. In 2013, he voted against the budget bill that established the Opportunity Scholarships. And in a recent Q&A with the local Daily Herald newspaper, when asked if he supports taxpayer money funding private schools, he responded: “I believe that when you siphon funds away from our public school budgets, it undermines the success of our schools overall.”

Rodney Pierce, a Black 46-year-old father and public school teacher, saw the voucher expansion in the state budget bill Wray voted for and felt history haunt him. Pierce had only one white student in his classes last year at Gaston STEM Leadership Academy. But about 30 miles across the rural county, white children filled Northeast Academy.

Pierce taught history, with a deep interest in civil rights. He’d studied the voucher programs that white supremacists crafted to help white families flee to segregation academies.

“This stuff was in the works back in the 1960s,” Pierce said.

He was so outraged that he challenged Wray, a 10-term incumbent, for his state House seat. Pierce won the Democratic primary earlier this year by just 34 votes. He faced no opponent in November, so come next year he will cut the House’s support of vouchers by one vote.

“Particularly in the Black community, we care about our public schools,” he said.

Many Black families also have little to no relationship with their local private schools, especially those that opened specifically for white children and are still filled with them. The only times Pierce had set foot on Northeast Academy’s campus was when he covered a few sporting events there for the local newspaper.

People there were nice to him, he said, but he felt anxious: “You’re in an academy you know was started by people who didn’t want their children to go to school with Black children.”

His own three kids attend public schools. Even with vouchers, he said, he wouldn’t send them to a school founded as a segregation academy, much less one that still fosters segregation. He finds it insulting to force taxpayers, including the Black residents he will soon represent — about half of the people in his district — to pay to send other people’s children to these schools.

How a Stacked Supreme Court Killed School Desegregation

The Washington Post published an opinion piece the other day by Michelle Adams, who has published a new book on the segregation-friendly role played by the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court 50 years ago in Milliken v. Bradley. 

Even as we consider today the role that presidents play in shaping American social policy (see Trump's role in killing Roe v. Wade), I am eager to read the Adams book and find out how Professor Adams portrayed the role of another racist president, Richard Nixon, in crushing school desegregation.   

Nixon's role was crucial, as demonstrated by Gerald Grant's research from the early 2000s.  In 2010, I reviewed Grant's book, Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh.

Below is the relevant section of that essay review that reminds us again of the power of the American Presidency to shape American life:

We should never underestimate the power of the presidents. Grant’s book should be required reading for present and potential school board members, as well as for any history or policy course on American education, if for no other reason than the recounting of how Nixon and his White House cabal of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell instituted a segregationist and anti-busing litmus test for any judge to be considered for appointment to the Federal bench, including the U. S. Supreme Court. 

For Nixon and his aides, their litmus test would be applied, of course, before any potential judge ever faced the lights of a Senate confirmation hearing. To get to the hearing, in fact, potential judges had to be on the side of segregated schools and segregated public housing. Grant shares transcripts from the Nixon’s White House taping system to show Nixon's active complicity in killing busing within or across districts for the purpose of school integration:

Nixon was making sure the he would not have to ask any nominee about his stand on busing, while directing Mitchell and key aides to apply that test to any potential appointment they brought to the president's desk. Because of the possible retirement of a second justice, Mitchell suggested to Nixon that he might make a "double play."

Nixon: Well, even then I don'twant a liberal.

Mitchell: Oh no, no.Nixon: I don't want a liberal.

Mitchell: Absolutely not.

Nixon: I just feel so strongly about that, I mean, when I think what the busing decisions have done to the South, and what it could do with de facto busing [in the North]. 

Mitchell: I agree.

Before Mitchell left the White House that day, Nixon underlined his instructions once again: 

I want you to have a specific talk with whatever man you consider. And I have to have an absolute commitment from him on busing and integration. I really have to. Go out and tell 'em that we totally respect his right to do otherwise, but if he believes otherwise, I don't want to appoint him to the Court.

Nixon got the Court he wanted. The four justices he appointed—replacing liberal judges of the Warren Court, including Chief Justice Earl Warren himself, along with Abe Fortas, Hugo Black, and John Marshall Harlan—radically changed the direction of the U. S. Supreme Court and provided the majority to stop desegregation at the city line in the North. The Warren Court had ordered desegregation of city and suburbs in Charlotte in 1968, but Nixon's Court refused to do so in 1974 in Detroit with its majority decision [in Milliken v. Bradley] (pp. 151-152).

The 5-4 decision to strike down Detroit's inter-district desegregation plan helped to seal the fate of urban desegregation efforts nationwide, while demonstrating a willingness by the new Nixon Court majority to flex its judicial muscle for the cause of segregation. By the middle of the next decade, the traceable resegregation of American schools had begun in earnest, and for the past twenty years [now fifty], that pace has only quickened.

How Six Conservative Zealots in Black Robes May Have Gravely Injured A Racist and Classist Testing System

The 6-3 decision this week by the majority on the U. S. White Supremacist Court to kill affirmative action in college admissions underscores an elite antiquarian fixation as old and as morally debauched as the white supremacist plantation owners of the antebellum South.  

By stepping backwards toward a return of an apartheid Jim Crow society, this time attempting to hide its hideous naked racism behind the fig leaf of color-blindness, today's white power structure, ironically, may accomplish a feat that generations of social progressives and anti-racist education reform have been unable to pull off: the eventual elimination of racist and classist standardized testing for any high stakes purpose--be it at the individual or the institutional level).  

From the ACT and SAT up to the GRE and LSAT, and down to the TCAP and MCAS and a slew of other state exams suffered each year by K-12 students, this malign decision to kill affirmative action by the six right-wing radicals on the Court will highlight the roadblocks standardized tests impose on marginalized students, whether from income or ethnicity. 

To the extent that higher ed institutions continue, moving forward, their efforts to promote diversity among their student bodies, such tests, I predict, will be minimized or dropped entirely from admissions criteria (as they have been already in California's state colleges in universities).

Of course, in states with white nationalist super-majorities controlling legislatures, don't expect state institutions to be allowed any strategy to block the proliferation of the kinds of testing tools that have been used for over a hundred years to assure the dominance of a phony meritocracy based on white privilege and the oppression of minoritized groups.

New Study Reveals School Racial and Economic Segregation

 NEW STUDY: First-Of-Its-Kind Analysis Reveals Widespread Racial, Economic Segregation In U.S. Schools, Ranks Most Segregated Cities

Six decades after Brown v. Board, segregation between Black and white students remains very severe in 10 percent of metro areas, significant in others

The most severely racially and economically segregated metro areas include New York City, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Newark

(New York, NY) — More than six decades after Brown v. Board, many students across the country still attend schools that are heavily segregated, both racially and economically. A new, first-of-its-kind analysis, published today by The Century Foundation, provides a uniquely detailed look at the current state of school segregation across all U.S. metropolitan areas. The results are alarming: segregation is still persistent across the country and our biggest metropolitan areas see particularly high rates of segregation between Black and white students, and between those who are lower-income and more affluent. 

Accompanying the study is a new tool, produced in partnership with the Segregation Index, led by Ann Owens from the University of Southern California and Sean Reardon from Stanford University, that allows users to dig into just how severe segregation is in their area—and what causes are behind it. The School Segregation Data Dashboard, also published today, includes data from public and private schools in all 403 metropolitan areas across the country, presented in an interactive map that shows local segregation levels as well as larger trends across the country.

“While it’s no secret that many students still experience segregation within their schools, the severity of that segregation in many metropolitan areas is shocking, and should prompt policymakers to act,” said Halley Potter, TCF senior fellow and the study’s author. “Data is essential for addressing such a pervasive problem, and what we’ve learned from this new analysis is that segregation looks very different in New York than it does in California, and in every area in between. This level of data allows us not only to better understand the causes of segregation in certain areas, but also to determine how best to address it.”

TCF’s analysis measures segregation by race and ethnicity, as well as by income, using the variance ratio segregation index, which allows researchers to compare the difference between two groups of students in their exposure to students from one of the groups. For example, a variance ratio of zero for Black-white segregation means that every school in that area would have the exact same racial composition, and a measure of one means that Black and white students would be totally isolated. “Very severe” segregation exists, in terms of this study, in areas with variance ratios larger than 0.5, meaning they are closer to being entirely segregated than entirely integrated. 

Key findings from the study include:

National Trends

• Metro areas have particularly high levels of segregation between Black and white students 

• In 10 percent of all metro areas, Black-white segregation levels are “very severe” (variance ratios higher than 0.5), meaning schools are closer to being entirely segregated than to fully integrated

• Segregation levels between white students and students of other races are less stark, but still significant across the country 

• On average, the difference between the percentage of white students at the average white student’s school and at the average non-white student’s school in the same area is 21 percentage points

• Economic segregation is also widespread, and students of color (Black students in particular) have higher average rates of poverty

• The rate of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch is 16 percentage points higher at the average Black student’s school than the average white student’s school in the same metro area

• School segregation is most extreme in the Northeast, where both racial and economic segregation are more pronounced

• Segregation between school districts causes much of this regional segregation, and is the largest driver of segregation nationally 

Cities and Metro Areas with Most Severe Segregation

• The New York City and Milwaukee metropolitan areas stand out as especially segregated 

• The study includes six lists of the 10 most segregated areas across six types of segregation

• New York City and Milwaukee appear in the ten most segregated areas on two-thirds of these lists 

• Chicago, Newark, and Philadelphia also have high levels of segregation across many groups, appearing on half of the most segregated lists

• Boston, Detroit, Oakland, and Los Angeles, among others, come in behind these cities, and rank among the top ten most segregated areas by several metrics

• Segregation of different racial groups of students varies across the country

• Detroit has the highest levels of segregation between white and all non-white students

• Milwaukee has the highest levels of school segregation among Black and white students, while Philadelphia is most segregated between Hispanic and white students

• California is home to the most segregated schools between White and Asian students (Napa) and white and American Indian students (El Centro)

• The Newark area has the highest levels of economic segregation 

“These findings point to many different types, and severities, of segregation across our country, but they also reveal something essential for policymakers: much of our country’s segregation is driven by segregation between school districts,” said Ann Owens, associate professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and one of the leaders of the Segregation Index. “Solving this problem is particularly complex, as it will require conversations at all levels of government. Local leaders within a district have few tools to address segregation across district lines on their own—leadership to address interdistrict segregation must come from the state or federal level.”

While interdistrict segregation is the largest driver of segregation, and most prevalent in the Northeast and Midwest, other factors, such as segregation within districts and among private and charter schools, also contribute to segregation. The report and interactive map reveal the complex realities of segregation in U.S. schools, and should prompt policymakers at all levels of government to take action.

###

The Century Foundation (TCF) is a progressive, independent think tank that conducts research, develops solutions, and drives policy change to make people’s lives better. We pursue economic, racial, and gender equity in education, health care, and work, and promote U.S. foreign policy that fosters international cooperation, peace, and security. TCF is based in New York, with an office in Washington, D.C. Follow the organization on Twitter at @TCFdotorg and learn more at www.tcf.org.

-- 

McKenzie Maxson (she/her/hers)

Press Secretary

The Century Foundation

2000 M Street NW, 7th Floor, Washington DC 20036

C: 937.789.4606 @mckenziemmaxson

Tennessee's Racist Governor, Bill Lee, Commemorates Nathan B. Forrest

Along with Tennessee's governor, Trump voters yesterday commemorated the contributions of Confederate general, war criminal, and first Grand Wizard of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest.  On Wednesday, Lee signed the proclamation:

"I signed the bill because the law requires that I do that and I haven’t looked at changing that law," Lee said Thursday.   

He declined to say whether he believed state law should be changed to no longer require the governor to issue such proclamations or whether he had reservations about doing so.

So egregious was this act that even Ted Cruz called out Tennessee's governor this week.  Now when your governor is to the right of Ted Cruz, you know you're in trouble.

This latest assault on decency is a reminder of how far we haven't come in so much of the South (and elsewhere).

Now for the quiz: What does Tennessee have in common with Mississippi and New York?

Answer: All three are among the ten states with the highest levels of segregated schools.

See excellent piece today in the NY Times.

A Half Century of Segregated Schools in NYC

Important piece of journalism today in the Times.  Here's a clip:

New York City is starkly different today than it was 50 years ago. It is politically more liberal, and far more racially diverse. Yet one aspect has barely changed: The city’s public schools remain among the most segregated in the nation. 

The deep racial divide was highlighted last week, when eighth graders who had taken the specialized high school admission test received offers to attend New York’s highly selective public high schools. The statistics were striking: out of 895 slots in Stuyvesant High School’s freshman class, only seven were offered to black students. 

Racial and socio-economic segregation is even more pronounced in some parts of the city now than it was a five decades ago, though research released in the intervening years has shown that integration benefits all children. . . .

Trump Nominee for Federal Court Mum on School Segregation

We know there are millions of unacknowledged white supremacists who do not support race mixing.  The evidence is all around us in policy and practices in housing, schooling, and even praying.  What we don't expect, however, is a Klan-friendly nominee for a federal judgeship who will not offer even verbal support for school integration: 

(CNN)Wendy Vitter, one of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees, refused on Wednesday to say whether a landmark civil rights opinion was correctly decided, triggering outrage and renewed criticism of the President's efforts to reshape the judiciary.

At issue was Brown v. the Board of Education -- a seminal opinion that held that state laws requiring separate but equal schools violated the Constitution.

"I don't mean to be coy," Vitter, who is up for a seat on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said at her confirmation hearing, "but I think I can get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions -- which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with." . . .

DeVos Takes Racist Stupidity to New Heights

White lady billionaire, Betsy DeVos, has moved beyond grizzly bears and guns to explore a whole new territory in the Trumpist landscape of racist delusion.  In describing the origins of historically black colleges and universities as an example of "school choice," DeVos shows that, 1) she is as ignorant as most people suspect, or 2) she is ideologically driven to turn a huge element of the historic black struggle for education into a minstrel sideshow to mis-educate an audience stupid enough to believe what she says.  This is from the Press Release yesterday:

. . . .A key priority for this administration is to help develop opportunities for communities that are often the most underserved. Rather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have done this since their founding. They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution.

HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish. . . .

What DeVos and the Trump crumbs demonstrate is a clear attempt to justify segregation as a choice that existed when segregation was the only choice.  One option a choice does not make.  

In pretending that Jim Crow Era black citizens preferred segregated schools, DeVos attempts to rationalize the expanding resegregation of the poor, black, and brown in corporate welfare reform charters, or private schools desperate enough to accept a cheap voucher that no quality private school could accept as payment.

Such a public statement shows in ghastly detail what a civil wrong looks like when painted as a civil right.

SESSIONS, Jefferson Beauregard III (Jeff), (1946 - )

In the coming days, Congress will decide if a states rights segregationist from Alabama will be the next Attorney General of the United States.  

Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III has a long history of working to fortify the commitment to white supremacy in his state, and if Donald Trump gets his way, Sessions will bring his racist reading of the law to the national stage.  

If you have not seen this piece on Sessions' role in maintaining separate and unequal schools in Alabama, please take a moment to read it in order to understand why the Sessions appointment must be stopped.  

During the early 90s, Sessions, as State Attorney General of Alabama, led an effort to overturn a state court decision aimed to establish more equity in public school funding. 

. . . .Attorney General Sessions led the battle against the decision. He argued that Judge Reese had overreached. It was a familiar war cry on the segregationist right: An activist court was usurping the power of the state’s duly elected officials to solve the problem on their own. For the next two years, Mr. Sessions sought to discredit Judge Reese and overturn his ruling. In one of the twists of austerity budgeting in the mid-1990s, Mr. Sessions had laid off 70 lawyers in the attorney general’s office, and had to find outside counsel to handle the case. Lawyers working on contract for the office were to be paid no more than $85 per hour, but for the challenge to the equity case, the fee cap was lifted. . . .

Sessions' work on behalf in educational inequity earned him high marks among Alabama Republicans.  And even though Sessions' side lost the case when the Alabama Supreme Court sustained Judge Reese's ruling for more equitable funding, Sessions took his seat in the U. S. Senate, where he has raged against racial and social equality ever since.

I believe that stopping this appointment is much more important than stopping the DeVos nomination; DeVos or anyone else that Trump picks will be a puppet of the Walton Foundation, while Sessions will have at his disposal the legal assets of the federal government to promote injustice in every American institution.

Over 1,100 law school professors agree that Sessions has to be stopped:

A group of more than 1,100 law school professors from across the country is sending a letter to Congress on Tuesday urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general.

The letter, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, is also scheduled to run as a full-page newspaper ad aimed at members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be holding confirmation hearings for Sessions on Jan. 10-11.

“We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States,” states the letter, signed by prominent legal scholars including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law. . . .

Jeff Sessions, Alabama's Chief Segregationist

Before Jeff Sessions became a United States senator, he was Attorney General for the State of Alabama.  His chief accomplishment was to lead a battle against equal funding between white and black school districts in the state.  

Good preparation, no doubt, for his role as chief prosecutor and enforcer of segregation and social injustice at the federal level. 

From NYTimes:

. . . .Nearly 30 of Alabama’s poorest school districts, with support from disability rights groups, civil rights organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against the state. The most vocal critics of school reform, including the far-right activist Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, warned that it would bring “socialism” to Alabama.

After nearly three years of litigation, Judge Eugene W. Reese of the Alabama Circuit Court found the inequitable funding unconstitutional and ordered the state to come up with a system to remedy the inequity.

Attorney General Sessions led the battle against the decision. He argued that Judge Reese had overreached. It was a familiar war cry on the segregationist right: An activist court was usurping the power of the state’s duly elected officials to solve the problem on their own. For the next two years, Mr. Sessions sought to discredit Judge Reese and overturn his ruling. In one of the twists of austerity budgeting in the mid-1990s, Mr. Sessions had laid off 70 lawyers in the attorney general’s office, and had to find outside counsel to handle the case. Lawyers working on contract for the office were to be paid no more than $85 per hour, but for the challenge to the equity case, the fee cap was lifted.

Mr. Sessions was lauded by fellow Republicans for his efforts. They saw funding inequities as part of the natural order of things, not as a problem to be remedied. And any remedy would entail either the redistribution of funds from wealthier to poorer districts or an increase in taxes. Both positions ran against the small-government, privatization dogma that Mr. Sessions promoted. . . . .

Charter Solution Magnifies Segregation Problem

It is ironic that the ESEA, which was intended to break down school segregation, has been succeeded 60 years later by the latest version of the same legislation, now known as ESSA, which provides extra fuel to the segregation engine (charter schools).  A clip from the summary of a new study by the GAO.  Much more on this later:

The percentage of K-12 public schools in the United States with students who are poor and are mostly Black or Hispanic is growing and these schools share a number of challenging characteristics. From school years 2000-01 to 2013-14 (the most recent data available), the percentage of all K-12 public schools that had high percentages of poor and Black or Hispanic students grew from 9 to 16 percent, according to GAO's analysis of data from the Department of Education (Education). These schools were the most racially and economically concentrated: 75 to 100 percent of the students were Black or Hispanic and eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—a commonly used indicator of poverty. GAO's analysis of Education data also found that compared with other schools, these schools offered disproportionately fewer math, science, and college preparatory courses and had disproportionately higher rates of students who were held back in 9th grade, suspended, or expelled.

Charters Drive School Resegregation, Duke Study Finds

We have known for almost a decade that charter schools are more segregated (follow the links in this commentary) than the public schools they are replacing, and we have known much longer that diverse, inclusive classrooms are the most cost effective and just way to improve academic performance for all students.

We now have evidence that charter schools have become more segregated over the past 15 years, as all minority or all white charter schools have proliferated.  In North Carolina, for instance, white charters now resemble the white academies that sprang up in the wake of the 1964 Civl Rights Act, just as all black charters have become as common as they were during Jim Crow.

There is a big difference, however, between the black charters of today and black public schools of the 1950s and 1960s.  Even during Jim Crow, many black schools had black, caring, and professionally-trained teachers who understood the contexts of poverty and racism from which their students came.

With a primary concern for the whole child, those all-black schools were not laser focused on turning children into miniature Amazon workers, who are subjected to behavioral sterilization while producing test scores that build and protect charter school brands.

Another difference: today's black segregated charters are often staffed with white beginners with little, if any, professional preparation and with even less understanding of the challenges that disadvantaged children bring to school. These beginners represent the Amazon worker paradigm brought to tax-funded discriminatory schools. 

Below is part of a WaPo article that reports on a new Duke study that brings the resegregated charter school phenomenon up to date:

. . . .Setting aside the drama between charters and teachers unions, or complaints that charter schools lead to the privatization of public education, there has been the persistent critique that charters increase inequality by plucking advantaged students out of traditional public schools.

The most recent cautionary tale comes from North Carolina, where professors at Duke have traced a troubling trend of resegregation since the first charters opened in 1997. They contend that North Carolina’s charter schools have become a way for white parents to secede from the public school system, as they once did to escape racial integration orders.

"They appear pretty clearly to be a way for white students to get out of more racially integrated schools,” said economics professor Helen Ladd, one of the authors of the draft report released Monday.

Charter schools in North Carolina tend to be either overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white—in contrast to traditional public schools, which are more evenly mixed. Compare these charts from the report:

The bottom chart shows students that attend North Carolina’s regular public schools. There is a healthy variety of schools with different racial makeups. Only about 30 percent of students attend schools that are highly segregated, meaning schools that are more than 80 percent or less than 20 percent white.

The top chart shows students at North Carolina’s charter schools. More than two thirds attend schools that are highly segregated. You can see on the chart because the histogram has two humps, one at each racial extreme.

The charts also show how racial makeups have shifted over time. By 2014, a fifth of charter schools were overwhelmingly — more than 90 percent — white. In 1998, less than 10 percent of charters were that way.

Parental preferences are part of the problem. The charter school admissions process is itself race-blind: Schools that are too popular conduct lotteries between their applicants. But if a school isn’t white enough, white parents simply won’t apply.

In previous research, Ladd discovered that white North Carolina parents prefer schools that are less than 20 percent black. This makes it hard to have racially balanced charter schools in a state where more than a quarter of schoolchildren are black.

“Even though black parents might prefer racially balanced schools, the fact that white parents prefer schools with far lower proportions of black students sets up a tipping point,” the authors write. “Once a school becomes ‘too black,’ it becomes almost all black as white parents avoid it.”

Looking at students in grades 4-8, the researchers found that the regular public school population in North Carolina has become less white over the past 15 years (from 64.1 percent white to 53 percent white), while the charter school population has grown more white (from 58.5 percent white to 62.2 percent white).

Not only that, but the kids choosing charter schools these days also seem to be more able. The researchers examined how students had been scoring on standardized tests before they entered charter school. It used to be that kids with below average test scores applied to charter schools. But in recent years, the kids going into charter schools tend to have above-average test scores.

The researchers argue that this changing mix of students explains much of the test score gains among North Carolina’s charter schools. By their calculations, the schools haven’t gotten that much better at teaching students — but they have gotten better at attracting more able students.

In 2010, North Carolina received a $400 million Race to the Top grant from the Obama administration. As part of its application, it promised to eliminated the cap on charter schools, which had been stuck at 100. Now there has been a flood of charter schools seeking to open in North Carolina, and the researchers warn that the segregation problem might only get worse.

One problem is that disadvantaged students have less of a chance to attend a charter school. First, they or their parents have to be plugged in enough to know which are the good charter schools and motivated enough to apply. Then, they need to have the resources to actually attend the charter, because unlike regular public schools, charter schools in North Carolina do not have to offer transportation or lunch to students. For poor students who rely on school buses and free meal programs, the costs associated with attending a charter school may discourage them from the opportunity.

By contrast, affluent families might not think twice about driving their children to attend the high-achieving charter across town instead of a low-achieving neighborhood school. In this manner, even charter schools without explicit fees or admissions requirements may tilt toward inequality.

Ladd said that she would like to see charter schools be required to provide services on a par with what public schools offer. This would be a step toward making them more accessible. The board that oversees charter schools might also be more careful about approving new ones. Schools that plan to open in white or affluent neighborhoods are unlikely to attract anyone but white and affluent students. . . .

Segregated Housing and the Results That Follow

In an excellent piece at Alternet, Richard Rothstein turns his attention to conditions that made racial incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore entirely predictable. 

The history of U. S. housing for non-whites is one of labeling, containment, and exclusion, and all of it has been and continues to be inspired, funded, and embraced by federal and local governments.

Today we see the same discriminatory model used in the institutionally-racist policies applied to education in the No Excuses charter hellholes that celebrate segregation, containment, close policing, and psychological sterilization.

A clip from Rothstein's article:

It was government—federal, state, local—whose explicitly racial laws, policies, and regulations ensured that black Americans would live separately. St. Louis and Baltimore, the bookmarks of our recent incidents, illustrate this.

A hundred years ago, both cities adopted ordinances prohibiting African Americans from moving to blocks where whites predominated. After the Supreme Court banned such rules in 1917, St. Louis’s planning board preserved the policy. In neighborhoods where deeds prohibited sales to African Americans, the board prohibited anything but single family homes. Where neighborhoods had black families, it permitted multifamily structures, saloons, and factories. It changed zoning designations when necessary to enforce racial boundaries. Baltimore’s official “Committee on Segregation” coordinated building and health inspectors’ efforts to condemn black residences found in white neighborhoods. The committee also organized neighborhood associations to adopt pacts pledging white homeowners never to sell to black purchasers.

The federal government led nationwide to enforce segregation. In the 1930s, many urban neighborhoods were modestly integrated when both European immigrants and African Americans walked to factory jobs. Cities razed such neighborhoods to construct federally financed segregated public housing—in St. Louis, for example, for blacks on the north side, for whites farther south.

During World War II, the government built segregated housing for defense workers. In cities with previously few black residents, this imposed rigid segregation on burgeoning black populations.

Faced with post-war housing shortages, President Harry Truman proposed expanding public housing. Conservative Republicans, rejecting government participation in private markets, introduced a “poison pill” amendment requiring that public housing be integrated. They knew that if the amendment passed, Southern Democrats would oppose any public housing, defeating the program. Northern liberal Democrats like Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota campaigned against the integration amendment, uniting with their Southern colleagues to defeat it, and the 1949 Housing Act funded segregated housing.

When civilian housing construction recovered, the government promoted suburbanization. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guaranteed bank loans to builders on condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. The FHA even provided model deed language barring re-sales to non-whites.

Such subdivisions blossomed in virtually every metropolitan area. Best known is Levittown, N.Y.—17,000 homes for veterans, sold initially for about twice national median family income (less than $125,000 in today’s dollars). Affordable to working class families of any race, federal policy restricted them to whites.

As suburbanization accelerated, whites left segregated public housing, lured to racially exclusive communities by FHA or G.I. bill mortgages. Soon, white projects had vacancies while black waiting lists were long. Housing authorities then opened all projects to African Americans. When industry also left inner cities and black workers couldn’t get to good suburban jobs, ghetto impoverishment grew.

The FHA refused to insure mortgages in black neighborhoods as well—“redlining” neighborhoods to indicate they were uncreditworthy because African Americans lived in (or even near) them.

Unable to get mortgages and restricted to overcrowded neighborhoods where housing was in short supply, African Americans paid rents considerably higher than those for similar dwellings in white neighborhoods, or bought houses on installment plans with no equity rights. Higher housing costs forced black families to double-up, sometimes subdividing single-family homes. City services declined where black populations increased and neighborhoods turned into slums. If they were close to downtown businesses, federal, state, and local governments collaborated in “slum clearance” programs that relocated black residents to outlying areas.