Forty-two years after the Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools, many classrooms are not yet fully integrated because of the academic performance of Black students and their perceived ability to learn.
To change that, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is organizing community-based groups into a national campaign to “untrack” curriculums that often push Black students into low-end courses. The Atlanta-based civil rights group hopes the effort becomes as significant as the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“Education is so critical to the success of all people,” said Deric Gilliard, a spokesman from the SCLC in Atlanta. “It is a tragedy that our kids are being channeled into areas that do not allow for their full growth. “
Last fall, the SCLC held a national summit at Spelman College on tracking and the miseducation of Black children. This year, the community groups are planning a series of regional meetings in Selma, Ala., Wilmington, Del., Dayton, Ohio, Los Angeles, Rockville, Md., and Virginia to discuss tracking. A date for SCLC’s next tracking summit has not been set.
SCLC’s campaign is aimed at helping parents and community groups recognize when children are being “tracked” and collect information about the issue. It also calls for a change in the educational philosophy to one that says that all children can learn at high levels, said Rose Sanders, founder and project coordinator of the Coalition of Alabamians Reforming Education in Selma.
“How you implement that philosophy is through a unified required core curriculum that is enriched in math and science,” she said. “Unified is important because it means students can’t be taught separately but together.”
But to do that, colleges and universities must train teachers who can teach curriculums that emphasize math and science and are comfortable in classrooms with students of differing abilities, said Emma Owens, an associate professor in the College of Health, Education and Human Development at Clemson University.
