Center for Children's Advocacy executive director Martha Stone Co-Authored an Op-ed in Hartford Courant on Ensuring Students Get Integrated Education

Sheff Case: Big Gains, No Time To Let Down

DENNIS PARKER, DEUEL ROSS, MARTHA STONE

Hartford Courant Op-Ed March 16, 2017

The plaintiffs in the Sheff v. O'Neill school desegregation case are more frustrated than anyone that a significant number of Hartford students of color remain in highly segregated, low-performing schools. We are now more than two decades past the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that, as a result of racial and ethnic isolation in Hartford's schools, "[e]very passing day denies ... children their constitutional right to a substantially equal education."

From the day the case was decided up to now, we have been profoundly disturbed at the slow pace and the limited scope of the state's efforts to provide an education for Hartford children that satisfies their constitutional rights. Over the past decades, we have returned to court multiple times to speed up the process of implementing a remedy and have consistently tried to assure that all students would have the opportunity to realize the benefits of a high quality, integrated education.

We acknowledge the state's obligation to provide a high-quality education to all students regardless of whether they attend schools open to them because of the Sheff case or neighborhood schools. While fighting for the maximum number of seats in magnet and choice programs, we have also urged measures that would bring benefits to schools that are not magnets. Our suggestions included using magnet schools as partners to neighborhood schools to help them provide greater educational opportunities by sharing facilities, staff and training. But the fact that more than 50 percent of Hartford students remain in segregated, under performing schools and that thousands of students remain on waiting lists to get into magnet or choice schools bears witness to the inadequacy of state efforts to date.

Almost as frustrating as the slow progress since the Supreme Court decision is the suggestion that segregation and inadequate schools are somehow the consequence of Sheff remedial measures. The failure to provide high-quality, integrated education to Hartford students of color long predates the Sheff lawsuit. In the 1989 complaint, we pointed to Connecticut students across the state who were "largely segregated by race and ethnic origin" and who suffered "severe educational burdens".

What has happened in the intervening 20 years cannot be viewed as sufficiently successful, not as long as there are a substantial number of Hartford students who have not received the benefits of programs implemented under Sheff. But the fact remains that 47 percent of Hartford children of color receive opportunities that were wholly unavailable to them before the case was filed.

The significance of those opportunities is not lost on people inside and outside of Connecticut. A February article in The Christian Science Monitor, praising the Hartford metropolitan area's desegregation efforts, recognized that "academic transformation and racial mixing are intertwined" and quoted the former United States Secretary of Education, John King Jr., describing the effort as a "model for the country".

Should we be satisfied with half of Hartford's students being in segregated neighborhood schools? No. Should we tolerate dramatic disparities in educational opportunities between neighborhood schools and magnet and suburban schools? Of course not. But the solution does not lie in compromising or limiting programs whose effectiveness in addressing segregation and educational achievement has been demonstrated.

What must happen instead is to build upon what works and what has achieved success so far, to create more spaces in high performing magnet and suburban schools, to eliminate the persistent waiting lists and to assure that students receive equal educational opportunities in every setting. That can best be done by raising the quality of all schools. Successful schools should be seen as models, not as threats. We owe the students of Hartford, who have endured unconstitutional unequal educational opportunities, nothing less.




Dennis Parker is director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Project. Deuel Ross is an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Martha Stone is executive director of the Center for Children's Advocacy in Hartford. They are attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation case.

Copyright © 2017, Hartford Courant

Online at http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-parker-sheff-hartford-build-on-success-0319-20170316-story.html