History of Race, Equity and Education MCPS by Anthony Alston

1830s

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Most southern states have laws forbidding the teaching of enslaved people to read. Even so, about 5% of enslaved African Americans became literate at great personal risk.

1896

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Frederick Hoffman's book, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, is published. A key measure for him was the differential rates of tuberculosis between whites and blacks. And what he found was that African Americans had very, very high rates of tuberculosis. He also found high rates of syphilis and venereal diseases. But for him, though, tuberculosis was key because he felt that this was the signal index of whether or not African Americans would be able to survive outside of slavery.

He would say, "Well, given these high rates of tuberculosis and other kinds of infectious diseases, we expect the Negro and the Native American to become extinct. They just simply will not be able to survive the rigors of civilization because in part, their bodies are not fit for those environments. Their intellects aren't fit to compete with us. They are not capable of engaging with us in the rough and tumble world of the marketplace. And therefore, they will simply die off."

1908

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The Binet-Simon test (originally developed to identify children who were behind in academic performance so they could receive remedial education) is renamed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. Part of the change is the invention of the Intelligence Quotient, designed as a way to sort people by intellect level.

Intelligence testing became a tool used by the eugenics movement. Race and ethnicity were often used to classify students who scored poorly on the tests.

By 1932, a survey of 150 school districts revealed that 75% of larger U.S. cities were using intelligence testing to place students in different academic tracks.

1935

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The federal government’s Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) commissioned surveys of American cities that assessed mortgage risk for lenders. The surveys included “residential security” and “racial concentration” maps of all surveyed cities. Risk was tied to the presence of minorities, which made it harder to get a loan in a majority Hispanic or black area.

1940

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During the 1940s, Orange County, CA schools used this chart to enroll students.

1942

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This 1942 sign details the places where people of Japanese descent were allowed to live.

1946

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The 1946 ruling of Melendez v. Westminster gives Mexican students in California equal rights to education.

1954

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", and therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (1955) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".

1957

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The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled at the formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. President Eisenhower sent federal troops to safely help the students enter the building, when the Arkansas governor blocked their entry.

1964

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed public, intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in government agencies and facilities, public accommodations, education, and employment; established a federal enforcement structure and empowered victims of discrimination to sue and the government to withhold federal funds from violators.

1965

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the act secured the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South.

1965

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President Lyndon Johnson signs the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. It establishes high standards and accountability, provides fair and equal opportunities to receive an education, and provides funds for professional development, instructional materials, and the promotion of parental involvement. The sections of the act include:

Title I – Financial Assistance To Local Educational Agencies For The Education Of Children Of Low-Income Families
Title II – School Library Resources, Textbooks, and other Instructional Materials
Title III – Supplementary Educational Centers and Services
Title IV – Educational Research And Training
Title V – Grants To Strengthen State Departments Of Education
Title VI – General Provisions

1968

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In 1968 Congress passes the Bilingual Education Act, providing the first funding to encourage schools to incorporate native-language education into their curriculum.

1968

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Fair Housing Act, also called Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, U.S. federal legislation that protects individuals and families from discrimination in the sale, rental, financing, or advertising of housing. The Fair Housing Act, as amended in 1988, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, disability, family status, and national origin.

1971

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Supreme Court rules unanimously that busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation.

1972

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Congress adopted the Indian Education Act of 1972. The Act is based on the following premises:
1) American Indians have unique academic needs, especially with respect to language preservation; 2) a continuum of services, pre-school through post-secondary education, is imperative; 3) the trust relationship between the federal
government and Indian people must be reinforced across governmental agencies; and 4) every Indian student, regardless of federal recognition status, deserves equal access to federal funding aimed at educational improvement.

1972

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1974

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The Equal Educational Opportunities Act is passed. The act guaranteed education free of bias and discrimination, or unequal treatment, for all people. The EEOA is one of a set of federal laws that works to prohibit discrimination in schools. Specifically, EEOA bans discrimination based on race, nationality, color, or sex against faculty, staff, and students. It requires schools to take action to overcome barriers which prevent equal protection. The legislation has been particularly important in protecting the rights of students with limited English proficiency.

1974

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In 1974, Milliken v. Bradley clarified the distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, confirming that segregation was allowed if it was not considered an explicit policy of each school district. The Court held that the school systems were not responsible for desegregation across district lines unless it could be shown that they had each deliberately engaged in a policy of segregation.

1974

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Lau v. Nichols was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously decided that the lack of supplemental language instruction in public school for students with limited English proficiency violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court held that since non-English speakers were denied a meaningful education, the disparate impact caused by the school policy violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the school district was demanded to provide students with "appropriate relief".

1975

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The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a law that makes available a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and ensures special education and related services to those children.The IDEA governs how states and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities.Infants and toddlers, birth through age 2, with disabilities and their families receive early intervention services under IDEA Part C. Children and youth ages 3 through 21 receive special education and related services under IDEA Part B.

1977

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In response to civil rights legislation, the federal Office of Management and Budget issues Directive 15, creating standard government race and ethnic categories for the first time. The categories are meant to aid agencies, but they are arbitrary, inconsistent, and based on varying assumptions. For example, "Black" is defined as a "racial group" but "white" is not. "Hispanic" reflects Spanish colonization and excludes non-Spanish parts of Central and South America; while "American Indian or Alaskan Native" requires "cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition" - a condition of no other category. The categories are amended in 1996, and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander" is added.

1978

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The Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted in 1978 because of the disproportionately high rate of forced removal of Native American children from their traditional homes and essentially from Native American cultures as a whole.

It also gave Native American parents the legal right to deny their children’s placement in off-reservation schools and boarding schools.

1982

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In June 1982, the Supreme Court issued Plyler v. Doe, a landmark decision holding that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status. By a 5-4 vote, the Court found that any resources which might be saved from excluding undocumented children from public schools were far outweighed by the harms imposed on society at large from denying them an education.

1984

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A Nation at Risk is published. President Ronald Reagan developed an education reform program because of the report targeting schools that were deemed failing. The term "at-risk" was then expanded to refer to "failing" students themselves.

1990s

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During this decade many districts won release from court ordered desegregation plans.

A report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project said that while schools in the South still have more integration of African-Americans and whites than before the desegregation movement, they lost ground in the 1990s.

The report also highlights that segregation of Latinos from non-Hispanic whites in schools is even greater than it is for African-Americans.

1995

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Gloria Ladson Billings introduces the theory of "culturally relevant pedagogy". It rests on 3 criteria or propositions: a) students must experience academic success; b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence; and c) students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order.

2000

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Since 2000, 71 predominately white communities have attempted to secede from their school districts. Of these, 47 communities have been successful at splitting from their districts.

States such as Alabama make it easy for a town to create its own district.

2001

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This five-year research study (1996-2001) focused on English language learners (ELLs/LEPs) long-term academic achievement in Grades K-12. This study includes qualitative and quantitative research findings from five urban and rural research sites in the northeast, northwest, south-central, and southeast U.S. It was designed to answer urgent policy questions of interest to the federal and state governments of the United States, since this demographic group is projected to be 40 percent of the school-age population by the 2030s and most U.S. schools are currently under-educating this student group. Overall, this research provides whole school district views of policy decision-making that is data-driven regarding designing, implementing, evaluating, and reforming the education of Language Minority students.

2002

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President Bush signs the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, requiring states to track progress of subgroups, including minorities and special education students.

2009

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The state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards was launched in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states

2009

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The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, 18 U.S.C. § 249 was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., both in 1998, the measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Shepard was a gay student who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming; Byrd was an African American man who was tied to a truck by two white supremacists, dragged behind it, and decapitated in Jasper, Texas.

2015

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The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Barack Obama on December 10, 2015. This bipartisan measure reauthorizes the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s national education law and longstanding commitment to equal opportunity for all students. The new law builds on key areas of progress in recent years, made possible by the efforts of educators, communities, parents, and students across the country.
STATE LEADERS HAVE TO FOLLOW CERTAIN REQUIREMENTS:
- Report results for more student subgroups
- Continue to have 95 percent state test participation
- Identify the lowest-performing schools, approve locally developed improvement plans, and monitor the schools’ progress
- Report data on the distribution of effective teachers
- Consult a prescribed list of stakeholders when developing the state’s plans.
- Makes funds more flexible (e.g., Title II and Title IV transferable)

2015-16

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Based on civil rights data released by the U.S. Department of Education, ProPublica's Miseducation website is an interactive database that examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline. https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/

The data released by the U.S. Department of Education shows black and Hispanic students in Montgomery County schools are, on average, more than three grade levels behind white students academically, and more than twice as likely to be disciplined as white students.

2015-2020

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A Washington Post analysis has found that black Americans are disproportionately affected by police violence. The data focuses specifically on police shootings and it mainly relies on police reports, news accounts and social media postings. Since the start of 2015, 4,728 people across the country have died in police shootings and approximately half - 2,385 - were white. Out of the remainder, 1,252 were black, 877 were Hispanic and 214 were from other racial groups. The data looks different as a share of the population, however. Black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the population but they are shot and killed by the police at a rate that's over twice as high as for white Americans.

In July 2014, a cellphone video captured some of Eric Garner's final words as New York City police officers sat on his head and pinned him to the ground on a sidewalk: "I can't breathe." On May 25 of 2020, the same words were spoken by George Floyd, who pleaded for release as an officer knelt on his neck and pinned him to the ground on a Minneapolis street for 8 min and 46 seconds. This event continues to lead to calls for actions across the country and the world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

2017

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Violence erupted in the college town of Charlottesville on Aug. 12 after hundreds of white nationalists and their supporters who gathered for a "Unite the Right" rally over plans to remove a Confederate statue were met by counter-protesters, leading Virginia’s governor to declare a state of emergency. James Fields Jr., ultimately pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes and was sentenced to life in prison for ramming his car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 other people.

2020

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The World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic and President Donald Trump declares it a national emergency. As countries around the world order businesses to shut down and people to stay at home, schools plunge into remote learning. The pandemic itself--and the shift to remote learning--shine a light on the educational inequities that affect black and brown children.

A report published by the Society for Research on Child Development states: "Black Americans are contracting and dying from COVID-19 at rates that far exceed other racial and ethnic groups. Through inequitable policies and practices, Black Americans are forced into conditions that elevate their risk for COVID-19, and consequently, place Black children at the epicenter of loss in multiple domains of life."

2020

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George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and more murdered by police.

2020

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Millions have mobilized in support of Black Lives Matter in protests that still continue to today. Data suggest that over 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations, making it the largest movement in the country’s history, the New York Times reports.

2020

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Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and Asian Pacific Policy & Plannig Council (A3PCON) launch “Stop AAPI Hate”website to track incidents of COVID-19 discrimination.

2020

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The White House’s Office of Management and Budget notifies agency heads Sept. 4 that federal workplaces will no longer be allowed to conduct “divisive, anti-American propaganda” training that focuses on race theory and white privilege. The Office of Personnel Management must review and approve training materials going forward.

Jan 6, 2021

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A mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol, where Congress had convened to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The insurrectionists clashed with police, scaled walls, broke windows, and carried Confederate and Trump flags throughout the Capitol’s halls. Members of Congress and their staffers sheltered in place before being evacuated from the building.

2021

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Derek Chauvin is convicted on three accounts of murdering George Floyd.

2021

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The video of the police shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago was released days after the killing of Duarte Wright in Brooklyn Center, MN and the pepper spraying of Lt. Caron Nazario in Windsor, VA all happening during the trial of Derek Chauvin. Ma'Kiah Bryant is shot within hours of Chauvin's conviction reading.

2021

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After a year of remote and hybrid learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, school systems are designing plans for reopening. https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-continues-aggressive-plan-safely-reopen-schools

1892

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Montgomery County opened its first public high school for White students.

1927

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Montgomery County opened its first public high school for Black students using Rosenwald funds to aid in an addition to Rockville Colored Elementary School.

In the mid-1920s, black parents advocated for a high school.
The black community paid $6,700 towards construction & the rest came a foundation.
This was the only high school in the county for black students. Many had to ride for hours to get to school

1957

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Despite the Board's initial recommendation for a 12 year integration plan, the Board eventually adopted a 3-year plan after Board member Rose Kramer argued for a fast and complete integration plan.

1959

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All County Colored School teachers and principals are assigned to integrated schools. Margaret T. Jones (Rock Terrace Colored Elementary) becomes first black principal of a formerly all-white school, Bannockburn

2020

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MCPS launches its Antiracist System Audit to examine six areas within the district.

2022

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MCPS hires Dr. Monifa McKnight as its first female and its second person of color superintendent, 162 years after its establishment on February 4, 1860.

1991

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MCPS Board of Education hires Dr. Paul Vance as its first Black superintendent. Dr. Vance served in the role from 1991-1999.

2009

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The Report on Disproportionality in Montgomery County Public Schools reports data demonstrating disproportionate representation by race or ethnicity in certain disability categories, placement in particular settings, and disciplinary actions. The report describes recommendations from the Disproportionality Steering Committee convened to review current policies and practices and to offer recommendations to reduce disproportionality. The Report on Disproportionality in Montgomery County Public Schools contains a detailed action plan that has been developed to implement these recommendations.

1860

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In 1860, the General Assembly of Maryland passed a resolution establishing countywide public schools. Fifteen common schools opened throughout the county, providing primary education for rich and poor white children. MCPS was founded on February 4, 1860.

1936

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William B. Gibbs, Jr. files a suit against the Montgomery County Board of Education for parity in teacher pay. Case is settled out of court, but Gibbs loses his job.

1950-1952

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County opens new Negro schools. Consolidated elementaries are Longview, Edward U. Taylor, Rock Terrace, and Sandy Spring. Carver High School and Junior College is first for black students built with parity to white schools. Lincoln becomes the junior high.

1956

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Group of Poolesville citizens hold anti-integration demonstration at the County Office Building and argue against integration of their school before the Board.

Parents who refuse to send their children to the newly-integrated school relent after Norris threatens to take them to court for failure to comply with state attendance laws.

1961

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Montgomery County Public School integration is declared complete.

1983

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Black principals head 31 of 152 schools. Almost 10% of County teachers are black.

2009

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William B. Gibbs, Jr. Elementary School opens in Germantown.