By Bernie Sanders

GUEST COLUMNIST

This week marks the 65th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling -- Brown v Board of Education – which, after several decades of impassioned resistance against Jim Crow, finally declared that the practice of “separate but equal” in our school system was unfair and unconstitutional.

This civil rights victory did not mark the end of the struggle, however. Here in North Carolina and across the country, heroic children and parents had to face down angry white mobs to integrate schools and implement the Brown decision at the local level.

These efforts made real gains for equality. However, as someone who protested school segregation in Chicago in the years after the Brown decision, I am deeply troubled that today we are seeing a steady erosion of that progress.

Since the late 1980s, the number of racially segregated schools has more than tripled, and today, more than a third of all African American and Latino students attend a school where 90 percent of their peers are non-white. This segregation also operates along class lines: 40 percent of children from low-income families attend schools whose student population has poverty rates of 75 percent or higher.

The consequences of segregation are well-known. Research has shown that students in integrated schools have better test scores, are more likely to attend college, and drop out of high school at lower rates - and we know integrated schools help close racial achievement gaps. We also know that segregated schools in Black and Latino areas often do not receive equal funding.

In 2016, school districts serving mostly students of color received $23 billion less in funding than mostly white schools, even though they serve the same total number of students. In all, school districts serving the largest populations of Black, Latino, or Native American students receive roughly $1,800 less per student in state and local funding than those serving the fewest students of color.

There’s a similar divide by income: school districts with the highest rates of poverty receive about $1,000 less per student in state and local funding than those with the lowest rates of poverty.

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In North Carolina, over the last decade, there has been a 61 percent increase in the number of schools that are segregated by race and income. And Republicans in the legislature just passed a bill that empowers wealthy white school districts to create their own publicly-funded, privately-administered charter schools. That’s a recipe for resegregation.

It’s the same story when it comes to funding. North Carolina has one of the lowest public education funding rates in the country. North Carolina public school teachers make at least 26 percent less than comparable college graduates. And Republicans in the legislature have passed major corporate tax cuts, while trying to block Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed increases in school funding.

This is Robin Hood in reverse, and it is happening on the national level too. After giving huge tax cuts for the very rich, President Trump is proposing to cut after school programs that serve 34,000 North Carolina students and is proposing to eliminate funding for the major grant program for teacher development.

Trump and billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos plan to pump $500 million into “expanding access” to charter schools, which have been draining money out of traditional public schools and exacerbating educational segregation. Indeed, a 2017 Associated Press report found that “while 4 percent of traditional public schools are 99 percent minority, the figure is 17 percent for charters.” The report added that “In cities, where most charters are located, 25 percent of charters are over 99 percent nonwhite, compared to 10 percent for traditional schools.”

I will soon announce a comprehensive plan to reform and reinvest in America’s public education system to combat racial and economic segregation. I will stand with groups like the NAACP in calling for a ban on for-profit charter schools and a moratorium on federal funding of new charters until we can ensure they’re operating with transparency and accountability.

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When we are in the White House, my administration will support local school integration initiatives and I will appoint judges who uphold desegregation orders. We will pay teachers the fair wages they deserve, and make sure that school funding is equitable. The quality of a child’s education should not be determined by her zip code or by the family she was born into.

Thurgood Marshall once said that it is a right of all children to get “an equal start in life and to an equal opportunity to reach their full potential as citizens.” He declared that “children who have been denied that right in the past deserve better than to see fences thrown up to deny them that right in the future.”

Our school system can no longer put up fences for black and brown children. On this 65th anniversary of the Brown vs Board of Education decision, we are going to tear down those barriers and create an education system that works for all people, not just the wealthy and powerful.

Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) is an independent senator from Vermont and a candidate for the 2020 Presidential Election. This piece was submitted exclusively to the Citizen Times for publication.