Minnesota's Cruz-Guzman case is popularly understood to be a school desegregation suit, a modern version of Brown versus Board of Education, but to be successful, we argue here, it must be fundamentally different and provide more expansive relief than Brown v. Board. Cruz-Guzman relies on a very different constitutional principle than Brown. In the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs in Brown were seeking an integrated education for its own sake, on the theory that a segregated education is inherently unequal. In Cruz-Guzman, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that the Brown theory is not a viable claim under Minnesota's constitutional education clause. Minnesota's constitutional education clause requires the legislature to deliver an adequate education that meets all state standards, and for this reason, to prevail, the Cruz-Guzman plaintiffs must present the court with a plan for reforms that will deliver the adequate education that students of color, lower income students, indigenous students, and multi-lingual learners deserve.
This post first provides a bit of background on how the Thurgood Marshall's litigation team decided to seek integration only, and the consequent failure of many so-called integrated school systems to deliver an adequate education to all students. We then argue that to deliver an adequate education, fundamental education reform must accompany integration to provide districts with enough targeted funding to afford those students with an adequate education that meets all state standards, and the funding must be paired with robust accountability and effective practices.
Brown's Narrow Integration Focus
In Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court consolidated five different lower court cases attacking segregated education. (Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia). While all of those cases attacked the operation of segregated public education, four of those suits challenged grossly unequal funding, facilities and materials. For example, Davis v. (Virginia) County School Board was triggered by a student strike over dilapidated black school buildings and overcrowded school buildings. They initially demanded equal funding and equal facilities. After hundreds of students walked out of school, the NAACP offered to commence a litigation addressing their grossly unequal resources, provided that they also sued to integrate public schools. Some of the families dissented because they feared a loss of control that would result from integration.
When the five lower court integration cases arrived at the Supreme Court, only Brown had not challenged unequal funding, because Kansas had provided relatively equal resources to its segregated schools. Marshall's legal team believed that focusing on the relief sought in the Kansas Brown case, and thereby abandoning the demand for equal funding, was a superior and more effective strategy. See OAH Troubled History
Marshall's team wanted a rule they hoped that states could not evade. They decided to argue that equal resources wouldn’t cure the harm-- that even perfectly equal physical resources could not overcome the constitutional injury caused by segregation itself. This led to the central claim that segregation is inherently unequal, regardless of resource parity. Instead of centering on bricks-and-mortar and operating fund disparities, the plaintiffs emphasized psychological harm to black children; Stigmatization and state-imposed inferiority and damage to educational and civic development.
Abandonment of the equal resources claim was not universally accepted amongst black
families and educators. Black schools
had developed a civic infrastructure of educators and educational leaders. In black schools, student leadership, student
athletes, and talented students were all black. Principals and teachers too were predominantly black in many of these schools. There was an understandable concern that this infrastructure would be
dismantled and that talented black students would be relegated to an internally
segregated education.
Justice Warren’s decision acknowledged that
facilities in the cases were sometimes unequal, but it explicitly stated that
the decision did not turn on resource comparisons As invited by the Plaintiffs’ legal representatives, the Court held that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. That sentence marks the decisive break from a
resource-based equalization framework. We'll not here elaborate on the mixed results of Brown. History records decades of deliberate delay after the Brown v. Board's mandate. In addition to the undisputed benefits of school integration, professor Ramsey writes in "The Troubled History [of Brown] about the massive damage to the existing black educational infrastructure:
In addition, school boards also funneled money and supplies to existing facilities and constructed new black schools to dispute claims that they were underfunded and quell the desire for integration. When this strategy failed and federal court orders forced school districts to develop new desegregation plans, black teachers faced massive job losses as white school boards closed black schools. African American principals, who once held one of the most powerful and prestigious positions within African American communities, also received demotions or lost their jobs as their schools were eliminated
In Part II of this topic, we'll continue this topic by proposing that the advances that resulted by Brown v Board have been blunted by the failure of Brown, and subsequent federal decisions to order integration accompanied by the necessary resources, by accountability and by effective practices necessary to provide integrated students with an adequate education, one that meets all state standards.
