From Retrenchment to Renewal: African American Education, 1975–Present

Desegregation, Accountability, and Equality: North Carolina and the Nation, 1971-2002

“…While officials in North Carolina claimed that the competency program was "an affirmative action program of proven worth" that benefitted blacks "most" (Iwanda v. Berry, 1980, p. 2), MCTs and diploma sanctions exacted a disproportionate toll on black students, and likely contributed to the stagnation of the African American graduation rate during the last two decades of the twentieth century. After rising sharply in the 1960s and 1970s, the black graduation rate peaked in 1985 and remained stagnant in the decades that followed (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Williamson-Lott, 2012;Rury & Hill, 2012).…”

“…Site of the landmark 1971 decision in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg, North Carolina was at the center of debates about the efficacy of desegregation. The effects of desegregation remain contested, but a large body of social science scholarship has convincingly shown that comprehensive desegregation, civil rights measures, and Great Society programs produced significant gains in African American educational achievement and attainment (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Lott, 2012;Grissmer, Flanagan, & Williamson, 1998;Rury & Hill, 2012;Wells, Holme, Revilla, & Atanda, 2009;Wolters, 2008). By the 1980s, evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and estimates of African American educational attainment indicate that blacks were closer to equality with whites (National Center, 2000;Rury & Hill, 2012).…”

“…Seeing standards as a way of ensuring that African American students were taught a common curriculum, the NAACP and a new generation of civil rights advocates including The Education Trust and The Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights endorsed these reforms (Rhodes, 2012;Taylor, 2004). While the rhetoric of standards was appealing, the confluence of policies and practices associated with the turning away from the expansion of educational opportunity -the intensification of racialized tracking, persistent disparities in funding, and the curricular reductionism that began with MCTs combined to limit African American opportunity (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Lott, 2012;Sacks, 1999;Tyson, 2011). Because African American students did not necessarily have the opportunity to learn what was tested, racial achievement gaps that had closed in the 1970s and early 1980s began to widen.…”