Although much of the attention–historic and current–to school desegregation dwells on students, in a recent interesting paper, Desegregating Teachers, Wendy Parker (Wake Forest) widens the traditional lens by assessing K-12 classroom teacher demographics. The abstract follows.
"Our public schools are more segregated than is
commonly recognized. Through an original empirical study of 157 school
districts, this Article uncovers that teachers are re-segregating, just as
students are. Many educators, policy makers, and legal scholars would find no
fault with this resegregation because they disconnect integration from quality
of education. The consequences of teacher segregation, however, remain uncharted
territory in this debate over the value of integration. The resegregation of
teachers exposes the truth of segregation - it continues to impede structural
equality and helps to perpetuate white supremacy. Segregated teaching staffs,
which put inexperienced white teachers in minority schools, are but one aspect
of the inequality of segregation. Yet, this past term the Supreme Court
legitimated the current segregation in our public schools in its landmark
opinion, Parents Involved. Our society’s refusal to recognize the transformative
potential of integration is, however, more of an obstacle to equality than the
Supreme Court. That is, until we identify integration with quality of education,
the Supreme Court’s refusal to do so is unimportant."
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