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Education Regarding Race: A Case Study

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Current State of Education Regarding Race There has been detailed documentation on the growth in Black student educational attainment in response to significant legislative and judicial decisions which have impacted equity in education across racial groups. However, there has continued to be a steady achievement gap and many other inequities in education between minority students and white students in the United States. The current extent of racial inequality in the national education system shows a state of severe inequity. Racial minorities on average have differential suspension rates and punishments, less achievement in math and science, lower graduation rates, and are taught buy less experienced and lower paid teachers than white students. …show more content…

Ferguson decision, which allowed for racial segregation as long as it was separate but equal, education systems remained divided by race far beyond the time of reconstruction. In the quest of many civil rights activists' efforts to outlaw Jim Crow laws and other racially discriminating practice, education inequity became a leading rally for the movement. In Murray v. Pearson (1936), Thurgood Marshall challenged the refusal of University of Maryland’s School of Law from rejecting minority students based solely on race, arguing it violated separate but equal requirement because the disparities between black and white law schools was so severe. Murray won the case and was allowed entry in the school because there was no black university comparable to University of Maryland’s program (Zelden, 2013). Similarly, in Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, black student Lloyd Gaines was denied admission at University of Missouri Law School because of his race. To comply with the separate but equal decision Missouri offered to build an all-black law school or pay for Gains to attend and all black law school in a neighboring state. When Gaines rejected these options, the case made its way to the Supreme Court who ruled in favor of Gaines state that University of Missouri could not require transfer of a student to another state because it did not have an equal racially segregated option and thus must admit Gaines (Bluford, 1959; Kelleher, 1971). From the mid-1930s to …show more content…

Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County, Boiling v Sharpe and Gebhart v. Ethel where the focus was directed and lower level public education (Kluger, 2011). In arguing a compression of all five cases under the name Brown v. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall argued that black schools were significantly inferior to white schools and that the conditions of black school led to sociological perceptions of black students feeling they were inferior to white students. The Supreme Court ultimately made a decisions that segregation of schools violated the constitution, but there was slow change to desegregation of schools despite the courts call to swift change. Eventually Brown II was the court case that specifically addressed school districts tactics to slow down or completely refuse to desegregate schools (Ashenfelter, Collins & Yoon 2006; Kluger, 1976; Patterson,

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