Closing Philly's racial achievement gap: A long, bumpy road

by Ron Whitehorne

Despite the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision rejecting “separate but equal” schools in America, it took years for districts like Philadelphia – as racially segregated in some ways as any in the South – to focus attention on the gap in academic performance between Black and White children.

As the courts here grappled with the question of desegregating the city’s schools in a long-running legal action, a succession of school administrations employed various strategies to boost achievement among low income students of color. But more than a half century after Brown, wide racial gaps in both opportunities and outcomes remain.

Racially isolated schools “continue [to have] much less experienced teachers assigned to them and receive no compensatory programs in exchange,” said Michael Churchill, the attorney representing community groups in the lawsuit addressing segregation and equity.

“Advanced placement and high standards classes are less available in the neighborhood high schools [attended mostly by] minority students,” Churchill added.

Desegregation debates

Beginning in 1968, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) sought strong measures, including mandatory busing, to desegregate city schools. In Philadelphia, as in other northern cities, White resistance to desegregation was broad and deep, and the District vociferously fought the resulting lawsuit.

Among African Americans, in part because of the strength of this resistance, community-based movements beginning in the 1960s focused on demands that they believed would raise Black student achievement. They included changing the curriculum to promote a positive view of Black history, greater community control over how schools are run, and a more equitable distribution of resources.

Gains made in these areas in the 1960s during the reform administration of Mark Shedd were reversed after the election of Frank Rizzo as Mayor. Rizzo fired Shedd and presided over a period of stagnation marked by falling test scores, rising absenteeism, and political patronage. Budget problems and teacher strikes further crippled the system during the ’70s and early ’80s.

In the late 1970s, pressure from the PHRC lawsuit resulted in one lasting reform: the creation of several magnet schools as a tool to promote desegregation, such as the High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA).

The appointment of Constance Clayton in 1983, the city’s first African American superintendent and a respected educator, raised expectations for equity. Clayton introduced a standardized curriculum and moved to end social promotion. An initiative to restructure the city’s comprehensive high schools was launched.

Over her 11-year tenure, test scores showed modest movement but then leveled out. The new curriculum was faulted by teachers for rigid pacing schedules. There was a de facto return to social promotion, and high school restructuring was torpedoed by the teachers’ union and administrative resistance.

Hornbeck and Judge Smith

The appointment of David Hornbeck as superintendent in 1994 again raised hopes, coinciding with an upsurge in activism and a major shift in the 25-year legal battle.

Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith moved it away from a focus on desegregation and towards improvements in “racially isolated” schools. In a February 1994 decision, Judge Smith wrote: “The record amply demonstrates the school district has not provided … equal allocation of resources, or a commitment to eliminating racial imbalances in the schools.”