chimed in with diagnoses that found black children "culturally deprived."
Black parents, who during the 1950s were regularly denounced in school
circles for their alleged nonconcern with education, were in the 1960s
repeatedly criticized for their "interference" in the form of picket lines and
mass delegations. Furthermore, state departments of education as a whole
hindered the new movement: throughout the South, state legislatures,
state school officials, and court officers collaborated in frustrating parent
and community efforts to improve black education. Occasional sparkling
new buildings for black students proved to be empty educational shells
( Moody, 1968); desegregation objectives were hobbled by crafty strata-
gems and endless delays.

Change was energized only by pressure from the civil rights move-
ment. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
"This legislation was written in the streets" ( King, 1965). But while the
result was a popular triumph, the administration of the law could not be
carried out on those same streets. Evasion, both blatant and veiled,
remained the norm. Thus, civil rights matters that should have been
implemented readily and directly limped along and came to be portrayed
as an educational excrescence, an interference with the purportedly
"professional" personnel. Fair treatment of children was thereby negated
as an education goal. Black children lost most from this regressive stance:
they were not only denied the respect due every child, they remained
academically ill served.

During the 1980s, the main currents of educational reform departed
further than ever from the civil rights concerns of equity and equality.
Entire documents on reform omit mention of desegregation and concern
for equal treatment. Others ritually refer to the subjects three-quarters of
the way through a document.

The readiest way to effect the narrow brand of achievement explicated
in most of these reform proposals is by not ignoring equity concerns. If,
by a year from now, black and other minority students were to match the
academic achievement of white students, a tremendous growth in
excellence would be recorded -- one far beyond the vague and slender
goals elucidated in the reports. By ignoring the obvious failures of the
public schools for black and other minority children, the reform move-
ment is excluding the most immediate -- and pressing -- avenue for
improvement.

In large city public school systems, poor and minority children are
regularly shortchanged in matters that are mediated through money:
school facilities, teachers and other instructional personnel, curriculum,
counseling, and more. On a per-student basis, less is spent on them than

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