By Damon Hewitt

Fifty-six years after the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, America is in a state of educational emergency. Many students attend schools where they are more likely to be suspended or expelled than to receive a high quality education. In terms of high school graduation, the most basic of all indicators of academic achievement, some students stand no better than a coin flip of a chance.

According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, in nearly 2,000 American high schools 40 percent or more of entering freshman fail to reach their senior year. Not surprisingly, these schools, now known as “dropout factories,” often have fewer fiscal and human resources than necessary to meet students’ needs. And they are comprised mostly of black, brown and poor students. Overall, the much-discussed “achievement gap” between white students and students of color seems to be widening. In particular, in nearly every indicator of academic success, black students as a whole are underrepresented; and for every indicator of academic failure, these students are consistently overrepresented. Despite Brown’s promise, these students are locked out of opportunity.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to begin making things right. This year, President Obama and Congress began the process of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Initially passed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the ESEA is the most expansive source of funding for K-12 schools, including targeted assistance to students living in poverty. But in order to make the ESEA a truly effective tool for fulfilling Brown’s promise of educational equity, it must be retooled with an understanding of why the problems outlined above persist.

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