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Alabama NewsAlabama Politics
Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity, and Now Equal Outcome
By Jim Jackson
Posted on: February 4, 2005
In America, we have a serious problem with the public education system. The breakdown started with the civil rights movement and the decision to use the system to socially engineer the races -- the emphasis was switched from encouraging the smart children, the future leaders, to almost all of the emphasis being placed on the least of the students, guaranteeing a dumbed-down education for all the children. The unionization of the system greatly accelerated the breakdown -- the system became the teacher’s domain rather than the children’s place. The breakdown has been further accelerated by the government takeover of the schools (state and federal) from the communities. As a result the student’s learning has been degraded below that of some third world countries.
And, now we are faced with, not only a requirement to educate the children, but a requirement to guarantee their learning -- equal outcome is being touted as the new civil right. And vast amounts of money are being touted as the answer to the problem of chronic underachievement, primarily in the black community. It is a national problem, and it is a problem in the State of Alabama.
In Alabama, there is an ongoing battle over this new civil right. To begin the discussion, first take a look at what Alabama’s 1901 Constitution says about education. Article XIV, Section 256: “The legislature shall establish, organize, and maintain a liberal system of public schools throughout the state for the benefit of the children thereof between the ages of seven and twenty-one years. The public school fund shall be apportioned to the several counties in proportion to the number of school children of school age therein, and shall be so apportioned to the schools in the districts or townships in the counties as to provide , as nearly as practicable, school terms of equal duration in such school districts or townships. Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.”
Now take a look at Amendment 111 which was added in 1956 to Section 256 of the Constitution. It reads: “It is the policy of the state of Alabama to foster and promote the education of its citizens in a manner and extent with its available resources, and the willingness and ability of the individual student, but nothing in the constitution shall be construed as creating or recognizing any right to education or training at public expense, nor as limiting the authority and duty of the legislature, in furthering or providing for education, to require or impose conditions or procedures deemed necessary to the preservation of peace and order.”
The racial element in the original document is obvious, and was long ago declared null and void by federal legislation. And, no one objects to its removal. Although Amendment 111 was added during the civil rights era, and was apparently intended as a means of preventing integration, the words themselves do not mention race, and, in fact, make a very practical statement regarding the education of the children. In light of the growing demands for equal outcome, and the willingness of judges to succumb to these demands, the words are even more logical and appropriate. And, the majority of the people of Alabama object to their removal.
The basic problem is no longer why the words were added or what the original intent was. The problem is the present interpretation of the words by activist judges.
And, although the amendment says that the state is not required to provide an education for the children, the state in fact does provide such a free public education, including free text books, free transportation, free meals, free counseling, free health care, free tutoring, free mentoring, and free day-care for young children.And, the schooling has been expanded from 1 - 12 to pre K - 12, mostly to provide day-care for working mothers. All of this now in spite of the words in Amendment 111, and nobody is proposing any changes.
Now, to clarify the tax issue. And, for those who don’t believe that the portion of Amendment 111 that deals with a right to education is now a tax issue, take a look at what an activist judge did.
In 1993, Judge Gene Reese, in the case of ACE and Harper vs. James filed by the Alabama Coalition for Equity and the ACLU, declared Amendment 111 unconstitutional, and ordered a redistribution of funds from the more affluent school systems to the poorer systems. He ruled that not only must the state provide a free education to all the children, it must provide them an “Adequate” and “Equitable” education. It took nine years for the Alabama Supreme Court to overturn this decision.
In the meantime, million of dollars were were taken from the parents who support their children’s education and given to those who don’t. For instance, the Huntsville, Alabama School System lost a significant amount of funds. According to the Minutes of the Huntsville City Board of Education meeting, 3/15/01, in FY2001 alone, Huntsville lost $361.74 per student, for a total of $8.3 million. Some of this money went to the Wilcox County Schools, run by Rep. James Thomas, a leader in the national Legislative Black Caucus. This school system is among the poorest in the state, yet with the money that was taken from the Huntsvillle schools, Thomas was able to build a high school that would put those in Huntsville to shame -- it even has an indoor olympic-sized swimming pool. To my knowledge, no other school in Alabama has such a facility.
Did the additional money improve the achievement in this school system? No! In 1993, the Wilcox County System scored 38.4 on the SAT. In 2003, the score was 35.0, a 3.4 percent drop. And, if you look at the predominately black schools in Huntsville, you will find that their achievement level is no better than the Wilcox schools. Money does not an educated child make.
So for those who don’t believe the vote against Amendment 2 in the recent election was about taxes, talk to the people in Huntsville who had their money taken away from them, and used to fill an oversized swimming pool to try to raise the learning level of the underachievers in Wilcox County.
Now, to the real issue here -- equal outcome.
The equal outcome movement actually started with Pres. Lyndon Johnson. In his commencement address at Howard University on June 4, 1965, he expressed his support for equal outcomes policies directed at blacks. He linked economic rights with civil rights and equality of outcome with equality of opportunity. He said: “It is not enough to open the gates of opportunity, all our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.” This commitment to equality has led to race-based quotas and preferences in all walks of life in America. In addition, these policies have also led to legal challenges all over the country to force education systems to somehow bring up the achievement of black children to the level of white children.
For instance, according to U.S. News & World Report, 1/24/05, although New York already spends more per pupil on education than any other state in the nation, it is presently facing a judgment to provide an additional $14 billion over four years (a 45 percent increase) and an extra $9.2 billion over five years for new schools. In addition, 16 states are facing school-finance litigation, and 20 states have settled funding lawsuits.
This article references testimony by Prof. Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who also testified in the Alabama Equity Lawsuit before Judge Reese. Back then, he said: “After reviewing over 200 studies that looked at the relationship between resources and performance, he found that there is no systematic relationship between expenditures on schools and student performance, and there is no systematic relationship between the major ingredients of instructional expenditures per student -- chiefly teacher education and teacher experience, which formally drive teacher salaries and class size -- and student performance.” Judge Reese did not listen because this was not what he wanted to hear.
Included in the above numbers is the state of Kansas where the Kansas Supreme Court has recently told the state legislators that they have not provided enough money to ensure all students receive a “suitable” education. In view of a previous decision by the legal system in this state, one has to wonder whether these people have their heads stuck in the sand, or are they just plain stupid. A review of this previous decision is certainly appropriate.
In 1985, Federal District Judge Russell Clark took over the Kansas City, Mo. school system, which was in physical and educational shambles. He ruled that “the system was to receive whatever amount of money was needed to bring the quality of the system up to that of the surrounding suburban schools.” During the next 12 years nearly $ 2 billion was spent to provide the best equipped schools in the country, and to provide more money per-pupil ($ 11,700) than any of the other 280 largest school districts in the country. At one point, 44 percent of the state budget for K-12 was going to just the 9 percent of the state’s students in this district.
The results -- dismal failure. Test scores did not rise, administrative problems were rampant, the district had a central administration that was 3-5 times larger than other comparable size districts, and promotions were based more on social situations than merit. Because the community regarded the school system as much as an employment opportunity as an educational institution, less than half the budget ever made it to the classroom.
According to the Cato Institute which published a detailed review of this experiment, “the lesson here is clear: money, facilities and things do not an educated child make. Parents, communities and children decide for themselves whether they want to learn.” And, the most important lesson from this experience: “over time the unlimited money available to the district created an inverse incentive -- the district got hundreds of millions of extra dollars in funding each year but only if student test scores failed to meet national norms.”
In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case, and ordered Judge Clark to return the system back to the state -- the experiment had failed.
In another case, the court was even more direct in pointing the finger at the the real problem. In 1997, the Federal Appeals Court 7th Circuit(Judge Posner), in the case of People Who Care vs. Rockford Board of Education, addressed the requirement on schools to close the gap in test scores between white and minority students. It found that, “It was unjustifiable to require the school district to achieve a goal that depends to a significant degree on circumstances beyond its control -- were there a feasible means, decreeable by a court, of closing the gap in educational achievement between white and black students, the gap would have been closed by now.”
In the face of this overwhelming evidence that money is not the solution to the underachievement problems in some schools, the school system in Huntsville several years ago revised its mission statement to read: “The mission of Huntsville City Schools as an educational system in one of the world’s most technologically advanced communities is to guarantee that every student will graduate with the capability to compete successfully and contribute responsibly in a global, technological society through state-of-the-art, individualized teaching and learning in safe and orderly centers of excellence.” -- a guarantee of equal outcome.
Although there is not enough money in the U.S. Mint to accomplish this mission statement, it has been put on the books. It is only a matter of time until a lawsuit appears.
For nearly half a century, we have gone through integration, suitability, equality, equity, adequacy, and now we are looking at equal outcome. And, it doesn’t seem to matter that the only way to accomplish equal outcome is by focusing all of the attention on the worst students and by lowering the standards needed to pass. In addition, it means abandoning those students who are above the lowered standards. The end goal is not to produce smart students but to produce equal students. It is the only possible way to produce equality in learning -- it’s simply called “dumbing down.” It doesn’t seem to matter that equality cannot be given or bought -- it must be earned., and that’s this the one thing that hasn’t been tried.
Yes! the children of Alabama deserve an education, and they are being offered just that. But it cannot be rammed down their throat, and it cannot be bought with money. Instead of voting on another constitutional amendment that concentrates on removing outdated racial language from the constitution, maybe the answer is a new more appropriate amendment -- “The children must earn their education.”
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