CBS News, May 18, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders will unveil an education plan in South Carolina on Saturday that addresses de facto segregation in American public schools.
The Vermont senator's campaign says the plan is multi-faceted and partly aimed at reducing segregation in the public school system. It would end funding of for-profit charter schools and place a moratorium on the creation of new charter schools, which the campaign notes is a priority of the NAACP.
Sanders' plan will be announced on the 65th anniversary weekend of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled school segregation laws unconstitutional. Yet research shows that over the last several decades, public schools across the country have become increasingly segregated.
A 2019 study by UCLA and Penn State reported that three years ago 18 percent of U.S. public schools were "intensely segregated," meaning that their student population was less than 10 percent white. According to the study, in 1988 only 6 percent of public schools met this definition. "Research shows that segregation has strong, negative relationships with the achievement, college success, long-term employment and income of students of color," the study said.
Sanders has named his plan after Thurgood Marshall, who argued the Brown v. Board of Education case and later went on to become the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court.