LAist, December 18, 2019 by Deepa Fernandes
More than 65 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, California's public preschools remain deeply segregated.
The numbers are striking:
- 94% of students across all preschools run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, are children of color, according to the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.
- Just 2% of children attending most Head Start programs in L.A. County are white and almost 90% are Latino, the L.A. County Office of Education says.
- Home-based preschools are even more segregated, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute.
Why?
The answer lies in the limits of Brown -- the ruling doesn't explicitly extend to preschools. In the decades since it became law, initially well-meaning but ultimately flawed funding policies have mostly left preschools in California either all white, all Latino, or in some cases, all black.
"Over half of all of California's preschool students are in preschools that are 90 to 100% students of color," said Erica Frankenberg, a professor of education at Penn State University who studies preschool segregation nationwide.