Urban schools decay: Crisis in education By PAUL RUSKIN lAST TUESDAY'S decision by the Detroit Board of Educa- tion to significantly shorten the coming school year dramatically illustrates the desperate crisis now facing most American urban school systems. They have been decaying along with the cities they serve for the past decade. As a result, the poor, mainly black, have been left behind to suffer the con- sequences as their richer neigh- bors flee to the suburbs. Most urban school systems are now failures, both economically and educationally. THE DETROIT system is a case in point. The quality of education has been declining steadily in recent years. State achievement tests show that De- troit school children are at the lowest level of achievement in the state. Economically, the situation is even bleaker. The current eco- nomic crisis has occurred be- cause city voters refused to en- forse two millage proposals which would have provided $60 million for the coming school year. Furthermore, the state board of education has refused to allow the Detroit system to operate at a loss this year - in fact, the state is demanding that the De- troit system begin to repay some of the loans it has receiv- ed in the past six years. The Detroit schools have been financially insolvent for six years and the voters' rejection of the millages only dealt a d e a t h blow to a system which has been seriously ill for years. Detroit school officials haven't been able to come up with any long range solution to the prsb- lem and all the stopgaps pro- posed for the coming year in- volve drastic cuts in service. The plan tentatively set, to cut the school year by 63 days, will pro- bably never go into effect be- cause of opposition from teach- ers and from the state. The teachers stand to lose 35 per cent of their pay if the plan were instituted. The millages might be put on the ballot again in August, but if they are passed, they would not provide revenues for t h e coming school year, but only for the following one. Finally, the state may allow Detroit to postpone the payment of its debt. In that case, the com- ing school year would still have to be cut by 33 days and the crisis would reappear n e x t year. Only a major overhaul of edu- cational financing will solve the fiscal problems plaguing urban school systems throughout t h e country. THE SUPREME 'gourt will rule during its next sessin whe- ther school financing systems which result in poor districts spending less on education than rich ones violate the Constitu- tion. The specific case on appeal is a Texas federal court ruling \w =At School Board and the Virginia State Board of Education. THE SUPREME Court nas a unique opportunity to restruc- ture the American educational system. By supporting equitable financ- ing and the use of metropolitan school systems to eliminate se- gregation caused by discrimina- tory housing patterns, the Court would go a long way toward changing separate and unequal to together and equal. Integration and equal financ- ing, however, are not enough. There are serious dangers in- herent in the full scale integra- tion approach. First, there can be no real in- tegration and no real equal edu- cation as long as tracking of stu- dents according to perormance on middle class weighted tests is fostered by education experts. The inevitable result of this technique is that the races are housed in the same school build- ing but effctively resegregated into "high" and "low" classes. A second danger concerns the hiring and firing of blank teach- ers and administrators. One 01 the very few healthy signs that has emerged in the Northern ur- ban centers is the large number of black teachers and admin- istrators being hired. There is a serious danger that this trend will be reversed if the blacks be- come a powerless minority with- in an integrated system. In Arkansas, which las achiev- ed a good deal of i~steg'cstion since 1964, the number of black principals has dropped from 134 to four in eight years, a 97 per cent drop. In Alabama there has been' a three year decline from 250 to 50. In Florida there were 102 black principals in 1963. Now there are 13. Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi have experienced declines of 115, 68, and 250 re- spectively. And so it goes throughout the South where there has been integration. Between 1968 and 1970 the number of black teachers in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama de- creased by over 100-while the number of white teachers shot up by over 400. These figures indicate that any effort at integration must pro- tect the jobs of black teachers and administrators and m u s t ensure that proportionate num- bers of new blacks are hired. THE INTEGRATED metropoli- tan educational system, equit- ably financed and protected from both excessive tracking and discharge of black personnel, is one path toward saving o u r troubled urban schools. that financing based on 1 r c a 1 property taxes is .inconstitu- tional. Under this system of fin- ancing, poor districts often pay (as Detroit does) a higher rate of property tax than surrounding richer or more industrial d i s- tricts, but there is a higher re- sultant per pupil expendiLure in the rich districts because of the larger tax base. cent personal income tax and 2 per cent value tax on industry. The added revenues would be divided among the school d i s- tricts of the state. Milliken's system, particularly if it is modified by the initiation of a state graduated income tax would effectively correct the current economic disparity in school financing. Whether his of local and central state offic- ials." Merhige ordered Richmond and its two counties to merge their three systems into one "metro- politan" system. No school in the new system would have over 40 per cent black students. But last week, a higher federal court reversed the Merhige de- cision and thereby prevented Richmond from implementing the metropolitan system this year. However, the fate of me- tropolitan school systems rests in the hands of the Supreme Court, which will rule on the subject within the next year. At the same time, it will pro- bably rule on a forthcoming de- cision by U.S. District Judge Stephen Roth, who has pledged to devise some kind of metro- politan system for the Detroit area. Recently appointed Justice Lewis Powell will almost cer- tainly disqualify himself from the Richmond case because he served on the Richmond C it y "In Arkansas . . . the number of black prin- cipals has dropped from 134 to four in eight years." If the Court upholds the Texas ruling, states will be forced to devise more equitable systerms of school financing. In this state, there is w i d e disparity in the level of financing among the more than 600 school districts. To eliminate the im- balance, Gov. William Milliken has proposed new financing sys- tem. It would replace the pro- perty tax with a 2.3 per cent in- crease in the state's 3.9 per (1 system is adopted or not, the important point is that inequit- able financing should disappear if the Supreme Court supports the Texas ruling. BUT MONEY ISN'T the only problem. For example, even in well financed urban districts, ob- servers note, teachers often have low expectations for the predom- inantly black student bodies. When the teachers subsequently put less emphasis on academic performance, the students' edu- cation suffers. The Richmond, Va. system is a graphic illustration. The Rich- mond schools, which are 70 per cent black, spend more money per pupil than do either of Rich- mond's two affluent neighboring counties, Chesterfield and Hen- rico, which are about 90 per cent white. Nevertheless, the National As- sociation for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP) filed a court suit against the city and two counties, charging that black and poor children in Richmond were being deprived of a decent education because of the segre- gated systems. U.S. District Judge Robert Merhige upheld the NAACP charges in what has now become a landmark decision. Merhige said that "the duty to take what- ever steps are necessary to achieve the greatest possible de- gree of desegregation . . . is not circumscribed by school division boundaries created and main- tained by the cooperative efforts Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of the author. This must be noted in all reprints. TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1972 News Phone: 764-0552 NIGHT EDITOR: PAUL TRAVIS EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: ARTHUR LERNER ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITOR: NANCY ROSENBAUM PHOTO TECHNICIAN: GARY VILLANI Simmer Staff BOB ANDREWS ................................... Associate Sports Editor ROBERT BARKIN ...... ....... Night Editor JAN BENEDETTI. . . ... . . . . ..Night Editor ROSE SUE BERSTEIN............. Co-Editor DANIEL BORUS ........Sports Night Editor ROBERT CONROW...............................Books Editor LINDA DREEBEN. ......... Night Editor DENNY GAINER. ....... Puotography Editor ANDY GOLDING .............................iusiness Manager MERYL GORDONs.......Asistant Night Editor HARRY HIRSCH........ . Display Manager SHERRY KASTLE .......Circulation Manager KAREN LAAKKO ....... Classified Manager ELLIOT LEGOW........ .. . Sports Editor ARTHUR LERNER.. ..... ...Co-Editor DIANE LEVICK.Assistant Night Editor DAVID MARGOLICK.... ..Photographer SHEILA MARTIN.. .... uGeneral Business Assistant JIM O'BRIEN............ ..Science Editor CHRIS PARKS. .... Night Editor NANCY ROSENBAU I. ..... Assistant Night Editor PAUL RUSKIN .s.......Assistant Night Editor ROLFE TESSEM..........,Photographer PAUL TRAVIS ........... . ...Night Editor GARY VILLANI .... . . ..........Photographer JIM WALLACE...... . . ..... ..... Photographer DEBORAH WHITING ..... . . . . . .Circulation Assistant CAROL WIECK .........,General Business Assistant