In 1985, J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families shows three families from different backgrounds in Boston all being united in their dislike for the busing solution. The book was praised by the public. Red and blue politicians agreed that busing children was a failed attempt at equality. However, many Black civil rights activists in Boston greeted the book with anger and frustration (p. 20). 

Judges ordered “busing” as a remedy in school districts such as Boston, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles that were found guilty of intentional segregation in violation of Brown v. Board of Education and the fourteenth amendment (p. 7). 

The national narrative on busing has always been that no one benefited in the system, but Matthew Delmont in Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation paints a more complicated picture. Delmont describes the main opposition to busing as a resistance to school desegregation (p. 3). He states that busing was never a policy debate, and  instead it was a battle about how school desegregation would be defined in media and public discourse, and how much actual desegregation would take place in our schools, especially outside the South (p. 5). 

In 1972, the United States Commission on Civil Rights complained that “somehow the busing-for-desegregation debate has become clouded in its own language and expressions, in which the word ‘busing’ almost always follows such labels as ‘massive’ and ‘forced.’ . . . [S]omehow a pattern of fears and myths has become fixed in the minds of the public, making it hard to sort out the facts and determine what is true and what is false.” (p.15) 

School desegregation often led to negative outcomes for Black students and teachers, like closure of schools, change in curriculum, loss of employment for teachers, and disproportionate suspensions for students. Each of these could have been reasons why Black communities were often ambivalent about busing (p. 18). Although there were multiple and conflicting Black opinions on “busing”, the national media only focused on “antibusing” Black viewpoints. (p. 18) 

The “busing failed” narrative shows that school officials, politicians, courts, and the media valued the desires of White parents more than the rights of Black students (p. 2). This narrative is comforting because it allows people to accept the continued racial and socioeconomic segregation of our schools as inevitable and unchangeable (p. 21). 

Delmont’s work offers a new look at a national narrative. Maybe if the busing system had been tweaked and not shut down as a complete failure, our schools today would be fairer.  

2. Charter Schools

Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement and Cold War era, there has been a shift to a neoliberal model in the United States. In the education system, this is seen by an increase of standardized testing, meritocracy and merit pay, privatization, and business-like management. Proponents for the use of neoliberal ideas in education have a couple of key arguments. They argue for privatization of schools by insinuating school choice creates school competition which increases school productivity ensuring students get the best education possible. They also argue that through standardized testing and school report cards, schools and teachers are held accountable, and if more funds are given to the better-scoring schools than it will encourage other schools to work hard and perform well. The overarching goal is to use principals and logic in business to best improve the school system.

Many who disagree with neoliberal policies influencing education come from inside the school. A common argument against neoliberal ideas is the inevitability of increasing inequality in society. School choice and the privatization of schools only benefits the students that are let into the better funded schools. Merit-pay based on testing harms the schools that already have a high percentage of low-income students and thus makes the job of the school and teacher infinitely more difficult. In this system, schools that do not need more money are given more money from their test scores and can stock up on resources. The schools that need the extra funds and resources are punished, thus falling behind on resources and making their scores lower the following year. As long as the system continues, the cycle continues.

Both supporters and opponents want the best for our education system, but the problem comes when a policy is a good idea in theory, but a terrible one in practice. At outer glance, school choice seems like a good idea. Students and parents should be able to choose their school! It’s the fairest idea and represents freedom. But in reality, schools decide who they let in so only certain children choose their school, others do not get that freedom. Most everyone will agree that accountability is always a good idea. The issue though, again comes from implementation. Having accountability only from standardized test scores is not an accurate or fair assessment and puts unneeded pressure on students, teachers, and schools.