Sixty years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools violated the Constitution, and DeKalb County school Superintendent Michael Thurmond said “phenomenal progress” resulted, though poverty continues to contribute to educational inequality.
In an address to a small crowd at the Commerce Club in downtown Atlanta Wednesday, Thurmond, who is black and grew up in poverty with an illiterate father but attended a newly desegregated high school, said his life is evidence that the controversial decree in Brown v. Board of Education “transformed and rescued” the lives of millions of blacks.
Racial disparities in graduation rates and academic performance endure; Thurmond attributed them to poverty rather than skin color, noting that poor whites, Asians and Hispanics also struggle. Next, he said, Georgia schools should look for ways to engage poor parents in their children’s educations, while state leaders should devote more of the education budget to poor students, on top of the money the federal government already gives schools to address poverty.
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