The more things change....

I'm reading the biography of Al Shanker, and in chapter 3 there's a section that's on-point for one of the great education debates of today. This is from the time after Shanker attended the march on Washington and saw Dr. King's speech:

While King's speech highlighted Southern racism as particularly overt, there was plenty of evidence of discrimination in the North as well, and New York City was no exception. In the early 1960s, there were three basic racial disparities in New York City public schools. There were very few minority teachers (fewer than 10 percent of teachers were black or Hispanic in a city school system whose minority student population was approaching 50 percent), there was considerable de facto segregation in the schools, and students in heavily poor and minority schools tended to get the least experienced teachers.

The UFT had proposals on all three fronts. The 1963 contract pushed for greater recruitment of black teachers in the South, to boost the overall number of minority teachers. And to address both the integration of white students and experienced teachers into ghetto schools, the UFT proposed an "Effective Schools" program (later renamed More Effective Schools), which would provide reduced class size and extra services in a small number of selected schools. The union argued this program would provide a realistic way of attracting experienced teachers (while avoiding forced transfer of teachers) and middle-class white children (while avoiding compulsory busing). Because the UFT members would never go along with forced teacher transfers, Shanker said "we felt an obligation to come up with a plan of our own."

And here we are 40 years later, still having the same conversation. It could it be argued, perhaps, that the problem can't be solved, or that the right solution hasn't come along yet. Or you could argue that there isn't really a problem here at all, and that personal choice has it's downside. One of the advantages of being in my small district is that we don't have these conversations, but in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York it's important.