Detroit Busing

Michigan Radio's State of Opportunity project takes a look at the long shadow cast by the 1970s Detroit school busing controversy. http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/

[abandoningschools]

Abandoning the Neighborhood School: 1970s Detroit busing and its long shadow

Michigan Radio’s State of Opportunity project takes a look at the long shadow cast by the 1970s Detroit school busing controversy.

Join Sarah Alvarez for this five-part series on how the Milliken v. Bradley decision to desegregate Michigan schools rocked Detroit Public Schools and caused more divisions than integration. 

Teachers and people who were just kids at the time recall the apprehension and fear they felt inside the school as community members opposed to busing started fights and threw bricks through windows.

[abandoningschools]

The Michigan Bar Journal reflects on the case and breaks it down for us. 

[abandoningschools]

In Detroit, how much school choice is too much?

"High wealth and middle class families have been conscious consumers of education for a long time," Dan Varner of Excellent Schools Detroit said. "Folks buy a home based on where they think they'll get a high quality education for their kids." The truth is in Detroit we've not given poor kids the same opportunity."

[abandoningschools]

Busing then and charter schools now - are they really that different?

"It’s not that we don’t have plenty of choices," Amber Arellano, Executive Director of Education Trust Midwest says. "We have tons of choices! But most of them are mediocre to lousy, so let’s stop replicating mediocrity."

[abandoningschools]

Does racial diversity equal better schools?

Abby Phelps has worked in the Detroit Public Schools for almost 30 years. As she walks me around Carstens Elementary on the city's east side, we talk about her memories of school in Detroit when she was a girl, when the fight over desegregating schools was raging. Phelps said she felt, when compared with her white peers, "I had to be better than the best. I had to prove my integrity and I felt I had to do twice as much." 

[abandoningschools]

40-year shadow cast by Detroit's failed busing plan

Mark Litt is now in his late forties, but was a fourth grader at Vanderberg Elementary when his father signed him up as one of the plaintiffs in a NAACP legal challenge to racial segregation in Detroit's schools. Litt said he hasn't thought about the case in many years and that very few people know about his place in Detroit's history or even the case itself. "I think a lot of people aren't aware of it," he says.

[abandoningschools]

A 'funnel district' forms in Ferndale as students exercise school choice

Every school day hundreds of kids from Detroit travel up Woodward and many other routes on their way to Ferndale’s schools without their families needing to move.  Ferndale has been called a funnel district because of the traffic in and out of the district...Exercising their ability to educate students from other districts under Michigan’s schools of choice policy, Ferndale has wooed Detroit students. The district has two high schools that cater almost exclusively to students from Detroit. One of them, University High, has 426 students only 7 of whom come from Ferndale.  

[abandoningschools]

[abandoningschools]

[abandoningschools]

[abandoningschools]

Visit Original Link

Keith Johnson---wow, a treasure trove of experience and knowledge about busing in Detroit. Here he shares his experiences going from predominately white schools into the DPS' attempt to integrate schools. His parents couldn't have prepared him for the violence he encountered. 

[abandoningschools]

[abandoningschools]

People to know in the Detroit busing controversy - Judge Stephen Roth 

Judge Stephen J. Roth was the sitting judge when Milliken vs. Bradley came to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He caught the case in a blind draw and would go on to make two of the most controversial decisions in Detroit busing. Roth's decisions declared segregation in Detroit's schools was the fault of the state and busing kids between Detroit and the suburbs was a way to desegregate the schools.

Read more about Roth and the heat he took over his rulings in the Michigan Bar Journal. 

[abandoningschools]

Visit Original Link

Juanita Hernandez has a unique take on what's happened to Detroit Public Schools. She grew up in the city in the 1930s and played with kids of all races. She had one child in high school during busing and saw what went wrong with its implementation. And she also sees what the city is like today from her vantage point as an election polls volunteer. Listen to her longview. 

[abandoningschools]

[abandoningschools]

Memorandum to President Gerald R. Ford advising him on his position on busing. 

[abandoningschools]

Visit Original Link

Photo credit: Timothy Boscarino   |  Flickr