Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement

Civil rights activist Suitts (Hugo Black of Alabama) traces the rhetoric behind the modern school choice movement to its racist roots in this slim but persuasive investigation. Though contemporary reformers tout school choice as a “social justice issue,” Suitts reveals that tax credits and private school vouchers were advanced by Alabama state senator Albert Boutwell and other segregationists to blunt the impact of the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. When Southern politicians and school board members discovered that opposing integration at all costs was “counterproductive to preserving as many virtually segregated schools as possible,” they began to emphasize “parental liberty” and “freedom of choice,” Suitts writes, and strove to bolster private education at the expense of public schools. He suggests that the Trump administration’s support for charter schools and voucher programs, led by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, will impoverish public schools, perpetuate “token level[s] of diversity,” and handicap students of color, as well as those with lower socioeconomic status. Writing without rancor but with an urgent sense of the risks involved, Suitts presents a damning portrait of the historic motivations behind privatization. Teachers, policy makers, and progressive activists would do well to take heed. [em](Feb.) [/em]