By: Mischaël Cetoute
Nayvadius Wilburn, professionally known as Future, is considered one of the patriarchs of the trap music movement and an expert[1] on the effects of federal involvement on Black lives. In his third consecutive number one album, Future sings of the aftermath of a federally backed police raid. “Feds Did a Sweep” opens with a line about how many friends he’s lost, then goes on to say, “The feds did a sweep, picked the dogs up like an infant, got 13 bodies, got 20 something damn victims, burned the eyes out a witness.”[2] While Wilburn lacks the academic pedigree to ever be summoned to testify in front of Congress, perspectives like his- ghettoized Black men, are desperately missing from the national discourse surrounding education.
The scope of federal involvement in education covers a wide range of topics from funding for special education all the way to sexual assault on college campuses. However, a consistent fault line in the battle for or against federal involvement in education has been the color line. For this reason, my analysis of the federal involvement in education will focus primarily on race and federal attempts at creating educational equity for the descendants of slaves. In this paper, I employ Future’s metaphor- “Feds Did a Sweep” to do two things: (1) re-center traditionally silenced voices in the education debate, and (2) reframe liberal orthodoxy regarding federal intervention in education.
Historically, liberals have advanced the argument that federal involvement in education is necessary to equalize an unfair playing field. This argument is best encapsulated by three milestone events in American history: I. the establishment of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen And Abandoned Lands (BRFAL), II. the mandatory desegregation order of Brown v. Board, and III. the introduction of high-stakes tests as a result of No Child Left Behind. And while each of those interventions began with good intentions, a similar pattern of neglecting local Black voices ultimately led to their demise and a calcification of the original issue.
The Freedmen’s Bureau vs. Freedom Schools
In March of 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau (BRFAL) to facilitate the transition of freed slaves into the mainstream. The Freedmen’s Bureau deployed $6 million towards education, opened and staffed more than 2,500 schools, and introduced over 150,000 children to Classical education.[3] On the surface, it is difficult to argue against these contributions. However, if one delves deeper into the history of the Black American Freedom Struggle, it becomes apparent that the Freedmen’s Bureau destroyed the organic Freedom Schools movement. In “Education of Blacks in the South” Historian James Andersen notes that it was Black politicians during the Reconstruction Era that wrote universal education into the Southern state constitutions. Andersen also points out the tradition of local “self-help” where Black citizens volunteered time, donated private land and resources towards the creation and maintenance of neighborhood schools.[4] In fact, northern missionaries were astonished to discover many former slaves established their own educational collectives which were staffed entirely by Black teachers and uninterested in the “civilized” Yankee curriculum.[5] Then in 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau seized control over and closed all the Freedom Schools and their funding source. Over 10,000 former slaves signed a petition to reopen their schools at their own expense. Their petition was denied.[6] The Feds did a sweep and wiped out years of Black self-determination, only to pull out of the South a few years later.
Desegregation with all deliberate speed vs. Black teachers
The next major Federal attempt to improve educational opportunities for the descendants of slaves didn’t come until almost a century later. In a rare, unanimous Supreme Court Decision, Justice Earl Warren declared separate inherently unequal, and mandated school integration with “all deliberate speed.”[7] White liberals and middle-class Black leaders touted this decision as a great victory. Half a century later even critiques of “The Federal Role in Education,” like the one advanced by Paul Hill, characterize Brown as positive.[8] Hill, who earlier in his essay compares federal involvement in education to a deadly form of water says, “The federal government had good reason to become engaged with the public schools when it did…Federal intervention has made it illegal for schools to discriminate on the basis of color…These gains are real, and no one suggests that America reverse them now.” Education Historian Charles Payne provides a helpful contrasting view in his essay, “The Whole United States is Southern!!” In it he details a 1955 poll that shows that only about half of Black Southerners agreed with the Brown decision, and various newspaper reports at the time described a muted and wary Black community, far from the victory cries happening in elite liberal circles.[9] Many liberals were surprised by the lack of enthusiasm from Black communities regarding the Brown decision.[10] Decades later their clairvoyance would be proved by the present reality of our nation’s hyper segregated schools and the massive layoffs of Black educators-from which we have yet to recover. The Feds did a sweep and wiped out the number of Black teachers by nearly half.
No Child Left Behind vs. Black Youth in Cages
The most recent attempt to ameliorate educational inequality came in the form of higher standards and high-stakes testing. As Carl Kaestle astutely proves, to the average American “Federal aid means federal control.”[11] And with the introduction of No Child Left Behind, this suspicion was confirmed, formally requiring all states to administer standardized tests in order to continue receiving federal aid. George Bush’s iconic line “the soft bigotry of low expectations” reverberated across both aisles and led to one of the most impactful federal interventions in Education since the land grants of the early 1800s. As a result of NCLB, states (schools) are accountable for student performance on standardized tests with the lofty goal of closing “the achievement gap” by 2014. Liberals, like Jack Jennings, seized the momentum around testing and framed test scores in terms of racial disparities. In Part IV of “Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools: The Politics of Education Reform” Jennings articulates what is now the party line amongst elite liberals- the federal government can fix public schools by increasing funding for programs that focus on Early Childhood Education, Teacher Retention and Preparation, etc.[12] Jennings argues for the United for Students Act, which mirrors Obama’s Race to the Top (grant aid for states tied to requirements) except with more funding. Well-intentioned elites like Jennings have overlooked the perverse incentives a “data-driven” school climate presents. Educators are now incentivized to remove low-performing and misbehaved students from their rolls in order to avoid penalties such as reduced funding or school closure. As a result, the use of exclusionary discipline and suspensions skyrocketed in the decades following NCLB, clearing the way for the School-to-Prison Pipeline. High stakes testing also disproportionately harms Black youth who are most likely to be retained, and never recover, according to research conducted by Jay Heubert for the National Research Council.[13] The Feds did a sweep and rounded up even more Black children for prison.
Conclusion
Federal education policy as it relates to Black people reflects the social context more than it affects it. When there is a time of racial reckoning, the federal government steps in and does a sweep. When the tide turns back over, it goes back to reinforcing a racially unjust status quo. My earlier examples of landmark federal interventions (then subsequent abandonment) illustrate this pattern. However, it would be a mistake to think that exclusive state control is the remedy. The goal of this paper is to encourage progressives to move beyond the typical boundaries to debate and begin asking better questions. If federal involvement was coupled with an excavation of the fraught history of Black educational experiences, it could show promise. My personal position is that the more pressing questions are about power distribution. Who gets to decide what is best for Black children, who creates the metrics of measurement for success, and ultimately, who oversees implementation? In other words, who decides there’s a mess and who gets to sweep?
[1] Wilburn’s lived experience growing up in Kirkwood, Atlanta, an area disproportionately impacted by the crack epidemic and mass incarceration, is what imbues him with expertise on the effects of federal power.
[2] Future, Feds Did a Sweep (Epic Records 2017).
[3] Matthew Hirschland, Correcting the Record: Understanding the History of Federal Intervention and Failure in Securing U.S. Educational Reform. 17 Education Policy, 343-364 (2003).
[4] James Andersen, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988)
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
[8] Paul Hill, The Federal Role in Education, 2000 Brookings Papers on Education Policy 11 – 40 (2000).
[9] Charles Payne, “The Whole United States is Southern!!”: Brown v. Board and the Mystification of Race, 3 Journal of American History (2004).
[10] Id.
[11] Carl Kaestle, Federal Aid to Education Since World War II: Purposes and Politics, Spencer Foundation
[12] Jack Jennings, Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools: The Politics of Education Reform, (2015).
[13] Jay Heubert and R. Hauser, High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation, (1999).
