Education Reform in Florida: Diversity and Equity in Public Policy

2. The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida

In two ways Governor Jeb Bush’s education policies in Florida in his first term assumed that the primary historical legacy of racism has been low expectations for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. First, his accountability policies for elementary and secondary schools have relied on a single mechanism—high-stakes standardized testing—as the primary tool of school improvement. Second, the elimination of affirmative action in Florida higher education implied that the history of discrimination in higher education should no longer have a role in higher education admissions policies. Chapters 5 and 8 explore those contemporary debates explicitly. In this chapter, we explain how Florida’s educational history has left lasting marks on the current debate. Exploring civil rights efforts in the Jim Crow era, state-supported White resistance, and effects of desegregation on historically Black institutions, this chapter places school desegregation in Florida in a regional context. The civil rights movement and desegregation politics in Florida significantly shaped public education in the state. School desegregation took place in Florida as the state was witnessing significant growth in its major metropolitan areas, rapid demographic change, and a shift to an increasingly diversified economy, an economy increasingly less dominated by traditional agricultural elites. These forces both shaped and complicated Florida’s response to desegregation. Unlike other southern states, pro-segregation demagogues, who closed public schools to evade desegregation in Virginia and Arkansas, did not gain a critical voice in shaping educational policy. Rather, state and local 19 CHAPTER 2 The Legacy of Desegregation in Florida Deirdre Cobb-Roberts Barbara Shircliffe leaders charted out a course for maintaining segregation and later for implementing desegregation in the name of “good race relations.” In contrast to other education reforms discussed in this book, the state government in Tallahassee did not initiate or implement desegregation . In fact, in Brown II (1955), the U.S. Supreme Court did not hold state governments responsible for planning, implementing, or monitoring desegregation. Although state governments had mandated segregated schooling, the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned that due to variations in local conditions, local school districts under the direction of the federal court would be responsible for working out desegregation plans. In higher education, the story was different; as a state agency, the Florida Board of Control governed the higher education system. This chapter describes the legacy of desegregation efforts in Florida, using case studies from both K–12 public schools and higher education to explore the dynamics involved in desegregation. In each case, we address the power White privilege has had in shaping desegregation policies and debates within the African American community about the legacy of desegregation. In Florida, as elsewhere in the South, desegregation was an uneven and diverse experience and was played out differently in various communities throughout the state. Its legacy for current educational policy includes both the pragmatic issues of isolating students and also the political dynamic of relative newcomers in Florida making policy without acknowledging the continuing skepticism of African American political and community leaders toward educational policies controlled by White politicians. FLORIDA IN THE JIM CROW ERA In 1866, following the Civil War, Florida was one of the first states in the Union to pass a law allowing the establishment of segregated schools for African Americans. This school law resulted from both African American demands for schooling and White efforts to control the African American education movement. During this period, the Freedman’s Bureau, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, and the African Civilization Society began establishing schools to meet demands for education among African Americans. As elsewhere in the South, many White Floridians feared such schools, particularly if headed by northern teachers or federal authorities. To capitalize on these fears, Freedmen’s Bureau Head Colonel Osborn 20 DEIRDRE COBB-ROBERTS AND BARBARA SHIRCLIFFE wrote Florida legislators and argued that by initiating schools for African Americans, “White Floridians would have control over the freedmen’s education.”1 That argument, in part, led to the passage of the 1866 school law to establish tax-supported schools for African Americans and to give the state control over who could be hired to teach. These schools were financed by taxes paid by African American males and revenue generated from license fees of White teachers working in the schools for African Americans.2 During radical Reconstruction, 1868–1877, legislators began to formalize state control over schooling. African American representatives in the state legislature fought...