Let's stop walking in circles
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Black History Month is an ideal time to honor one of Pittsburgh's outstanding educators, the late Barbara A. Sizemore, and reflect on the insights in her remarkable book, "Walking in Circles: The Black Struggle for School Reform," which assesses a wide range of efforts to improve education for African-American students in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The book's title is a shorthand description of how educators keep reinventing the wheel in an effort to raise academic achievement among African-American children. The policy treadmill so far has yielded only limited improvements while perpetuating conflicts between community activists and district administrators.
Recent protests by the Pittsburgh NAACP targeting educational disparities continue the tradition of activism initiated by the NAACP Education Committee under the leadership of the late Rev. LeRoy Patrick in 1966. At that time the committee complained that teaching projects in the Hill District and Homewood-Brushton "failed to demonstrate significant results."
Another wave of activism was sparked by desegregation plans and school closings in 1980, led by former city Councilman Sala Udin and University of Pittsburgh professor Jerome Taylor. Voting patterns on the Pittsburgh school board in that period bear remarkable similarities to recent deliberations. Dr. Sizemore described how a board majority ignored community activists and passed its own plan over the objections of African-American members Jake Milliones and James J. Robinson.
In some respects, even today's highly touted Pittsburgh Promise -- which offers to finance college for all eligible students in the public school district -- fits the "walking in circles" metaphor.
The Promise is an ingenious effort to stem middle-class (primarily white) exodus from the city. Despite efforts to ensure racial equity, community suspicion is fueled by memories of innovations implemented in the early 1960s that were directed, in part, "toward reversing the exodus of the white middle class from the city."
First Published February 1, 2010 12:00 am
