Lessons from the past by a man who lived it

Former 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Nathaniel Jones

On Friday, October 29, I had the privilege of serving as keynote speaker for the conference titled “From Redlining to White Flight: The History of Housing Segregation & The Importance of Regionalism.” The conference was a partnership between the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion and Cooley Law School.

The purpose of the program was to educate attendees about past practices and decisions that have led to the segregated housing patterns that we see in metropolitan Detroit today.  One of historic turning points for the region was the 1974 case of Milliken v. Bradley. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a plan for cross-district busing in metropolitan Detroit. The morning portion of the conference included a re-enactment of the Supreme Court oral arguments in Milliken v Bradley.

The cast of re-life justices who participated in the re-enactment included Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly, U.S. District Judges David Lawson and Denise Page Hood, 40^th District Court Judge Joseph Oster, and retired Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James L. Ryan. Attendees, comprised mostly of Cooley law students and high school students from Macomb and Oakland Counties and the City of Detroit, were able to sit in a crowded courtroom and experience the case as it was presented back in the early1970s. 

I attended the conference to talk about historical population and housing trends in Southeast Michigan. It is impossible to look at federal housing and transportation policies and the long-term effects of Milliken v. Bradley without having a deeper understanding of why metro Detroit remains so racially polarized. Housing redlining kept neighborhoods segregated, federal mortgage policies and the building of the freeways subsidized suburban sprawl, and the prohibition of forced busing encouraged white flight.   

During the conference, I was able to sit beside someone who fought in the trenches to insure that Detroit’s children had an opportunity to live in a diverse world—an opportunity that was squandered by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Milliken case. The person sitting next to me on the panel[1] was Nathaniel R. Jones, retired judge for the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and current Senior Counsel and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the firm Blank Rome LLP. 

His bio reads like a history of the Civil Rights Movement.  He started his career in Youngstown, Ohio in 1956 as executive director of its Employment Practices Commission.  In 1960, President Kennedy appointed him assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.  He went on to serve as deputy general counsel to the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders which investigated the race riots that occurred across the country in 1967; general counsel of the NAACP, a position formerly held by Justice Thurgood Marshall; played an important role in furthering the abolition of apartheid in South Africa; and was consulted by the drafters of South Africa’s new constitution.

As general counsel for the NAACP, Judge Jones argued Milliken v. Bradley in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and shared with the audience many little-known facts about the case and the participants – facts that will play a prominent role in his upcoming memoir.

Listening to Judge Jones, it is abundantly clear how Detroit’s past still profoundly influences us today. It was especially gratifying that young people were in the audience, people who will blaze our path to the future now armed with the lessons of the past. How fortunate we are to have people like Judge Jones to help show us the way.

 

 

[1] The other panel members brought a great deal of experience as well and included Clifford Shrupp, Executive Director (since its creation in 1977) of the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit; Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Civil Rights Unit (in the Eastern District of Michigan) Judy Levy, and Elliott S. Hall, a Partner of Dykema Gossett and long time fixture in the Detroit legal community.

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2009 MEAP: Public school reading scores outshine the charters

It has been said that a child learns to read up until third grade, after which he/she reads to learn. The ability to read at an early age is critical for academic success across all subjects in the years to come.

The State of Michigan recently released results from the Fall 2009 MEAP.  Table 1 presents a summary of the third grade reading results (the earliest grade tested) for the Detroit Area – Macomb, Oakland and Wayne Counties.  The results are tabulated across districts and presented as county totals.  The City of Detroit district is pulled out separately from Wayne County, and the remaining Wayne County districts are summarized.  In addition, public school districts have been tabulated separately from charter schools.

Table 1 presents results over the last five years so that trends can be readily identified.  Among the findings:

• The results were clear – all districts, both public and charter, experienced improvements in the percent of children reading at grade level over the last year. The percent of children not meeting standards dropped from 13.6% to 10.2% across the State of Michigan.  Those meeting standards increased from 86.4% to 89.8%.
• Macomb Public Schools, after two years of decreases, experienced an increase in the percentage of children meeting standards from 88.5% to 91.6%. For the first time, less than 1,000 third grade students could not read at grade level.
• Oakland Public Schools’ 2008-09 improvement was extended, and increased. The share of students testing at grade level grew from 91.2% to 93.6%. As was the case with Macomb, this was the first time that less than 1,000 third grade students could not read at grade level.
• Detroit Public School students showed the greatest improvement. By the 2008-09 school year, the percent of Detroit students that were reading at a third grade level had fallen from a high of 75.5% to 71.7%.  But in the 2009-10 school year, Detroit students rallied to 79.1 %, representing a 10.3 percent improvement.
• Out-Wayne County Public Schools also showed improvement after two successive years of losses. The Fall 2009 tests showed a grade level reading rate of 90.0 percent.  This was up from 86.0% in Fall 2008.
• The percent of tri-county public school students reading at a third-grade level increased from 85.8% to 89.8%.
• Charter schools continued to have significantly lower rates of students meeting reading standards than their public school counterparts (though DPS is still slightly lower than each of the county charter averages).
• Macomb charter schools produced a grade level reading rate of 80.0%, a marked increase from 76.2% in Fall 2008.
• Oakland Charter schools showed similar, though slightly less, improvement than did Macomb. Student grade level reading in Fall 2009 was 79.7%, up from 76.6% in Fall 2008.
• Wayne County charters (charters located in the City of Detroit were not pulled out separately) showed the largest improvement across the tri-county, as the grade level reading rate increased from 76.25 to 81.0 %.

 

A second trend that the data reveal is the decreasing public school population of 3^rd graders[1]^,[2] resulting from a combination of out-migration and decreasing births.  The number of 3^rd graders tested statewide (including both public and charter) decreased by 2,216, or 1.9 percent.  Macomb lost 314 3^rd grade students (3.2%) between 2008 and 2009 (when public and charter enrollments are combined), while Oakland lost 106 students (0.8%).  Both experienced decreases in public enrollment (3.6% and 0.8%, respectively), with very small changes in charter enrollment.

The number of Detroit Public School third graders taking the test has fallen by 2,142, or 23.7 percent, between Fall 2005 and Fall 2008.  Much has been written about decreasing enrollment in the district overall.  Such large decreases in the early grades provide strong evidence to support the general enrollment forecasts of a district that will drop to about 50,000 by 2015[3].

Table 1.  3rd Grade Reading MEAP Results

 

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[1] The numbers also reveal a movement from public to charter schools, as the population of charter school students increased significantly in Wayne, slightly in Oakland, and held steady in Macomb.

[2] The assumption must be made that the numbers are not affected by an increasing number of parents opting out of having their children tested.

[3] The City of Detroit is adding children through births, at a rate that has been dropping since 1990.  The forecast for attracting families with young children to the City in the near future is not there.  As a result, increased enrollment will only come through an increasing market share – attracting a higher percentage of current residents at each grade level.