Racial and Ethnic Tensions in American Communities: Poverty, Inequality, and Discrimination—Volume VII: The Mississippi Delta Report

Chapter 2

Race and the Public Education System in Mississippi

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Scholars have warned that absent innovative policy changes, Mississippi and the rural South will face a work force crisis as a result of the globalization of the regional economy and the shift away from unskilled industrial labor.[1] Mississippi currently lacks the skilled and educated workers necessary to stimulate vigorous economic growth. The state has long been characterized by an out-migration of talent from the region, with a corresponding “brain drain” each year of college students who elect to leave the Delta upon graduation.[2] According to the CEO of one Delta corporation, Mississippi is confronting a “horrific” problem in the area of public education, and as a result, he rejects nearly two-thirds of job applicants to his company because they are unable to meet his company’s hiring criteria.[3]

One of the biggest challenges facing the Mississippi public school system today is poverty. According to Dr. James Hemphill, special assistant to the state superintendent and director of external relations of the Mississippi State Department of Education, this is particularly evident in the Delta where the economy is so depleted that obtaining a quality education is extremely difficult.[4] High rates of poverty coupled with a legacy of unequal educational opportunities for people of color, who make up more than one-third of the population, have left Mississippi’s children at a substantial disadvantage compared with the rest of the nation.

Background

In 1990, 75.2 percent of the total U.S. population had a high school diploma or higher educational attainment. This figure was 77.9 percent for whites and 63.1 percent for blacks. In Mississippi, however, the figures were much lower with a rate of 64.3 percent for the total state population, including 71.7 percent for whites and 47.3 percent for blacks. The gap between educational achievement in Mississippi and the rest of the nation and that between black and white Mississippians are equally dramatic for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Compared with 20.3 percent of the total U.S. population, only 14.7 percent of the Mississippi population had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Nationwide the figures for whites and blacks were 21.5 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively, compared with 17.2 percent of Mississippi whites and 8.8 percent of Mississippi blacks. Only Arkansas and West Virginia lagged behind Mississippi in equivalent educational attainment.[5]

In 1995, the national high school graduation rate was about 86 percent—the same level as in 1990.[6] In contrast, Mississippi had a graduation rate of 75 percent in 1995.[7] And that number had declined to 73.8 percent by 1998.[8] Although the total number of public high school graduates is projected to increase 20 percent between 1995–1996 and 2007–2008, in Mississippi the total number is expected to decrease 1 percent.[9] Failing to complete high school has a direct impact on a person’s potential for financial stability and success. In 1992, for example, high school dropouts were three times more likely to receive income from AFDC or public assistance than high school graduates who did not go on to college (17 percent versus 6 percent).[10] And in 1998, high school graduates nationwide had an unemployment rate of 4 percent compared with 7.1 percent for those who had not completed high school.[11]

Education constitutes a major expense for Mississippi. In fiscal year 1995, Mississippi spent $1.478 billion on education or 58.7 percent of all general fund appropriations.[12] The Mississippi public school system comprises 149 school districts and three agricultural high schools, which in 1995 served 503,301 elementary and secondary students.[13] It is difficult to approximate the number of private school students in the state because various sources provide different figures. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that in 1993, Mississippi had 221 private elementary and secondary schools that served 58,655 students.[14] More recently, the Mississippi Private School Association was estimated to have 90 member schools representing 36,000–37,000 students, and the state’s Catholic schools, which do not belong to the association, were calculated to represent an additional 10,000 students.[15] Overall, the Mississippi Council of Chief State School Officers estimates that 88.7 percent of Mississippi’s school-age children are in public schools compared with the national average of 90 percent.[16]

Quality of Education

Testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing brought forth a harsh indictment of the Mississippi public school system. Roger Malkin, chairman of the Delta and Pine Land Company in Scott, Mississippi, testified that his company, during the hiring process, has found that many young people applying for work with a high school diploma are “functionally illiterate.”[17] Mr. Malkin testified, “I think it’s a tragedy, and I’m here as a U.S. citizen, a Mississippi citizen, and I think that public education in the United States is appalling, and we have to do something about it.”[18]

As in many high poverty areas, many Mississippi public schools are characterized by dilapidated buildings and insufficient resources. In June 1995, the State Department of Education visited, unannounced, the Quitman County schools and found filthy buildings, truant students, and “depressing and appalling conditions.”[19] Clearly, the physical conditions of a school setting—including lighting, air and ventilation, classroom space, and outside distractions—can play a role in the educational process.[20] Many schools in the Delta were built in the 1940s and 1950s and have not been properly maintained.[21] Furthermore, it has been estimated that 30 percent of all Delta schools need additional classroom space to accommodate students adequately.[22]

Mississippi uses a performance-based accreditation system to evaluate its school districts. The accreditation levels are from level 1, which is probation, to level 5, which is excellent. A level 3 is considered successful. For 1995, only one school district received a 5, and 19 school districts were ranked at level 4. The majority of school districts, 90 in total, fell into the 3–3.9 range. Twenty-four schools received a performance index between 2 and 2.9, and 19 received a performance index between 1 and 1.9.[23] Of those 19 low-scoring districts, 10 were located in the Delta or its periphery.[24] The student performance in Tunica County, for example, has been so poor that the district has been under state oversight since March 1997.[25]

Generally, the literature on whether student performance is correlated with spending has been contradictory.[26] Tables 2.1 and 2.2 show that the average total per pupil expenditure for the top 10 performing school districts is $3,963 and for the bottom 10 districts, the figure is $4,509. Thus, on average, the lowest ranking districts spend more money per pupil than the top performing districts.

Unlike other states, Mississippi has not experienced an eruption of equity funding lawsuits. This may be attributable in part to the State Legislature implementing, over the governor’s veto, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. This program seeks to ensure that every school district will receive “sufficient” funds to provide an adequate education. The state will provide an increase of at least 8 percent for education services in every district. The program, implemented in 1998, will continue to be phased in over a six-year period, and will target an additional $130 million annually to education needs throughout the state.[27]

Another factor affecting student achievement is the efficiency of the school district administration, including superintendents. Mississippi has 65 counties that elect, rather than appoint, their school superintendents. This is more than any other state.[28] While many of the top performing districts have appointed superintendents, and while many of the worst performing districts have elected superintendents,[29] testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing suggested that data on this matter are inconclusive.[30]

Testimony at the hearing suggested that allowing appointment rather than election of superintendents would “infuse and in fact give the district the ability to go outside the county lines to attract an effective leader.”[31] Dr. Ron Love, deputy superintendent, State Department of Education, testified that the most significant drawbacks of electing the school superintendent is that “the talent pool that you’ve got to select from has got to live right there next door to you, and be affected by all the local politics in that community. So it can be very difficult for them to get some new blood into the community. . . .”[32]

But according to Dr. Hattie Nalls of the Adolescent Family Life Institute, Inc., both elected and appointed officials are subject to the same political influences.[33] Although she said the community has a larger voice in the election of local officials, “even in that, a lot of manipulation goes on,” with some ministers, for example, encouraging their parishioners to vote for a particular person.[34] And her criticism of appointed officials was similarly harsh because, based on Dr. Nalls’ observations, many appointed positions are decided “before it gets into the chamber.”[35]

Testimony at the hearing suggested that only a small minority of the 15,000 school districts around the nation have kept the position of superintendent as an elected one. And yet nearly half of Mississippi’s school districts—63 out of 149—have kept the position elected rather than appointed.[36]

It was reported at the hearing that while there have been proposals before the State Legislature nearly every year to mandate the appointment of school superintendents instead of election, the proposals “just don’t quite make it.”[37] The state is currently focusing on improving the skills of its local school administrators whether elected or appointed.[38]

Several educators and community leaders suggested that the educational process must take place in the home as well as in the schools. Municipal judge and attorney Clell Ward stated in his interview with Commission staff:

We can’t solve the problem through the school system. Parents need to have an understanding as to the importance of education first, and that might entail some sort of program to train parents in conjunction with a program to reduce teenage pregnancy. We need to train parents how to be parents and instill values.[39]

Similarly, Dr. Martha Cheney, project coordinator for the Mississippi Public Education Forum, a private foundation funded by the state’s business community, believes that there must be a stronger focus on the “basics,” which includes parents talking to their young children in the home during their preschool years.[40]

Funding, Resources, and Equal Opportunity

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act,[41] enacted in 1965, established several programs that provided federal funds to local school districts. Title I of the act created a program specifically designed to improve educational opportunities for educationally deprived children. Funding levels are calculated based on the number of low-income children in the school district. The Title I program supplements local school efforts to improve the basic and advanced skills of students at risk of school failure.

Title I funds reach approximately 14,000 school districts and serve more than six million children annually. Since Title I’s enactment, Congress has appropriated almost $97 billion to local school districts.[42] In 1995, Mississippi received almost $122 million in Title I funds, which were distributed to 719 schools serving 246,524 schoolchildren. Approximately 75 percent of the funds were used for classroom instruction.[43] In 1996, disbursements to Mississippi increased to $126.4 million.[44]

A 1993 U.S. Department of Education study of Title I found that recipients of services under the program in schools where at least three quarters of the children were poor scored substantially lower in math and reading than recipients attending schools where fewer than half were poor.[45] Many of the Delta school districts that continue to perform poorly rely heavily on federal funds.[46] For many school districts, receipt of Title I funds drive their per-pupil expenditures above the state average.

There appears to be disagreement among education leaders as to the costs and benefits associated with accepting Title I funds. Dr. Margaret Cheney, project coordinator of the Mississippi Public Education Forum, argues that residents of the Delta see the federal government as a “sugar daddy” because of the substantial federal assistance received under Title I and from the National Science Foundation.[47]

But Dr. James Hemphill and Dr. Ron Love, both special assistants to the state superintendent, point to the benefits of federal funding. Dr. Hemphill testified at the Mississippi Delta hearing that Title I funding “absolutely” plays a role in raising student achievement levels in poverty areas.[48] He believes that, without it, Mississippi public schools would be in “desperate shape.”[49] Dr. Love arrived at the same conclusion.[50] The single criticism with how the money is spent in the state of Mississippi was put forth by Dr. Hemphill, who testified that the funds should be focused earlier in a child’s education.[51]

Mississippi Teachers

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Education released a report finding that public school teacher salaries in rural settings are several thousand dollars lower on average than in metropolitan areas.[52] For the 1993–1994 academic year, the average annual salary for teachers nationwide was $36,846.[53] For the same year, Mississippi had the lowest average salary for public school teachers, $25,715.[54] These numbers have increased only slightly: in 1998 the national average was $37,560, and the average in Mississippi was $27,720.[55] Moreover, Mississippi’s entry-level salary for teachers ranked near the bottom at $18,833.[56]

In 1997, the State Legislature approved a three-year initiative to raise teacher salaries 10 percent, but even these raises are not expected to make Mississippi’s average teacher salary competitive with those in other states.[57] The State Department of Education maintains that while increased teacher pay was the primary legislative goal to address these concerns, there are other efforts underway to address teacher pay in a systematic way, which is essential in recruiting and retaining teachers.[58]

On May 1, 2000, Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove signed a bill into law that gives teachers a 30 percent pay raise to be phased in over the next six years.[59] But teachers are disappointed because of a provision in the new law that requires the state revenue to increase by 5 percent before the raises are given.[60] And although Governor Musgrove has promised to ask the Legislature next year to remove the revenue requirement, Maryann Graczyk, president of the Mississippi American Federation of Teachers, said, “A lot of teachers do not have faith in the Legislature because of past broken promises. Some look at [the raise package] as another set of broken promises.”[61]

Testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing suggested that if all the graduates of Mississippi’s 15 public and private education schools stayed to teach in Mississippi public schools (currently less than two-thirds of the graduates remain in-state), it still would not be enough to fill the void left by the teachers who are beginning to retire.[62] Current stopgap measures include the use of approximately 1,500 teachers who have been awarded emergency teaching certificates, as well as a large number of “long-term substitutes.”[63]

The current shortage of minority teachers is particularly acute. Minority students only account for about one-tenth of the students in teacher education courses in Mississippi.[64] Moreover, many African American education students, especially those toward the top of the class, are recruited, with higher pay and better benefits packages, to work at schools outside Mississippi.[65]

Dr. Andrew Mullins, former special assistant to the state superintendent of schools, notes that he has seen a precipitous drop in the number of minority teachers obtaining certification. Moreover, testimony delivered in the Mississippi Delta hearing emphasized that many of the poorest school districts, with the highest concentrations of minority students, are also the ones grappling with the most severe teacher shortages:[66]

There is a severe shortage of teachers in [the Mississippi Delta]. In many cases there is a warm body or no body to instruct the children. We have seen a recent precipitous decline in the number of minority teachers and the number of minority teachers statewide applying for certification. The number of black applicants continues to decline. It is difficult to attract white teachers to all-black districts in many cases. These factors, coupled with experienced teachers retiring earlier, teachers leaving the profession due to classroom discipline problems, inadequate administrators and little or no parental support, create a real and worsening crisis for many of our Delta schools.[67]

Finally, the hearing testimony indicated that despite the fact that schools with high percentages of black students see the need for African American teacher role models,[68] meeting that objective is becoming increasingly difficult in low-income areas such as the Delta. Dr. Love testified, “You can [have] a district that’s 97 percent black and at least 50 percent or more faculty will be white.”[69]

Mississippi Teaching Corps

Dr. Mullins, former special assistant to the state superintendent of schools, testified at the Mississippi Delta hearing about the Mississippi Teaching Corps, which offers structured entry into the teaching profession for liberal arts graduates from all over the country who have strong backgrounds in math, natural sciences, or foreign languages. The program, which requires a two-year commitment, combines full-time teaching with working toward a master’s degree in education. The degree program, financed by the state, includes summer study with a small stipend.[70]

In the summer prior to the first academic year, the teachers are required to enter into a certification process at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. Afterwards, the recruits are assigned to the most impoverished schools, which are primarily in the Delta. On the weekends, they return to the university to work on their master’s degrees. Approximately 25 students enroll each year. In 1997, the class of 22 Teaching Corps students included two African American teachers.[71]

Members of the Mississippi Teaching Corps are required to teach for a minimum of two years. Of the 25 teachers who were beginning their second year in 1997, five said they would be staying to teach for a third year. However, testimony at the hearing suggested that many Corps teachers “leave pretty discouraged by the situation that they find themselves in.”[72]

Mississippi Critical Teacher Shortage Act of 1998

The state is now aware of the critical need for teachers, and it has funded several creative programs to help address the problem. These programs include the following:

• Critical Needs Teacher Scholarship Program.[73] This program provides full scholarships (tuition, room, meals, books, materials, and fees) for full- or part-time students willing to teach in geographical shortage areas.[74]

• William Winter Scholarship Fund.[75] Under this program, if a newly minted teacher agrees to teach for one year in both a subject and geographic “shortage” area, the state will repay two years of that teacher’s educational training.[76]

• University Assisted Teacher Recruitment and Retention Grant Program. This program provides scholarships to teachers in shortage areas to seek a graduate degree.

• Relocation Grant/Reimbursement of Interview Expenses. One-time grant for teachers moving to teacher shortage areas and reimbursement of expenses incurred during the interview process at districts’ discretion.

• Mississippi Employer-Assisted Housing Teacher Program. This program is a special home loan program for teachers agreeing to serve in shortage areas.

• Mississippi School Administrator Sabbatical Program. This program reimburses the salary and fringe benefits (for one year) paid to teachers completing an approved full-time administrator preparation program.

While these programs are a good start, more needs to be done if the teacher shortage problem is going to be resolved.

The Public Education Forum of Mississippi convened a task force in 1998 to examine factors contributing to public school educators leaving the profession.[77] The task force determined that the three highest factors, in descending order, were “inadequate salary,” “discipline problems,” and “better job opportunities.”[78] During the hearing, the following were suggested as possible reasons why teachers are leaving the profession:

• High pupil-to-teacher ratio.[79] There was testimony at the hearing that a high pupil-to-teacher ratio, especially when there is a wide divergence of talent in the classroom, can lead to discipline problems and other stress factors that can contribute to a teacher’s decision to leave the classroom.[80]

• Reducing years of service required before retirement from 30 years to 25 years. Some argue this is good because it allows teachers who are “burned out”—or those teachers who are merely biding their time until they can retire—to go ahead and leave.[81] Thus, lowering the minimum number of “years of service” required for retirement can entice unproductive teachers to leave the profession.[82] However, this policy change can also lead to a loss of highly productive teachers: Many teachers, when they reach their 25th year of teaching, will retire from the state and then go teach in a private school or across the line in another state. They can then draw retirement benefits from their 25-year teaching career in Mississippi, in addition to a salary from another school or state.[83]

• Poor administrator support and mentoring. Some of the Mississippi Teacher Corps teachers have reported that they are placed into a classroom with little or no help from the school administrator or from fellow teachers, even though everyone knows the teachers have no classroom experience.[84] There was also testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing on the importance of implementing a “master teacher” program that would provide mentoring to new teachers. Each new teacher would be assigned an experienced “master teacher” for one year, who could nurture the new teacher’s growth and advancement as an educational leader in the school.[85]

Desegregation of the Public Schools

Mississippi has had a history of denying equal educational opportunities to its minority children. For the first 50 odd years of this century, Mississippi’s system of public education was one of “separate and unequal” for blacks.[86] In 1916, the per capita expenditure for each white child of school age in Mississippi was $10.60, and for each black child, $2.26. In 1939, for every $9.88 spent for white instruction, $1 was spent on blacks. The 1943 ratios were $8.27 to $1.75 for whites and blacks, respectively.[87] In anticipation of Brown v. Board of Education,[88] and hoping to weaken the case against segregation, the state enacted legislation calling for equal resources for both black and white children and attempted to promote a public education system that was “separate but equal.”[89]

Erle Johnston, former state director of the controversial Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (1963–1968), writes that no state fought harder than Mississippi after Brown to thwart integration and discourage blacks from enrolling in all-white public schools.[90] Only after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in two other important school desegregation cases, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County[91] and in Alexander v. Holmes[92]—a full 15 years after Brown—did Mississippi seriously begin the process of integrating its public school system.

By that point, white flight may have rendered school integration plans largely ineffective. There was significant white flight to private schools in the 1960s and 1970s, and to predominantly white suburban communities in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, white flight now has left Mississippi public schools not much more racially diverse than they were before desegregation began.[93]

A dramatic rise in private all-white schools in Mississippi occurred in the late 1960s. In the 1963–1964 school year, there were only 17 private schools, enrolling 2,362 students (916 of whom were black). By September 1970, there were 155 private non-Catholic schools, with an estimated student population of 42,000.[94] In the Jackson school district, 9,000 of its 39,000 students left the public school system from September 1969 to September 1971.[95]

A white journalist who was a first grader in Leland, Mississippi, a small Delta town that began its first year of integration in 1971, wrote:

After the Court’s ruling, a flood of hysterical white Mississippi families fled to newly created segregationist academies-schools with Confederate-colonel mascots and rebel flag logos. . . . For white Mississippians who considered themselves enlightened, the idea of sending their children to all-white private schools twenty-five years ago was taboo . . . But today, those crude segregationist trappings have largely fallen away. . . . Today, many of the children of the early white graduates of Leland’s integrated public schools are attending private academies.[96]

As one black state legislator explained it: “We just all quietly go about our own way. Folks from the academy ask me from time to time if I can help them find any good black children . . . I say ‘What for?’ ”[97] This same sentiment was expressed in an interview shortly before the Mississippi Delta hearing by Robert Davis, a professor of law at the University of Mississippi, who was an expert witness at the hearing:

When it comes to interacting socially, the atmosphere in Mississippi is different from other parts of the country. The different races are not comfortable with each other—separation seems to be promoted in different ways, including in professional groups, in social groups, in churches, etc. You basically have two societies that go about their lives and only get together when they have to. People don’t seem to want bridges built.[98]

Of course, there was also testimony at the hearing to suggest that important social interaction is starting to take place among the races. According to Dr. William Sutton, president of historically black Mississippi Valley State University:

I can see some changes . . . in the communities and the rotary clubs and on bank boards and also in the chambers of commerce that we are beginning to participate a bit more, and that will help, but we have a long ways to go.[99]

In March 1998, members of President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race gathered at the University of Mississippi for a forum dedicated to gauging the community’s progress on race. One newspaper reported that “the old South and the new one clashed”:

A black student and a white student from Oxford High School declared their friendship with a heartfelt hug, but also pointed out that black and white students segregated themselves at lunch. Black speakers complained about the lack of a black doctor in town, adding that a non-white physician would have trouble attracting white patients. When a white man in the audience stood to proclaim that it was his “freedom” to wave the Confederate flag at Ole Miss football games, a white student responded by saying that most students would appreciate it if he did not.[100]

Some observers maintain that for both blacks and whites there is social pressure not to send their children to schools where they will be in the minority.[101] Moreover, testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing points out that as private schools flourish in a given community, support for the public schools can wane. Dr. Love, special assistant to the state superintendent, stated:

I think the most dramatic impact the private schools [have] on public schools ha[s] to do with divided loyalties and community support for your public schools. I’ve worked in districts where there was very little private schooling, like Tupelo, and we enjoyed a great deal of communitywide [support] from local businesses and others. I think in the Delta on the other hand . . . you may have divided loyalties. . . . And that I think is the most crucial factor in terms of development of academies versus some other things. That’s where the impact tends to be most negative.[102]

Robert Buck, counsel for the Greenville Public School District Board of Trustees, testified that he, too, believes private academies can drain away support from the public school system, especially due to the economic burden placed upon parents who send their children to private schools:

If you have persons who pull their children out of a school system into a separate school system, as a result of the desegregation of public schools that took place in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, you have those persons now having to devote their resources to support the private academies, and at the same time pay ad valorem taxes to support the public school system. I think it almost necessarily follows that those persons whose resources are now being stretched are going to be opposed to anything that would mean an increase in tax rates . . . It certainly is my impression, based on my observation and also the impression of many people that I talk to that in fact there has been an adverse effect upon support for public education as a result of the proliferation of private academies.[103]

The problems surrounding the increase of predominately white private academies have plagued one small community in Tunica County for several years. Most residents of Tunica County are black, poor, and poorly educated.[104] In Robinsonville, a small unincorporated area in Tunica County, local officials are planning to build an $8 million state-of-the-art elementary school for students in the area. At first glance, the proposed plan would appear to directly benefit the residents of Robinsonville. But in the area immediately surrounding the property where the school is to be built, an upscale residential development is also scheduled to be built.[105] This development will undoubtedly attract higher income white families. As a result, area residents have organized with state and local officials to oppose the school, which many view as another plan to perpetuate the pattern of segregation that exists across the region.[106]

Because Tunica County schools are operating under a 1970 mandatory desegregation order, the school board has to get approval from the Department of Justice before it can build a new school.[107] To date, the Justice Department has refused to approve the plan, noting the likelihood that the new school would be populated by the predominately white residents of the surrounding residential development, and recommended other sites for the proposed plan that had a higher percentage of black students.[108] Even if the Justice Department and the school board reach an agreement, the plan must then be approved by a federal judge.[109]

Some observers consider Brown v. Board of Education the “moral pinnacle” in the struggle for equality of opportunity between whites and African Americans.[110] Others view public school desegregation as destructive to black identity and destructive to black control of the educational process for their children.[111] Whatever one’s view, it is clear that efforts to desegregate public schools in the Delta have largely failed. Dr. Arthur G. Cosby, a sociologist at Mississippi State University, suggests that the failure of the Mississippi school system to achieve integration has had a negative impact on education overall. He argues that while it appears that there are substantial resources being spent on education, these resources are greatly fragmented, resulting in a wasteful duplication of effort, a failure to achieve economies of scale, and suboptimal results from the resources that are spent.[112]

The Link between Community Leadership, Successful Schools, and Integration

Dr. Hemphill testified that community leadership is absolutely paramount to successful schools:

We see many times that the most important reason students are not achieving is leadership, not necessarily funding, but leadership, and not necessarily educational leadership, but leadership in the communities. You have a community that expects a school district to provide a superior product, you’ll have a good school district. If you have a community that doesn’t expect that, then they probably will not do it.[113]

Roger Malkin, chairman of the Delta and Pine Land Company in Scott, Mississippi, testified that he thought part of the problem with public education—at least in the city of Greenville—was that the all-black school board “is in favor of mediocrity, they’re not particularly in favor of excellence.”[114] Mr. Malkin argued that there was a “leadership problem” in the black community, and he expressed discouragement over his belief that “the blacks who have made it, and there are a lot of . . . financially successful blacks in Greenville, they never show up at public school meetings.”[115] Furthermore, testified Mr. Malkin, commitments to desegregation and integration would not take place until the public schools improved:

What we must do everywhere in the United States is we’ve got to improve public education so it is a bargain. People don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth any more, white and black, and I think the critical thing is to improve education in the public sector and they will come. Build it and they will come.[116]

But according to Dr. Mullins, schools in the region have always been lacking.[117] He explained in a recent Mississippi news article, “You had an all white Legislature, with only one or two blacks as late as 1968. There wasn’t much interest in improving the schools.”[118] In describing one of the reasons that black schools were systematically neglected and underfunded, Dr. Mullins said, “You didn’t want to educate a good field worker because they’d leave the field.”[119]

In Mississippi, it is estimated that there are approximately 500,000 students in the public school system (K–12), and approximately 50,000 in nonpublic schools (including approximately 35,000 in private academies, 10,000 in parochial schools, and 2,000 students in Episcopal schools).[120] It is estimated that approximately 50 percent of the public school students are black,[121] that approximately 25 to 30 percent of the parochial students are black,[122] and that less than 2 percent of the private academy students are black.[123]

But these numbers fail to illustrate the point that schools in some parts of the state are much more segregated and homogeneous than in others. In the Delta, many of the school districts are 95, 96, and 97 percent black.[124] Dr. Love testified at the Mississippi Delta hearing, “If you spent most of your life in the Delta, you [would] think every public school in the state was all black.”[125] Dr. Mullins concluded that in the Delta, “[a]ll the whites went to private schools.”[126]

Resegregation of the Public Schools

The resegregation of children in America’s schools has increased progressively since the 1980s. According to Harvard University education professor Gary Orfield, segregation of blacks in the South declined dramatically from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, was stable until 1988, and has been rising since that time.[127] Orfield reports that in 1991–1992, 36.6 percent of black Mississippi students were in schools with 90–100 percent minority populations.[128]

The typical white student in a Mississippi public school attended a school with an average population of 31.5 percent black students.[129] In total, blacks make up 51 percent of the total public school population in Mississippi. Of the public school districts, 67 are 60 percent or more black and 56 are 60 percent or more white. Only 30 school districts are close to being racially balanced with a white/black ratio of 40 percent white to 60 percent black.[130]

In some parts of the state where private schools were created in direct response to the desegregation orders, whites have returned to the public schools. This is not the case in the Delta, however, where the vast majority of white children attend private or religious schools and black children attend schools that are overwhelmingly black public schools.[131] For example, in Holmes County, while the district population is 21.9 percent white, the public school K–12 enrollment is only 0.1 percent white. As table 2.3 indicates, these figures are representative of all school districts in the Delta.

Testimony at the Mississippi Delta hearing suggested that it is unrealistic to imagine that the private academies would ever be closed, leading to an integration of the public and private school systems.[132] Dr. Mullins remarked:

I don’t think that you can do that. I think that [it is] unrealistic to think of doing that. I think it’s a waste of energy to even try to attempt to do that. The way you address t