Photograph; Roland Park Fourth-graders do classwork in their homeroom at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore. The school is the most racially diverse school in the most segregated school district in the state. (Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun /May 7, 2014)
By Liz Bowie and Erica L. Green | Originally Published at The Baltimore Sun. May 11, 2014
At 16, Dorant Wells has experienced the complexities of what Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation ruling, has wrought: He attended a middle school full of students of different colors and nationalities, but one where he sometimes felt there were lower expectations for black students.
Now at his nearly all African-American high school, Milford Mill Academy in Baltimore County, he sees value in the special character of the school, while acknowledging he may be less prepared to enter a diverse world. “It keeps us united. We may not agree on everything, but we have each other,” said Dorant.
Sixty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in 21 states was unconstitutional, diversity is not guaranteed in Maryland’s schools. Ten percent of the schools in Maryland have a high percentage of black students, nearly all of them in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis. And no political or education leaders are recommending a consolidation of suburban and urban districts that experts say would be needed to truly address an imbalance driven largely by neighborhood demographics.
Instead, the struggle for racial integration and educational equality is taking place in the suburbs, where students are learning in increasingly diverse schools.
Students in these more integrated middle and high schools say they relish the multiculturalempathyeducates – 60 Years After Brown v. Board of Ed, Pockets of Segregation Remain in Md. Schools: