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Board of Education, the ruling by Justice Warren says that separating minority children from others because of race generates a feeling of inferiority. The impact of segregation is greater when it is a law. Some progress has been made with more Latino students attending college, more Latino teachers and administrators and a stronger academic curriculum, but today, many of the earlier problems in the educational system continue in one way or another. Schools in the inner city are constantly fighting for more money for their school budgets, and they usually lose out.
The schools have limited funding and resources, so the students who attend these schools do not have equal access to a good educational program. Brown v. Board of Education has not been able to solve the problems that these mostly minority schools face. The student walkouts represent a major event of the Chicane Movement and one of the most significant examples of high school student protests In United States history. These student strikes stress that the struggle for educational equality intestines to be an issue then and now. In Brown v.
Board, Judge Warren’s ruling says that “segregation with the sanction of law tends to impede the educational and mental development of minority children and deprives them of some of the benefits they would receive in an integrated school system. ” 5 For many years now, education has long been a concern of Mexican American community leaders, activists and educators. “Well before the U. S. Supreme Court outlawed school desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1 954, California Chicanes have challenged educational coordination. In 1946, Mended v.
Westminster School District resulted in banning separate Chicane schools in California. Yet the U. S. Civil Rights Commission showed that in the late 1 sass, one-quarter of Chicanes in California attended schools with more than 50 percent Chicanes. ” (Pit, et al, p 4) The Chicane Civil Rights Movement has worked hard for a variety of educational goals, including reduction of school drop-out rates, improvement of educational standards, development of bilingual-bicameral programs, more scholarships, Chicane studies courses, and an increase in the number of Chicane teachers and administrators.
The Latino community’s fight for justice started long before the 1 sass. It actually began in the 1 sass and ‘ass, when they won two major legal victories. The first was the Mended v. Westminster Supreme Court case in 1947. The ruling of this case prohibited segregating Latino schoolchildren from white children. “It was an important predecessor to Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U. S. Supreme Court determined that a “separate but equal” policy in schools violated the Constitution. In 1 954, the same year Brown appeared before the Supreme Court, Hispanics achieved another legal feat in Hernandez v.
Texas. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection to all racial groups, not just blacks and whites. ” (Nettle 2011) 6 Educators feel that many of the gains and rights for equal access to education, which is guaranteed by the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 for minority students, have been lost. One example of this is the California Initiative, Prop. 227 which was sponsored by Silicon Valley software entrepreneur Ron NZ in 1998. Prop 227 basically ended bilingual education in the state of California.
Ten years after California voters approved sweeping changes in the way schools teach English to immigrant children under Proposition 227, some educators say the law has not worked and needs to be changed. “It’s not working,” said Grace Mischief, assistant professor of multilingual and multicultural education at Cal State San Marco’s. “We’ve had it for 10 years and we can confidently say that it’s not working. So, yes, we need to reverse it and change it. ” (Usefulness 2008) “At times, Chicanes have tried to make changes through existing avenues, or attempted to elect Chicane or pro-Chicane school board members.
At other times, out of frustration, they have turned to walkouts, sit-ins, and direct confrontations with school boards and administrators. Students have provided much of the effort toward making educational reforms through various organizations. ” (Library of Congress article: The Chicane Civil Rights Movement p 1) The Chicane Movement emerged during the Civil Rights era with three goals: restoration of land, rights for farm workers and to get educational reforms. “While Hispanics have more political power than they did during the Civil Rights Era, they also have new challenges.