1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

Another approach is to improve his scholastic achievement in the segregated
school before he moves to a desegregated school with higher
standards.
It is not the <strong>Commission</strong>'s position that raising the scholastic achievement
of minority-group children should precede desegregation. The
Supreme Court held compulsory racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional
7 years ago, and charged all school boards operating segregated
schools with the duty of ending segregation and discrimination with
all deliberate speed.
During a transitional period, however, efforts to raise the academic
standards of inferior, segregated schools is not inappropriate. Moreover,
while the programs here discussed were found in schools predominantly
enrolling minority-group children, they would have no less value in
biracial schools.
Two of these programs were in segregated southern schools; one was
found in a formerly segregated school system in a border city; the rest
in large cities of the North. All are imaginative efforts to provide equal
educational opportunity for children whose background has not led
them to aspire to scholastic achievement. Some are too new to have
proven their worth; others show heartening results.
The Phelps-Stokes project
This project, directed by the Phelps-Stokes Fund, was conducted for 5
years (1955-60) under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, General
Education Board, in four public high schools in each of four Southern
States. 28 The general purpose was to improve instruction in the
areas of language, mathematics, and physical and social science through
the cooperative efforts in each instance of a high school, a nearby college,
and the local school officials. 29 The project sprang from a survey indicating
that less than 3 percent of the graduates of Negro high schools
in the South are likely candidates for the best interracial colleges. 30
Six specific objectives were set: (i) to raise the level of scholastic
achievement of the pupils in the participating schools, (2) to encourage
better selection and use of instructional materials, (3) to stimulate professional
growth of teachers, (4) to establish effective college-high school
cooperation, (5) to improve preservice and inservice teacher education,
and (6) to develop an attitude on the part of the participating schools
and colleges to continue the program after the 5-year period. 31
Various services were offered to each of the participating high schools:
(i) the help of a college consultant in each of the four areas of instruction
to be improved; (2) the services of 20 nationally recognized experts
as consultants on particular problems; (3) 8-week summer workshops
for teachers for three consecutive summers; (4) State and regional con-
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