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National Urban League - 
Continued from page 359 

in 1950 to a 79% completion rate in 1978. This means that more young blacks are eligible to enter college, or to enter the labor force in more desirable jobs that require at least a high school diploma for entry. It also means that the black-white high school completion gap has been narrowed, and that perceptions of the unworthiness of black attainment have been reduced.

However, the percentage of blacks in the teaching force is declining-from 8.1% of public school teachers in 1971 to 7.8% in 1981. Whites were 88.3% of public school teachers in 1971, but 96.1 in 1981. Of the recent bachelor's degree recipients newly qualified to teach in May 1981, 8,400 were black (6.4%), but only 4,500 (5.0%) recent black bachelor's recipients were teaching full time. In 1980 only 3.9% of black male and 5.6% of black female college-bound high school seniors indicated they they intended to major in education. 

The Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 1983 

In general, public perception of the schools is that they are average or below in terms of the quality of their work, but the public's expectations for the quality of their work, but the public's expectations for the schools are high. Nationally, only 19% of the public rated the schools A or B, 38% rated them C, 22% rated them D or F, and 21% did not know what grade to assign. Nonwhite respondents' ratings were somewhat higher than those of whites; 24% of non-whites rated the schools as A or B, 32% rated them C, 16% rated them D or Fail, and 30% did not know what rating to assign. 
Thus public schools populated by black children and youth are part of a national education picture that adults see as problematic. When questioned specifically about the problems faced by local schools, the top four problems faced by local schools, the fop four problems named remain: (1) lack of discipline, (2) use of drugs, (3) poor curriculum/poor standards, and (4) lack of proper financial support. Only the third of these four problems is properly a public school primary responsibility, for which the school properly may be held accountable and which it has the power to solve within its parameters. 
It is also important to recognize that while there is a national image that urban schools (populated mainly by black children) are full of problems-and in many instances this is true-their problems are for the most par the same problems being experienced by many or most schools in the nation today. Thus what some people would have us think of as urban problems (black problems) are school problems in general in the society in 1983. We might have more of the problems, i.e., to a greater degree, but our schools are not different in kind to all other schools. 

Current Issues Affecting Urban Education 

The most immediate and pressing concerns of urban educators at this writing are (1) societal efforts to reverse direction, i.e., the institution of polices and programs that reduce access to education or eliminate efforts so recently instituted to provide equal educational opportunity for underprivileged children, (2) merit pay for teachers, (3) competency testing of teachers, (4) competency testing of students, (5) the stiffening of graduation requirements, and (6) self-help efforts to improve the academic achievement of minority children. 
Black children, their parents, and their organized groups need to understand that the current mood is to test us out of the educational employment pictures. It needed to be understood that the competition has increased for scarce places in education and in employment and the nation is turning against affirmative action in education and employment. The feeling is that people should merit education and employment opportunity, and merit is more than often determined by test scores. 
Neoconservatives and President Reagan are saying that civil rights efforts and the quest for quality over the past 25 to 30 years have caused many of the problems existing in American today. Also, the quest for equity in education has caused the problems in public education. Remember John Gardner's old question, "can we be equal and excellent too?" The answer today seems to be "no," and the emphasis is on excellence, not ab equality or equity.

CONCLUSION 
The permissiveness of the 1960's led many youth to believe that they need not learn to read, write, or compute well. They were told that they could get necessary information form television, and that calculators would work their math problems They hoped they could talk their way through life, and even in the oral realm the use of cultivated language was not taught or encourage into many schools. The Puritan-Protestant work ethic declined, and like many other Americans some teachers and student [[students]] exerted less effort than had their counter-arts in the past.
Urban schools can work, but we as a nation must rededicate ourselves to making them work. In  1983 four schools in Washington, D.C. metropolitan area received awards for excellence from the U.S. Department of Education: Brookland Elementary and Jefferson Junior High in Washington, D.C., George Mason Junior High in Falls Church Va., and T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. The awards were based on impressive student performance on standard achievement and minimum competency tests, low dropout rate, and high daily attendance rates. These are new beginnings, and it is our challenge-and society's-to see that they extended. 

SUMMARY 
CEREMONIES IN CIVIL RIGHTS:
A THIRTY YEAR RETROSPECTIVE 
on the LAW and RACE 
BY DERRICK BELL 
DEAN 
THE UNIVERSITY OF 
ORGEON [[OREGON]] LAW SCHOOL

FINDINGS 
There was widespread hope in 1954 that the time had come to bring home to America the freedom the country helped achieve abroad during World War II. And then in ringing phrases, the Supreme Court had given substance to that hope. By ruling that segregated public facilities, even though "separate but equal" were unconstitutional, the Court gave the country, at least, an interpretation of the fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause that from the beginning was essential to insure that citizenship rights of black.  
 
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