Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Race and Education in North Carolina
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.johnebatchelor.com/
CITY: Greensboro
STATE: NC
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://lsupress.org/authors/detail/john-e-batchelor/ * http://www.blairpub.com/johnbatchelor/ * AU blog: http://johnbatchelordiningandtravel.blogspot.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Guilford College, bachelor’s degree; University of North Carolina-Greensboro, master’s degree; North Carolina State, doctorate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Columnist for the Greensboro News and Record, Greensboro, NC, beginning 1991, and formerly for the Winston-Salem Journal, Winston-Salem, NC. Former teacher in Guilford County, North Carolina, and administrator in North Carolina school systems, including serving as superintendent of two districts, retired 1999; then worked as a leadership and school improvement consultant with the Success For All Foundation and the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, retired 2009. Also leads tour groups focusing on food, wines, and history.
AWARDS:
Recipient of Newlin History Scholarship, Guilford College; Hodnett Doctoral Fellowship, North Carolina State.
WRITINGS
Also author of the John Batchelor Dining and Travel blog.
SIDELIGHTS
A former school teacher and administrator, John E. Batchelor began writing restaurant reviews in 1981. Batchelor also writes the occasional travel and historical articles and articles about school governance and personnel management. In addition, Batchelor leads tour groups focusing on dining, wines, historic sites, and art museums and galleries.
Chefs of the Mountains and Chefs of the Coast
Batchelor is the author of several books, including historical books and books about chefs and food. He is the author of Chefs of the Mountains: Restaurants and Recipes from Western North Carolina and Chefs of the Coast: Restaurants and Recipes from the North Carolina Coast. The books focus on both well-established and up-and-coming chefs. Batchelor provides profiles of chefs that include their cooking philosophies and influences. Batchelor also discusses their often unique personalities.
Overall, the books also include descriptions of restaurants and their ambience, along with sample menu items. Recipes are featured from each chef. Sidebars primarily discuss topics such as organic farms and farming and people who left behind successful careers to become farmers and cooks. Calling Chefs of the Coast “exceptionally well illustrated, organized and presented,” an Internet Bookwatch contributor went on to recommend the book as “an inherently interesting read for amateur kitchen cooks and accomplished gourmands alike.”
Race and Education in North Carolina
Batchelor draws on his history degree and his background as an educator and school system administrator for his book titled Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation. Gathering information from a wide range of resources, from case law and newspapers to interviews with policy makers, civil rights leaders, and attorneys involved in school desegregation, Batchelor examines the history of school segregation in North Carolina and how the state came to desegregate its schools. On into the first half of the twentieth century, white and black schools were generally accepted in North Carolina, with few challenges to the segregation of students. According to Batchelor, that would all change rapidly as by the 1970s North Carolina’s school system had been effectively desegregated. In fact, the state boasted that 99 percent of its black students were in desegregated schools.
Batchelor points out that North Carolina had long cultivated an image as being a moderate state on race. Nevertheless, he details that the idea of desegregating the schools was often met by reluctance, even after the seminal Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that ultimately made segregated schools illegal on a federal level. Following the Supreme Court decision, North Carolina differed from most of its southern neighboring states in that the state’s leaders took a low-key approach as opposed to other state leaders, who vociferously opposed the decision.
Nevertheless, there was strong opposition to desegregation in North Carolina. Some legislators in the state wanted to start a voucher program to support segregated private schools. At the same time, they petitioned for the state to close down its public schools. Other tactics to delay or avoid integration included creation of policies that would place relatively few black students in nonsegregated schools. Batchelor focuses primarily on the governor’s advisory committee and its recommendations. He notes that the committee’s efforts generally hindered desegregation.
However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and litigation were placing increasing pressure on the states to desegregate their schools more quickly. As a result, the political machinations to prevent school integration began to struggle as it became clear that the courts were not going to back such efforts. Batchelor details several such court decisions. The book goes on to examines how local school districts began working toward desegregation in the schools as they continued to face racial prejudice and support for segregation. “Batchelor’s device for framing each chapter with a concise introduction and critical questions to be answered by the chapter will be helpful to undergraduate readers,” wrote Paula C. Austin in Journal of Southern History.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, August, 2015, review of Chefs of the Coast: Restaurants and Recipes from the North Carolina Coast.
Journal of Southern History, May, 2017, Paula C. Austin, review of Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation, p. 477.
ONLINE
John Batchelor Dining and Travel Blog, http://johnbatchelordiningandtravel.blogspot.de/ (November 8, 2017).
John E. Batchelor Website, http://www.johnebatchelor.com (November 8, 2017).
News & Observer Online, http://www.newsobserver.com/ (July 31, 2015), “Triad Food Critic John Batchelor Publishes New Book”; (April 9, 2016), Christopher Gergen and Stephen Martin, “Doing Better: Tar Heel Educator’s New Book Warns of Risks to NC Public Schools.”
Winston-Salem Journal Online, http://www.journalnow.com/ (October 17, 2012), Michael Hastings, “Critic Writes about Chefs.”
Welcome
John Batchelor has been writing about food, wine, travel, and history for over 30 years. He writes the fine dining restaurant review column for the Greensboro News and Record and formerly for the Winston-Salem Journal. Over a thousand of his articles have been published.
His book, Chefs of the Mountains: Restaurants and Recipes from Western North Carolina, was published by John F. Blair in Winston-Salem in 2012. Blair published Chefs of the Coast: Restaurants and Recipes from the North Carolina Coast in June 2015. Louisiana State University Press published Race and Education in North Carolina: from Segregation to Desegregation in December 2015.
He has re-retired from his “real job.” He was a teacher in Guilford County and an administrator in several North Carolina school systems, including superintendent of two districts in the eastern part of the state. Both districts where he was superintendent were rated among the lowest 12 in the state on academic achievement when he went there; when he retired, every school in the district was rated “Exemplary.” He retired the first time in 1999, then worked as a leadership and school improvement consultant with the Success For All Foundation and the Center for Data Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore. He retired again in 2009 and he intends to stick with it this time, concentrating on writing.
He has written several books in the field of history, as well as articles about personnel management and school system governance. He was co-author of the first edition of The American Nation, a best-selling US History textbook published by Prentice-Hall in the mid-1980s. He holds a baccalaureate degree from Guilford College, where he was awarded the Newlin History Scholarship; a master’s degree in history from UNC-Greensboro; and a doctorate from NC State, where he received the Hodnett Doctoral Fellowship.
John E. Batchelor
John Batchelor has been writing about restaurants and travel since 1981. He is the restaurant reviewer for the Greensboro News and Record and the Winston-Salem Journal. He has also been an educator and a consultant with the Center for Data Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.
About John Batchelor
John Batchelor began writing restaurant reviews for The Greensboro Record, an afternoon daily newspaper, in July 1981. After the Record merged with The Greensboro Daily News, creating The News and Record, his column moved to the morning paper. Except for an interlude in 1997, his columns have been published for over 35 years. Beginning in August 2010, he also reviewed restaurants for the Winston-Salem Journal. His columns therefore circulated to a readership of approximately 175,000. . (He stopped writing for the Journal in 2012.) He also writes occasional travel articles, and he leads tour groups. Locations include wineries in North Carolina, California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as cruises and European trips that focus on dining, wines, historic sites, and art museums and galleries. Contact him at john.e.batchelor@gmail.com. Tours can be arranged on a custom basis, in addition to pre-arranged itineraries.
Triad food critic John Batchelor publishes new book
Jul 31, 2015 (0)
Food critic and restaurant reviewer, John Batchelor, has a new book, "Chefs of the Coast" just in time for summer beach reading and dining on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, in Greensboro, N.C. (handout photo)
LYNN HEY/News & Record
Food critic and restaurant reviewer, John Batchelor, has a new book, "Chefs of the Coast" just in time for summer beach reading and dining on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, in Greensboro, N.C. (LYNN HEY/ News & Record)
LYNN HEY/News & Record
John Batchelor, one of the Triad’s most revered food critics, has published his second book in an ongoing series: “Chefs of the Coast: Restaurants and Recipes from the North Carolina Coast.”
It follows “Chefs of the Mountains,” which he published in 2012. In it, he catalogued notable chefs and restaurants of western North Carolina. His latest release includes profiles of 50 well-established and up-and-coming chefs from the coastal region. He reveals each chef’s culinary philosophy, influences and personality. Their profile also includes a description of their restaurant, its ambience and sample menu items.
Outer Banks restaurants were selected based on Batchelor’s experience as a judge for the OBX Taste of the Beach chef’s challenge, plus a series of meals during Taste of the Beach, which included meals at different restaurants. He selected restaurants on the Crystal Coast (Beaufort, Morehead City and Swansboro) and the Wilmington-Southport area based on personal visits and recommendations from friends, readers and other food writers.
“Chefs of the Coast” can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Scuppernong Books.
Batchelor began writing restaurant reviews for The News & Record, when it had an afternoon product — The Greensboro Daily News — in 1981. Since then, his columns have been published in the News & Record, Go Triad, the Winston-Salem Journal and elsewhere. He leads food, winery and historical tours in the U.S. and Europe.
Batchelor says “Chefs of the Mountains” grew out of judging Fire on the Rock Chef’s Challenge in Blowing Rock, which has expanded to Competition Dining, a statewide series of events. He says “Chefs of the Coast” was the next logical step, and he’s talking with the publisher about the next book.
“Reader advice is welcome,” he says.
Critic writes about chefs
Michael Hastings, Winston-Salem Journal Oct 17, 2012 (0)
John E. Batchelor easily could have written a book of restaurant reviews. He has been reviewing restaurants in the Triad for more than 30 years.
Batchelor is the restaurant critic for the News & Record in Greensboro and was a former restaurant critic for the Winston-Salem Journal.
But in his new book, Batchelor moved beyond the realm of restaurant criticism, and he focused on chefs outside of the Triad.
“Chefs of the Mountains” (John F. Blair, $19.95) details 40 chefs and restaurants in Western North Carolina.
“To me the book works on three different levels,” Batchelor said in a telephone interview from his home in Greensboro.
First, the book is a travel guide to restaurants. Entries on restaurants include contact information as well as details on the history, food and atmosphere.
Second, the book is about the chefs’ stories. Preceding each restaurant entry is a short essay on its chef, how he or she got interested in cooking, the approach to cooking and other information.
Finally, a large part of the book is a cookbook. Batchelor includes two or three recipes from each restaurant, along with color photos of many of the dishes.
Batchelor has done occasional restaurant reviews on places in the mountains, so he knew of some from those visits. He also has been a judge for years for Fire in the Rock and the Western North Carolina Chef’s Challenge, two professional cooking competitions. Those experiences and other research helped him choose the restaurants in the book. The bulk of the restaurants are in the Asheville, Boone, Blowing Rock and Banner Elk areas. But other areas include Highlands, Hot Springs, Saluda and Waynesville.
Batchelor said that he found two main things in common among the chefs.
“One is grandmothers,” he said. “It’s amazing how many said they became interested in food because of their grandmother. They’d describe sitting in the kitchen, shelling peas, smelling biscuits and learning to cook.”
The other common factor is an interest in local foods. “It is a trend that it is statewide and nationwide; it’s just stronger in the mountains,” Batchelor said.
He said that farmers in the mountains seem especially good at reaching out to chefs to help them put local foods on their menus. That effort is aided in part by such programs as the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project.
It also probably doesn’t hurt that the mountains attract outdoor types who often have other connections to the land, whether it’s through a love of hiking, fishing or other activity. Chef Sam Beasley of The Gamekeeper in Boone moved to Boone in 1991 so he would be near great places for rock climbing. Travis Boswell of The Orchard in Cashiers talks in the book of how he takes his dogs trail running and his children on mushroom hunts.
The chef profiles reveal some interesting stories, and more than a couple of chefs who came from Europe. Wolfgang Green of Wolfgang’s Restaurant and Wine Bistro in Highlands escaped East Germany in 1961, just days before the Berlin Wall went up.
Marianne Blazar of The Orchard Inn in Saluda, is a native of Vienna, Austria, who has traveled the world with her husband, a photographer. They’ve gone on an African safari and toured Paris, and they used to operate a charter boat in the Virgin Islands.
Batchelor also tells a funny story about Michael Foreman, who has two restaurants in Blowing Rock: Restaurant “G” at Gideon Ridge Inn and Bistro Roca and Antlers Bar. Foreman was cooking at a restaurant in Colorado when a woman and her friend came in for lunch. When one of the women, Natalie Nelson, asked about dessert, the waitress replied, “The best dessert is a new guy in the kitchen, and his name is Michael.”
Foreman and Nelson have now been married 12 years.
Recipes in the book are varied. Macaroni and cheese with chicken, white-bean soup and fried green tomatoes are some of the familiar comfort foods.
Others are slightly fancier, though not always difficult. Coq au vin, beef-cheek timbales, lobster Ramen and strawberries Romanoff are a few of the dishes that people might associate with some of the fine-dining restaurants in the mountains.
Batchelor said that while people can often re-create the taste of restaurant dishes, they tend to have more trouble with the appearance or presentation. At the end of each recipe, there is a paragraph titled “To Present.” It explains how the dish can be artfully arranged on the plate.
Batchelor says in the book that he doesn’t want to be a chef, partly because he knows how hard chefs work.
“But,” he wrote, “I appreciate what chefs do, and I very much enjoy the products of their work.”
Still, from time to time, he likes to cook like one.
He said he hopes his book will help people do just that.
Bacon Chicken
Makes 4 servings
Chicken:
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts with wing bones attached (See Note)
Splash of olive oil
Sauce:
12 strips bacon, finely diced
¼ cup light brown sugar
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1. For the chicken, heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop off knobs at end of wing bones if you prefer that appearance. Add olive oil to a large, ovenproof sauté pan over medium heat. Place chicken skin side down in pan and cook until a nice brown color is achieved. Turn chicken over and place entire pan in oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven.
2. For the sauce, while chicken is cooking place bacon in a 1-quart saucepan and render over medium-high heat. Just before bacon becomes crisp, remove from stove, leaving grease and bacon bits in the pan. Add sugar, mustard and vinegar, stirring constantly until incorporated. Mixture can be reheated or held warm. If holding warm, stir well before using. This sauce can be used with many other proteins and salads. Try it warm over a baby-spinach salad. Sauce will last in refrigerator for a week.
Note: Skin-on boneless breasts or boneless skinless chicken breast can be substituted, but check them earlier for doneness.
Recipe from The Painted Fish Café in Banner Elk, appearing in “Chefs of the Mountains” (John F. Blair, 2012).
Ham and White Bean Soup
Makes 4 servings
1 large sweet onion, diced
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups good-quality baked ham, such as Honey Baked, cut into ½-inch cubes (See Note)
8 cups chicken stock
2 cans cannellini beans, preferably imported Italian
¼ cup diced fresh parsley
Saute onions in butter until browned. Add salt and pepper. Add ham. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add beans. Reduce heat and simmer at least 15 to 20 minutes until mixture thickens. Press some of the beans against side of pot to mash and release starch. Continue to simmer. Add parsley at the last minute. Serve with crisp bread such as ciabatta.
Note: Instead of chopped ham, soup can be made with a ham hock. If using ham hock, simmer soup with hock for two hours, then remove meat from hock, finely chop it and return it to soup before serving.
Recipe from Sorrento’s Bistro in Banner Elk, appearing in “Chefs of the Mountains” (John F. Blair, 2012).
Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation
Paula C. Austin
83.2 (May 2017): p477.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation. By John E. Batchelor. Making the Modern South. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. 2015. Pp. xviii, 222. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6136-4.)
In Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation. John E. Batchelor explores North Carolina's claim that by the 1970s, "99.5 percent of the state's black students were attending desegregated schools" (p. 138). The book contends that the state achieved this level of school integration, despite its long segregationist history, while maintaining its image as moderate on race. Batchelor argues that although the state's wary political responses to the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision had little systemic impact on desegregation, federal court orders accelerated token black student reassignments and positioned North Carolina to achieve "more thorough school desegregation" than anywhere else in the South (p. 143).
Using case law, oral histories, and archival sources, Batchelor compares state policies after Brown with judicial mandates, finding the latter had weightier consequences. The book's first half deals with the recommendations of the governor's advisory committee, which was responsible for compliance with Brown at the local level. This committee made it difficult for a single lawsuit to force desegregation of all North Carolina schools and resulted in only a trickle of black students into white schools. The second half of the book, while continuing to examine the failures of Pearsall committee policies like the Pupil Assignment Act (1955), details federal court judgments. Judges, "in obedience to the law," yielded to the Civil Rights Act (1964) and determined local desegregation plans unconstitutional (p. 85). Earlier cases like Morrow v. Mecklenburg County Board of Education (1961) and Wheeler v. Durham City Board of Education (1961) pushed local boards to integrate even as they proposed and implemented racist freedom-of-choice plans. The Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971) decision on busing motivated both the establishment of a state-funded Technical Assistance Center for desegregation and support from white business and civic leaders. In the end. North Carolina achieved through the judiciary what it could not do politically.
Batchelor details the political machinations used to resist integration, including state constitutional amendments that eliminated compulsory attendance for any white child assigned to a school with black students. These received widespread public support and were later challenged by federal judges. However, in its efforts to demonstrate a peaceful movement toward "systemwide desegregation," particularly in the South, the book minimizes the impact of delegating compliance with Brown to the local level, a move that significantly stymied the NAACP legal strategy (p. 124). Additionally, in some places the book downplays the violence that happened in the state: both the rhetorical violence revealed in judges" opinions and political officials' statements that treated black inferiority as a foregone conclusion, and the physical and psychological violence experienced by students, including eggs thrown and crosses burned. Perhaps a deeper engagement with civil rights historiography, beyond William H. Chafe's Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Freedom Struggle (New York, 1980) could have helped Batchelor better situate his argument in a national context and consider the quotidian manifestations of Jim Crow violence.
Still, Race and Education in North Carolina does not profess to be a social history. It traces and then foregrounds the impact of legal decisions in the wake of Brown in North Carolina's struggle against its own moderate obstructionism. Batchelor's device for framing each chapter with a concise introduction and critical questions to be answered by the chapter will be helpful to undergraduate readers. Pairing this book with other recent titles that examine the movement for educational equity, like Sarah Caroline Thuesen's Greater Than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina. 1919-1965 (Chapel Hill, 2013), will provide students with both a lesson in historiography and a variegated look at the struggle for racial justice in North Carolina.
Paula C. Austin
California State University, Sacramento
Austin, Paula C.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Austin, Paula C. "Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 2, 2017, p. 477+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA495476271&it=r&asid=a25b26bb1b79596b234c8db26268665e. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495476271
Chefs of the Coast
(Aug. 2015):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Chefs of the Coast
John E. Batchelor
John F. Blair, Publisher
1406 Plaza Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27103
www.blairpub.com
9780895876393, $19.95, 338pp, www.amazon.com
In "Chefs of the Coast", restaurant reviewer and food critic John Batchelor profiles 50 well-established and up-and-coming chefs from the region. Drawing from personal interviews, Batchelor reveals each chef s cooking philosophy, influences, and personality. Each profile also includes: A description of the restaurant, its ambience, and sample menu items; Color photographs of the chef, restaurant, and food; Recipes from each chef. Sidebars throughout the book offer information about farms (mostly organic) that sell vegetables and meats to the public as well as to restaurants, unique producers from the region, and stories of a number of people who gave up successful careers in order to return to the land. Exceptionally well illustrated, organized and presented, "Chefs of the Coast" is an inherently interesting read for amateur kitchen cooks and accomplished gourmands alike. The palate pleasing, appetite satisfying, do-it-yourself at home dishes range from Scallops Casino (Red Sky Cafe); to Lobster Bisque (Stripers Bar & Grille); to Shrimp and Grits (Clawson's Restaurant); to Bacon Pops (Taste the Olive Cafe & Wine Bar); to Conch Chowder (The Rudy Duck Tavern). As much fun to browse through as it is inspiring to plan menus with, "Chefs of the Coast" is very highly recommended for personal, family, and community library cookbook collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chefs of the Coast." Internet Bookwatch, Aug. 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA427555751&it=r&asid=50667913f5f85ad76ca0386581c966cc. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A427555751
Doing Better: Tar Heel educator’s new book warns of risks to NC public schools
By Christopher Gergen and Stephen Martin
Correspondents
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April 09, 2016 12:30 PM
John Batchelor’s credentials as an educator speak for themselves – and when he speaks about the state of public schools in North Carolina, we would be to listen.
The Tar Heel native spent 30 years as a teacher and administrator, working in classrooms across the state during the early years of desegregation and leading major turnarounds as superintendent of two high-poverty systems in eastern North Carolina. He later teamed with the Center for Data Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University as a school improvement and leadership consultant nationally.
Batchelor has since turned to writing about his home state, and he has two big stories to tell.
The first is captured in his important and inspiring new book “Race and Education in North Carolina: From Segregation to Desegregation,” released in December by LSU Press. The book explores the transformation of North Carolina’s public education system in the years following 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, from a thoroughly segregated enterprise into the most desegregated state system of education in America. This didn’t happen without major resistance, as we noted in a column last year.
But the process ultimately delivered far greater socio-economic balance in schools with high concentrations of race and poverty. Those changes drove levels of academic growth, particularly for lower-income and minority families, that were unprecedented for our state and linger to this day. Just four years ago, for example, our state’s four-year high school graduation rate reached an all-time high of 80 percent, while the dropout rate hit an all-time low of 3 percent.
Forces driving success
Those successes are central to Batchelor’s second, and far less uplifting, story – which explains how much of the progress made in equalizing educational opportunity in North Carolina is coming undone. The tale of how we went from segregation to desegregation to re-segregation is the focus of another book that Batchelor’s writing now. It is, he says, “depressing as hell.”
The situation wasn’t always this way. In the decade after the Brown v. Board ruling, a coalition of progressive business, civic, faith and government leaders methodically fought off attempts to undermine desegregation. Three forces, Batchelor says, fueled their success. First, these leaders shared a moral vision, not widely accepted at the time, that all children should receive a quality education regardless of race or income level. Second, they were pragmatists who recognized that North Carolina’s economy would never fulfill its potential if the minority population didn’t have fair access to education. Also, the civil rights movement could bring the economy to a virtual standstill if acceptable progress did not occur. The third factor, legal action spearheaded by the federal government, accelerated the pace of desegregation.
Because most neighborhoods were and still are racially and socio-economically segregated, busing was needed to accomplish true desegregation. By the late 1970s, that system was in place. There followed a wave of major school reforms, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, that invested in early childhood education, reduced classroom sizes, prioritized the development and advancement of teachers and more accurately measured student’s academic growth year over year. The reforms made quality education more accessible than ever and elevated student achievement across the board.
Then it all began to unravel.
Reforms being dismantled
As Batchelor tells it, the trouble started with federal court rulings in the 1990s, particularly involving judges appointed during the Reagan years, that prioritized local control of schools over federally-mandated desegregation. School boards here and across the country used their new freedom to end busing in favor of neighborhood schools, which leads to de facto segregation in many communities. Meanwhile, the public charter school movement, of which North Carolina has been in the vanguard, hasn’t helped.
A Duke University study released last year found that about 30 percent of students in North Carolina attend regular schools that are highly segregated, defined as those with enrollments that are more than 80 percent white or less than 20 percent white. But two-thirds of charter school students attend schools that are highly segregated and about two-thirds of charter school students are white, contributing to the growing racial and socio-economic imbalances in our schools.
As a result, Batchelor says, too many schools are once again becoming isolated pockets of race and poverty. Strong evidence shows those conditions will significantly diminish the performance of schools. While our education system still benefits from investments in the ‘80s and ‘90s, many of those reforms are being dismantled or scaled back. It will take some time to measure the impact. But when it comes to public education, Batchelor warns, our state has “embarked on a period of great risk.”
Christopher Gergen is CEO of Forward Impact, a fellow in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke University, and author of “Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives.” Stephen Martin, a director at the nonprofit Center for Creative Leadership, blogs at www.messyquest.com. They can be reached at authors@bullcityforward.org and followed on Twitter through @cgergen.