This document contains testimonies and prepared statements from a congressional hearing on educational issues held in Arizona. Statements and testimonies address education reform, school financing, equalization, site-based management, federal programs, vocational education, and American Indian education, among other issues. Included are opening statements by Representatives Dale Kildee and Ed Pastor. Witnesses providing testimony include: (1) Lee Whitehead, Arizona Education Association; (2) Louise Kleinstiver, superintendent, Somerton School District No. 11, Yuma County; (3) George S. Garcia, superintendent, Tucson Unified School District No. 1, Pima County; (4) Gilbert Innis, Tribal Education Department, Gila River Indian Community; (5) James Cervantes, student, Phoenix; (6) Pat Medina, parent, Phoenix; (7) Derrick Gray, teacher, South Mountain High School, Phoenix; (8) E. T. Hernandez, parent, Phoenix; (9) Anthony Abril, Phoenix; (10) Eugene Bressard, director, Friendly House, Phoenix; (11) Judy Muller, teacher, South Mountain High School, Phoenix; (12) Ronald Mohammed, substitute teacher, Phoenix; (13) Jack Lunsford, Phoenix; (14) Betty Thompson, Phoenix; (15) John Pizzi, Glendale; and (16) Susan Shepherd, parent, Glendale. Prepared statements, a Gila River Indian Community Resolution, and a concept paper on the role of tribal governments in education policy are included. (KS)

After a half-a-century of school reform, a majority of Americans consider the public schools as worse today than when they attended school. Those reforms missed the mark because they were not focused on the backgrounds of the students’ parents--by far the most important indicator of students’ progress in school. The importance of parents was documented by the Coleman Report more than 50 years ago. School reform must be continued but re-directed to over-come the power of low parental socio-economic status. The best way to improve the schools is to create a better, fairer economy providing parents with good jobs and decent wages. In the meantime, good pre-school, after-school, and other aids are needed to help students from low income families. Teacher quality, although not as influential as the parents’ backgrounds, is the second most significant indicator of student success. Teachers, like parents, have not been the focus of the attention their importance deserves. In particular, teachers should be fairly paid, and their verbal and cognitive skills improved. The Coleman Report again documented the importance of those skills more than half-a-century ago. Instead, money, time, and effort have been spent on reforms that won’t bring about great improvement because they did not address adequately those two important factors.

2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

"This big-shouldered book, full of ardor...offers us a reasonable hope that with attention and care we can again make public education what it was meant to be, and must yet be."—The Los Angeles Times.