To the Editor:
It begins in a pre-K classroom — a question asked, and a hand raised. A Black child, eager and knowledgeable, waits. The teacher’s gaze sweeps past — again and again. Decades after our celebrated 1948 Princeton Plan, the effort to desegregate Princeton public schools, that child’s teacher tells her she is “too much.” What expectations might a teacher have for a Black preschooler that would render her excitement for learning “too much”?
The answer can be found in the recently released report from Not In Our Town (NIOT) Princeton, “Towards the Promise of Equality: Princeton’s Unfinished Journey to Educational Justice.” (niotprinceton.org/k12report). The report traces our schools’ story from Betsey Stockton — a formerly enslaved woman who founded Princeton’s first school for Black children — through the 1948 desegregation to the present.
The report shows that desegregation never led to true equality.
To understand why, we need to trace the roots of Princeton’s current schools to the early 19th century, when Betsey Stockton founded the first school for educating Black children in Princeton, which later became the Witherspoon Street School for Colored Children. By all accounts, this school, in spite of fewer material resources, was “an institution of genuine excellence” with Black principals and teachers who created an ecosystem of care and held their students to the highest standards.
After desegregation, well-intentioned as it was, the Black professional education ecosystem eroded and was never rebuilt. Black students found themselves in classrooms with teachers who did not expect — or believe — they could succeed.
Indeed, within a few years of the Princeton Plan, Black students’ college attendance and graduation rates fell. Shirley Satterfield, a Princeton historian who attended Witherspoon School, summarized her post-1948 education by saying: “While there was integration on the outside, there was segregation on the inside.”
Over the years, driven by a climate of microaggressions and lack of advancement opportunities, many Black educators have left. A Princeton High School teacher admitted, “The legacy of teachers being pushed out … is one we never grappled with.”
Parents and organizations supporting Black students have tried to fill in the gaps in a system that is not designed for these students to realize their full potential.
The district made efforts towards equity. It undertook an equity audit in 2017-2018. However, even today, the commitments in response to the Equity Audit Report remain largely unfulfilled. And, there are instances in which equity measures have been dialed back.
Based on interviews, oral histories, and published sources, the NIOT report is a reflection of decades-long educational injustice experienced by Black students in our schools. It proposes recommendations such as investing in retention of Black educators and ending the academic tracking trap. It calls for our Princeton school system to own its history of discrimination and commit to repair. Our Black community must be integral to the process of transformation, so all our students have the opportunity to thrive. Every Princetonian should read the report at niotprinceton.org/k12report.
That child’s hand is still raised. Let us finally see and respond to her.