Preston Green, a professor of educational leadership and law at the University of Connecticut, sees the fight for reparations as a long-term effort to shine a light on persistent racial disparities. “When we deal with issues of race, this country has a very difficult time with it,” Green said. “I think that’s why it’s taking its time to really percolate.”

In a recent article, Preston C. Green III of the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education, Bruce D. Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and Joseph O. Oluwole of Montclair State University argue that school finance litigation incompletely remedies the harms imposed upon schools serving Black communities. Green, Baker, and Oluwole instead call for a reparations program for Black Americans that includes a school finance reform agenda. They argue that this agenda should be enacted through state-level legislation and subsequently supported and regulated by federal actors.

White public schools have always gotten more money than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “separate but equal” era – which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The disparities have persisted even after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools.

White public schools have always gotten more money than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “separate but equal” era – which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The disparities have persisted even after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools.

In this month’s episode of the NEPC Talks Education podcast, NEPC Researcher Christopher Saldaña interviews Drs. Bruce Baker and Preston Green, leading experts in K-12 school finance and school choice policy. Baker is a professor in the Department of Educational Theory, Policy, and Administration at Rutgers University. Green is the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.