Professor Richard D. Parker is the Paul Williams Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He has taught at the Harvard Law
School since 1974, specifically courses in criminal law, constitutional law, and law and literature. Currently, he is a member of the
Board of Advisors, The National Voting Rights Project, and The Initiative and Referendum Institute.
Professor Parker begins by referring back to a previous question concerning the soundness of the decision made in
Brown v. Board of Education. Although it was rationally sound, the question is enriched by a more complex notion of
soundness. In the making of Constitutional law, soundness is determined by the political underpinnings of the law and its expected effectiveness.
In the short term, Professor Parker believes that the decision was sound due to the migration of African Americans from
the South to the North and their newfound voting rights. These votes were "up for grabs," meaning that no one knew what their
consequence would be, and blacks thus acquired influence in the political arena.
In the longer term, there are two issues that call the soundness of the case into question. Firstly, there is no longer
as much uncertainty about the votes of African Americans, which substantially reduces their political influence. Secondly, although the
educational achievement gap of students K-12 had narrowed during the late 1980s, it has begun to widen again. In Professor Parker's
opinion, this is a disaster that "flies in the face of the optimism of the Brown decision."
Finally, Professor Parker addresses the No Child Left Behind Act, predicting that the mandatory testing will reveal the
severity of the achievement gap. We can reduce political pressure by demanding that the scores are scaled downward so that more people
pass or by abolishing the high-stakes effects of poor test performance. However, Professor Parker insists that we must "[l]et the test
scores fall as they may" and maintain the high stakes "in the hope that the political system will respond." The alternative choice is
based on an assumption that we can't expect these kids to do well, which will be "an expression of the very kind of prejudice that Brown
was attacking."
|
|