Seeking Justice in Schools: A Christian Call to Pursue Educational Equity

In my first job after college, I taught first grade at a public elementary school. Curiously, given the small size of the rural, Louisiana town in which the school was located, my classroom was only a few hundred yards from a Christian private school. I remember driving past the private school every morning – with its ornate, plantation-style edifice along a main street – and wondering about its presence. Eventually, I would read that the school opened in 1965, five years after four Black girls integrated two schools in New Orleans and five years before East Baton Rouge Parish desegregated its schools under another court order.

As it turned out, the private school began its life as a segregation academy. The White families who lived in that community found it so intolerable to desegregate that they started a school, using faith as a mask for otherwise racist intents. Today, in a town where about 54% of the population is White and 40% is Black, the public school serves a student population that is 84% Black while the private school serves a student population that is about 96.5% White.

Since those early years teaching first grade in Louisiana, I have continued to think about the problem of school segregation. I have thought about it while teaching second grade in Morocco and while conducting research in East Africa and the U.S.; I continue to think about it while teaching educational history and policy-focused courses at Bethel University in Minnesota, where I am an Associate Professor. Here is what I think about often: How did the U.S. get to this point, where a school started almost 60 years ago with the intent to segregate continues to do so today? How did we get to a point wherein significant educational inequities – injustices – seem intractable? And why aren’t Christians shouting from the rooftops about it? Why doesn’t educational injustice seem to make the list of our primary concerns? Or maybe even our secondary concerns?

A Brief Reckoning with the History of Educational Inequity in the United States

To answer these questions, I think it makes sense to start by thinking about the broader context. For example, to take a historical angle on these questions, we might start with Brown v. Board of Education, a Supreme Court case with which many people are familiar and required the desegregation of U.S. schools “with all deliberate speed.” Brown is viewed as a triumph, as it should be, though its work was only ever partially completed and has been subsequently undone. In fact, desegregation took literal decades and required significant federal intervention. Taking the private school I mentioned above as one example, in the early 1980s it was listed among 100 others as having their non-profit status revoked by the federal government because of their racially discriminatory policies. The school would again come under scrutiny in the late 1990s for the same reason and its current demographics suggest that little has changed. Other similar examples abound.

Exacerbating the exceedingly slow “deliberate speed” of school integration, in 1974 in Milliken v. Bradley the U.S. Supreme Court decided that desegregation orders did not apply across district boundaries, marking an abrupt shift from a previous decision that had upheld busing as a remedy for segregation. Coupled with the substantial effects of red-lining and racial covenants – two legal frameworks that significantly shaped the U.S.’s housing geography – later court cases cemented in place existing racial segregation.

Responding to this changing set of interpretations in the intervening years, many school districts have redrawn their borders in ways that increase segregation with few repercussions. As one immediate example from the community where I live and work in Minnesota, in 1993-94, less than one percent of Black students in the Twin Cities attended a highly segregated public school, defined by the U.S. government as a school serving a population with at least 90% or greater minority students. By 2018, approximately one quarter attended a highly segregated public school. As of 2017, there were 200 schools in the state where students of color made up 90% or more of enrollment – double the number of similar schools as in 2002. Given that racial segregation is often coupled with economic segregation, this effectively isolates many students of color in high-poverty, racially-segregated schools.

Literal physical segregation is also exacerbated by other forms of injustice, most notably in terms of inequities in school funding and defunding, access to high-quality teaching and curriculum, and discipline rates. Studies have shown that students of color and students attending schools in high-poverty communities are less likely to be taught by highly-qualified, veteran teachers and more likely to experience high rates of teacher absenteeism and turnover. Across all schools, discipline rates for students of color are disproportionately high, while participation in gifted and talented programs and other advanced, college-preparatory coursework is low. Put simply, educational injustice is a feature, not a bug, of our public education system.

Our Christian Call to Justice

As a former teacher and current professor, I find this “feature” of public schooling challenging. From the perspective of our faith community, if there is anything at which we, Christians, should be brilliant, it should be collective action, such as might be required to address educational injustice. Encouraging each other to care well for our communities, advocating for the enactment and enforcement of just laws, inspiring thoughtful and sustained engagement – these are foundational to our beliefs. Indeed, our faith centers the “foolishness” of a God who gives us not what we deserve or earn, but what our good and holy Father lavishes upon us.

In Biblical terms, “justice” is often described in two different ways: mishpat and tzadeqah. The first, mishpat, is usually defined as “retributive” or “commutative” justice. As Tim Keller describes it in his book Generous Justice, mishpat is concerned with “punishing wrong-doers and caring for the victims of unjust treatment.” In most contexts, retributive justice is what we ostensibly hope to achieve through the legal system – that shared standards for community life might be established, that rule-violators will be punished, and that victims may seek remedies for harms caused. The second way justice is described pushes us toward an embodied, proactive way of life wherein we seek to rectify injustices through restoration. Tzadeqah, this second type of “restorative” justice, requires that our day-to-day lives and relationships reflect fairness and generosity, and that we work to create a society in which those most likely to be exploited or neglected are protected. Importantly, mishpat and tzadeqah are often paired, suggesting that true justice requires ethical ways of living, coupled with action, and extended across our communities.

Throughout the Old Testament, and particularly the psalms and prophets, justice is articulated as necessary for two reasons. First, as a form of remembrance of God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Second, because justice is an expression of God’s character and Israel to is to reflect God’s character to the world. Therefore, Israel itself must be just – a blessing to the nations – and will be judged accordingly. This second point is especially important. Being a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9, NIV) requires the pursuit of justice on behalf of those most likely to be marginalized because God is just and can be no other way.

In the New Testament, God embodies mishpat and tzadeqah through Jesus’s death on the cross, comingling love and justice through sacrifice for human sin. But even before his death, Jesus showed particular concern for the poor and the downtrodden during his ministry, including healing lepers (Mark 1:41, Luke 5:13), spending time with social outcasts (Matt 9:13), and heroing a Samaritan in a parable about caring for our neighbors (Luke 10:26). It was perhaps these ministries that Paul had in mind when he exhorted his letter readers to emulate Christ, doing “nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4, NIV). Here Paul reminds the church to have the “same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:5-8, NIV).

Through Christ, we see what justice means: It means valuing others above ourselves. It means humbling ourselves and using our privilege and advantages on behalf of others. It means considering others, even those to whom we are indifferent or even hate, as neighbors. All this is to say, Christians should be at the forefront of the pursuit of justice, as those privileged to serve a redeeming God.

Pursuing Justice in Education

Fundamentally, the U.S. educational system is unjust. Students of color and those growing up in poverty are significantly less likely to have access to high-quality schooling and are therefore also significantly more likely to experience the ripple effects of marginalization across their lifetimes. Also fundamentally, we are called as Christians to root out injustice and to seek reconciliation. Yet, for the most part, Christian communities have been silent on this issue. Certainly, there are important counter-examples, folks like Jemar Tisby and Nicole Baker Fulgham repeatedly point out the besetting sin of structural injustice and its historical roots, as it wreaks havoc on the lives of children through their access (or lack thereof) to high-quality schooling. But I think it is also fair to say that the improvement of the U.S. public education system has not been a central concern for Christians; we have generally done very little in recent years. Yet if we were to imagine, how might we seek justice in schools?

First, we will need humility to look at educational inequities with fresh eyes. One of the most common objections I hear when I have conversations about educational injustice is that while schools might not always be equitable everywhere, they were certainly okay at whichever South Northwestern Middle High School so-and-so attended. I can sympathize; I’m confident I would have felt the same before my own work as a teacher. At the same time, it does not require much searching to encounter overwhelming evidence of continued segregation and inequality. The natural response is often, “I didn’t realize… I didn’t know…” which then begs the question, “Now that you do, how will you respond?” Writing this feels glib – as a professor, I have variations of this conversation every semester – but I think these sentiments are likely honest. Many in the White Christian community want to believe that we live in a just society, where if racial segregation wasn’t well addressed by the Civil War, then it certainly was by the Civil Rights movement. It is deeply painful – shameful – to imagine that alongside us, in our classrooms and communities, students of color, from immigrant backgrounds, with disabilities, regularly encounter racism, xenophobia, ableism, and so on.

In Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf describes our Christian call as “self-donation.” “Indisputably, the self-giving love manifested on the cross and demanded by it lies at the core of the Christian faith.” He later explains that selflessness is always rooted in a willingness “see from there,” in other words, in a commitment to the ongoing consideration of the perspective of the “other.” Without this intentional, humbling work, Volf argues that our comfort in our existing culture will lead us to ignore evil: “we offer our own version of [sin] – in God’s name and with a good conscience.” Similarly, in their book Reparations, Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson write that when we cling to intellectual, moral, and political pride we are led to believe “we are on the right side of history.” As a reluctance to encounter educational injustice might suggest, it is easier to assume that either things are okay – particularly if we are not harmed by, or perhaps benefit from the status quo – or that the problems we encounter must be explained by x, y, or z – typically justifications that don’t require self-donating repair. So, if we care about educational injustice, we must be willing to humbly ask hard questions and accept even harder answers.

Second, if we commit to caring for the downtrodden, then injustice will necessitate reparation. And this may come at a presumed or real cost. We can see this in our very real fears as we navigate an unjust world. To return to my class as example, once a semester we have a whole-group conversation where students respond to the prompt: “What stops you from recognizing and confronting racism when you see or experience it?” Overwhelmingly, the answer is not ignorance, but fear. I am afraid of backlash. I am afraid when I call something racist, it will provoke anger. I am afraid I won’t be able to defend myself. This fear manifests itself in other ways, too. I am afraid if I choose a school in an impoverished neighborhood my kids might be harmed – if not directly by violence, then indirectly by missed opportunity. I am afraid if I leave my feels-comfortable church, I might not know what to do or say in a new environment. These are fears I also feel. It is incredibly challenging to divest ourselves of privilege because the truth is that privilege is a great insulator.

Yet, God’s love of justice demands reparation for the sin of not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Kwon and Thompson write that the two ethical responses to White supremacy and racism are restitution and restoration: “deliberate repair of White supremacy’s cultural theft through restitution (returning what one wrongfully took), and restoration (restoring the wronged to wholeness).” Particular repairs will vary across communities – and should likely be led by those who have been wronged – but broadly speaking in terms of education, it might look like advocating for more equitable and generous funding models that take into account disparate needs. It might look like school district boundaries that are not configured to favor the wealthy or White over the poor or people of color. It might look like radical generosity and a willingness to give in abundance. It might look like time and energy invested by families who enroll their kids in local schools and actively support teachers and other students. It might look like coordinating volunteers to support schools in meeting identified needs. It might look like opening free before and after care programs in church buildings to provide practical love and support to families with tight budgets whose work hours do not match school hours. It might look like hundreds of big and small answers to the question: How do I share Christ’s love in practical ways? Most importantly, it will require a willing embeddedness and the persistent pursuit of relationship despite very real and personal costs.

This leads to my third thought: The only way we will be able to stay the course in recognizing and confronting injustice is in community. The counter-cultural call – to use our privilege and freedom for others – requires deep and sustained engagement and alone, we will fail. I think this is part of what we are reminded of in Hebrews 12:1-2: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (NIV). Following the recounting of the embodied faith of Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rahab, and others, we are reminded that we are called to pursue justice not on our own, but with our foremothers and forefathers in faith behind us and the present Christian church alongside us. Educational inequities are a problem we have created together and they are something we must address together. As we humbly consider the present realities of injustice and begin the challenging work of repair, we will need to do so in community.

The Daunting and Daring Work of Pursuing Justice

And so, in something like an answer to the questions I posed at the beginning, a close accounting of the U.S. educational system reveals injustice everywhere because just as schools have shaped society, society also shapes schools. Educational reforms are daunting and complicated. Particularly in our present time when curriculum, teacher training, and funding are objects of rancorous debate within the U.S. context, it can feel far easier to find a school that works for my kids (perhaps by homeschooling, or finding a private or charter school, or buying a home in a well-funded, high-scoring district) and do just that. We fail when we do this. I fail when I do this. We fail because we miss opportunities to love kids and families in our communities as ourselves, and to pursue justice in radical and practical ways. It is essential that we care deeply about educational justice and to see it as inextricably linked to our commission. That in obeying “everything [Jesus has] commanded” (Matt. 28:20, NIV), we might seek to love others humbly, continually, and without regard for the cost because we serve a God who is himself just and abundant.