Education Secretary Arne Duncan decided to draw on Little Rock to make a point Saturday to the American Bar Association.
Duncan, keynoting the American Bar Association litigation section’s fall leadership meeting, said one cure for the entrenched segregation is creating more quality schools everywhere, available to all races.
He said that at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., — site of the forced integration of nine black students into an all-white school in 1957 — the student population is now nearly all black.
Because Central High is considered to be one of the best in the country, it draws some white students from the suburbs, he said. However in far too many minority communities, “the schools simply aren’t good enough,” he said.
According to a Sept. 3 enrollment report, Central High had 2,478 students, 55 percent of whom were black.