“Our Metropolitan Separations”: The Case for Metropolitan Public Schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia

This research uses published reports from think tanks, statistical data from the Virginia Department of Education, newspaper articles, and court cases to argue for the creation of metropolitan school districts in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Framing this article's importance is the undeniable fact that almost seventy years after the famous Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), American public schools still legally operate on a racially segregated basis. Virginia contributes to this issue by having some of the highest rates of racial segregation within its major metropolitan area school districts. This racial segregation has resulted in disparate educational outcomes between Black and White students. These outcomes are used by White parents and legislators to maintain segregated and unequally resourced public school systems, which perpetuate the contemporary economic inequity between the races. Creating metropolitan schools in Virginia, I argue, will set the Commonwealth on the path to finally fulfilling the elusive promise of Brown (1954) while helping address the historical continuum of discriminatory public education in America.