Education Department orders Georgia school district to end racial tracking

Jet, July 3, 1995

After concluding the Calhoun County (GA) School District has been steering Black students into lower-level classes, the U.S. Education Department ordered it to immediately stop the practice - called racial tracking - or lose federal funding.

The school district in rural southwest Georgia had for years engaged in the illegal tracking system that placed Black students - who make up 59 percent of the district - in lower-level classes and White students in classes for high achievers, without regard for individual ability.

Corkin Cherubini, a White educator who moved to the area from Virginia 25 years ago, blew the whistle on the district's racist practices after advancing from a teacher in the 1,200-student school district in Edison, GA, to superintendent.

Cherubini documented the system of racial tracking whereby White students were put in classes for high achievers, labeled section A or section B; while Black students were put in classes for slow learners, labeled sections C and D.

He looked at several years of classes and noted that some Whites in sections A and B had low test scores and some Blacks in C and D had high scores.

He also pointed out that White teachers in the district were generally assigned to the high-achieving classes while Black teachers were assigned to the others.

This is not the first time race has been an issue in Calhoun County schools. The county was ordered to integrate its schools 25 years ago.

Across the Southeast, Black students are twice as likely as Whites to be classified as slow or retarded. Federal officials are looking at similar racial tracking problems in nine other Georgia school systems.

Teachers in the district now face a summer of training on how to teach classes that are more racially balanced and have an equal mix of students with low, average and high test scores.