Black Americans have learned one lesson over and over again. When people in power start talking about “local control,” it is time to pay attention. The phrase is not about good government. It’s not about good schools or fair representation. It’s about denying students and voters equal treatment under the law. The truth is that local control is about the federal government turning a blind eye as state and local leaders deliberately exclude Black communities from education and opportunity.
Louisiana is at the center of the local control debate. A federal court recently ended decades of school desegregation oversight in the state’s Concordia Parish, concluding that the district had done enough to move beyond its segregated past. At nearly the same time, Louisiana remains at the center of another major civil rights fight over congressional maps and whether Black voters will have a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.
These are connected legal battles and part of the same story, which is whether Black students, families, and communities have equal opportunity, voice, and access to the people making decisions about their schools and futures. Limiting a student’s access to high-quality public schools and limiting a person’s voting power have the same end: weakening our democracy.
Louisiana’s Attorney General Liz Murrill celebrated the Concordia decision as a win for local control. But federal oversight of public education came about because of local control and because leaders in Concordia and elsewhere feared the power of diversity and equity in education.
Related: Louisiana Representative Explains Why National Progress Is Not the Same as Progress for Black Folks
Black America knows this. Black America knows that if local leaders had done the right thing after Brown v. Board of Education, federal judges would never have had to intervene. Schools would have voluntarily opened their doors, shared resources fairly, redrawn attendance boundaries, and ensured Black children received the same educational opportunities as white children.
Black America knows that local control barred them from exercising any control at the local level. It was only through organizing, protesting, and petitioning that school doors opened. But even then, it was petitioning the federal government that caused change to occur.
The damage caused by segregation did not disappear when the laws changed. Local leaders still decide where schools are built, how attendance lines are drawn, which neighborhoods receive investment, which students have access to experienced teachers, advanced courses, safe facilities, extracurricular programs, and pathways to college and careers.
And discrimination has survived through school boundaries, budgets, admissions policies, closures, and transportation decisions. The quiet rationing of opportunity can continue long after officials stop calling them segregation.
That is exactly why keeping these oversight orders in place after blatantly racist policies ended is so important – because the policies’ reverberations continue.
It is in Louisiana where courts are deciding whether Black voters will have a fair opportunity to elect leaders who reflect their communities. Those same leaders will make decisions about school funding and access. School desegregation and congressional redistricting are governed by different laws, but they are tied together by the same fundamental question: Who gets to shape the future.
Schools determine who receives the preparation, resources, and opportunities to lead. Voting determines who has the power to decide how those schools, neighborhoods, and public systems are governed. Education shapes opportunity, and voting shapes power.
The connection is not accidental.
Public schools help teach young people what democracy looks like. When children grow up in divided and unequal systems, when diversity is treated as optional, and when some students consistently receive less, it becomes easier for leaders to carry those same values into the way they draw voting districts, distribute public resources, and decide whose concerns deserve attention. That is why this moment matters far beyond Concordia Parish and Baton Rouge.
Across the nation, we are hearing the same familiar phrases: “Race neutral,” “local control,” and “returning authority to the states.” These are not bland, procedural phrases. Together they represent a move toward less opportunity, less accountability, and fewer tools to challenge discrimination.
And they also represent what will happen if what is happening in Louisiana spreads throughout the country. If the federal government can walk away from protecting Black children and Black political power in one state, it becomes easier to walk away in another. Louisiana is showing us what happens when America decides the work of civil rights, including the right to an excellent public education, is over before Black communities have experienced the fullness of the promises embedded in those rights.
How states and elected leaders respond to what is happening in Louisiana may well lay the groundwork for the future of education and democracy around the country. We cannot approach Louisiana as two separate struggles. The fight for a right to an excellent education and the right to equal representation are the same struggle. The outcome of that struggle will decide the future of our democracy.
Denise Forte is president and ceo of EdTrust.
