OCT 2017 UPDATES           Like us on Facebook View our videos on YouTube

Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, Nyah Berg, Frantzy Luzincourt, Miriam Nunberg, Illya Benjamin, Josh Wallack, and Angelica Infante-Green during the "School Integration Initiatives in New York" panel. 






NCSD is currently  formulating  a strong response to the Secretary's latest attack on programmatic support for diverse, equitable schools. We encourage our membership and readers to contact NCSD staff to join our efforts.

DeVos Eliminates School Diversity Priorities in New Competitive Grant Program Priorities

On October 13th, the Department of Education published new  Proposed Supplemental Priorities and Definitions for Discretionary Grant Programs . 

In these new proposed priorities, Secretary DeVos continues to weaken federal support for diverse schools, eliminating supplemental priorities for programs that work to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in schools while emphasizing school choice. During the Obama Administration, NCSD advocacy played a key role in the promulgation of supplemental priorities for school diversity in 2014, and socioeconomic diversity in 2016.

Comments on the proposed priorities are due November 13th.
NCSD member John Brittain, a longtime civil rights lawyer and activist, discusses our newest brief, "Can Socioeconomic Diversity Plans Produce Racial Diversity in K-12 Schools?"
New NCSD Research Brief 

This month NCSD published a new research brief, titled "Can Socioeconomic Diversity Plans Produce Racial Diversity in K-12 Schools?" 

Authored by  Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Erica Frankenberg, and Jennifer Ayscue, the brief explores to what extent various socioeconomic (SES) focused diversity plans can generate racial diversity in schools. 

Ultimately, the authors conclude that both policy design and local context matter when it comes to whether or not SES diversity plans will produce racial diversity--and that considering SES and neighborhood racial factors together may be the best way forward for creating racial integration using SES data.
#NCSD2017 Conference Recap
Thank you to everyone who came out and made the #NCSD2017 conference such an incredible teaching and learning experience for all attendees.

Check the conference website over the coming weeks, as we work on uploading presentation materials and videos from the conference.
 
Conference attendees: We'd love to get your feedback!

To facilitate the sharing of sharing stories and perspectives about the power and promise of school diversity at #NCSD2017, we established a StoryCorps archive titled #CelebrateSchoolDiversity. We hope you'll listen and contribute to it!
 
Finally, we owe a huge thanks to all the organizations and individuals who supported the conference with financial or in-kind contributions:


NCSD Welcomes New Members
This month NCSD welcomes four new member organizations! Read more below to learn about our new partners lending their support to diverse, equitable schools:

Family and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
FFLIC is a grassroots  membership-based organization working to transform the systems that put children at risk of prison. Through empowerment, leadership development, and training FFLIC strives to keep children from going to prison and support those who have and their families. As representatives of mothers and fathers, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and allies, FFLIC believes in and implements a model of organizing that is people- and community-centered, and is explicitly anti-racist.
 
The School Desegregation Notebook
This blog is an exploration of school segregation today, run by  Peter Piazza, an education policy researcher whose work focuses on preserving and strengthening public education. 
 
Temperament, Affect, and Behavior in Schools (TABS) Lab
Housed in the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education and Human Sciences at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, TABS is an interdisciplinary lab focused on children's and adolescents' emotional and behavioral well being in the school context. TABS  work takes a unique approach in considering the experiences of students of color in traditional areas of educational psychology.
 
The NY-based FHJC is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to eliminating housing discrimination; promoting policies that foster open, accessible, and inclusive communities; and strengthening enforcement of fair housing laws.
NCSD Member Updates 
Patterns of Resegregation in Florida's Schools 

A new report from the Civil Rights Project /Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA examines the trend of resegregation in Florida's public schools. This report, Patterns of Resegregation in Florida's Schools, provides a context for Florida's school segregation including the impact of U.S. Supreme Court decisions and trends in school accountability and choice. It then examines enrollment trends and racial proportion changes in Florida schools including public schools and charter schools, and charts segregation trends at the state level over time.
Segregation by District Boundary Line: The Fragmentation of Memphis Area Schools 

In a new article, NCSD Research Advisory Panel members Erica Frankenberg and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, alongside Sarah Diem, examine the changing landscape of school districts in Memphis-Shelby County, Tennessee, extending prior research on school district fragmentation and consolidation by examining the largest American school district merger--and swift, subsequent suburban secessions--in recent decades.

Richard Rothstein Book Tour Continues

Richard Rothstein continues his tour for the new book Color of Law, which  uncovers a forgotten history of how racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments created the patterns of residential segregation that persist to this day. See tour destinations and dates below.
Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching

Teaching Tolerance will soon begin taking applications and nominations for the  Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching .  The biennial award recognizes  five classroom educators from across the United States who teach the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in diverse settings, achieve academically, and work collaboratively. These educators employ research-based practices to help students develop positive identities, exhibit empathy, consider different perspectives, think critically about injustice and develop the skills to take action. 

You can apply or nominate someone you know  here  beginning November 1!

Does School Composition Matter? Estimating the Relationship between Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Achievement in Maryland Public Schools

On October 18th the Maryland Equity Project published a  new brief examining the relationship between the racial/ethnic and economic composition of Maryland's public schools and school performance. The brief finds a significant variance between average standardized test scores between schools and districts which is highly correlated with students' socioeconomic status, and more weakly correlated with race.


Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers

On the evening of October 26th, NCSD member and American University law professor John Brittain joined former NYCUL Executive Director Norm Siegel in New York City to discuss their contributions to the recently published  Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections from the Deep South, 1964-1980.

Federal Updates 
Senators Send Letter to Secretary DeVose, Urging Action on Hate in Schools

On October 25th, nine US Senators issued a  letter  to Secretary DeVos expressing concern regarding the increase in hate speech and discriminatory conduct in schools since Trump assumed the Presidency. The Senators urge Secretary DeVos to make public the Department of Education's plan to address the rise of discrimination and harassment in public schools, highlighting President Obama's efforts on bullying prevention as evidence of how actions by the Department can influence student behavior.
Upcoming Events of Interest

11/17/17
11/18/17		 Building Bridges, Not Walls: Diversity & Equity Summit 2017
Host: Learn Together, Live Together		 Washington, DC
04/11/18
04/13/18		 Equity Summit 2018: Our Power. Our Future. Our Nation.
Host: PolicyLink		 Chicago, IL
05/02/18 All Children, Our Future: Civil Rights and Education Conference
Host: The Leadership Conference Education Fund		 Washington, DC

The National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD) is a network of national civil rights organizations, university-based research centers, and state and local coalitions working to expand support for government policies that promote school diversity and reduce racial isolation. We also support the work of state and local school diversity practitioners. Our work is informed by an advisory panel of scholars and academic researchers whose work relates to issues of equity, diversity, and desegregation/integration .
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund * Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund   American Civil Liberties Union * Poverty & Race Research Action Council  * Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law  * Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund  * Magnet Schools of America  * One Nation Indivisible  * Southern Poverty Law Center  * Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School  * Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA  * Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University  * University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights  * Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University  * Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley  * Education Rights Center, Howard University School of Law  * Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School  * Education Law Center  * New York Appleseed  * Sheff Movement Coalition  * Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation  * ERASE Racism  * Chicago Lawyers' Committee  * Empire Justice Center  * IntegrateNYC  * Intercultural Development Research Association  * Reimagining Integration: The Diverse and Equitable Schools Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education * Institute for Social Progress at Wayne County Community College District  * Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School  * Equity Assistance Center (Region II) at Touro College * IntegratedSchools.org *  The Office of Transformation and Innovation at the Dallas Independent School District  * Live Baltimore * Maryland Equity Project   * Center for Education and Civil Rights  * National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector  * The Center for Diversity and Equality in Education at Rutgers University * Being Black at School * UnifiEd * The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy * Public Advocacy for Kids * The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools * Family and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children * The School Desegregation Notebook * Temperament, Affect, and Behavior in Schools (TABS) Lab * Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc.


Contact Us
  National Coalition on School Diversity
c/o Poverty and Race Research Action Council
Website: school-diversity.org
Email: [email protected]
Mailing Address: 740 15th St. NW #300 Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-544-5066