NCSD Update: December 2020

DECEMBER 2020 UPDATES

It's been an extremely challenging year, but we're ready to hit the ground running in 2021. Will you join us? Learn about membership here.

REMOVAL OF GEPA 426: CHECK!

We asked NCSD members to weigh in on school integration priorities for the Biden/Harris administration.

Here's what we came up with for the first 100 days.

Stay tuned for a more complete agenda for the incoming administration in the New Year!

We're excited to announce that one of NCSD's longstanding policy goals, the removal of anti-integration language in the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA), was passed as part of Congress's spending/coronavirus relief bills last Tuesday.

Thanks to Rep. Bobby Scott and Rep. Rosa DeLauro for their leadership on this issue!

See a related Education Week article by Andrew Ujifasa. (Help us amplify NCSD's role in this effort by retweeting Andrew's tweet.)

Other news from Capitol Hill: Statue of Civil Rights Activist Barbara Rose Johns Will Replace U.S. Capitol’s Likeness of Robert E. Lee by Isis Davis-Marks (Smithsonian Magazine, Dec. 23)

PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN TAPS CT ED COMMISSIONER FOR SECRETARY OF ED

Last week, President-elect Joe Biden announced his pick for Secretary of Education: Connecticut Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona. In his remarks (which begin at approximately 13:30), Cardona urges us to "build something better than we have ever had before," in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Where Biden's Choice for Education Secretary Stands on Key K-12 Issues by Evie Blad (Education Week, Dec. 22) - "As education commissioner, Cardona agreed to a state settlement in a decades-long Hartford school desegregation case that allowed more students in the city’s segregated schools to enroll in magnet programs."

An Early Honeymoon for Miguel Cardona Could Be Tested by Biden’s Push to Reopen Schools by Andrew Ujifusa (Education Week, Dec. 22) - "He also was involved in the 2020 settlement of a long-running legal dispute in Connecticut over racial imbalance in magnet school admissions. Cardona had been in office only a few months before the resolution of that case, Sheff v. O’Neill, and more generally hasn’t been a state chief for very long. Yet his experience with the case and his public work on education equity issues could prove helpful if the Biden administration chooses to prioritize issues like school diversity and integration."

How Will Biden’s Proposed Education Secretary Try To Narrow Gaps? Here Are Some Clues by Natalie Wexler (Forbes, Dec. 22) - "Narrowing gaps between students still learning English and their peers has been a major focus of his career."

For CT’s Miguel Cardona, new post as U.S. Secretary of Education is a key part of Joe Biden’s agenda by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas (CT Mirror, Dec. 22) - "Cardona has focused much of his career on ways to close gaps in opportunities for students to thrive."

Biden selects CT’s Miguel Cardona to lead the U.S. Department of Education by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas (CT Mirror, Dec. 22) - "Cardona is also a fan of embracing a student’s native language and encouraging districts to set up dual-language programs so they and their classmates can learn their core subjects in Spanish or another language."

INVEST IN INTEGRATION: DONATE TO NCSD

Can you help NCSD raise $500 more in individual donations by the end of the year?

With your help, NCSD raised $2000 in individual donations this November and December. We're incredibly grateful for your support.

There's still time to help us unlock our potential in 2021, so please consider a year-end donation to NCSD.

Help us reach $2500!!

You can contribute to NCSD's work through our fiscal agent, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council.

Donate Via PayPal(or with debit/credit card)

You can also send a donation via check or money order to:

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Attn: National Coalition on School Diversity

740 15th Street NW, 3rd Floor

Washington, DC 20005

**The check or money order should be made out to PRRAC, indicating "NCSD" in the subject line of your check.

Key NCSD Activities in 2020:

Including Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity in ESSA District Plans (March 2020)

Model State School Integration Policies (May 2020)

Using CARES Act Flexibility to Address Systemic Educational Inequality and Bring Students Together (August 2020)

10 Ways the Biden/Harris Administration Can Prioritize School Integration in its First 100 Days (December 2020)

Progress in Congress on our policy agenda:
Passage of Strength in Diversity Act in U.S. House (September 2020)
Removal of anti-integration language in Section 426 of GEPA (December 2020)

Virtual events:
#NCSD2020 keynote conversation, featuring Vanessa Siddle Walker (The Lost Education of Horace Tate) and Elizabeth McRae (Mothers of Massive Resistance); facilitated by Dani McClain (We Live for the We)
#NCSD2020 advocacy training featuring Sunil Mansukhani and Stephen Cobb from The Raben Group
In collaboration with Integrated Schools and Learn Together, Live Together, we hosted two successful Twitter chats: #KnowBetterDoBetter and #ThurgoodWasRight.

We welcomed three new members: North Carolina Justice Center, The Bell, and The Bridges Collaborative.

NEWS FROM

ACROSS OUR

COUNTRY

NYC to Begin Addressing Admissions Processes

New York City officials recently announced major changes to many public school admissions processes to further school desegregation. While this is a notable development, a great deal of work is needed to actualize equitable admissions and Real Integration in NYC.

We continue to be inspired by youth-led organizations and their supporters, like IntegrateNYC, Teens Take Charge, New York Appleseed, and NYC Alliance for School Integration & Desegregation (ASID) in their efforts to make the city's admissions policies more equitable.

NY Appleseed: "Middle-school screens purported to evaluate students on their academic performance and behavior in their first nine years of life. There is no other school district in the nation that uses exclusive admissions processes for middle schools as extensively as New York City. The predictable segregation and unequal access to educational opportunities represented a betrayal of the core promises of public education and acquiescence to our city and nation’s legacy of racial oppression."

Related: Student Reflections on Selective Entry High Schools (School Diversity Notebook, Dec. 3)

Graphic via IntegrateNYC

National -

Opinion: Creating Diverse Schools is Challenging But Worth It by F. Chris Curran (Gainesville Sun, Dec. 10) - "Research points to a number of benefits of diverse schools. Diversity creates a set of school stakeholders with the resources and political power to successfully advocate for high-quality schools."

Schools Could See U-Turn on Civil Rights Under Biden by Christina A. Samuels (Education Week, Dec. 2) - "Under a new administration, civil rights activists want to see a dramatic U-turn from the past four years. But it’s more than just bringing back some of the guidance from the Obama administration, they say: The coronavirus pandemic has deepened inequities..."

Here Is What School Integration in America Looks Like Today by Halley Potter and Michelle Burris (The Century Foundation, Dec. 2) - Provides a comprehensive inventory of school integration efforts across the country and offers a snapshot of recent progress. The report includes an interactive map and a full dataset.

Opinion: How DeVos May Have Started a Counterrevolution in Education by Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire (New York Times, Dec. 1) - "[Devos's] legacy will still be far-reaching and long-lasting. This is not a result of what she made, but of what she broke: a bipartisan federal consensus around testing and charters that extended from the George H.W. Bush administration through the end of the Obama era."

Connecticut -

Want to Fix Inequities in School Funding? Top Legislators Say Property Tax Reform Solves the Problem. by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas (Connecticut Mirror, Dec. 9) - "[T]he state had one of the largest disparities in education spending between predominantly white and predominantly nonwhite districts, according to an analysis of 2016 fiscal year spending generated by EdBuild, a national think tank that advocates for school funding that levels the playing field."
Related: Does ‘Snob Zoning’ Lead to Segregated Suburbs in CT? by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas (Connecticut Mirror, Dec. 7) - "What’s happening in this liberal suburb that borders segregated New Haven is a reflection of land-use decisions playing out in wealthy suburbs across the state. It’s also a result of the inertia at the state Capitol to resist any new housing laws."
Flashback: Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing by Jacqueline Rabe Thomas (Connecticut Mirror / Pro Publica, May 22, 2019) - "In a liberal state that has provided billions in taxpayer money to create more affordable housing, decisions at local zoning boards, the Connecticut Capitol and state agencies have thwarted court rulings and laws intended to remedy housing segregation."
Housing-Schools Connection:
Milestone Agreement in Sheff vs. O’Neill School Desegregation Case Adds 1,000 Magnet School Seats to Ease Racial Isolation of Hartford Students by Josh Kovner (Hartford Courant, Jan. 10, 2020)
Segregated, Differently: Half of Hartford's Schools are Segregated by Rachel Cohen (American Prospect, Oct. 18, 2017)

Massachusetts -

Opinion: Massachusetts’ Public Schools are Highly Segregated. It’s Time We Treated That Like the Crisis It Is by David Scharfenberg (Boston Globe, Dec. 11)
Related: Check out this thread analyzing the opinion piece from Massachusetts resident and School Diversity Notebook editor Peter Piazza: "Lots of compelling arguments, though, it often undercuts its own progressive message in confusing, potentially counter-productive ways."

How Has Boston Gotten Away with Being Segregated for So Long? by Catherine Elton (Boston Magazine, Dec. 8) - "Now, as part of Boston’s racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, activists are not only insisting on police reform, but also renewing demands to address the city’s residential segregation."

MEMBER UPDATES

IDRA launched its first Education Policy Fellows Program. Five fellows will gain real-world advocacy experience and training during the 2021 Texas legislative session.

IDRA provided recommendations to members of President-elect Biden's education transition team, urging the new administration to focus on much-needed COVID-19 relief and policies that promote systemic educational equity.

Celebrate the Legacy of METCO: Raise Your Voice for Racial Equity

METCO's recent review of 2019-2020 milestones included a rap performance by METCO alum Echezona Onwuama and a panel discussion with writers Dr. Susan Eaton (The Other Boston Busing Story) and Jennifer De Leon (Don't Ask Me Where I'm From) and filmmaker Mike Mascoll (On the Line: Where Sacrifice Begins and CodeSwitching) whose work centers on the METCO experience. Criminal justice advocate Sean Ellis, a METCO alum and the subject of the Netflix documentary Trial 4, also makes a special appearance.

The stream is available here.

New publication:

The Most Segregated (and Integrated) Cities in the SF Bay Area

Update:

"MSA learned that Congressional conferees...agreed to MSA’s request to increase MSAP funds by $2 million, to a total of $109 million for the new fiscal year."

Read the full statement here.

Upcoming events:

PRRAC will be hosting two online events in collaboration with Open Communities Alliance:

A Steady Habit of Segregation: History of Segregation in Hartford County on January 28, 2021. Featuring Susan Eaton, author of the recent report, A Steady Habit of Segregation.

The Impact of Segregation and Reparative Strategies on February 9, 2021. Featuring Philip Tegeler (PRRAC), Professor Anika Singh Lemar (Yale Law School), Erin Boggs (Open Communities Alliance), and Jennifer Rangel (Inclusive Communities Project).

Both events will start at 6pm ET.

Research Advisory Panel member Linda Tropp published two new articles with co-authors:

How Intergroup Contact and Communication about Group Differences Predict Collective Action Intentions Among Advantaged Groups (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Dec. 8)

Witnessing Racial Discrimination Shapes Collective Action for Racial Justice: Enhancing Awareness of Privilege Among Advantaged Groups (Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Nov. 19)

CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCE LIST

The 65th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Teaching Tolerance, Dec. 4) - "These resources help students contextualize the boycott—and the civil rights movement at large—beyond Rosa Parks’ role, with a focus on women who were also instrumental in sparking change."

The Pandemic to Prison Pipeline: A Timely Q&A (National Education Policy Center, Dec. 2020) - "[T]wo experts on student discipline discuss how the pandemic has—and has not—changed the ways in which children are punished by schools, and what we can do about it."

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation (New York Times, Nov. 30) - "Vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, still permeate much of America’s built environment."