Weds, Feb. 2 @ 4pm EST: Join NCSD member group Center for Education and Civil Rights for a virtual conversation with authors Courtney E. Martin and NCSD RAP member Genevieve Siegel-Hawley about how schools and families can work together to create and sustain racially integrated schools.
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RACE CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER FIRE |
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The Supreme Court recently announced it will review two federal court decisions upholding race-conscious admissions policies in higher education (at Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill). Given that these decisions may impact school integration efforts, we will be following this issue closely and continue to report back on developments. In the meantime, we’re sharing statements issued by our member organizations, many of whom are directly involved in defending the policies being challenged. |
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WHAT NCSD MEMBERS ARE SAYING |
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"At this moment when anti-Asian racism is at peak levels, this is not the time for SCOTUS to take drastic action and prohibit consideration of race as one of several factors in admissions. Ignoring racial discrimination doesn’t make it go away. Race-conscious admissions is a way to safeguard against discrimination that women and people of color face in accessing opportunities." Read more here.
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Comment on Supreme Court Decision to Hear Challenge to Affirmative Action at Harvard and UNC
“The goal of these suits — to end the consideration of race in college admissions — is extreme, ignores the history of race discrimination, and threatens diversity and inclusion on campuses.” Read more here.
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The Law and Facts are Clear: Race-Conscious Admissions is Meaningful, Necessary and Constitutional
“Race-conscious admissions policies are a critical tool that ensures students of color are not overlooked in a process that does not typically value their determination, accomplishments, and immense talents. We will vigorously defend access and opportunity in higher education alongside a diverse coalition of students of color, including our incredible clients whose testimony about their experiences on campus served as the cornerstone for the lower courts’ favorable decisions in both of these cases.” Read more here.
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LDF Issues Statement on Supreme Court’s Decision to Grant Cert in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC
“Further, the Court’s decision today comes amidst the backdrop of widespread efforts to erase and deny the experiences of people of color. As our country experiences a resurgence of white supremacy, it is as important now as ever before that our future leaders be educated in a learning environment that exposes them to the rich diversity that our country has to offer, so they may be fully prepared for the many challenges ahead.” Read more here.
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NCSD STAFF UPDATES
What We've Been Up To Recently
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Join us in advocating for Fostering Diverse Schools.
Find some basic talking points here, and contact your legislators this week!
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NCSD Leads Comment Letter to Retain Critical School Diversity Funding in FY 2022 Budget
The Fostering Diverse Schools program would provide $100 million for a voluntary grant program that states and school districts could apply for to help reduce racial and socioeconomic isolation in their schools. It is modeled after the Strength in Diversity Act, which passed the House of Representatives on a bipartisan basis in the 116th Congress.
We also submitted a letter requesting that the House bring the Strength in Diversity Act (H.R. 729) to the floor for a vote. |
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Virtual Event (2/16):
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A Community Conversation with Black Girls: Identity, Education, and Girlhood: Join NYU Metro for a community conversation on the schooling experiences of Black girls. Community members, youth, educators, and families are invited to engage in a virtual forum that involves storytelling and how the identities of Black girls impact their educational experiences. Register today!
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New Report:
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AFFH for States: If some version of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is reinstated later this year, it will be a major opportunity for state governments (which were left out of the initial AFFH process because the Trump Administration suspended the rule before the paperwork for state governments was completed). In anticipation of a reinstated rule, PRRAC has put together some ideas for how state government can take advantage of a revived AFFH process to affirmatively address residential segregation, which is a driver for so many other consequences including school segregation.
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Updates:
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What Do You Think of SchoolSparrow? - Part 1 by Peter Piazza: "If you’ve followed the debate about GreatSchools.org ratings, you might have also heard about SchoolSparrow.com. Positioned as an equity-oriented alternative school rating site...As you’ll see in this two-post series, I have genuinely mixed feelings. This first post is my attempt to outline those thoughts/critiques - before the site went national, I shared a slightly longer version of this with SchoolSparrow’s founder, Tom Brown. The second [yet to be published] post is Tom’s response to me, shared with permission and slightly edited."
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Update:
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National Convening in Baltimore: Get excited! The Bridges Collaborative is planning an in-person convening in Baltimore. It will be on May 19th and 20th, 2022 in Baltimore, MD! If you are interested in presenting to the Bridges Collaborative, please reach out to lallinger@tcf.org.
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NEWS FROM
ACROSS OUR
COUNTRY
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Sheff v. O’Neill: Historic Agreement Reached for Hartford, CT Students |
Pending judicial and legislative approval, a proposed Sheff v. O’Neill settlement "will result in a permanent injunction enforcing the key terms of a long-term [plan] intended to redress the consequences of decades of disinvestment and exclusion.”
Sheff v. O’Neill, originally filed in 1989, aimed at addressing the severe racial and economic segregation in Hartford, CT schools.
Additional Resources:
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In Memoriam: Lani Guinier (1950 - 2022)
Elise Boddie, Rutgers, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice:
Lani Guinier was a visionary "small d" democrat. She was legendary in voting rights circles, but her insights about the centrality of democracy to equality and opportunity extended well beyond voting. Her writings challenged us to think broadly about how institutions could promote democracy outside the structures of formal representation. For example, she sought to redefine "merit" by urging colleges and universities to admit students who would become engaged citizens and public-minded leaders. She argued that problems of racial injustice were a "canary in the mine" -- a silent warning about systemic ills that damage the lives of so many and how repairing them would help to mend broader social fault lines. She also pushed for democracy in the law school classroom by confronting gendered instructional norms that disproportionately privileged men and silenced women. Lani Guinier was not only a brilliant lawyer and scholar; she was also a champion of democracy and a champion for all people.
Susan Eaton, Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy:
More than two decades ago, I scanned the small audience gathered at Harvard for a reading from my first solo-authored book. I am not always an anxious speaker, but to spot THE Lani Guinier in the second row, made my hands shake. I'd seen Professor Guinier command audiences with equal amounts intellectual gravitas and effortless charm. I'd watched her (good-naturedly) smash opponents in debates over affirmative action. I tried to read everything she wrote. I tried to write like her. After the reading, she stood in line to compliment me more generously than I suppose I felt I deserved because I had to hold back tears. We agreed to meet the following week. But after that first meeting in her office, with her wit and wisdom, our areas of disagreement, and her family photos all freely shared, she made me feel seen and valued rather than terrified...Continued on NCSD's website.
john a. powell, Othering & Belonging Institute:
Lani was a close friend. I loved her mind and her. Through her work and life, she offers insight to both better understand our society and to begin to repair it. She is well known for her powerful work in voting and merit. She helped us begin to see the limits of majority rule and how we could have a voting system for institutionalized tyranny. She reminded us that saving the canary in the coal mine was about fixing the air in the mine for all of us. One of her most profound writings (From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy) is demanding not just reading—but truly studying—her work on racial literacy and rejection of racial liberalism. In it she uses the limits of Brown to help us understand the complexity of race and its relationship to class and geography. She also demonstrates the failure to take seriously the needs and interests of poor whites, which often leads to racial backlash and polarization. Thank you, Lani. We will miss you and continue to learn from you.
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National -
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New Report Details the School-Level Impact of the Anti-CRT Conflict Campaign (National Education Policy Center, Jan. 27) - "One interesting finding of the report is that students with the highest likelihood of encountering diversity are those most likely to be restricted from learning about it in school. Districts where the percentage of white students had declined by at least 18 percent since 2000 were three times more likely to be impacted by campaign conflict.”
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Louisiana -
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Homer Plessy Receives Pardon in Historic Supreme Court Segregation Case by Janet McConnaughey (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 5) - "Louisiana’s governor on Wednesday posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy, the Black man whose arrest for refusing to leave a whites-only railroad car in 1892 to protest racial segregation sparked the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that cemented 'separate but equal' into law for half a century."
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Massachusetts -
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Choosing Integration: A Discussion Paper and Policy Primer by Ben Forman & Simone Ngongi-Lukula (MassINC, Jan. 20) - "At a crossroads where the state has new policies and resources to mount a coordinated effort to increase integration, the authors show how policies in education, housing, and transportation could work in tandem to provide new opportunities for children from families with limited means to attend lower-poverty suburban schools."
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New Jersey -
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NJ School Desegregation Lawsuit Moving Along, and it Could Change Your Child's Life by Joe Strupp (Ashbury Park Press, Jan. 14) - "New Jersey's constitution, enacted in 1947, seven years before the Brown decision, explicitly forbid segregation in the public schools. Yet that provision and the state's anti-discrimination laws failed to halt the steady, decades-long creep of de facto segregation...The lawsuit argues the state Commissioner of Education has the power to halt the practice but has failed to exercise them. And, it argues, that the state has long been aware of the problem."
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New York -
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The Future of New York City’s Segregated “Gifted” Programs by Fabiola Cineas (Vox, Jan. 6) - “'New York City’s approach to gifted and talented is unusual and the segregation is particularly egregious,' Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank the Century Foundation, told Vox. 'It’s really striking to be in a school building where if you peer into a classroom, you can guess whether it’s the gifted and talented classroom just by looking at the faces of the kids in the room. I think we’ve already seen that just trying to expand the gifted program, as it has been, hasn’t worked as a lever to advance equity.'”
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In Memoriam: Dr. Charles V. Willie (1927 - 2022)
By Michael J. Alves
w/ reflections from John Brittain & Richard Kahlenberg
My dear friend and colleague, Dr. Charles V. Willie, the Charles Eliot Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a champion of equitable school desegregation, passed away on January 11, 2021, at the age of 94. As documented in his recent obituary in the Boston Globe, Chuck’s life was filled with extraordinary accomplishments and his “unconditional” love for his family, students, and even those fellow scholars and desegregation experts who did not always agree with him.
Chuck’s commitment to “justice and equality” was rooted and instilled by his parents during his upbringing in the segregated city of Dallas, Texas. Chuck was also greatly influenced by his friend and classmate at Morehouse College, Martin Luther King, Jr. And Chuck carried his passion and faith for justice into the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church when he championed the righteous cause of the church ordaining women priests.
My decision to ask Dr. Willie to be my advisor was based on his longstanding belief and commitment to desegregation and his real experience as a desegregation activist and staunch advocate for justice and fairness that included his service as a court-appointed Master by Judge Arthur W. Garrity in the Boston desegregation case. Chuck’s role as a Master in the Boston case and his advocacy for magnet schools, along with his fellow Master Francis Kepple, who was a former Dean at HGSE and President Kennedy’s U.S. Commissioner of Education, helped to inspire the creation of the Cambridge choice plan, which sought to make all schools magnetic desegregating schools of choice.
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In Memoriam: Dr. Willis David Hawley (1938 - 2021)
By Marilyn Zlotnik (Metis Associates)
A native of San Francisco and the son of a schoolteacher, Bill attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned three degrees, including a Ph.D., in Political Science. In his early career, Bill helped to found the Institute of Policy Studies and Public Affairs at Duke University. His early research on school integration helped to show the benefits of attending school with children from different races on attitudes and understanding, and refuted assertions that it might reduce academic achievement.
Bill took a leave from his position at Duke to support President Jimmy Carter in establishing the U.S. Department of Education. Returning to academic life, he then became Dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, where he brought together a distinguished and diverse group of researchers to join him in researching the benefits of school integration, among other research interests. After a decade at Peabody, Bill took on the role of the Dean of the College of Education at the University of Maryland. He helped found and directed the Common Destiny Alliance, a coalition of 30 national organizations and numerous scholars committed to improving race relations and educational equity. Fittingly, Bill ended his career - working until the very end - with a decade of work as Special Master in a court desegregation case in the Tucson Unified School District.
You can find his full obituary written by his children here.
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CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCE LIST |
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Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) |
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National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) |
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New Venture Fund (Communities for Just Schools Fund Director of Movement Partnerships) |
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Open Communities Alliance |
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Shriver Center on Poverty Law |
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Human Rights Campaign Foundation in partnership with the National Education Association and the American Counseling Association - The Human Rights Campaign Foundation in partnership with the National Education Association and the American Counseling Association presents Time To THRIVE, the annual national conference to promote safety, inclusion, and well-being for LGBTQ youth...everywhere!
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Magnet Schools of America - The Conference will provide an opportunity for magnet district and school professionals to dig in on education policy that impacts magnets. Attendees will hear from: Members of Congress and agency officials, school district officials, and policy and foundation organizations.
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2/16 - 2/22
Hybrid: New Orleans, LA & Online
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National Association of ESEA State Program Administrators - The Conference is intentionally aimed at coordination among federal education programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and other federal programs.
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2/17 - 2/19
Nashville, TN
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American Association of School Administrators - Researchers, educators and practitioners will come together for intensive debate and discussion on Leading for Student-Centered, Equity-Focused Education, and what that means for your leadership role, community collaboration, district outcomes, and student success.
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3/4 - 3/6
New Orleans, LA
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American Association of College for Teacher Education - The Annual Meeting provides a forum for educators to engage in meaningful discussions, share research and practices, and become better equipped to drive change in the educator preparation field.
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South by Southwest - A four-day event offering compelling sessions, in-depth workshops, engaging learning experiences, mentorship, film screenings, future-focused competitions, an expo, networking opportunities, and so much more.
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Contact Us
National Coalition on School Diversity
c/o Poverty and Race Research Action Council
Mailing Address: 740 15th St. NW #300
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-544-5066
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