NCSD collaborated with the Poverty & Race Research Action Council on a special issue of Poverty & Race (PRRAC's quarterly journal). Guest edited by Derek Black, this issue features an impressive lineup of research, policy, and legal experts (including several NCSD members) working at the intersection of school funding and segregation/integration. More info below!

NCSD POLICY UPDATE

NCSD STAFF UPDATES

What We've Been Up to Recently

AIR'S EQUITY INITIATIVE OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCES RAPID-CYCLE GRANTEES UNDER ITS "EQUITY AND INTEGATION 2.0" CALL

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) officially announced that NCSD is among six organizations awarded rapid-cycle project grants to conduct research on school integration and equity. NCSD's project is entitled "Leveraging Title II of ESSA and Redressing the Post-Brown Decimation of the Black Educator Workforce in the South to Support School Integration and Educator Diversity." (Stay tuned for more developments!)

Other funded rapid-cycle projects include:

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to "study disproportionality in gifted and talented identification rates at the state and national level and how they are informed by state, district, and school-level variables."
• North Carolina State University to "analyze to what extent two-way dual language immersion programs can foster school integration."
• Local to Global Justice to "gather community representatives in Arizona to explore ways that dual language, arts enrichment and family literacy strategies might enhance school integration experiences for students."
• University of Minnesota to "use a multimodal, exploratory case study design to examine how Black, Latin, Asian, Pacific Island, Desi-American (APIDA) and Indigenous youth in Minneapolis Public Schools perceive, experience and conceptualize school integration efforts. The project is being co-funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and will involve sub-grants for youth-led research investigating policy and practical solutions for school integration."
• Brown’s Promise to "host a series of learning labs where school integration and equity experts, researchers, thought leaders and advocates can build relationships and share knowledge."

NCSD SUMMER INTERN SPOTLIGHT

We can't believe it's already time to say goodbye to our incredible Summer 2023 intern cohort! Below are short blurbs on each of our interns, their projects, and what they learned during their time at NCSD.

Yaz Liow (they/them) is a rising junior at Yale majoring in Comparative Literature and Education Studies. This summer, Yaz delved into the legislative, administrative, and legal events behind the systemic removal of Black educators from the U.S. public school system after Brown v. Board. They found that many conservative districts exploited its clause to desegregate with “all deliberate speed” to delay action indefinitely. They also tracked the shifting definitions of desegregation, from the elimination of explicitly segregationist policies to a swift and holistic process of integration. Yaz has learned much about how government action surrounding desegregation has operated on terms that prioritize white comfort above all else.

Karina Maciel (she/her) is a rising junior at Amherst College, majoring in American Studies. This summer, she examined the historical loss of Black educators following Brown v. Board and has also conducted in-depth research regarding the history and structure of Title VI of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which focuses on American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian education. She has really enjoyed getting to work with the NCSD team, especially her fellow interns, and has loved being able to take a further look at the deeper history and policies behind school integration and diversity. 

Jamie Nicolas (she/her) is a rising junior at Yale majoring in American Studies and completing the Education Studies program. She researched the removal of Black educators from the workforce following Brown v. Board and learned about the use of property tax revenue in education funding. She enjoyed learning about the pedagogy Black Southern educators used to affirm their students’ potential and appreciated the opportunity to learn about topics she had not known much about before, like school funding. Her favorite part of the internship was connecting with the other NCSD interns during meetings about the zine they created.

HARVARD/UNC RULING UPDATES

NCSD MEMBER UPDATES

Earlier this month, IDRA hosted a 50th Anniversary Reception in the nation's capital that featured remarks by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten, Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX), and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM). NCSD was in attendance and honored to be a part of the event's host committee. Congratulations, IDRA, on an incredible 50 years of advocacy, research, technical assistance, and leadership programming on behalf of students of color, bilingual students, and low-income students across the U.S. South, particularly in Texas and Georgia.

CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCES

• In a new National Education Policy Center policy brief, "Section 504 Plans: Examining Inequitable Access and Misuse," authors Maria M. Lewis and Raquel Muñiz present research to inform policymaking around Section 504 by considering trends documenting ongoing and even increasing inequities in how the law is being used. Since many of the inequities are systemic, the authors provide recommendations that include policy actions at the federal, state, and local levels.

• A manuscript published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, "Internalized Racism and Racial Self-Identity Formation in Black Children," aims to help health care providers understand how racism is theorized to be internalized, reviews segregation-era research on racial identity formation in Black children, and provides a timeline of racial conceptualization and bias formation in children.

NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY

National -

• Black Lives Matter turns 10 (CBC News, July 15) - "John Logan...at Brown University in Providence, R.I., says at this pace, it’ll still take 30 years just for African Americans to be as segregated from whites as other minority groups are; full integration — it’s nowhere in sight."

• The Supreme Court's Segregationists (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10) - "Opposition to affirmative action is part of a segregationist agenda that began with opposition to school desegregation in the 1950s and has taken new and more-underhanded forms as evolving public opinion made an open defense of segregation untenable."

• No One Can Stop Talking About Justice John Marshall Harlan (New York Times, July 7) - "The language of colorblindness that Roberts and Thomas use to make their argument comes directly from Justice John Marshall Harlan’s lonely dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision that upheld Jim Crow segregation."

• Opinion: What history reveals about the biggest new power player in US politics (CNN, July 7) - "As they battled desegregation, many White mothers argued that the Supreme Court had superseded local — and parental — authority. They sought to wrest back control by adopting segregationist textbooks, promoting private academies and, at times, shutting down public schools altogether while conducting private lessons at home."
• Related: Moms for Liberty is part of a long history of rightwing mothers’ activism in the US

• Why Red States Are Blocking New School Voucher Programs (Progressive Magazine, July 3) - "School vouchers spread segregation: “Another concern for us about these voucher proposals is that Virginia has a history of discriminatory voucher proposals that were a way of avoiding school desegregation,” [Laura] Goren says. 'Unfortunately, a lot of research shows that vouchers continue to increase school segregation.' And voucher opponents noted that vouchers did not only increase segregation by race but class as well."

Alabama -

• Dothan High alumni reunite 54 years after school integration to celebrate perseverance (Dothan Eagle, July 25) - "The first graduating class to racially integrate Dothan High School in 1969 reunited on July 8 to celebrate its success...Black alumni who transferred from Carver High spoke with the Dothan Eagle about their experiences at Dothan High. They reflected on the strength it took them to overcome the challenges that came with joining a newly racially integrated school."

Arkansas -

• County deseg agreement may come to an end (Sentinel-Record, July 28) - "The court-ordered school desegregation agreement that has been in place for Garland County for more than 30 years could come to an end."

California -

• Former students from segregated campus reunite nearly 80 years later to reflect on legacy of Mendez v. Westminster (OCDE Newsroom, July 25) - "Socorro 'Coco' Puebla, Dolores Martinez, Frank Mendoza and Luisa Medina reunite to talk about their experiences at Hoover School and the landmark case of Mendez v. Westminster that ended school segregation in Orange County.'
• Related: Former students from Westminster’s segregated ‘Mexican School’ remember the past

• Reparations Report: Housing Segregation and Separate and Unequal Education (Davis Vanguard, July 5) - "[T]he following are excerpts from the Executive Summary of the California reparations report…Government actors, working with private individuals, actively segregated America into African American and white neighborhoods. Although this system of segregation was called Jim Crow in the South, it existed by less obvious, yet effective, means throughout the entire country, including in California."

Connecticut -

• Fairfield works to reduce racial imbalance in schools, but is CT law outdated? (CT Insider, July 30) - "Connecticut's 54-year-old school desegregation law may need an update to prevent forcing transfers predominantly upon students of color, education experts say. It's illustrated with a dilemma playing out in Fairfield, where the law requires the Board of Education to resolve a racial imbalance stemming from the most diverse elementary school in the district — McKinley Elementary School, where about 56.6 percent of the students are from racial minority backgrounds."

• A year after Sheff v. O’Neill (WSHU, July 20) - “Last year the landmark lawsuit, Sheff v. O’Neill was finally settled after 30 years of litigation. The case aimed to integrate the school system in the Hartford area. Elizabeth Horton Sheff filed the suit in 1989 on behalf of her 10-year-old son Milo. It was filed against the governor of Connecticut at that time, William O’Neill. But the struggle for equity in education is not over.”

New Jersey -

• Newark’s teaching force doesn’t always match its diverse student body — especially among Latinos (Chalkbeat Newark, July 27) - "In Newark and other cities in New Jersey, teaching staff and school leadership do not always reflect diverse student bodies. Demographic data shows Black and Latino students make up about 90% of Newark’s total student population, while teachers from those backgrounds make up just over half of the teaching staff."

• Why these NJ schools are so diverse, while many are segregated — affordable housing has been key (NJ Spotlight, July 25) - “As part of the Segregated collaboration among newsrooms covering New Jersey, Gothamist and WNYC explored the deep connections between housing and public school segregation, and how Franklin Township’s embrace of affordable housing contributes to one of the most diverse districts in the state. Read the full report from Gothamist or listen on WNYC.”
• Related: How Asian American students experience our highly segregated K-12 schools; A working history of South Orange-Maplewood school integration, access and equity efforts; Increased affordable housing helped diversify Franklin Township schools; ‘Segregated’ Journalism Project Gives Me Hope; How segregated are New Jersey’s schools? It’s complicated

• In NJ, AAPI students find community and exclusion among segregated schools (Gothamist, July 17) - “[I]n New Jersey, with its roughly 600 school districts, where you live closely determines where you go to school. But in New Jersey, there's been far less discussion about what that kind of segregation means for the state's growing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.”

• Protesting NJ School Segregation at National Governor's Association Meeting (Press of Atlantic City, July 12) - “A group focusing on unacceptable levels of segregation in NJ schools and neighborhoods, including members like Pleasantville Councilman Tony Davenport and activist Steve Young, attempted to deliver a request for a meeting with Gov. Phil Murphy during the National Governor's Association meeting.”
• Related: School integration group seeks sitdown with Murphy in Atlantic City

New York -

• One Bed-Stuy School's Integration Story (WNYC, July 5) - "Clara Hemphill, founding editor of InsideSchools.org and the author of A Brighter Choice: Building a Just School in an Unequal City (Teachers College Press, 2023), talks about her new book which follows a group of parents at a public school in gentrifying Bed-Stuy as they try to come together across racial and class lines." 

Washington, DC -

• Gallaudet University Holds Special Graduation Honoring Black Deaf Students Denied Diplomas During Segregation (Essence, July 26) - "Gallaudet University honored 24 Black deaf students who attended the school between 1952 and 1954 with the high school diplomas they were denied while enrolled at Kendall School Division II for Negroes, which operated on the school’s campus at that time. The ceremony, attended by over 300 people and live-streamed, was held at Gallaudet University’s Center for Black Deaf Studies, the world’s first center dedicated to commemorating Black Deaf history, contributions, and culture." 
• Related: Gallaudet Recognizes the Kendall 24 and Their Teachers; Black deaf students who attended 1950s segregated school to finally get high school diplomas

Wisconsin -

• The Judicial Failures of School Desegregation in the United States (Part One) (Milwaukee Courier, July 14) - ‘Historically, when one thinks about segregation and abhorrent racially charged segregation, the north is often portrayed as a utopia of equality. This was far from the truth; because the north—and the Midwest specifically, was equally as segregated and laced with racist policies as the south.”
• Related: The Judicial Failures of School Desegregation in the United States (Part Two)

NCSD MEMBERSHIP

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 * The Othering & Belonging Institute * 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 * The School Desegregation Notebook * Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. * Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO) * Learn Together, Live Together * Beloved Community * Learning Policy Center * Public School Forum of North Carolina * The Bell * North Carolina Justice Center * The Bridges Collaborative at The Century Foundation * South Side Early Learning * Oneonta For Equality * NestQuest * Metis Associates