As the main hub of the school integration movement, NCSD has had a busy year supporting, shaping, and sharing PK-12 school integration research, policy, and practice. On #GivingTuesday, we highlighted some of our exciting wins from 2023. With NCSD turning 15 next year, help us continue our important work in 2024 and beyond! | |
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NCSD STAFF UPDATES
What We've Been Up to Recently
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Over recent years, several school districts have taken steps to provide greater equity in the selection process for “specialized” middle and high schools, also known as “exam schools,” “criteria-based schools,” “competitive admissions schools,” or “gifted and talented schools." The admissions process for specialized schools is competitive and can be similar to college admissions, and courts have been asked to rule on the constitutionality of some of these measures. This fact sheet summarizes five legal challenges to specialized school admissions policies in Philadelphia, PA (2022); Fairfax County, VA (2021); Boston, MA (2021); Montgomery County, MD (2020); and New York City, NY (2018). | |
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NCSD Research Brief Presented at MSAP Project Directors Meeting
NCSD attended the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) Project Directors Meeting, an annual event for MSAP school and district leaders and others working in the school diversity field. NCSD member Peter Piazza of the School Diversity Notebook led a presentation entitled "Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality," based on NCSD's latest research brief he co-authored with James Noonan. The brief, “Accountability Systems and the Persistence of School Segregation: Research Evidence and Future Directions,” examines recent empirical research on the relationship between school accountability systems and segregation, and how these systems might be refined to promote real integration in schools.
In addition to MSAP grantees, many Fostering Diverse Schools (FDS) grantees were in attendance.
NCSD has started to compile FDS-related job openings:
If you are aware of any additional FDS opportunities, please email Gina Chirichigno (gina.chirichigno@gmail.com).
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BROWN ANNIVERSARY PLANNING
May 17, 2024 - Brown v. Board of Education 70th Anniversary
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SAVE THE DATE: Brown 70th Anniversary Event
On May 2, 2024, NCSD will co-host an event with the Bridges Collaborative in Washington, DC to commemorate this important milestone anniversary.
More details to come, but please mark your calendar and share your ideas!
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SEEKING PROPOSALS: NYU Metro Center Conference
NYU Metro Center is accepting proposals for its Equity Now: 70 Years of Brown vs. Board Equity Conference, which will take place on May 17, 2024. Proposals should address: 1) culturally responsive restorative justice; 2) decolonizing education practices; 3) district and school equity policies and practices centering resource distribution and access; or 4) diversity hiring policies and practices for educator representation.
Proposal deadline: December 5, 2023
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SEEKING ARTICLES: Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives - Revisiting Brown
Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives invites legal academics and practitioners to submit articles for Volume 16: 70 Years Later: Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education and the Struggle for Racial Equity in Education.
Submissions will be considered on a rolling basis and contributors will be featured in a day-long symposium in Spring 2024.
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NCSD is keeping track of Brown v. Board of Education programming happening in 2024, and will share a calendar soon with confirmed events. Please email Gina Chirichigno (gina.chirichigno@gmail.com) with details about events you are supporting. | |
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Update:
- New research by The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, "Gentrification and Schools: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Options," examines the growth of gentrification in California and its impact on schools and educational opportunities in the state. Co-authored by NCSD member Jenn Asycue, the study "highlights the complex interplay between gentrification, school choice, and school segregation patterns."
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Update:
- On November 2, IDRA hosted its 50th Anniversary Gala in San Antonio to commemorate the organization's "bold legacy and bright future." The event brought together over 300 educators, policymakers, researchers, students, and advocates from across the nation to celebrate Texas-based IDRA's growth into a national nonprofit that influences education policy, conducts research, guides school leaders, and creates student and parent leadership programs. Check out the event highlights.
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Update:
- In the latest issue of PRRAC's Poverty & Race journal, “The arc of opportunity: a decade of research on housing, neighborhoods, and social mobility,” from Raj Chetty's keynote address at the 9th National Housing Mobility Conference on September 20, 2023, looks at the recent evolution of research and research methods to understand the impact of place on opportunity. Another article by Elizabeth DeBray, Philip Tegeler, Ariel Bierbaum, and Andrew Greenlee calls for a renewed federal effort to bring together housing, education, and transportation planners in support of regional equity and integration.
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Update:
- SPLC's Learning for Justice introduced its newest curriculum Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, which begins in 1877 with Reconstruction and continues with the movement for equality and civil rights to the present. The framework "centers Black Americans’ struggle, while pointing out the ways in which white supremacy was institutionalized—across multiple levels of society—to deny political, social and economic equality to Black people." This important resource comes at a time when states and districts are attempting to censor discussions of race and racism in U.S. history and the classroom.
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INDIVIDUAL MEMBER UPDATES
- A new essay by Janel George explores how clinical legal education is poised to prepare law students for moments of retrenchment to racial progress, drawing on reflections from the launch of Georgetown Law's Racial Equity in Education Law (REEL) Policy Clinic.
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Fellowship Opportunity: The Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research (CRJ) in partnership with the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst announces the CRJ Bracey-Shabazz Faculty Fellowship in Education. Applications will be accepted through January 15, 2024.
- The Education Exchange Podcast discusses Justice Stephen Breyer's recent book, Breaking the Promise of Brown: The Resegregation of America's Schools, with Thiru Vignarajah, former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland and former law clerk to Justice Breyer.
- A new article in the Journal of Southern History argues that the school-to-prison pipeline, which is typically thought to start with the “zero-tolerance” policies of the 1990s, actually began decades earlier during school desegregation.
- The new book, False Starts: The Segregated Lives of Preschoolers, is an "inside look at the racial and class divides between Head Start and private pre-K classrooms for children and their families."
- A new report, "Exclusionary by Design: An Investigation of Zoning’s Use as a Tool of Race, Class, and Family Exclusion in Boston’s Suburbs,1920 to Today," argues that much of the 21st century housing crunch was shaped by a 20th century conflict over racial inequality.
- A new article published in Social Science & Medicine finds that "state-level school desegregation efforts played a consequential role in shaping the cognitive function of Black adults who grew up in the U.S. South."
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NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY | |
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Arkansas -
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Segregation Academies Show Us the Ugly Side of Vouchers (Daily Beast, November 25) - "Even today, the link between vouchers and resistance to integration in the South is not a subtle one. Two months after Arkansas Governor Sanders announced the LEARNS Act, her attorney general filed motions in U.S. District Court to end decades-long federal desegregation orders in three school districts, orders which would have precluded students in those districts from participating in the voucher program."
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New Jersey -
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Thoughts on the next leader of NJ public education (NJ Spotlight News, November 29) - "The Murphy administration and plaintiffs in a major school segregation lawsuit recently agreed to try mediation to come up with a settlement, with a tentative deadline set for January. Depending on the remedies they land on, the next commissioner could have a significant part to play [in efforts to desegregate schools]."
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New mural sparks inspiration for Greenwood Elementary students (CommunityNews.com, November 1) - "John Malloy, a fourth grade social studies teacher at Greenwood, was the first to suggest Ruby Bridges as the subject of a mural. Bridges, now 69, is known as the first African-American student to attend the formerly Whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960."
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North Carolina -
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UNCW project aims to provide healing and understanding for Wilmington's racial history (Wilmington StarNews, November 17) - "After receiving a $300,000 grant from The Teagle Foundation in 2022, UNCW launched a program to explore the meaning and fragility of democracy. With a focus on Wilmington’s history, including the 1898 coup d’etat and massacre, the university program is meant to develop civic education through various avenues, including community-engaged research."
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School desegregation: Where does North Carolina stand now? (EdNC, November 6) -"Recent research shows that while schools are more diverse today than in the past, they are still highly segregated...housing policy, expansion of school choice, and district-level decisions as causes of segregation in education among North Carolina cities."
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Texas -
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Critics Warn Passing Vouchers in Texas Will Revive Segregated Schools (Dallas Observer, November 3) - "Passing vouchers would lead to more segregated schools, both racially and economically, according to an October press release from the Texas NAACP and Texas Legislative Black Caucus...The modern voucher push can be traced to racist backlash following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional."
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8th Annual National Day of Racial Healing
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
"The National Day of Racial Healing is a time to contemplate our shared values and create the blueprint together for #HowWeHeal from the effects of racism. Launched in 2017, it is an opportunity to bring ALL people together in their common humanity and inspire collective action to create a more just and equitable world."
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Baltimore, MD
December 12
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Visionary Leadership: School Success is More than Test Scores
National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities
"Join Morgan State University's (MSU) National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities (NCEED) for a panel discussion with a select group of principals from Baltimore City schools as they share their relevant practices for increasing student achievement, student engagement, and community and family partnerships."
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Los Angeles, CA January 3-February 2, 2024 | |
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2024 Annual Convening: Building Community for School Integration
Diverse Charter Schools Coalition
"Marking the 10 year anniversary of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, our 2024 Annual Convening celebrates our community’s work to support, promote, and expand school integration. This year’s gathering will allow members of the Coalition to reflect on our organization’s work as well as their own commitment to the diverse-by-design movement. We will also focus on the importance of equity within advocacy and storytelling in envisioning the next decade of school integration across the country."
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Washington, DC
February 7-9, 2024
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MSA 2024 Policy Training Conference
Magnet Schools of America
"This is a great opportunity to learn about the importance of making your magnet voices heard at the federal level. Attendees will meet with members of Congress on Thursday, February 8.
Three important reasons you should attend: 1) Connect with other magnet school teachers, administrators, and Congressional representatives from across the 50 states. 2) Advocate for magnets and federal funding for magnet schools by giving Congressional representatives a first-hand glimpse into what a magnet school is. 3) Empower year-round advocacy by taking back lessons learned and Congressional contacts and sharing those with your fellow teachers and administrators."
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14th Annual NEFA Conference
National Education Finance Academy
"The National Education Finance Academy is home to scholars, students, practitioners, and policymakers who are interested in the study of education finance broadly defined. Our organization serves the fields of P-12 education finance, higher education finance, economics of education, education law, and educational policy...by holding scholarly meetings for the presentation and discussion of education finance issues, by stimulating the teaching of P-20 education finance, and by disseminating scholarly research in our partner journals."
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Founded in 2009, the National Coalition on School Diversity is a cross-sector network of 50+ national civil rights organizations, university-based research centers, and state and local coalitions working to expand support for school integration. NCSD supports its members in designing, enacting, implementing, and uplifting PK-12 public school integration policies and practices so we may build cross-race/cross-class relationships, share power and resources, and co-create new realities. | | |
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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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