NCSD and IDRA hosted a Twitter chat in recognition of the 50th anniversary of San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez to spark conversation around the link between school funding and segregation (more below).

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What We've Been Up to Recently

NCSD Presents at NEA National Leadership Summit

NCSD director Gina Chirichigno and NEA senior policy analyst Christine DonFrancesco presented "Leveraging Real School Integration for Pandemic Recovery" at the 2023 NEA National Leadership Summit on March 10-12 in San Francisco, CA. The theme for the conference was "Joy, Justice, Excellence: The Strength of Educators. The Brilliance of Students. The Power of Community."

NCSD Participates in Rodriguez 50th Anniversary Commemoration

On the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court school funding case San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, IDRA, Trinity University and its Center for Education Leadership, Edgewood ISD, and NCSD hosted a commemorative event to reflect on the case, its impact, and its legacy of struggle and activism. Panelists shared moving stories of the families and policy experts involved in the case, and discussed what communities can do today to promote fair funding of public schools. NCSD Director Gina Chirichigno joined in person. Watch the video.

Recap of #RodriguezAt50 Twitter Chat

NCSD and IDRA also hosted a #RodriguezAt50 Twitter chat to spark conversation around the link between school funding and segregation. Check out this recap of the chat, courtesy of Peter Piazza at the School Diversity Notebook.

You can still add your thoughts to our discussion prompts! Access the full chat here (scroll to the bottom to start from the beginning).

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & OPPORTUNITIES

• Uncovering Inequality is a new project by the Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at Columbia University that seeks to improve media coverage of various topics, including education, by providing journalists with historical context. Check out the education report: “Racial Inequality in the U.S. Education System Post-Brown: An Introduction to the History and Policies that Shape Our Contemporary Context.” Read a related Education Week story here.

• A new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce examines six college admissions models and the impact they would likely have on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity if used consistently across selective colleges. "Race-Conscious Affirmative Action: What’s Next" finds that an expected national ban on the consideration of race in college admissions will threaten the racial/ethnic diversity of students at selective colleges unless they fundamentally alter their admissions practices.

• Our Children Can’t Wait is a new podcast by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools based on a book of the same name about the systems and structures that keep our kids from flourishing. Hosted by the book's author and the center's executive director Joseph Bishop, the series unpacks a host of issues that impact education to develop a new roadmap for education equity. Check out the recent episode "How the Civil Rights Movement is Still Shaping Education Policy Today," featuring John Jackson of the Schott Foundation and Arnold Fege of Public Advocacy for Kids.

• A new journal article "The Magnet-School Wars and the Future of Colorblindness" by Sonja Starr at the University of Chicago "uses recent magnet-school litigation as an entry point to examine the future of colorblindness, arguing that precedent and numerous other considerations argue against extending the principle beyond racial classifications."

• Call for papers: The special series of the Metropolitics journal will focus on efforts for Black political and economic power in the contemporary period, including educational initiatives and schools. If you have any questions, please email James DeFilippis at jdefilip@rutgers.edu or Akira Drake at akirad@upenn.edu. Submissions are due May 1, 2023.

• Call for papers: Early Childhood Research Quarterly journal released a call for papers on equitable access to early care and education (ECE). This special issue aims to advance the knowledge base on policy solutions and practices that improve equitable access to affordable and high-quality ECE from both the family and provider perspectives. Manuscripts are due June 1, 2023.

NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY

National -

• The Racial Makeup of a School’s AP Classes May Perpetuate Within-School Segregation (Housing Matters, March 8) - "This study examines how current within-school segregation affects the likelihood that future Black high school students will take advanced math courses. Using public school data from North Carolina, the authors followed three cohorts of public high school students, totaling more than 240,000 students in more than 500 schools from 100 school districts." 



• Blocking Black History Is Just The Beginning (Essence, February 28) - "Tackling and repairing inequities means acknowledging and exploring their roots. That includes the exclusion of Black veterans in the 1944 GI bill, racial redlining, and school segregation, all of which inform discussions on reparations that the College Board has now removed from its AP African American Studies curriculum. History helps us understand our disproportionate representation in unemployment lines, failing schools, jails and prisons. History’s past directly impacts today’s present." 

California -

• Survey Says: SF Students, Families, and Staff Sound Off on Lowell and Other High School Challenges (The Frisc, March 2) - "Controversy over the admissions process at San Francisco’s Lowell High School has opened a window for potential reform across all the city’s public high schools. The first signals, indicating what students, families, and staff want to see, are now public."

Minnesota -

• Improving Minnesota education: What does the evidence say really works? (Minnesota Reformer, March 14) - "Minnesota has a long history of residential segregation which impacts schooling and learning. Overwhelmingly student achievement is correlated with poverty. Children who live in high or concentrated poverty neighborhoods generally do worse in school than those who do not live in them... What do we learn from all these studies? If Minnesota really wishes to improve educational quality, it first needs to address the way we fund and structure our schools. We should not fund them based on local property taxes but instead equalize funding across the state."

Missouri -

• Political activism heats up St. Louis suburban school board races (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 20) - “'There is a long tradition of really fearsome and fractious fights over schools, affirmative action, school prayer, school segregation and teaching evolution. It’s not new that we are fighting over schools,' said David Houston, an assistant professor of education policy at George Mason University. 'What is new is that the fault lines are falling so neatly along party identifications than the fights that happened generations ago.'”

• Black students in Rockwood School District want diversity programs that create safe spaces (St. Louis Public Radio, March 2) - "Black students at the high school are desperately searching for ways to connect with each other, especially since the school district eliminated three diversity programs that gave students of color throughout the district a sense of community."

New Jersey -

• 'Segregation' In NJ Schools Focus Of New Rutgers Study (Patch, March 3) - "Large numbers of underserved students are being clustered together in New Jersey according to their race and household income. Resources are being stretched thin. And the problem is getting worse, a recent report on 'school segregation' from Rutgers University-Newark claims."

• 2 reports show the damages of school segregation and paths for fixing it (NJ Advance Media, March 1) - "Two reports on the effects of school segregation and how to address them came out Tuesday, almost exactly a year after the state argued that the school system would need to be 'rebuilt brick by brick' to integrate schools...The reports are timely as the state awaits a decision in a 2018 case over whether students should continue to be assigned to schools based on where they live, resulting in the New Jersey schools ranking as the sixth or seventh most segregated in the nation."

New York -

• Confronting and Addressing K-12 Segregation in New York City Schools (Thirteen, March 6) - "Most importantly, policymakers and media professionals should heed the views, ideas, and activism of New York City students. It is students who are directly impacted by segregation and inequity. As New Yorkers, it is time we take their insights seriously."

North Carolina -

• CMS and Mint Hill reach détente in long, twisted battle over suburban charter schools (WFAE Charlotte, March 14) - "Five years ago, educators and policymakers across North Carolina watched as Mecklenburg County lawmakers pushed a municipal charter school bill through the General Assembly that some thought would reshape public education across the state. But none of the four towns authorized to create a new type of public school ever pursued that path... Opponents said the municipal charter bill could set a troubling statewide precedent. Leaders of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said the option undermined long-range planning for building new schools and expanding existing ones. And because the municipal charter schools could preferentially draw students from mostly-white town limits, they could undermine diversity in nearby CMS schools."

Texas -

• The state takeover of Houston public schools is about more than school improvement (The Conversation, March 17) - "In order to understand the logic of the planned state takeover of the Houston schools, it pays to understand the important role that schools have played in the social, political and economic development of communities of color. Historically, communities of color have relied on school level politics as an entry point to broader political participation. School-level politics may involve issues like ending school segregation, demanding more resources for schools, increasing the numbers of teachers and administrators of color, and participating in school board elections."

• Considering race, class and power in Texas Education Agency’s takeover of Houston Independent School District (Houston Public Media, March 15) - "The Texas Education Agency is seizing control of the largest school district in the state. For both supporters and opponents of the takeover, race and class plays an undeniable central role in the move... For decades, Black community members in Houston had demanded better schools for their children. Policymakers gave in, but they had an ulterior motive: to create segregated residential patterns across the Houston area, where Black and white people were relatively integrated at the dawn of the 20th century."

• Texas state officials take over Houston school system amid contentious political battle (Austin American-Statesman, March 15) - "Texas education officials said Wednesday they will assume control of the embattled Houston school district after a long and slogging legal battle over a proposed intervention. The state announced that it will soon appoint a new superintendent and a board of managers in Texas' largest district and the eighth-largest district in the United States as a debate ensues along political party lines."

Virginia -

• Isle of Wight School Board states systemic racism does not exist in new policy (Daily Press, March 17) - "The Isle of Wight County School Board last week narrowly passed a revised policy that, among other things, states that 'there is no systemic racism or bigotry perpetuated by the United States or any governmental entity'...Isle of Wight County was one of the first communities in Virginia to face a legal challenge for its failure to comply with school desegregation orders following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling."

Check out our field-wide calendar, which is evolving given the COVID-19 crisis.

Please let us know of upcoming events, by emailing newsletter@school-diversity.org.

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 * Chicago United for Equity * 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