NCSD has had a busy year supporting, shaping, and sharing PK-12 school integration research, policy, and practice. To help us continue our important work, make a donation during these last few days of 2023. As always, we are grateful for your support and the work that you do to strengthen this movement. Happy holidays and see you in 2024 (our 15th anniversary)!

LEGAL UPDATES

Media coverage:

• US court rejects race bias claims over Boston school admission policy
• Boston exam schools: US Appeals Court upholds temporary admission policy
• Boston's exam schools admission policy upheld on appeal
• U.S. Court Rejects Race Bias Claims Over Boston School Admission Policy
• 1st Circ. Says Harvard Case Doesn't Nix Boston Diversity Plan

NCSD STAFF UPDATES

What We've Been Up to Recently

SAVE THE DATE: BROWN@70 ANNIVERSARY EVENT

On May 2, 2024, NCSD will co-host a Brown v. Board of Education 70th anniversary event with the Bridges Collaborative in Washington, D.C. to commemorate this important milestone anniversary.

More details to come, but please mark your calendar and share your ideas!

NCSD is keeping track of Brown 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.

REEL POLICY CLINIC PROJECTS WRAP UP (FOR NOW!)

We recently closed out our first semester in partnership with Georgetown University Law Center’s Racial Equity in Education Law & Policy Clinic (REEL Policy Clinic). We are grateful to Ambreanna Arneus, Saundrea Shropshire, Sydney Richardson-Gorski, and Anya Chew for their hard work and dedication analyzing the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) and ESSA Title II.

Directed by Professor Janel George, the REEL Policy Clinic engages in policy advocacy on behalf of clients to advance racial equity in education. Learn more about its work here.

Stay tuned for more developments in Spring 2024!

NCSD MEMBER UPDATES

CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCES

• Two new commentaries by The Century Foundation draw on research it conducted over the last year that explores links between exclusionary zoning and educational opportunity in New York State and New York City, as well as original communications and messaging research that TCF commissioned to uncover the most effective ways to talk about exclusionary zoning and its links to educational policy. Check out "When People Think of Housing, They Think Schools—and Vice Versa" and "5 Tips for Talking about Exclusionary Zoning" to learn more.

• A new report from the Commission on Reimagining the Economy, citing research from Raj Chetty and Opportunity Insights, finds that "Economic connectedness, defined as cross-class friendships, is the biggest predictor of long-term upward mobility for Americans of all ages and income levels...Given the importance of cross-class relationships for economic mobility and for social cohesion, the Commission recommends the adoption of policies, practices, and programs to bring people together across lines of socioeconomic difference.”

• The Leadership Conference’s podcast, Pod for the Cause, kicked off a new season with "Rediscovering Bayard Rustin: A Life and Legacy of the Movement," which dives into Rustin’s pivotal role in advancing civil and human rights and his pursuit of racial, social, and economic equality for all. Also, the recently released film “Rustin” shares the impact and influence he had during the Civil Rights Movement, especially for orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington. 

• A new commentary by the Fordham Institute on career and technical education argues "Once a de facto means of maintaining within-school segregation, career and technical education (CTE) has, in recent years, experienced a favorable shift in public perception. Not only are schools less likely to confine students to strictly vocational or college-preparatory tracks, but educators and policymakers have also increasingly come to value career readiness...[A] new study by a Florida State University researcher examines the effects of CTE on other course-taking, as well as whether these effects vary by student subgroup."

• 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. 

NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY

National -

• Black Children Who Speak African American English Are Routinely Misdiagnosed with Speech Disorders (Scientific American, December 20) - "Segregation has given rise to a distinct African American English. Speech professionals must recognize it to avoid misdiagnosing Black children and wasting valuable educational resources."

• By the Numbers: How will student demographics shift in the next 30 years? (K-12 Dive, December 7) - "By 2050, researchers project that non-Hispanic White children will make up 42% of the school-aged children, compared to 50% in 2020. This population was the only group to have a projected decline across racial and ethnic backgrounds."

• "If You Make That Choice, He Will End Up in Prison." (Mother Jones, December 5) - "Too often, these kinds of programs facilitate the segregation of Black students, especially boys, and can be a one-way ticket to a poor education," referring to affective needs centers (ANCs), a specific type of program designed to help students with social-emotional issues.

• OPINION: Why segregation and racial gaps in education persist 70 years after the end of legal segregation (Hechinger Report, December 4) - "The great promise of Brown was one of equal access to high-quality education. The hope was that income and other social disparities among white, Black and Latino people would dissipate over time. White resistance contributed to America not keeping this promise."

• Seven facts about modern school segregation (World in Black, December 1) - "Experts at The Civil Rights Project at UCLA say school desegregation 'peaked in 1988,' and there have been no major legal or policy advances since that time. It’s been almost 70 years since the high court struck down the 'separate but equal' doctrine."

Arizona -

• Half-century-old Tucson school segregation case returns to the Ninth Circuit (Courthouse News, December 6) - "The plaintiffs in the 1974 lawsuit say the Tucson Unified School District still hasn’t compiled with a 1978 desegregation order."

Connecticut -

• Report: Widening “diversity gap” between students and teachers of color (CT Mirror, December 7) - "Though increasing teacher diversity in Connecticut has been on an upward trend for several years, the pace of recruiting candidates that proportionally represent the state’s student population has not kept up, according to a new report from Education Reform Now CT."
• Related: CT student body continues to diversify, but education workforce falls behind

Illinois -

• Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories. (Chalkbeat Chicago, December 20) - "Originally established to help desegregate schools, the system has recently earned a reputation for stressing out students, who are competing for seats at a limited number of sought-after schools, many of which are segregated by race and income."

Kentucky -

• Charter schools ruled unconstitutional in Kentucky (Forward Kentucky, December 12) - "In his ruling, [Judge Phillip Shepherd] wrote, 'This charter school legislation is effectively an attempt to bypass the system of common schools, and establish a separate class of publicly funded but privately controlled schools that have unique autonomy in management and operation of schools.This ‘separate and unequal’ system of charter schools is inconsistent with the constitutional requirements for a common school system.'"

Maryland -

• Anne Arundel County can’t ignore school segregation (Greater Greater Washington, December 7) - "The growing race and class divide in Anne Arundel County, and in turn, the school system, is no secret. Parents and county residents have even confronted the board about the redistricting process’ failure to address segregation and possibly amplify it. Some community members even perceive the divide as an intention to maintain the status quo."

Massachusetts -

• Metco helps thousands of Boston kids to a brighter future. So why didn't Beacon Hill boost its funding (Boston Globe, December 14) - "For the first time since 2018, the state Legislature only level-funded Metco, denying the program's leaders' request for additional funding to expand."

New Jersey -

• NJ’s segregated school system starts with neighborhood schools, advocates say (NJ Spotlight News, December 18) - "Advocates and lawmakers explore ways to free students from segregated school districts at Joint Committee on the Public Schools."



• NJ officials and plaintiffs in landmark school segregation case begin mediation (Gothamist, December 2) - "Gov. Phil Murphy's administration has begun mediation discussions with a coalition of New Jersey nonprofits that sued the state alleging pervasive de facto segregation across the state’s public schools."

New York -

• New York Gov. Hochul Signs Bill On Reparations, Joining California And These Other Cities (Forbes, December 19) - "Hochul’s signature comes two weeks after a report by New York City comptroller Brad Lander found decades of school segregation, discriminatory policing, discriminatory housing practices and public health inequities have scarred New York City with the “persistence of a stark racial wealth gap.”
• Related: New York launches commission to consider racial reparations; The Racial Wealth Gap in New York

• Essays, tests, auditions, frustration, stress: What it’s like to apply to high school in NYC (Chalkbeat NY, November 30) - "As with so many things in the public school system, those with time and means often have an advantage, contributing to New York having among the most segregated schools in the nation."

Ohio -

• How did this charter school get a nearly $2 million federal [Charter School Program] grant? (Washington Post, December 6) - "The school also talked in its application about closing the achievement gap and serving diverse, underserved students even though its unrevealed Black student population (2.4 percent) is so tiny the state does not even give it a gap-closing measure."

• Children's book tells the story of Lincoln School Marchers' fight to end segregation at Ohio school (WBNS, December 1) - "A group of southwest Ohio mothers and their children have a chapter in American history that most people did not learn about in school. They were known as the Lincoln School Marchers, and they trekked two miles every school day for two years demanding admission into the white school in Hillsboro after the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling."

Virginia -

• Virginia's U.S. senators introduce bill to rename Roanoke's Poff building (Roanoke Times, December 6) - "Roanoke’s federal courthouse should bear the name of a civil rights lawyer who fought school segregation – not a congressman who defended it, Virginia’s two senators say. U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine introduced legislation Wednesday that would rename the Richard H. Poff Federal Building as the Reuben E. Lawson Federal Building."

• Rosenwald Schools and the Quest to Provide Education for Black Children (RVA Hub, December 5) - "For Black school-age children in the early 1900s, publicly-funded education options were inadequate and, in many cases, nonexistent in the segregated South. To address this problem, Virginia-born educator Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald forged a visionary partnership to build Black schools across the segregated South. The Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC) will explore the transformative impact of this program in the special exhibition."

Washington, D.C. -

• Gallaudet University fundraising campaign honors unsung hero, highlights history of Black deaf students (WTOP News, December 11) - "D.C.’s Gallaudet University for deaf and hard-of-hearing students is stepping up a multimillion-dollar campaign to right some of the historical wrongs against its Black students. Now, more than 70 years later, Gallaudet has launched a $23 million fundraising campaign to honor Miller. It’s called the Necessity of Now campaign."

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.

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 * Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley * 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: 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, Inequaliy and Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School * Integrated Schools * The Office of Transformation and Innovation at the Dallas Independent School District * Live Baltimore * Maryland Equity Project at the University of Maryland College of Education * Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State College of Education * National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector * Diversity Education Network at Rutgers University * Being Black at School * Unified Community Connections * 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 Diversity Notebook * Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. * Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO) * Learn Together, Live Together * Beloved Community * Learning Policy Institute * Public School Forum of North Carolina * The Bell * North Carolina Justice Center * The Bridges Collaborative at The Century Foundation * SproutFive * Oneonta For Equality * NestQuest Houston * Metis Associates