Join NCSD for a pizza party/game night on Brown COLORS the Board of Education, an educational board game that commemorates Brown v. Board of Education and allows players to delve into the intricacies of the historic legal decision (and subsequent desegregation cases). Learn more and register!

POLICY & LEGAL UPDATES

The Brown's Promise brief urges the Appellate Court of Maryland to reverse last year’s Circuit Court ruling, which found that the state was not in violation of its constitutional duty to provide an adequate education to Baltimore City students. The Advancement Project joined the brief as a signatory.

The brief asserts:

"The State has facilitated a system that isolates the predominantly Black and Brown students of BCPSS into schools of concentrated poverty and then, to add insult to injury, has failed to provide students with the resources needed to overcome the challenges of going to such schools. Today, Maryland is neither funding education adequately in the system it has facilitated nor is it taking steps to dismantle and desegregate the system. The State must meet its obligation to provide an adequate education to all the students living in Baltimore City by infusing sufficient resources to the district, including resources to allow for the deconcentration of poverty and meaningful and equitable opportunities for integration between BCPSS students and students from other districts in the region."

Read the full amicus brief and press release.

The Education Law Center also filed an amicus brief in support of the appellants, joined by the American Federation of Teachers, Center for Educational Equity, and National Center for Youth Law.

NCSD STAFF UPDATES

What We've Been Up to Recently

Join Us 2/6: NCSD Game Night

The "Brown COLORS the Board of Education" game was developed as an outreach and engagement tool for Metro Nashville Public Schools' (MNPS) magnet school office. NCSD is excited to welcome Dr. ReGina Etter and Jon Wren of MNPS to facilitate this event.

Co-created by Dr. Etter, the game presents situations, uncovers historical occurrences, and offers players opportunities to be deliberate and strategic in their efforts to achieve the outcomes they deem appropriate. An impactful, provoking, and compelling experience, Brown COLORS The Board of Education has been presented to a variety of audiences, from local school boards to regional and national educational assemblies.

If you are interested in growing your knowledge about the Brown decision and its enduring impact, join us and gain a new tool to assist in your educational advocacy.

++Please share event info with your DC-based friends and colleagues via Twitter and Eventbrite!

NCSD to Present at National Education Association Leadership Summit in March

NCSD Director Gina Chirichigno and Professor Henry Tran will lead a session entitled "Increasing Access to Effective Educators: Leveraging ESSA for Integration & Educator Diversity" at NEA's upcoming National Leadership Summit in Chicago, IL. The session will share highlights from NCSD's American Institutes for Research project grant, "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."

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Seventy years later, communities and educational justice advocates continue to grapple with how to make the Court's decision a reality. What progress has been made, where have we fallen short or gotten stuck, and what is required to truly fulfill Brown’s promise of integration and educational equity?

To commemorate and build on this milestone anniversary, please join us on the evening of Thursday, May 2, 2024 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Advocates, parents, educators, policymakers, and students will convene to examine perspectives on Brown's promise––both fulfilled and unfulfilled––and imagine how, together, we might build a collective vision for what truly integrated, equitable, and thriving schools look like.

The event will take place from 6:30 to 10:00 p.m. and is hosted by The Century Foundation’s Bridges Collaborative, National Coalition on School Diversity, and American Institutes for Research. It will include a reception (with food and drinks provided), followed by programming and an opportunity to explore the museum’s galleries. More details to come!

2/10 KEYES EVENT - DENVER, CO

Via Eventbrite: "In 1973, following a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in Keyes v. Denver Public Schools, DPS was ordered to desegregate all of its schools. Fifty years later, DPS is by many measures, as segregated as it was before the decision with many of the same negative consequences for students...Join Park Hill Neighbors for Equity in Education (PHNEE) as we explore the history of Keyes, acknowledge its unfulfilled promises of integration, and consider how we can ensure equity and excellence for every DPS student." Learn more and register.

To learn about the history of the Keyes case, check out this timeline, which was developed by Laura Lefkowits in collaboration with NCSD (learn more here).

NCSD MEMBER UPDATES

CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCES

• The Leadership Conference’s podcast, Pod for the Cause, launched a new episode on Martin Luther King’s Legacy then and now. The episode explores how King's "I Have a Dream" speech has been weaponized to push for a colorblind society and how such attacks on our civil rights impact entire communities—from education to the economy. 

• Over the past year, The Century Foundation produced a series of ten reports on the links between housing policy and educational opportunity in New York, and this month released its summary report, "How New York State Can Improve Schools by Fixing Housing Policy."

• EdFund, a new initiative focused on bridging the gap between school finance research and policy, wants to know what advocates need to know about funding public schools. To better understand the current state of the field, they put together a brief survey. Complete the survey and be entered to win a $150 Amazon gift card. 

• Fellowship Opportunity: The National Black Child Development Institute is launching the second cohort of The Public Voices Fellowship on Racial Justice in Early Childhood in partnership with The OpEd Project. Applications are due February 9. 

NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY

National -

• Revised AP African American Studies Course Launching This Year (Essence, January 10) - "After being embroiled in controversy for much of last year, students will be able to officially enroll in the new course this fall."

• U.S. Supreme Court Declines Bid to Rename ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ (Education Week, January 8) - "The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an unusual request to rename its historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in recognition of a companion desegregation case from South Carolina.The court acted with a routine order without comment or dissent in In Re Nathaniel Briggs."
• Related: Denied ‘rightful place in history’: Supreme Court refuses to rename Brown v. Board of Education after family of first school desegregation case filed; The Price of Being First: Effort to Rename Brown v. Board Reveals Family’s Pain

• Education Activists Want to Revive School Integration. Just Don’t Call It Busing. (Wall Street Journal, December 29) - "Activists pushing for equality in American schools want to revive one of themost successful but divisive educational policies in the nation’s history: court ordered racial integration"

• Family mourns Donald Henderson, child plaintiff in Brown v. Board case (WIBW, December 28) - "Family and friends gathered Thursday to remember Donald Henderson, one of the child plaintiffs in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case."

Arkansas -

• What Arkansas' LEARNS Act has to do with race (NPR, January 3) - "Classrooms in Arkansas were at the center of school desegregation in the 1950s. Now, with the LEARNS Act, Arkansas schools are in the spotlight again."

California -

• Proposed bill aims to integrate landmark Mendez v. Westminster case into education curriculum, and more (OCDE Newsroom, January 12) - "The story behind Mendez v. Westminster, a landmark case in the struggle for school desegregation and civil rights, could potentially become an integral lesson for all California students if a newly unveiled bill receives enough legislative support...the bill would require the state Board of Education and superintendent of public instruction to place the case alongside Brown v. Board of Education in the state’s academic curriculum."

Florida -

• Federal lawsuit against Florida school district that banned books can move forward, judge rules (Associated Press, January 10) - "A lawsuit can move forward against a Florida Panhandle school district over its removal of books about race and LGBTQ+ identities from library shelves, a federal judge ruled."

Illinois -

• Unmasking Chicago School Segregation: From Systemic Racism to Policy Failures (Chicago Defender, January 10) - "Chicago Public Schools’ segregation problem is not caused by magnet schools, charter schools, or any other type of school. Our segregation problem has everything to do with systemic racism, supported by politics and policies that reinforce racism and classism."

Mississippi -

• Mississippi Freedom Trail marker unveiled in Grenada (Desoto County News, January 13) - "The latest Mississippi Freedom Trail marker was unveiled today in Grenada. The marker, located at the corner of Line and Green streets, memorializes the events surrounding the integration of Grenada schools in 1966 and includes photos and information about the violence and intimidation faced by students and their families and the outcome as schools in the district were fully integrated."

New York -

• Inter-district magnet school now closer to reality; would be in city (Democrat and Chronicle, December 29) - "Great Schools for All, the Rochester organization pushing for inter-district magnet schools, got its start from a book club in 2011....It is starting to look more likely than not that an inter-district magnet school will open in Monroe County sometime in the next several years."

Virginia -

• Students who paved way for integration in Pittsylvania County high schools to be honored (Danville Register & Bee, January 29) - "[T]he first two of four plaques will be unveiled honoring Freedom of Choice students—a scantly documented, yet pivotal moment in school integration in the late 1960s—in Pittsylvania County."

• Arlington to mark 65th anniversary of school integration (GazetteLeader, January 27) - "Stratford Junior High School in 1959 became one of first public schools in [Virginia] to drop segregation."

• Spotswood Students Win Inaugural Change Agent Award (Daily News-Record, January 17) - "After helping to tell the story of school desegregation in the area with a documentary, two Spotswood High School students recently won the first-ever Virginia Council For The Social Studies Barbara Johns Youth Change Agent Award."

Washington, DC -

• Still More to Learn: What Happened to All the Hill Schools? (Hill Rag News, December 29) - "The history of the District’s schools is a window on the changing history of the District. It tells us much about the changing streetscape. It also illuminates the historic demographics in communities and the impacts of racism on the education system itself."

“Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

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 * 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