News | Center for Education and Civil Rights

An Attempt to Resegregate Little Rock, of All Places

The Atlantic, October 22,2019 by Adam Harris LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—When Diane Zook, the chair of Arkansas’ State Board of Education, banged her gavel to bring the afternoon meeting into order on October 10, every seat in the cramped boardroom was filled. Nearly every inch of...

When School Districts Splinter, Segregation Rises—Radio Episode

BYUradio, October 21, 2019 with Julie Rose Sixty-five years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that public schools cannot be segregated by race. Court-ordered desegregation programs, such as mandatory busing, led schools across the country to...

A Great Public School Education for Every Student

Medium, October 21, 2019 by Elizabeth Warren I attended public school growing up in Oklahoma. After I graduated from the University of Houston, a public university where tuition cost only $50 a semester, my first job was as a special education teacher at a public school...

The School Secession Movement Is Growing. That’s Bad News for Integration.

The New Republic, October 15, 2019 by Sophie Kasakove "A critical vote in Baton Rouge this weekend is the latest victory for a nationwide campaign to make schools whiter." On Saturday, in southeast East Baton Rouge Parish, voters decided to break away from Louisiana’s...

Study: Secessions Have Increased Segregation Between Southern Districts—Podcast

Research Minutes Educational Research & Policy Podcast, October 3, 2019 School district secessions – wherein communities “splinter” from an established district to form their own – have become increasingly common in the last 20 years, particularly in the southern U.S...

Study: Early-childhood programs more segregated than K-12

Education Dive, October 1, 2019 by Linda Jacobson "Universal preschool models, as well as those that blend subsidized and tuition-based slots, offer more integrated settings, experts say." Early-childhood programs — including center- and home-based settings — are twice...

Neo-segregation: Why these communities are divorcing their school districts

Washington Post, September 24, 2019 by Valerie Strauss After the U.S. Supreme Court declared separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, some whites in the South resisted by...

A charter school faces the ugly history of school choice in the Deep South

The Hechinger Report, September 19, 2019 by Danielle Dreilinger In rural parts of the South, school choice has long been linked to private segregation academies opened for white families fleeing desegregation and busing. Mississippi’s first rural charter school...

Racial Isolation Deepens In Schools Decades After Brown v Board of Ed

KALW San Francisco Public Radio, September 12, 2019 by Lee Romney The State Attorney General recently came to Marin County to announce the first settlement to desegregate a California school in five decades. Meanwhile, 65 years after Brown v. Board of Education,...

The changing face of school integration

Washington Post, September 12, 2019 by Laura Meckler and Kate Rabinowitz GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. — The number of children attending U.S. public schools with students of other races has nearly doubled over the past quarter-century, a little-noticed surge that reflects the...

Busing Ended 20 Years Ago. Today Our Schools Are Segregated Once Again

Time, September 11, 2019 by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall Busing, the transporting of public school children to end racial segregation, was thrust back into national conversations when Senator Kamala Harris criticized Vice President Joe Biden , over his record on it at the...

Smaller communities are “seceding” from larger school districts. It’s accelerating school segregation.

Vox, September 6, 2019 by P.R. Lockhart "A new study finds that an increase in 'splinter' school districts are leaving poor and nonwhite students behind." America’s schools are becoming increasingly segregated , research has found, with black and Latino students...

School district secessions have deepened segregation in the South

Chalkbeat Research Roundup, September 4, 2019 According to a new study of secessions in seven counties from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 . . . district boundaries accounted for about 60% of the segregation between black and white students, while in 2015, boundaries accounted for 70%. “It...

Study finds carving up school districts worsens segregation

Associated Press, September 4, 2019 by Jeff Amy PIKE ROAD, Ala. (AP) — Pike Road High School graduates its first senior class this school year, and leaders of this sprawling, semi-rural suburb of Alabama’s capital city extol the young community’s focus on education as...

Study: 'Splinter' districts increase school segregation in the South

Education Dive, September 4, 2019 by Linda Jacobsen Researchers write that district secession is "eroding what has historically been one of the cornerstones of school desegregation in the South: the one-county, one-school-system jurisdiction." Communities that break away...