News | Center for Education and Civil Rights

California's Preschools Are Deeply Segregated, New Report Finds

Southern California Public Radio Published October 14, 2016 Preschools around the United States and in California are deeply segregated, a new report from Penn State finds. Around the country, white children are overwhelmingly going to preschool with only other...

In Connecticut, a Wealth Gap Divides Neighboring Schools

New York Times Published September 11, 2016 The two Connecticut school districts sit side by side along Long Island Sound. Both spend more than the national average on their students. They prepare their pupils for the same statewide tests. Their teachers, like...

A Southern City Wants to Secede from Its School District, Raising Concerns About Segregation

Washington Post Published August 26, 2016 GARDENDALE, ALA. — The school board in this small Birmingham suburb meets monthly, debates district policies and pays a superintendent’s salary. But the Gardendale Board of Education oversees no schools, employs no...

Fisher v. University of Texas and Lessons for K-12 Districts

Education Week Published July 7, 2016 The U.S. Supreme Court's long-awaited decision last month in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case challenging the constitutionality of a race-conscious student-admissions policy, affirmed that the policy adopted by the...

Penn State Professor Participates in Diversity Congressional Briefing

Penn State News Published June 16, 2016 Erica Frankenberg, associate professor of education and demography and co-director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State, recently participated in a congressional briefing on diversity to present her...

Mississippi District Ordered to Desegregate Its Schools

New York Times Published May 17, 2016 A federal court has ordered a town in Mississippi to desegregate its high schools and middle schools, ending a five-decade legal battle over integrating black and white students. The ruling by the United States District Court for the Northern...

New Research Center to Promote Racial Equity in Education

Penn State News Published May 11, 2016 Penn State will help to lead the fight against discrimination and inequality in education through research with the Center for Civil Rights and Education. The new center, housed in the College of Education , will promote the study of...

Dynamic Diversity: How Campus Leaders Can Respond to Student Protests

Higher Education Today Published April 20, 2016 Liliana Garces and Uma Jayakumar on a new model for understanding critical mass, promoting inclusive environments and facilitating the benefits of educational diversity on campus. Over the past months, college students across the...

Why Supreme Court Case On Race in Admissions Matters More Than Ever

The Huffington Post Published December 8, 2015 In a number of recent incidents across the country, black students have expressed how they continue to experience hostility because of their skin color. These students have spoken of their feelings of isolation and disempowerment...

School Segregation Is Bad And Getting Worse, But It’s Supposed To Be Solved Voluntarily ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress Published November 23, 2015 Six decades after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that determined that segregating white and black children is unconstitutional, American schools are drifting back toward racial segregation. Across the country, schools are...

Factoring Race into College Admissions is Crucial to Campus Diversity

Quartz Published July 6, 2015 Twelve years ago, after an epic legal battle over the University of Michigan’s affirmative action admissions policy in its law school and undergraduate school, the Supreme Court upheld the importance of student body diversity for the institution’s...

Ban Affirmative Action in Medicine?

Real Clear Policy Published April 24, 2015 With widely documented health disparities, the US is facing a real crisis when it comes to the health of its racial and ethnic minorities. Studies have shown that minority patients receive better care when physicians are from a similar...

What to Do About a “Color-Blind” Supreme Court

American Education Research Association, Division J (Postsecondary Education) Blog Published on September 1, 2014 In the aftermath of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, colleges and universities face an important challenge: How can they further racial diversity in their student...

Wishing Away Inequality: Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Schuette Decision

American Constitution Society Blog Published April 24, 2014 Chief Justice Hughes famously said that a dissenting opinion is “an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the...

Justice Kennedy’s Role in Fisher and the Reality of Race

Voices in Education Blog of Harvard Education Publishing Published on November 16, 2012 Those of us in the social science community who have been following the Fisher case know that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, like the 2003 decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v...