NCSD STAFF UPDATES
What we've been up to this month
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Steady Progress on NCSD Advocacy Goals
NCSD has been engaging with members of Congress and Biden/Harris administration officials regarding our policy priorities. A few things to note:
- President Biden's budget included a $100 million request for school integration. Read more via Chalkbeat.
- Over 40 organizations and individuals joined NCSD in submitting a letter to the leadership of the Senate and House Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee requesting:
- An increased investment in the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (at least $500 million);
- $120 million to support comprehensive, locally-led strategies to promote racial and socioeconomic integration; and
- A campaign to make states, districts, and communities aware of existing resources under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other federal funds that can be used to support school integration
- Read the press release here.
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NCSD Welcomes New Steering Committee
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This month, NCSD welcomed a new steering committee (steering committee members serve terms of two years): John Brittain, Nyah Berg, Anna Lodder, Matt Gonzales, Kris Nordstrom, Philip Tegeler, Elaine Gross, Tanya Clay House, Brenda Shum, as well as Rachel Norman, Avishek Mojumdar, and Yotam Pe’er of IntegrateNYC.
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We'd like to thank our outgoing steering committee members for their dedication to this work and NCSD: Susan Eaton, Monique Lin-Luse, David Glaser, Sufyan Hameed, and the late Courtney Everts Mykytyn.
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Upcoming Conference Presentations...
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A Chat with Rep. Mondaire Jones about Schools and Housing
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On 4/15, The Century Foundation's Bridges Collaborative, NCSD, and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council hosted Rep. Mondaire Jones (NY-17), co-sponsor of the Strength in Diversity Act, for a chat on what's happening in Congress and beyond to further equity and integration.
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Click here for more information and additional resources.
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#50STATE CONVERSATION
Don't forget to RSVP for our event on May 17th
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Join us for our Fifty State Conversation on May 17th (the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education).
A screening of Nothing About Us will take place at 7:15pm ET, followed by the #50State Conversation at 8pm.
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We're starting to share some of the projects that creators around the country have been working on in preparation for the #50State Conversation on May 17th. |
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Is your organization planning to commemorate the 67th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education on May 17th? We'll be keeping track of programming movement-wide. Email your details to gchirichigno@prrac.org. Stay tuned!
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New Research Affirms Social Emotional Benefits of School Integration for All Students
- Surveying 26,000 students, researchers examined eight social and emotional outcomes (civic participation, emotional safety, physical safety, positive affect, sense of belonging, social perspective taking, student engagement, and valuing of learning), analyzing differences between students who attend racially diverse schools and those that don't.
- They found consistently positive responses among all demographics.
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Update:
- Fifteen Boston METCO students from 11 different suburban area high schools participated in a paid internship program called BEAT (Boston Equity Action Teams), in which they investigated challenges of inequity in the neighborhoods of Boston. Their findings address systemic issues in education, housing, and economic equity in the Black community, and were presented to more than 50 education officials, teachers, and family members. Learn more here.
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Update:
Check out this new infographic from New York Appleseed about how implementation of an inclusive enrichment model in NYC public schools rather than segregation through academic tracking can benefit all students. |
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New issue of Poverty & Race, including:
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- Related: Opinion: The ‘New Redlining’ Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood by Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York Times, April 19) - "Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines."
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NEWS FROM
ACROSS OUR
COUNTRY
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50th Anniversary of Swann: "Substance, Not Semantics. Must Govern."
April 20th marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Supreme Court opinion that upheld the uses of transportation programs that aimed to eliminate racial segregation in schools.
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School Integration Was Accelerated by This Supreme Court Ruling on Busing by Zachariah Sippy (Teen Vogue, April 16) - "Fifty years later, however, the promise of the Swann decision remains unfulfilled. Former NAACP president and current Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks told Teen Vogue that 'looking at Swann…it’s almost like looking onto a legal mountaintop from a valley. Here we are today, in the shadow of the Swann decision, with schools that are just as, if not more, segregated than they were decades ago.'”
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What Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Teaches us 50 Years Later by Amy Hawn Nelson (Charlotte Observer, April 20) - "Perhaps this is Swann’s most important reminder — desegregation is the right thing to do, and it is a choice that we must make. We enacted policies and used tools to segregate, and we may do the same to desegregate. None of these choices are race neutral."
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Swann at 50 by Pamela Grundy (Color & Character, April 16) — "Persuaded by now-legendary civil rights attorney Julius Chambers, the Court unanimously upheld federal judge James McMillan’s order that Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) institute the nation’s first comprehensive busing plan, with the goal of fully desegregating every school in Mecklenburg County. Charlotte’s segregated housing patterns meant that desegregating schools would require massive cross-town busing. But the issue was results: 'Substance, not semantics, must govern,' the Court wrote."
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National -
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Racial Integration Through Two-Way Dual Language Immersion: A Case Study by Elizabeth M. Uzzell, Jennifer B. Ayscue (Education Policy Analysis Archives, April 2021) - "Findings show that students from different backgrounds may have equal status in mutually beneficial environments, can become bilingual and bicultural, and may experience lifelong benefits. Implications include the need for increased federal, state, and local funding to support districts using TWI to achieve integration as well as a federal language policy that promotes TWI."
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Massachusetts -
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Federal Judge Upholds Boston Exam School Admissions Policy by James Vaznis (Boston Globe, April 28) - "'Our goal has been to create the most equitable process for admitting a new class of students into our three exam schools amidst the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic,' school officials said in a statement. 'The admissions process affirmed by the court was designed with the community, including school leaders, educators, and civil rights advocates and will ensure that every student is equitably considered for admissions to our exam schools.'”
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U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals April 28th ruling in the case.
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Statement supporting the new Boston exam school admissions policy, signed by 25 organizations and 24 individuals.
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Editorial: Time for State Lawmakers to Act on School Integration (Boston Globe, April 1) - “A good place to start is with a series of bills put forth by state Senator Brendan Crighton, a Lynn Democrat, who says he learned the virtues of integration as a child in the city’s schools — once among the most diverse districts in the state, but now one of the most racially isolated.”
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Minnesota -
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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and plaintiffs’ attorney Dan Shulman announced a settlement in the long-running Minneapolis-region school integration case, Cruz-Guzman v. Minnesota. The proposed settlement agreement has been submitted to the Minnesota legislature for approval.
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New Jersey -
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OPINION: How School Integration Will Benefit Us All by Tina Kelley (The Village Green of Maple & South Orange, April 10) - "I admire the plan for its intention to knit our community together by ensuring that every neighborhood participates and shares in the benefits of integration along with every neighborhood experiencing the changes in transportation that the new system will bring. Black students, and their parents and guardians, should not be the only ones traveling to schools beyond what has been considered their neighborhood schools. Integration can not happen on the backs of Black, Hispanic, or Asian students."
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Pennsylvania -
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Trial Date Set for Landmark School Funding Case in Pennsylvania by Dale Mezzacappa (Chalkbeat, April 2) - "Data amassed by the plaintiffs have shown that the current funding system disproportionately impacts Black and Latino students. Half of the state’s Black students and 40% of Latino students attend schools in the bottom quintile of districts based on what they spend per pupil."
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Virginia -
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UVA and the History of Race: Allies of Integration by Patrice Preston Grimes (UVA Today, March 25) - "The new, clandestine communication channels that Black educators formed nationally through their involvement with the consultative centers were very important; this communication helped to restore some of the social networks that Black teachers, administrators and parents lost when racially segregated neighborhood schools closed in response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision."
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CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCE LIST |
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Inequity & Injustice Persist
Words cannot adequately express the range of emotions many of us have experienced this month. However, we do want to highlight a few articles that have helped us make sense of how we got here.
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Would You Like a Better Country or Not? by Garrett Bucks (The White Pages - Substack, April 13) - "What I care about is that we deserve a better country than this. All of us. Black and Brown and Asian and Arab and Indigenous people, yes. But white people too. People who you hate. People who hate you. I want a world beyond policing and prisons not merely for those who’ve suffered at the hands of cops, but for current police officers and their loved ones as well. I want a nation of great public schools not merely for kids whose public schools don’t love them, but also for the families who pay $70,000 for the myth that their private schools do."
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The Center for Popular Democracy |
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Poverty & Race Research Action Council |
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Southeast Asia Resource Action Center |
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It's not too late to register for RIDES highly interactive annual conference!
May 13 - 14, 2021
Featuring concurrent sessions on the latest practices and approaches to disrupting educational inequity and interactive sessions offering facilitated "problem of practice" consultations.
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Haymarket Books - Join antiracist educators and organizers for a conversation about the history of eugenics and standardized testing, the racist impacts of high-stakes testing on learning and instruction and how we can build a movement against the testing regime.
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METCO - A one-man show about generations of African-American soldiers who fought the enemy ...then came home to fight the hatred and bigotry of their own government. The event includes a virtual reception and post-show discussion with creator and performer Ron Jones.
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RIDES - Virtual community webinar about the Southern voice in the educational equity discussion.
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Contact Us
National Coalition on School Diversity
c/o Poverty and Race Research Action Council
Mailing Address: 740 15th St. NW #300
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-544-5066
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