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NCSD is excited to partner with the Poverty and Race Research Action Council on "The Lines Between Us: At School and At Home" on September 19th.  We will welcome Lawrence Lanahan, author of The Lines Between Us, a story of two families in Baltimore set against the background of decades of segregation and the evolution of the landmark Thompson v. HUD public housing desegregation case. Lanahan will be joined by Cara McClellan from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and journalist J. Brian Charles.

The Lines Between Us: At School and At Home
740 15th Street NW (Third Floor)  Washington, DC 20005 
September 19th at 6:00pm (refreshments at 5:30pm)

WHAT'S GOING ON IN NYC?



This week, the city's School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) released
calling for the elimination of competitive admissions to elementary and middle school programs, and changes to high school enrollment.

Follow the dialogue.
Here are some Twitter accounts/threads that might be of interest to you:

Our advocates on the ground in NYC are the best positioned to respond to questions/comments about the specifics of the report's recommendations.

We encourage everyone to read the recommendations. News stories often cannot capture the nuance that allows for a full understanding of these policy proposals being discussed, let alone the evidence that is guiding them. Moreover, it is clear that SDAG took their assignment seriously and have offered a roadmap to redressing systems and paradigms that maintain school segregation in the most segregated school system in our nation.

Want to learn more?
Here are some resources and recommendations  that might be helpful:
MEMBER UPDATES
Massachusetts Increases METCO Funding for Second Consecutive Year

 
METCO stakeholders gather at the Massachusetts State House to advocate for funding.
The Massachusetts legislature allocated $24.2 million to the 53-year-old desegregation program, an increase of $2 million over the previous year. The funds are distributed to 33 suburban school districts that participate voluntarily for the purpose of relieving racial isolation, and help reimburse the costs of transporting 3,100  Boston students to suburban schools. This  funding also enables support for students, schools, and communities to tackle the challenges and opportunities of integration.

The news comes at a time of evolution for METCO, which is preparing to transition its application process from a 15,000-person waiting list to an online lottery this fall.

For more information, check out The Atlantic and DigBoston , which both published extensive looks at the experiences of students and families who participate in METCO.

Center for Diversity and Equality in Education (CDEE) on the Ground in New Jersey

CDEE will soon release a book  to illuminate the opportunities and challenges of achieving "true integration." Written as a case study of the Morris School District (the only district in NJ, and quite likely the US, that resulted from a merger of two districts--one predominantly white, affluent and suburban and the other more diverse and urban--ordered by the state commissioner of education for racial balance reasons in 1971), it will include lessons learned from Morris's nearly half-century effort and a detailed action plan for NJ and other states about moving forward with statewide integration.

Also, read about CDEE's involvement in current desegregation litigation in this January 2019 Atlantic piece.

Housing-Schools Intersections: #DefendCivilRights Campaign (from PRRAC)



The Department of Housing Urban Development is  proposing to gut the longstanding legal tool known as "disparate impact" under the Fair Housing Act. Disparate impact acknowledges  how seemingly neutral policies can have a discriminatory effect in practice.  HUD's efforts are a clear attempt to impede recourse for housing discrimination. The proposed rule would allow financial institutions, insurance companies, and housing providers to escape accountability for engaging in practices that result in discrimination against protected classes.

How does this relate to education? Should this new policy go info effect, as Education Week reporter Andrew Ujifusa highlighted, it could have major consequences for efforts to further school integration as well. Additionally, many experts believe this effort will not end at HUD. 

What can you do? We encourage you to leave a public comment  for HUD expressing opposition to this rule and tweet with #DefendCivilRights to raise awareness on this important issue.
For your reading pleasure...

NATIONAL
  • ICYMI: The School Diversity Notebook  recently released a series on local-level stories including Austin, TX; Wake County, NC; Sausalito, CA; Oakland, CA; Baltimore, MD; Charleston, SC; and Richmond, VA. Across the country, there were several instances of potential changes to the invisible boundaries that divide students. Here is Part 1 and Part 2 of the series. 
REGION II
REGION III
REGION VI
CROSS-MOVEMENT READING LIST



A recent report by the Learning Policy Institute d escribes lessons learned from state efforts to reform school finance systems to be more adequate and equitable. 








The 1619 Project, Anti-Racism, and Legacies of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison

What can we say about this essential, foundational project from the inimitable Nikole Hannah-Jones that hasn't already been said? We'll just say read it cover-to-cover if you haven't yet, and check out the 1619 Project curriculum for students from the Pulitzer Center (which, no doubt, is  greatly needed).

Additionally, this month we lost a titan of American literature Toni Morrison and commemorated the influential James Baldwin on what would have been his 95th birthday: 

"[A]pathy & ignorance...is the price we pay for segregation. It's what segregation means, you don't know what's happening on the other side of the wall, b/c you don't want to know." -- James Baldwin

Further, National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi  r eleased his 
new book, How to Be an Antiracist. 

Given all this we wanted to highlight some recent pieces on how parents, educators, and students are thinking about and discussing all of this in the context of school integration and educational equity issues.
COMMUNITY OF THOUGHT & ACTION

North Carolina:   (NC Teacher of the Year in 2014-15) launched a new initiative, the  Center for Racial Equity in Education  (CREED), to " center students of color, inspire institutional change, and facilitate better educational practice, so we can transform the educational system in North Carolina."





CREED released two reports:
  • E(race)ing Inequities: The State of Racial Equity in North Carolina Public Schools
  • Deep Rooted: A Brief History of Race and Education in North Carolina

We're eagerly anticipating what's to come for this exciting effort!


The Russell Sage Foundation is launching a new  pipeline grants competition
for early- and mid-career researchers.

The competition seeks to promote diversity in the social sciences broadly, including racial, ethnic, gender, disciplinary, institutional, and geographic diversity. 

The call for proposals will be released in early Fall 2019.

The  #RacetoLeadSurvey  deadline has been EXTENDED by popular demand! You now have until September 13th to complete the survey and encourage your nonprofit and foundation friends and colleagues to do the same! 
jobs_and_careers.jpg
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
American Youth Policy Forum
The Center for Education & Civil Rights at Penn State
The Century Foundation
Child Trends
The Education Trust
ERASE Racism
The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund
Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Learning Policy Institute
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Urban Institute
Southern Poverty Law Center










MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Register for AERA's 2019 Brown lecture, featuring Prudence Carter, here.
        8/30/19 Berkeley, CA
        9/10/19
Host: Learning Policy Institute
Sacramento, CA
      10/12/19
Host: Public Schools First in NC
Raleigh, NC
      10/24/19
Host: American Education Research Association
Washington, DC
      10/26/19
Host: The Public School Forum of North Carolina, The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, and Policy Bridge at Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy
Raleigh, NC
10/28/19 
10/30/19 
Host: Magnet Schools of America
Albuquerque, NM
11/18/19 
11/20/19 
Reimagining Integration: The Diverse and Equitable Schools Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Cambridge, MA
 
Check out our  2019 conference listing
Please let us know of upcoming events, by emailing  school-diversity@prrac.org.
The National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD) is a network of national civil rights organizations, university-based research centers, and state and local coalitions working to expand support for government policies that promote school diversity and reduce racial isolation. We also support the work of state and local school diversity practitioners. Our work is informed by an advisory panel of scholars and academic researchers whose work relates to issues of equity, diversity, and desegregation/integration .
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  * Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society 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: The 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 in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School  * Equity Assistance Center (Region II) at Touro College * IntegratedSchools.org *  The Office of Transformation and Innovation at the Dallas Independent School District  * Live Baltimore * Maryland Equity Project   Center for Education and Civil Rights  * National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector  * The Center for Diversity and Equality in Education 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 * Family and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children * The School Desegregation Notebook * Temperament, Affect, and Behavior in Schools (TABS) Lab * Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. * Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO) * Learn Together, Live Together * Beloved CommunityChicago United for Equity * Learning Policy Center * Public School Forum of North Carolina


Contact Us
  National Coalition on School Diversity
c/o Poverty and Race Research Action Council
Website: school-diversity.org
Email: school-diversity@prrac.org
Mailing Address: 740 15th St. NW #300 Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-544-5066