Next month marks NCSD's 15th anniversary! We’re hosting a reception and appreciation event for NCSD and Phil Tegeler, and we’d love to see you there. Join us for NCSD At 15: "Reflecting on Our Legacy, Building Our Future," November 14, 2024, 6:00-8:00 PM at The Morrow Washington DC. Register soon because space is limited. | |
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NEW GRANTEES: MAGNET SCHOOLS ASSISTANCE PROGRAM AND FOSTERING DIVERSE SCHOOLS
Earlier this month, the Department of Education awarded 12 new Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) grants and two additional Fostering Diverse Schools (FDS) grants. More and more communities across the political spectrum have recognized the importance of racially and economically diverse schools, and there is a growing demand for funding to support local efforts. NCSD will continue to urge Congress to expand the MSAP and FDS programs, building on the small but solid foundation of the 2022-24 appropriations bills.
Speaking of appropriations... The House and Senate approved a Continuing Resolution (CR) to avoid a government shutdown on October 1, 2024. The CR will keep the government funded until December 20, 2024, after which Congress will revisit appropriations bills for FY2025. Stay tuned for updates.
BOSTON SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL ADMISSIONS CASE
The Supreme Court has been asked to consider the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence Corp. v. The School Committee for the City of Boston case, an equal protection challenge to Boston's selective school admissions policy. While the Court declined to intervene in the similar Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board case earlier this year, justices could clarify standards for assessing race-neutral criteria and equal protection claims in the Boston case. For more on these cases and others challenging specialized middle and high school admissions policies, see NCSD's fact sheet: Overview of Legal Challenges to Specialized Schools
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NCSD STAFF UPDATES
What We've Been Up to Recently
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As previously announced, we decided to postpone NCSD's 5th National Conference on School Diversity until 2025 after careful consideration.
Our conference is the largest cross-sector convening on school integration in the nation, and this extra time will allow us to enhance the quality and scope of the event, ensuring that it reflects the critical importance of the work ahead. #NCSD2025 will be more vital than ever, with a focus on the intersection of school integration and major policy issues affecting our multiracial democracy. These include attacks on DEI and CRT, book and curriculum banning, underinvestment in public education, and more.
Additionally, as NCSD celebrates its 15th anniversary, #NCSD2025 will serve as an inflection point for the school integration movement. It will be a unique opportunity to reflect on the past 15 years, celebrate our successes, learn from our challenges, and chart a strategic path forward.
We appreciate your understanding and look forward to coming together in 2025 to continue building a more inclusive and equitable future for all students.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with questions, comments, concerns, or ideas. You can email them to gchirichigno@prrac.org.
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BECOME A #NCSD2025 SPONSOR
NCSD has always been committed to providing a space for researchers, advocates, policymakers, educators, students, parents, and supporters to come together and strengthen the movement for integrated education.
If you believe in this cause and want to support #NCSD2025 and the school integration movement, become a sponsor.
See sponsorship levels (slide 5) and contact gchirichigno@prrac.org for more information.
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BOOK YOUR STAY IN OUR HOTEL BLOCK
See The Morrow DC's rates and book.
The Morrow DC Hotel
222 M Street NE
Washington DC, 20002
The Morrow Hotel is nestled in the center of the NoMa neighborhood, mere blocks from Union Market and minutes from nearby Amtrak (Union Station) and Metro (NoMa-Gallaudet U) stations. Located on the site of the former Central Armature Works, the hotel embraces the dynamic, industrious and artful NoMa community that surrounds it.
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Update:
- As featured in The New York Times, the Youth Journalism Coalition (directed by The Bell) is now accepting applications for the first cohort of Journalism for All, a citywide, public-private initiative to build sustainable journalism programs in underserved public high schools. In 2025, the initiative will provide three years of support to an initial cohort of 30 high schools. Learn more and apply by November 4.
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Update:
- Halley Potter of The Century Foundation's Bridges Collaborative co-authored a new commentary on how Project 2025 would impact education in New York City, including how Education Saving Accounts (ESAs) could cause public school enrollment and therefore funding to decline, as well as exacerbate socioeconomic racial segregation.
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Update:
- The Flood Center's" Mapping the Movement" convenings are kicking off Nov. 20. The goal of this mapping project is to help build a visible network of organizations engaged in racial equity work across North Carolina to highlight the efforts already underway, especially those centering and being led by communities of color.
- The center also launched a new timeline on its namesake, Dr. Dudley E. Flood, which highlights his involvement in the school integration movement.
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Update:
- IDRA's new policy brief analyzes how the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds were allocated to K-12 schools, how districts spent these relief funds, and the position many districts are in as they face deadlines to spend remaining federal dollars.
- After three successful cycles of its Education Policy Fellows Program, IDRA welcomes four new fellows, who will gain real-world advocacy experience and training during the 2025 Texas and Georgia legislative sessions.
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Update:
- After a decade of championing youth-led initiatives to desegregate New York City schools, IntegrateNYC’s operations as an independent nonprofit organization will conclude by the end of this year. All current IntegrateNYC staff members will be concluding their roles with the organization by December 1. IntegrateNYC is currently in discussion to merge into its rising ally, The Circle Keepers. Read more here.
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Update:
- LPI’s new blog post co-authored by Michael DiNapoli helps make sense of how teacher shortages and layoffs can coexist, and what factors impact school budgets, including the ESSER cliff, and other policy choices. The authors conclude that "the long-term solutions to teacher labor market issues would benefit from a shift in focus on the ESSER cliff to what states and the federal government are or can be doing to ensure all students have access to well-funded schools and a diverse, well-prepared, and stable educator workforce."
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Update:
- LDF's newest resource, "Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive," chronicles the history of the struggle for civil rights in the U.S. by sharing thousands of digitized documents from the LDF Archives, oral history interviews, narrative pieces to contextualize the primary source documents, an interactive timeline, and more.
- LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute released a research paper which "dissects Project 2025 and details how its radical proposals to restructure the federal government and increase the president’s authority will severely harm Black communities across the country."
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RESEARCH ADVISORY PANEL (RAP) UPDATES
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Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and others in Richmond, VA updated a study on housing and school segregation from 2017. Seven years later, “Can We Live and Learn Together 2.0,” reveals new data on housing and school segregation in the Richmond region – with a bottom line that should give us all pause: “segregation is an outcome and a cycle resulting from pernicious policies at the local, state, and federal level that need to be either changed or overturned.”
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Erica Frankenberg co-authored a new research article that finds historical patterns and trends in racial/ethnic differences in punitive school discipline over the last five decades in U.S. K-12 public schools. "Overall, out-of-school suspension rates show an inverted-U trend with significant increases between 1970 and 2010 followed by decreases in the last decade... However, racial/ethnic disproportionality in school discipline remains persistent across the board; indeed, increasing until the very last few years for Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native students compared to White students."
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Frankenberg is also the co-principal investigator for a new civil rights in education initiative at Penn State, called AdvancED Equity, which focuses on advancing research to inform policy related to civil rights protections in the field of education.
Learn more about our Research Advisory Panel here.
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INDIVIDUAL MEMBER UPDATES
- A recent University of the District of Columbia Law Review article featured an interview with John Brittain who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year by embarking on an 80-mile bike ride with his bike club. The editors wrote: "2025 will mark the end of Professor John C. Brittain's tenure at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. A civil rights advocate, fitness enthusiast, and respected professor, Prof Brittain has made a lasting impact on our school and the field of law. Almost always sporting his signature bowtie, Prof Brittain is loved by current and former students. His mentoring of hundreds of young lawyers and teaching of thousands more has left each of them better off for having the pleasure of his company and professional stewardship."
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Kevin Welner was interviewed about Colorado's Amendment 80, which would add language establishing a “right to school choice” in the state's constitution. Welner is also quoted on the subject in pieces here, here, and here.
- Earlier this month, Rick Kahlenberg made the case for school integration as part of a larger strategy of teaching students what it means to be an American during a Fordham Institute webinar.
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CROSS-MOVEMENT RESOURCE LIST | |
- The Southern Education Foundation’s new report, "Miles to Go: The State of Education for Black Students in America," presents an overview of education data for Black students in the United States and comprehensively analyzes the persistent inequities in our education system. According to the press release: "The report reveals that racial segregation in K-12 schools is increasing. By one measure, school segregation has returned to levels not seen since the 1960s, the decade after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown that segregated schooling was unconstitutional."
- Father-daughter duo Richard and Leah Rothstein recently published a sequel to The Color of Law titled Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law, which describes what everyone can do in their communities to redress the segregation chronicled in The Color of Law. Just Action was published in hardcover last year and will be released in paperback on March 4, 2025. Since the initial release, the Rothsteins have been traveling the country speaking with community groups, real estate associations, congregations, human rights organizations, housing professionals, bankers, and others, to explain how we can all take just actions in our own communities to redress segregation.
- To schedule an in-person or virtual event or conversation, contact their publicist.
- Check out Josh Cowen's address from earlier this month at the third annual Democracy Summit at Howard University’s Center for Journalism and Democracy, founded by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Cowen discussed his new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold Vouchers, which provides a deep-dive into education privatization and how private school vouchers are failing students and exacerbating income inequality.
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Roots ConnectED Educational Institutes are open for registration! Watch this video to learn more about what makes these spaces of learning so unique! Designed for educators and school leaders seeking to shift school culture with intentional anti-bias education practices, school teams leave with clear goals and actionable steps. Join them for a 3-day in-person Educational Institute at their Learning Site or a 1-day virtual Educational Institute.
- In-Person Institutes: Anti-Bias Culture and Curriculum Institute (December 2024) and the Inclusive Practices Institute (May 2025)
- Virtual Institute: Transforming School Culture and Curriculum: Centering Equity (February 2025)
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NEWS FROM ACROSS OUR COUNTRY | |
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What’s Ahead for Education This Supreme Court Term? Trans Rights, E-Rate, and More (Education Week, Oct. 4) - "The court will continue to add to its docket for cases to be decided this term. Among the other big pending cases are ones involving school diversity in selective-admissions schools and religious school charters."
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Thelma Mothershed Wair, Iconic Little Rock Nine Member Who Integrated An Arkansas School, Dies At 83 (Blavity, Oct. 23) - "Thelma Mothershed Wair, the iconic member of the Little Rock Nine who helped integrate an Arkansas high school in 1957 despite opposition from white protesters, has died at the age of 83...Mothershed Wair was the eldest of the Little Rock Nine. She and eight other students—Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls—integrated Central High School in Little Rock in September 1957."
- Thelma Mothershed Wair, a member of the Little Rock Nine who integrated an Arkansas school, has died at 83
- Thelma Mothershed Wair, 83, Dies; One of 9 Who Integrated a School
- Civil rights pioneer Thelma Mothershed-Wair, member of Little Rock Nine, laid to rest
- Remembering Civil Rights Pioneer and Little Rock Nine Member Thelma Mothershed-Wair
- A member of the Little Rock Nine and longtime East St. Louis teacher has died
- Why Little Rock Nine’s Legacy Still Matters
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How Ruby Bridges made school integration history at 6, while racists screamed at her (Asbury Park Press, Oct. 23) - "The Civil Rights Movement icon spoke at the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University in Long Branch on Oct. 22 in recognition of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that ordered an end to public schools segregated by race. And she spoke out against modern efforts to remove her books from schools, on the grounds that her life story is too divisive."
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The Scandal of America's Apartheid Education System (Current Affairs, Oct. 21) - "Education critic and activist Jonathan Kozol on America's unequal public school system and what we can do about it."
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VIDEO: A legacy honored: Thurgood Marshall's son celebrates Brown v. Board in Topeka (KSNT News, Oct. 11)
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Private School Choice: What the Research Says (Education Week, Oct. 10) - "Other topics that appear ripe for more analysis include the ripple effects of private school choice on phenomena like racial and economic school segregation; state funding for public schools; and enrollment trends in public schools."
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VIDEO: New Data Shows Book Bans Sweeping the US (The 74, Oct. 10)
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Florida -
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Duval Schools asked to consider equity, community impact of school closures (Jacksonville Today, Oct. 27) - "In advocates’ minds, the current closure discussion mirrors the court-mandated desegregation era: A district tasked with closing schools, with the schools under immediate threat in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Two of the schools, George Washington Carver and Susie Tolbert, were built as Black schools."
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Maryland -
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MCPS extends deadline for boundary review proposals after community feedback (MoCo 360, Oct. 23) - "Analyses of boundaries have divided the MCPS community in the past. In 2019, MCPS conducted a countywide boundary analysis. While district leaders said at the time the review wouldn’t result in changes, the analysis sparked debate over the value of school diversity versus students attending schools close to their homes."
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New York -
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How the NYC high school admissions process sorts kids by race, poverty, disability (Chalkbeat New York, Oct. 16) - "Advocates said the data highlights the role of the city’s selective admissions rules in driving the segregation that has plagued city high schools for years. 'It makes me incredibly angry,' said Nyah Berg, the executive director of Appleseed New York, a group that advocates for school integration and admissions reforms. 'We’re limiting opportunities to students because of factors outside of their control...over systemic inequities compounding over years and years.'"
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Now, NYC 5th graders' families can apply to any middle school in the city (Gothamist, Sept. 27) - "Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, which advocates for more integrated schools, praised the move to open middle school admissions.'I think it’s great that they’re opening up access for folks on a more broad level,' she said. But she called the unlimited choices of high schools 'unnecessary,' given that less than 40% of students fill out all 12 available choices now."
- Application changes will boost middle school choice, let families rank more high school options
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Susan E. Eaton, in conversation about her book, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line.
GBH News
"METCO, America’s longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, buses children of color from Boston’s city neighborhoods to predominantly white suburban schools. In contrast to the infamous violence and rage that greeted forced school busing within the city in the 1970s, the work of METCO has quietly and calmly promoted school integration. But how has this program affected the lives of its graduates? Would they choose to participate if they had it to do over again? Would they place their own children on the bus to suburbia? In The Other Boston Busing Story, sixty-five METCO graduates who are now adults answer those questions and more, vividly recalling their own stories and assessing the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines on their way to school. Susan Eaton will be in conversation with Stephanie Leydon, executive producer of digital video at GBH News."
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“I celebrate and lift up the people that were involved and that helped me. So why would you be trying to ban my books?”
– Ruby Bridges, Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University on October 22, 2024
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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. | | |
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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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