The Science and Law of School Segregation and Diversity examines the sources of the disconnect between scientific findings on school segregation and how the U.S. legal system addresses it; evaluates these sources' empirical and legal foundations; explains why they persist; and reveals what can be done about them.
Examines the patchwork evolution of school desegregation policy. In 1954, the Supreme Court delivered the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education—establishing the right to attend a desegregated school as a national constitutional right—but the decision contained fundamental ambiguities. The Supreme Court has never offered a clear definition of what desegregation means or laid out a framework for evaluating competing interpretations. In The Crucible of Desegregation, R. Shep Melnick examines the evolution of federal school desegregation policy from 1954 through the termination of desegregation orders in the first decades of the twenty-first century, combining legal analysis with a focus on institutional relations, particularly the interactions between federal judges and administrators. Melnick argues that years of ambiguous, inconsistent, and meandering Court decisions left lower court judges adrift, forced to apply contradictory Supreme Court precedents in a wide variety of highly charged political and educational contexts. As a result, desegregation policy has been a patchwork, with lower court judges playing a crucial role and with little opportunity to analyze what worked and what didn’t. The Crucible of Desegregation reveals persistent patterns and disagreements that continue to roil education policy.
Confronting a reality that many policy makers would prefer to ignore, contributors to this volume offer the latest information on the trend toward the racial and socioeconomic resegregation of southern schools. In the region that has achieved more widespread public school integration than any other since 1970, resegregation, combined with resource inequities and the current "accountability movement," is now bringing public education in the South to a critical crossroads. In thirteen essays, leading thinkers in the field of race and public education present not only the latest data and statistics on the trend toward resegregation but also legal and policy analysis of why these trends are accelerating, how they are harmful, and what can be done to counter them. What's at stake is the quality of education available to both white and nonwhite students, they argue. This volume will help educators, policy makers, and concerned citizens begin a much-needed dialogue about how America can best educate its increasingly multiethnic student population in the twenty-first century. Contributors: Karen E. Banks, Wake County Public School System, Raleigh, N.C. John Charles Boger, University of North Carolina School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky, Duke Law School Charles T. Clotfelter, Duke University Susan Leigh Flinspach, University of California, Santa Cruz Erica Frankenberg, Harvard Graduate School of Education Catherine E. Freeman, U.S. Department of Education Jay P. Heubert, Teachers College, Columbia University Jennifer Jellison Holme, University of California, Los Angeles Michal Kurlaender, Harvard Graduate School of Education Helen F. Ladd, Duke University Luis M. Laosa, Kingston, N.J. Jacinta S. Ma, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Gary Orfield, Harvard Graduate School of Education Gregory J. Palardy, University of Georgia john a. powell, Ohio State University Sean F. Reardon, Stanford University Russell W. Rumberger, University of California, Santa Barbara Benjamin Scafidi, Georgia State University David L. Sjoquist, Georgia State University Jacob L. Vigdor, Duke University Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University John T. Yun, University of California, Santa Barbara
"The United States today is a suburban nation that thinks of race as an urban issue, and often assumes that it has been largely solved," write the editors of this groundbreaking and passionately argued book. They show that the locus of racial and ethnic transformation is now clearly suburban and illustrate patterns of demographic change in the suburbs with a series of rich case studies. The book concludes by considering what kinds of strategies school officials and community leaders can pursue at all levels to improve opportunities for suburban low-income students and students of color, and what ways address the challenges associated with demographic change.
The field of education has experienced extraordinary technological, societal, and institutional change in recent years, making it one of the most fascinating yet complex fields of study in social science. Unequalled in its combination of authoritative scholarship and comprehensive coverage, International Encyclopedia of Education, Third Edition succeeds two highly successful previous editions (1985, 1994) in aiming to encapsulate research in this vibrant field for the twenty-first century reader. Under development for five years, this work encompasses over 1,000 articles across 24 individual areas of coverage, and is expected to become the dominant resource in the field. Education is a multidisciplinary and international field drawing on a wide range of social sciences and humanities disciplines, and this new edition comprehensively matches this diversity. The diverse background and multidisciplinary subject coverage of the Editorial Board ensure a balanced and objective academic framework, with 1,500 contributors representing over 100 countries, capturing a complete portrait of this evolving field. A totally new work, revamped with a wholly new editorial board, structure and brand-new list of meta-sections and articles Developed by an international panel of editors and authors drawn from senior academia Web-enhanced with supplementary multimedia audio and video files, hotlinked to relevant references and sources for further study Incorporates ca. 1,350 articles, with timely coverage of such topics as technology and learning, demography and social change, globalization, and adult learning, to name a few Offers two content delivery options - print and online - the latter of which provides anytime, anywhere access for multiple users and superior search functionality via ScienceDirect, as well as multimedia content, including audio and video files
Despite the changing demographics of the nation and a growing appreciation for diversity and inclusion as drivers of excellence in science, engineering, and medicine, Black Americans are severely underrepresented in these fields. Racism and bias are significant reasons for this disparity, with detrimental implications on individuals, health care organizations, and the nation as a whole. The Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine was launched at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2019 to identify key levers, drivers, and disruptors in government, industry, health care, and higher education where actions can have the most impact on increasing the participation of Black men and Black women in science, medicine, and engineering. On April 16, 2020, the Roundtable convened a workshop to explore the context for their work; to surface key issues and questions that the Roundtable should address in its initial phase; and to reach key stakeholders and constituents. This proceedings provides a record of the workshop.
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow provides a compelling analysis of the forces and choices that have shaped the trend toward the resegregation of public schools. By assembling a wide range of contributors—historians, sociologists, economists, and education scholars—the editors provide a comprehensive view of a community’s experience with desegregation and economic development. Here we see resegregation through the lens of Charlotte, North Carolina, once a national model of successful desegregation, and home of the landmark Swann desegregation case, which gave rise to school busing. This book recounts the last forty years of Charlotte’s desegregation and resegregation, putting education reform in political and economic context. Within a decade of the Swanncase, the district had developed one of the nation’s most successful desegregation plans, measured by racial balance and improved academic outcomes for both black and white students. However, beginning in the 1990s, this plan was gradually dismantled. Today, the level of resegregation in Charlotte has almost returned to what it was prior to 1971. At the core of Charlotte’s story is the relationship between social structure and human agency, with an emphasis on how yesterday’s decisions and actions define today’s choices.
This book examines what equity means in a nation where the schools are becoming more diverse. The authors consider how well our educational reform policies, often framed in the language of equity and opportunity, measure up to the challenges of achieving equity in a diverse nation. While there is growing awareness of the increasing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of the nation, there is little recognition of how these trends affect the schools, particularly in formerly homogeneous communities. At the same time, inequalities in student achievement between different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups persist, even as educational policy has intensified the focus on the achievement gap. These two challenges make definitions of equity and opportunity as urban problems obsolete and call for a critical examination of educational policy and reform from an equity perspective. Central themes include the critical examination of how equity is conceived under the law and in policy, the experiences of minority students in suburban schools, and the impact of current reform policies and strategies for achieving greater educational opportunities for all students. This book is designed for graduate and undergraduate courses in educational policy and policy analysis, for policymakers interested in a critical examination of current reform policies and options, and educational leaders and administrators struggling with the implementation of reform mandates. From a policy perspective, it includes a survey of the evolution of educational policies and reforms since the 1960s and traces the mix of legal and legislative legacies that have informed educational policy and equity. It describes how trends in suburban diversification affect the schools, something that has largely escaped the attention of educational reformers. It provides school-based and non-school-based remedies for achieving equity in diversifying suburban communities and articulates alternatives to the current accountability for performance approach. It offers new and innovative analyses of current approaches to school reform, including an analysis of how accountability tests can create the illusion of reducing the achievement gap and an examination of the paradoxes of federally funded compensatory policies that incorporate market-based strategies. Novel approaches—such as social emotional learning and placed-based college access strategies—are examined through an equity lens.
