APRIL 2015 UPDATES        Like us on Facebook View our videos on YouTube
Integration Advocacy in Hartford, CT
A Hartford magnet school student speaks to her state legislator, Brandon McGee, at the Sheff Movement's recent Advocacy Day. How do you build the political will to support integration efforts in your community? Share your strategies!
Milliken, Meredith, and Metropolitan Segregation

Myron Orfield's new article in UCLA's Law Review chronicles the Supreme Court's school desegregation decisions and their effect on the schools and neighborhoods of metropolitan America over the last 60 years. It details how the courts, congress, and the president increased integration in schools and neighborhoods and then allowed schools to resegregate. The comparative urban legal history of Detroit and Louisville demonstrates the multi-level benefits of metropolitan-level cooperation on issues of racial segregation and the harms arising in its absence. 

A Better Start: Why Classroom Diversity Matters in Early Education

This report summarizes what is known about racial and economic diversity in Head Start and state pre-K classrooms, explains the connections between diversity and quality, and outlines steps policymakers can take to increase diversity in preschool classrooms.

A joint publication of The Century Foundation and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council

Read the report...

RELATED MEDIA
Segregation of the nation's children starts with preschool, new report finds
Washington Post, April 29
"In 1963 President John F. Kennedy challenged Congress to 'examine how far we have come in achieving first-class citizenship for all citizens regardless of color, how far we have yet to go, and what further tasks remain to be carried out.' Fifty years after this call to action...it is time to re-assess the state of segregation in Massachusetts, the outcomes of the intersection between segregation and educational opportunities, and the policy interventions designed to remove barriers to equal educational opportunities."

by The Pioneer Institute calls for increased support, including additional state funding, and expansion of Massachusetts' METCO program.
NCSD Welcomes Two New Members

The NCSD is proud to welcome IntegrateNYC4me and the Intercultural Development Research Association as members.

IntegrateNYC4me (NY) is a community-based organization that seeks to transform NYC public schools from a system of segregated, unequal schools to a system where all students have access to diverse schools and equitable allocation of essential resources. IntegrateNYC4me believes deeply in fair allocation of resources, powerful inter-dependent relationships built across race and class, and innovation in the field of education to create and sustain powerfully integrated environments.

The Intercultural Development Research Association (TX) develops innovative research- and experience-based solutions and policies to assure that (1) all students have access to and succeed in high quality schools; (2) families and communities have a voice in transforming the educational institutions that serve their children; and (3) educators have access to integrated professional development that helps to solve problems, create solutions, and use best practices to educate all students to high standards.
RELATED MEDIA
by Mackenzie Rigg
Danbury News-Times, April 15

Connecticut must keep up the momentum in school integration
by Stephen Glassman and Phillip Tegeler (op-ed)
CT Mirror, April 23
New Civil Rights Project Report

Connecticut School Integration: Moving Forward as the Northeast Retreats

For the first time in its ten recent studies of public school segregation in East Coast states, the Civil Rights Project's new report documents significant progress toward integrated education in Connecticut. There has been clear progress, according to the new study's findings.
Department of Education Updates

NCSD Submits i(3) Comment Letter

The NCSD's comments on the proposed priorities for the Investing in Innovation prorgram once again urged the Department to include the reduction of racial and socioeconomic isolation of students as an i(3) priority, noting that school diversity is a central departmental priority and is perfectly aligned with the stated goals of the program. 

Read the letter...
Report Highlights Office for Civil Rights' FY 2013-14 Activities

The Office for Civil Right's newly published report to the President and Secretary of Education, entitled Protecting Civil Rights, Advancing Equity, provides a snapshot of OCR's work over the past year. During FY2013-14, OCR:
  • resolved nearly 20,000 cases;
  • increased transparency by posting more resolution agreements online ;
  • released a new, universal Civil Rights Data Collection
  • wrote and released 11 comprehensive policy guidance documents

Read the report... 
New NCSD Issue Brief

Linking Housing and School Integration Policy: What Federal, State and Local Governments
Can Do

Our newest policy brief examines how policy makers can collaborate to take advantage of the reciprocal relationship between housing and school policy, highlighting a number of ways government housing and education planners can do more to address the underlying conditions of segregation and poverty concentration that are a major contributor to unequal neighborhood and school conditions.
Upcoming Events of Interest

05/07/15
7pm EST
 Host: Oakland Early Learning Collaborators
Webinar
05/26/15
05/30/15
Host: Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies
Washington, DC
05/27/15
05/29/15
 Host: Critical Race Studies in Education Association
Nashville, TN
06/03/15
"Moving Forward Together" Annual Benefit Reception
Host: ERASE Racism
Garden City, NY
09/25/15
Host: National Coalition on School Diversity
More details coming soon...!
Washington, DC


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.

American Civil Liberties Union - Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund - Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University - Chicago Lawyers' Committee - Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School - Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley School of Law - Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA - Education Law Center - Education Rights Center, Howard University School of Law - Empire Justice Center - ERASE Racism - Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley - Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School - Intercultural Development Research Association - IntegrateNYC4me - Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University - Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law - Magnet Schools of America - Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund - NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund - National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado - New York Appleseed - One Nation Indivisible - Poverty & Race Research Action Council - Sheff Movement Coalition - Teaching Tolerance - University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights - Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation
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: 1200 18th St. NW #200 Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-544-5066