On May 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division issued a fact sheet highlighting examples of the Division's recent work to protect students and combat segregation and race-based discrimination in schools. The Civil Rights Division has worked for decades to ensure equal educational opportunities for all of America's…

This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were…

Charter schools have seen a nearly tripling in students, with approximately 3.1 million students enrolled in 2016-2017. As of 2017, 1 in 8 African American students attended a charter school in the United States. This article provides a conceptual introduction to a special issue on equity issues within the charter school movement, with a…

Using a Critical Race Theory framework, this manuscript examines the scholarly literature on the intersection of tracking and its historical use as a method for establishing and maintaining racial segregation in American public schools. I begin by exploring accounts of tracking in American public educational institutions as researched by…

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a…

While some state and local education agencies may raise concerns over shifting legal principles and political apprehension in pursuing strategies that integrate students across race, socioeconomic status, and other factors, the changing demographics warrant serious inquiry into integration opportunities. This paper surveys the landscape of K-12…

Recent research suggests that high-stakes standardized testing has played a negative role in the segregation of children by race and class in schools. In this article we review research on the overall effects of segregation, the positive and negative aspects of how desegregation plans were carried out following the 1954 Supreme Court decision…

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court decided "Brown v. Board of Education," a case that is known throughout the US and around the world for its strong statements about equality and about the importance of education. The years since the "Brown" decision have been filled with many changes in US law and society. From the…

The author utilized Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the passage of the US Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 in an effort to disrupt the simplistic, uncritical understandings of the US Civil Rights Movement common to school texts while also arguing for the ongoing importance of the VRA in a time when voting rights for people of color are under…

The South was the central focus of the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. The landmark ruling held that laws mandating segregation in the school systems of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, along with D.C. and six other states, violated the U.S. Constitution. Intense opposition met the…

This study explores how 10 principals in mostly-Black U.S. urban elementary schools staffed by mostly-White faculty understood and experienced the manifestations of racial differences. Narrative inquiry with nearly 700 pages of transcript data yielded three themes: (1) gradients of color-conscious leadership, (2) principals as moral agents, and…

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti-civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White…

In 1954 the Supreme Court declared that public education is "a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." That landmark decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" stood for the proposition that the federal government would no longer allow states and municipalities to deny equal educational opportunity to a…

The purpose of this historical case study was to add to the literature an analysis of the landmark legal case of Jose Cisneros v. CCISD. The outcome of this case established Mexican Americans as an ethnic minority and set the legal precedent that the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Topeka ruling could be extended to other minorities beyond…

America's schools are more segregated now than they were in the late 1960s. More than 50 years after "Brown v. Board of Education," educators need to radically rethink the meaning of "school choice." For decades at Wake County, buses would pick up public school students in largely minority communities along the Raleigh…