The percentage of White residents in the urban core increased during the last three decades. Meanwhile, urban school choice policies have changed school enrollment processes. Scholars must examine how White residents navigate school choice in this context to understand why racial segregation persists. We study White parents in a city with changing…

In this research brief, we describe and decompose school segregation by race and ethnicity in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, in which we include: the District of Columbia; Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County in Virginia; and Montgomery County and Prince George's County in Maryland. We find only modest segregation within all but one…

The purpose of this research brief is to describe racial and ethnic school segregation in the District of Columbia, within and between the private and public sectors (including charter schools). Using different measures, we find, unsurprisingly, a high degree of segregation within both sectors. Total segregation among private schools is driven…

This essay examines the first detailed study of gifted African American youth: Lillian Steele Proctor's master's thesis from the late 1920s on Black children in Washington, DC. Unlike formative research on gifted children by educational psychologists, Proctor's investigation emphasized children's experiences at school, home, and community in…

Published histories of American art education seldom include the stories and accomplishments of Black art educators. There is a need to research, teach, and publish these histories to provide a more inclusive and equitable picture of American art education and to encourage more people of color to consider careers in the field. Using primary and…

This article outlines different forms of education privatization operating globally, examines their prevalence within the United States, and analyzes whether student marginalization and segregation occurs at the local level. We analyze six U.S. districts with higher saturation levels of charter schools, the most predominant type of privatization…

We estimate school-choice preferences revealed by the rank-ordered lists submitted by more than 22,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 200 traditional and charter public schools in Washington, D.C. The results confirm previously reported findings that commuting distance, school demographics, and academic indicators play important…

Youth homelessness is a distressing trend in the United States (U.S.). In 2013, more than one million homeless students were enrolled in the U.S. public school system. The District of Columbia, the nation's capital, is also experiencing a surge in the number of homeless youth. In April 2015, one in every twenty-four students attending the District…

The author analyzes the revealed school preferences of parents in the Washington, D.C., and asks, "What is the main determinant of charter school choice and how does it create racial, economic, and linguistic segregation?" The author first establishes a theory of choice, which incorporates past research and adds an additional variable to…

For a period of 85 years, the M Street/Dunbar High School was an academically elite, all-black public high school in Washington, D.C. As far back as 1899, its students came in first in citywide tests given in both black and white schools. Over this 85-year span, approximately 80 percent of M Street/Dunbar's graduates went on to college, even…

The nation and its public school enrollment are in the midst of dramatic racial change (Frey, 2001; Orfield, 2009). Soon, the nation's public schools will enroll a majority of non-White students, a demographic reality that has already occurred in the two largest regions of the country, the South and the West. As the nation's enrollment grows more…

Over 50 years after the monumental decision of "Brown v. Board of Education," many U.S. schools remain separate and unequal. This includes schools in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. The article discusses how in the two centuries of public education in Washington, D.C., Black educators used a variety of subversive tactics to…

Seven years after the Civil Rights Project first documented extensive patterns of charter school segregation, the charter sector continues to stratify students by race, class and possibly language. This study is released at a time of mounting federal pressure to expand charter schools, despite on-going and accumulating evidence of charter school…

IN A REPORT PUBLISHED IN 1962, IT WAS CONCLUDED THAT TOTAL SCHOOL DESEGREGATION IN NORTH CAROLINA WAS NOT LIKELY IN THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE UNLESS FORCED BY COURT DECREES. THE BASIS FOR THE PREDICTION WAS THE HISTORY OF APPLICATION OF TWO ACTS--THE PUPIL ASSIGNMENT ACT, WHICH TRANSFERRED AUTHORITY OF PUPIL ASSIGNMENT TO LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS, AND THE…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) State of American Business: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Says U.S. Could Face a "Severe Worker Shortage" Unless…