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…

This article analyzes Carter G. Woodson's iconic Negro History Week and its impact on Black schools during Jim Crow. Negro History Week introduced knowledge on Afro-diasporic history and culture to schools around the country. As a result of teachers' grassroots organizing, it became a cultural norm in Black schools by the end of the 1930s. This…

In 1981, Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the first school district in America to replace its neighborhood schools with a "controlled choice" assignment plan, which considered parental preference and racial balance. This article considers the history preceding this decision to explore how and why some Americans became enamored with…

We characterize the extent to which Black-White gaps for multiple educational outcomes are linked across school districts in the United States. Gaps in disciplinary action, grade-level retention, classification into special education and Gifted and Talented, and Advanced Placement course-taking are large in magnitude and correlated. Racial…

Access to quality education for all children is a common mantra for countless national and world organizations, such as the UN and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper examines the struggle within two nations who continue to move beyond the impact of racial segregation in the United States (US) and "apartheid" in South…

The establishment of new school districts in predominantly White municipalities in the South is restructuring school and housing segregation in impacted countywide school systems. This article compares the contribution of school district boundaries to school and residential segregation in the Southern counties that experienced secession since…

Although increasing the racial and ethnic diversity on college campuses is a key component of any broad policy agenda aimed at reducing structural inequality, access to higher education does not always equate to graduation and equal labor market opportunities. For colleges, students, and society to reap the benefits of diversity, there needs to be…

Many students are enrolled in segregated school systems with unequal access to resources. In this report, we present a measure that can help policymakers identify the schools in their system that are contributing the most to segregation. How our measure differs from traditional metrics: Much research on segregation relies on an absolute measure of…

Following Brown v. Board of Education, schools known as "segregation academies" that were created for the purpose of allowing White students to be educated without contact with Black students proliferated in the southern United States. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited such segregation, these schools remained in existence for…

Whether students of color are more or less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White in U.S. states with histories of de jure and de facto racial segregation is currently unknown. Unadjusted analyses of large samples of students attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. South yielded…

Opportunity hoarding is a sociological concept first introduced by Charles Tilly. This article explores its utility for historians by examining efforts to exclude different groups of people in a major American metropolis during the 1960s and seventies. This was a period of significant social change, as the racial composition of big city schools…

While U.S. public education is experiencing an increase in student body size and diversity, there is also an increase in racial and socioeconomic isolation. Participation rates among White students are decreasing as rates among Latine and Asian American and Pacific Islander students increase, and Black student participation rates hold steady.…

Among the many troubling legacies of centuries of slavery and discrimination in the United States are extraordinary race-based inequalities in life chances. Black children grow up in families with much lower income and wealth, on average, than White children. They are more likely than White children to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty…

Drawing on interviews with 38 black and Latino/a engineering students at a predominantly white, elite university, I use a cultural analytic framework to explicate the role of pre-college integration in the heterogeneous psychosocial and academic experiences of students of color on predominantly white campuses. I identify three cultural strategies…

This article presents findings from a larger on-going study examining the mathematics and science education of African Americans from 1854-1954. The overarching research question was "What type of mathematics education experiences did Blacks living in the South have during de jure segregation?" Archival materials from nine historically…