Background/Context: Legal scholars have cited the Fifth Circuit's ruling in Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961) as the beginning of a revolution for students' rights that ended the in loco parentis relationship between colleges and their students. But little has been written about the students' activism that led to this seminal case.…

"Equality of Educational Opportunity," also known as the Coleman Report, sought answers to two burning questions: (1) How extensive is racial segregation within U.S. schools?; and (2) How adversely does that segregation affect educational opportunities for black students? In answering the first question, James S. Coleman and his…

The racial diversification of America's higher education system has been at the forefront of legal argument for the last seventy-five years. Ground-breaking decisions birthed the inclusion of affirmative action policies in higher education after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In recent years, both the utility and constitutionality…

This study investigated the efficacy of race-neutral student assignment policies following the 2007 Supreme Court decision in "Parents Involved". Highlighting one urban school district--Chicago Public Schools--we examined differences in racial composition at their elite, "selective enrollment" high schools before and after…

In light of contemporary school choice proposals and the 60th anniversary of the Southern Manifesto, the Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools crisis provides interesting historical discussion. Prince Edward County (PEC), a rural community in central Virginia, was one of five school districts represented in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of…

Fifty years ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." In exploring the story of the events behind the essay, and the Supreme Court case that resulted, "Walker v. Birmingham", 399 U.S. 307 (1967), educators will find a pedagogically powerful lens through which to review the seminal…

This research considers how Mexican American history becomes part of the curricular canon, and what their inclusion tells us about popular conceptions of Mexican Americans. At a time of increasing presence of Latina/o students in K-12 classrooms, it is important to consider how we depict their experiences in U.S. history. To address this concern,…

This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state,…

Demographics in the U.S. have changed dramatically over the last three decades. Indiana's demographics are changing, too--albeit less dramatically. To explore how demographic shifts are changing the composition of Indiana's schools, the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) uses Common Core of Data (CCD) school enrollment data from the…

The enduring condition of racial and ethnic segregation in schools and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, is rooted in historical and contemporary racial discrimination and in practices and policies that exacted disparate harm on Black and Latinx people. School segregation both reflects and reinforces segregation in housing that was…

Steve Sheinkin's "The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights" recounts the explosion at a U.S. Navy base in the summer of 1944 that claimed 320 lives. It is also a story of African American resistance against prejudice, segregation, and injustice in the armed forces during World War II. The book was a 2015…

Magnet schools were originally created to attract a diverse student population. Using data from the 23 magnet schools in St. Louis, this longitudinal study is twofold: first, to review the performance outcomes of the magnet schools across a 5-year period, between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010, and second, to examine whether the magnet schools are…

Students are more racially segregated in schools today than they were in the late 1960s and prior to the enforcement of court-ordered desegregation in school districts across the country. This special issue addresses the overarching theme of policies, practices, or roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders that may directly or indirectly…

In this study, I employ geospatial techniques to assess the impact of school attendance zone "gerrymandering" on the racial/ethnic segregation of schools, using a large national sample of 15,290 attendance zones in 663 districts. I estimate the effect of gerrymandering on school diversity and school district segregation by comparing the…

In 1991, Herbert Kohl argued against the inaccurate and incomplete story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that appeared prominently within texts and trade books of that era (Kohl 1991). He contended the biased perspective stripped Montgomery's African American community of their courage, intelligence, and moral conviction. Kohl…