This is a short post to announce a bit of news that I’m excited about: the SD Notebook has recently been added as an official member of the National Coalition on School Diversity. If you aren’t familiar with it, NCSD is a group of researchers and advocates who work to expand political/social support for meaningful school integration. It is run by the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and includes majorly influential organizations, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, among many others who are mentioned frequently on this blog and whose work inspired its very existence. At the end of this post, I’ve copied the full list of member organizations with links to each.

Here’s an overview of some of the things they do:

• Research briefs – NCSD has a Research Advisory Council that is basically an all-star roster of school integration researchers whose work is also mentioned frequently on this blog (see examples here, here and here). Among other things, members of the research advisory council put out research briefs that are short overviews/research summaries about key topics related to school diversity. The most recent briefs cover:
  • Effective practices in building a welcoming and inclusive learning environment for students of color in integrated schools. Here’s a 1-min video overview.
  • Whether/how district diversity plans targeted at socio-economic integration can also lead to racial diversity. Here’s a 2-min overview.
  • And, in an earlier post, I wrote in more detail about a NCSD brief that summarizes research on the benefits of school integration.

Also, I was thrilled to find this among the resources on the NCSD research page – it’s a Diversity in Education Database that has archived research related to race/gender/SES and student outcomes. I did quick searches for “school choice” and “magnet schools” and found lots of interesting articles.

• Advocacy letters – They also write letters advocating for policies at the local, state and national levels that benefit school integration. Recent topics include letters to the New York Board of Regents about the use of diversity in the state’s ESSA plan and letters to the DeVos Department of Education about the “opening doors” school diversity grant program and about the Civil Right Data Collection database. They are currently working on a letter that responds to DeVos’ decision to eliminate school diversity priorities in DOE grant proposals.
• Conferences – NCSD organizes its own conference and promotes conferences that are run by its members. Its most recent conference, with the theme “a struggle we must win,” was last month in NYC (#NCSD2017). I thought this was great – as part of the conference, NCSD created a collaboration with StoryCorps, where people (anyone) can share their stories about the value of teaching/learning in an integrated school. This website has a list of stories on topics like the power of youth voice and why integrated schools are good for all students. You can even record your own story and add it to the archive (#CelebrateSchoolDiversity) using the instructions/prompts at the website.

There’s plenty more that I don’t have the space to write about here. If you are new to NCSD, I definitely encourage you to sign up here for their monthly newsletter.

In response to the rapid rate of school resegregation and of course the Trump election, the school integration movement is growing rapidly and gaining a larger audience. NCSD is a driving force in the movement, with inspiring individuals and organizations who have been leading this fight for decades. I’m excited and honored to be a part of it.  

NCSD Member Organizations

• NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Poverty & Race Research Action Council
• Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
• Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
• Magnet Schools of America
• One Nation Indivisible
• Southern Poverty Law Center
• Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School
• Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA
• Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University
• University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights
• Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University
• Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley
• Education Rights Center, Howard University School of Law
• Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School
• Education Law Center
• New York Appleseed
• Sheff Movement Coalition
• Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation
• ERASE Racism
• Chicago Lawyers’ Committee
• Empire Justice Center
• IntegrateNYC
• Intercultural Development Research Association
• Reimagining Integration: The Diverse and Equitable Schools Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Institute for Social Progress at Wayne County Community College District
• Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School
• Equity Assistance Center (Region II) at Touro College
• IntegratedSchools.org
• The Office of Transformation and Innovation at the Dallas Independent School District
• Live Baltimore
• Maryland Equity Project
• Center for Education and Civil Rights
• National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector
• The Center for Diversity and Equality in Education at Rutgers University
• Being Black at School
• UnifiEd
• The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy
• Public Advocacy for Kids
• The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools
• Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children
• The School Desegregation Notebook
• Temperament, Affect, and Behavior in Schools (TABS) Lab
• Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc.