Every time I read about “Moms for Liberty,” I think about Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s fantastic book, whose title – “Mothers of Massive Resistance” – would be a more accurate name for the organization that has quickly become a driving force in book banning and censorship efforts. And, especially during Banned Books Week this week, I’ve…
50 years ago last week, Black children on school buses hid under seats to avoid broken glass. White mobs in South Boston and Charlestown held signs that said “Whites have rights” and “Stop forced busing.” A half century since Boston’s first day of school in 1974, we still struggle to talk about it, though there…
I grew up in a town with a liberal reputation and an overwhelmingly white k-12 school district, where racism was an animating feature of everything from zoning laws to playground “jokes.” There are obviously many places like this, and, as you know, these places typically aren’t considered to be “segregated schools” in need of political…
As part of a collaboration between SD Notebook and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), this post is reproduced from the most recent issue of PRRAC’s “Poverty & Race” journal, which focuses on the relationship between school finance and segregation. And, it’s great. I highly recommend reading the articles themselves and/or tuning into…
Glenn Youngkin was in the news a lot last week. It wasn’t great. And, while this post won’t attempt a summary of what he knew and didn’t know, said and didn’t say about the prayerful salute to a Jan 6 flag at one of his rallies, it did feel like a good reason to revisit…
After long decades of silence or backsliding, state legislatures are newly beginning to think about policy solutions to contemporary school segregation. A bill in North Carolina, for example, would require public reporting on levels of segregation at each school, and my home state of Massachusetts is considering a bill that would establish a grant program…
When I started this series, it was before police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, before they tossed water to a white supremacist who had just murdered two protesters. That was only one week ago, but it already feels like forever-ago or, more accurately, feels like a version of this has been happening…
In part 1, posted last week, Matt Kautz looked at the origins of school policing in Boston: as students peacefully protested conditions in the city’s segregated schools, their dissent was criminalized. That post details efforts by the Boston School Committee, led by Louise Day Hicks, to frame student protest as dangerous, leading to police presence…
In the discussion about policing following George Floyd’s murder, we’ve learned (or been reminded) that contemporary policing has its roots in the slave patrols of the early 1800’s. It turns out there’s a sort of analogy with schools: instead of maintaining safety, school policing likewise began as an effort to criminalize people of color who…
I’ve been aching to write something about the virus, quarantine and racial justice in education. It’s been tough, though. It’s tough to find a unique way into an issue that has clearly important, yet well-covered headlines- stories about things like racial disparities in access to online learning or about how school closures have raised even…
School Diversity Notebook 