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…
Note: This is the first of a 2-part series. Part 2 can be found here. The school integration community received a jolt last week when “busing” and voluntary school integration unexpectedly took center stage at the Democratic primary. I’m sure that readers of this blog are familiar with the exchange between Kamala Harris and Joe…
In a previous post, I summarized key points from the Brown@65 conference hosted by the Center for Education & Civil Rights and the Africana Research Center at Penn State. This post focuses on the riveting keynote from Nikole Hannah-Jones. As regular blog readers know, I write about her often, given her central role in the…
Shortly after starting my job at the Center for Education and Civil Rights, I learned about a unique art exhibit that was set to be installed at Penn State as part of a national tour. The exhibit is called “Still Separate – Still Unequal,” co-curated with Larry Ossei-Mensah, and it is the second part of…
May 17th will mark 65 years since the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. It’s a key moment in the year for the school integration movement, a time to reflect (often on the pace of resegregation or the unfulfilled promises of Brown) and a time that many groups use for conversation…
School Diversity Notebook 