August 30, 2002
A Crucial Moment in the History
and Future
of Public Schooling in America
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The Resegregation of Southern Schools?
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On August 30, 2002 we held a conference
on the resegregation of southern schools in the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Co-sponsored by The Civil
Rights Project, The
Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina,
The
North Carolina Law Review, and The
Thurgood Marshall School of Law of Texas Southern University,
this conference brought together a remarkable group of thinkers
and activists with decades of experience in research, scholarship,
policymaking, and advocacy. Participants heard the latest about
the educational trends, the policy implications, and possible agendas
for public action.
Since the 1970s, no region of the United States has
experienced more widespread public school integration than the American
South. Broad racial desegregation in the South has been accompanied
by a host of beneficial social and economic changes: substantial
in-migration from other regions; increased housing integration;
robust economic growth, especially in metropolitan centers; and
greater progress than in any region toward the goal of closing the
nation's black-white academic achievement gap.
Yet in the year 2002, even as the nation becomes ever
more racially and ethnically diverse, it seems realistic to predict
that, within the coming decade, most Southern schools may rapidly
resegregate-by race and by socioeconomic class. Legal and social
forces not fully understood are impelling these prospective changes,
yet neither the root causes nor their vast social and political
consequences have been adequately explored by scholars, public policy
makers, or educational advocates.
Although school desegregation was a central focus
at this conference, we did not limit discussion to the effects of
"unitary status" findings alone, i.e., the termination
of court-supervised desegregation plans. We also reflected on the
potential of the nationwide push for school accountability, and
the decades-long fight for school resource reform, on the future
of integrated public schooling.
Commissioned
research for this conference totalled 17 papers and included
topics ranging from standardized testing, integrated neighborhoods,
school diversity, school governance, court decisions, teacher quality,
and more.
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The Resegregation of Southern Schools?
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Speakers for this event included:
John Charles Boger
is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina School
of Law, and is the deputy director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights.
Professor Boger, a former assistant counsel with the NAACP Legal
Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., has represented parties and
amici in various school resource/finance cases in Connecticut and
North Carolina.
John Brittain is former
dean of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law of Texas Southern University.
A civil rights attorney renown for winning school desegregation
decrees in Mississippi and crafting the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit
in Connecticut, Brittain has written widely as a scholar on civil
rights issues, served as national President of the National Lawyers'
Guild and undertaken human rights investigations in Haiti, Northern
Ireland, Nicaragua, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Julius Chambers is
director of The UNC Center for Civil Rights. Chambers built the
nation's premier civil rights firm in the 1960s and 1970s and successfully
litigated Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg and dozens of other Southern
school desegregation cases. Chambers has also served as director-counsel
of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and as
chancellor of North Carolina Central University.
Erwin Chemerinsky is
the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics
and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law
School. He is a one of the nation's leading constitutional scholars
and a frequent author on constitutional topics including a definitive
treatise, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies.
Charles T. Clotfelter
is the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies at the
Duke University. He is also the director of the Center for the Study
of Philanthropy & Voluntarism, and a research associate with
the National Bureau of Economic Research. Clotfelter has written
two books and many articles on issues of educational policy, including
research on the public schools & race.
Christopher Edley, Jr.
is a professor at the Harvard Law School and a co-director of The
Civil Rights Project at Harvard. He served as assistant director
of the White House Domestic Policy Staff in the Carter Administration,
and as special counsel to the President and director of the White
House Review of Affirmative Action in the Clinton Administration.
Erica Frankenberg is
a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. She
wrote her honors thesis at Darmouth College in 2001 on the end of
court-mandate desegregation in Mobile, Alabama. She received her
masters in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education
and is currently examining the relationship between residential
and school segregation.
Ellen Goldring is a
professor of education policy and leadership at Peabody College,
Vanderbilt University. She conducts research on the organization
and governance of schools and studies access and equity in public
school choice. She is the co-author of Magnet Schools and the Pursuit
of Equity, which focuses on questions of equity and community in
urban school districts with extensive magnet school plans. Her other
scholarly work focuses on the changing role of school leaders as
the organizational contexts for schools become more complex and
varied.
Helen F. Ladd is a
professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University
and former director of Duke's Sanford Institute of Public Policy.
Much of her current research focuses on education policy. From 1996-99
she co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Education
Finance. She is the editor of Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based
Reform in Education and co-editor of Making Money Matter: Financing
America's Schools.
Luis Laosa is a principal
research scientist emeritus in the Center for Education Policy and
Research at the Educational Testing Service in Princenton, N.J.
Dr. Laosa's research includes such areas as children's intellectual
learning and psychological development, and cross-cultural research.
He is a prolific author and has been involved in numerous organizations
dedicated to child development.
James Liebman is the
Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Professor
Liebman has written widely on school integration, and is currently
co-directing a national project to assess school accountability
techniques. As an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, Liebman served as a lead counsel in the Kansas
City, Missouri desegregation litigation.
Roslyn A. Mickelson
is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina
at Charlotte. Her recent articles include: "Subverting Swann:
First- and Second-Generation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools"
and "The Effects of Segregation on African American High School
Seniors' Academic Achievement". Michelson also served an expert
witness in the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school case.
Gary Orfield is a professor
of education and social policy at the Harvard School of Education
and the Kennedy School of Government. Professor Orfield is co-director
of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, and has, for
more than 30 years, been a leading expert on desegregation in public
education. He is co-editor of many books and studies including Dismantling
Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education.
Wendy Parker is a professor
of law at the University of Cincinnati School of Law. Professor
Parker worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of
Justice and has published several articles on education including
her two articles: The Color of Choice: Race and Charter Schools
and The Future of School Desegregation.
john a. powell is the
founder and executive director of the Institute on Race and Poverty,
and the Earl R. Larson Chair of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
at the University of Minnesota Law School. The former national legal
director of the American Civil Liberties Union, powell is a nationally
recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties
and issues relating to the intersections of race and poverty and
how they affect U.S. society. He speaks throughout the country on
related issues, including the benefits of regionalism, urban problems
associated with sprawl, the negative effects of concentrated poverty,
and the connections between housing segregation and segregation
in education.
Sean F. Reardon is
assistant professor of Education and Sociology and a faculty associate
at the Population Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University.
His scholarly research and teaching interests include the sociology
of education, the causes and effects of residential and school segregation,
and the sociology of adolescence. He is currently a William T. Grant
Faculty Scholar and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation
postdoctoral fellow.
Russell W. Rumberger
is a professor of education at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. He has published widely on education issues, with recent
research focused on school dropouts, school mobility and educational
underachievement of minority students. His recent works include
Student Mobility and the Increased Risk of High School Drop Out
and The Distribution of Dropout and Turnover Rates among Urban and
Suburban High Schools.
James E. Ryan is an
associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law
and will be a visiting professor at Yale Law School in 2002-03.
He has written extensively on education and school desegregation,
including: The Supreme Court and Public Schools; The Influence of
Race in School Finance Reform; Schools, Race, and Money; and Sheff,
Segregation, and School Finance Litigation.
Bejamin Scafidi is
an assistant professor of economics and public administration /
urban studies in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia
State University. He has recently served on the staff of the Governor's
Education Reform Study Commission for the state of Georgia. His
research interests include education and urban policy.
William L. Taylor is
acting chair of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights. Long involved
as a lawyer in school desegregation cases - from the Little Rock
Central High School case in the 1950s to the broad desegregation
efforts in St. Louis and Wilmington, Del. - Taylor has also taught
law at Catholic University and Stanford University, and is the former
staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He currently
practices law in Washington, D.C., and is an adjunct professor of
law at Georgetown Law School.
Amy Stuart Wells is
a professor of sociology and education at the Teachers College/Columbia
University. Her research and teaching interests include the sociology
of education and critical qualitative policy analysis. Of special
interest are educational policy issues pertaining to the politics
of race and culture, including school desegregation, school choice,
and detracking in racially mixed schools.
John T. Yun is a research
assistant at The Civil Rights Project. He is a doctoral candidate
in education policy research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
His research focuses on issues of economic equity in education,
specifically patterns of school segregation, educational differences
between private and public schools, and the effect of high stakes
testing and funding on educational outcomes.
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WELCOME AND PURPOSE
Gene R. Nichol, Dean, University of North Carolina
School of Law
Julius Chambers, Director, UNC Center for Civil Rights
Gary Orfield, Co-Director, The Civil Rights Project
PANEL ONE: Do Southern Schools Face Rapid Resegregation?
An Overview of Demographic and Legal Trends
Moderator: Gary Orfield,
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Trends in Public School Segregation in the South,
1987-2000
John T. Yun, Harvard University (with Sean F. Reardon, Pennsylvania
State University)
Texas Public Schools: Within-School Ethnic/Racial,
Socioeconomic, and
Linguistic Mix of Students and Academic Performance
Luis M. Laosa, Educational Testing Service
Legal Overview
Dennis Parker, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc
PANEL TWO: North Carolina as a Bellwether
for Other Southern States
Moderator: John Charles
Boger, University of North Carolina
School of Law
Segregation and Resegregation in North Carolina's
Public School Classrooms
Charles T. Clotfelter (with Helen F. Ladd & Jacob L. Vigdor),
Duke University
Education's 'Perfect Storm?' Racial Resegregation,
'High Stakes' Testing, & School Inequities: The Case of North
Carolina
John Charles Boger, University of North Carolina School of Law
Comment: Stephen
Smith, Winthrop University
THIRD PANEL: Does Racial or Class Segregation
Adversely Affect Academic Achievement or School Quality?
Moderator:
Christopher Edley, Jr., Harvard Law School
The Impact of Student Composition on Academic
Achievement in Southern High Schools
Russell W. Rumberger (with Gregory J. Palardy), The University
of California, Santa Barbara
Racial Segregation in Georgia Public Schools,
1994-2001: Trends, Causes, and Impact on Teacher Quality
Benjamin Scafidi (with Catherine Freeman & David L. Sjoquist),
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University
The Academic Consequences of Desegregation
and Segregation: Evidence from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Shifting from Court-Ordered to Court-Ended Desegregation
in Nashville: Student Assignment and Teacher Resources
Ellen B. Goldring (with Claire Smrekar), Vanderbilt University
Comment: Ann Majestic, Tharrington
Smith; Raleigh, North Carolina
WORKING LUNCH
Remarks:
Gene R. Nichol, Dean, University of North Carolina School of Law
James C. Moeser, Chancellor, University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
Christopher Edley, Jr., Harvard Law School
Special Address:
Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent, National Public Radio
CONCURRENT FOURTH PANEL (A): What Role
Should Courts Play in Influencing Educational Policy?
Moderator: John Brittain,
Former Dean, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University
Court Must Share the Blame for the Failure to
Desegregate Public Schools
Erwin Chemerinsky, University of Southern California Law School
Reconsidering the Role of District Court Judges
in School Desegregation
Wendy Parker, University of Cincinnati College of Law
The Limited Influence of Social Science Evidence
in Modern Desegregation Cases
James E. Ryan, University of Virginia School of Law
Comment: James E.
Ferguson, Jr. Ferguson, Stein, Chambers; Charlotte, North Carolina
CONCURRENT FOURTH PANEL (B): What Are the
Likely Impacts of the Accountability Movement on Minority Children?
Moderator: Gary
Orfield, Harvard Graduate School of Education
The Effect of the Standards and Accountability
Movement on Parents
Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia (with Jennifer Jellison
Holme, University of California at Los Angeles)
Towards Desegregating Education
James S. Liebman (with Charles F. Sabel), Columbia University
School of Law
High-Stakes Testing in a Changing Environment:
Disparate Impact, Opportunity to Learn, and Current Legal Protections
Jay P. Heubert, Teachers College, Columbia University
Using Title I to Compel States to Provide Equal
Educational Opportunities
William L. Taylor, Acting Chair, Citizens Commission on Civil
Rights
FIFTH PANEL: Does "Private Choice"
Pose a Threat to Public Education? Southern Residential Patterns
and Private Schools
Moderator: James
H. Johnson, Jr., University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business
School
Relationships Between Residential and School
Segregation in the South, 1990-2000
Sean Reardon, Pennsylvania State University (with John T. Yun,
Harvard University)
The Impact of School Segregation on Residential Housing Patterns:
Mobile, AL and Charlotte, NC
Erica Frankenberg, Teachers College, Columbia University
The Role of Private Schools in Southern School
Segregation
Charles T. Clotfelter, Duke University
Comment: Anita Brown-Graham,
University of North Carolina School of Government
FINAL PANEL: What Strategies Offer the
Best Hope for Equal Educational Opportunities?
Moderators: John
Charles Boger, UNC Center for Civil Rights
Christopher Edley, Jr & Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project
at Harvard University
An "Integrated" Theory of Integrated
Education
john a. powell, University of Minnesota Law School
Comment: Arthur Griffin,
Chair, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Audience Participation and Discussion
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