Law Commons^™

House Bill 3: An Iou Texas Public Schools And Communities Of Color Cannot Afford, Candace L. Castillo

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

A history of school finance litigation and legislation shows there are inherent and structural problems in Texas’s education finance system. Like many government and social structures, the Texas school finance system is built to benefit school districts that have greater access to wealth to begin with and creates inequalities between rich and poor populations as well as between people of color and Caucasians. House Bill 3 went into effect in 2019 and promises improvements to “recapture” calculations, increases in certain allotments, as well as salary increases for some Texas teachers. Some changes to education finance were sorely needed such as …

The Right To Be And Become: Black Home-Educators As Child Privacy Protectors, Najarian R. Peters

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The right to privacy is one of the most fundamental rights in American jurisprudence. In 1890, Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis conceptualized the right to privacy as the right to be let alone and inspired privacy jurisprudence that tracked their initial description. Warren and Brandeis conceptualized further that this right was not exclusively meant to protect one’s body or physical property. Privacy rights were protective of “the products and the processes of the mind” and the “inviolate personality.” Privacy was further understood to protect the ability to “live one’s life as one chooses, free from assault, intrusion or …

Mainstreaming Equality In Federal Budgeting: Addressing Educational Inequities With Regard To The States, Elizabeth K. Hinson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Great Society reformers targeted poverty as the defining characteristic for a novel federal education policy in the United States in 1965. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reincarnated within the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, distributes financial aid to disadvantaged students within public schools solely based upon students’ socioeconomic status. This Article does not dispute that financial resources improve student outcomes, but this Article argues that Title I’s funding formula is ineffective, and a new funding scheme – specifically, a mainstreaming equality funding scheme – must replace it. The implementation of this funding scheme …

"Law Is Coercion": Revisiting Judicial Power To Provide Equality In Public Education, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is an attempt to start a conversation about where we find ourselves in the plight to help our most challenged public schools. It is not intended to be a comprehensive solution to the problem, but rather a hard look at how, after decades of many efforts, we are further away from the equal education contemplated by the United States Supreme Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This article does not desire to simply cast blame for the failures of our children, but to send a reminder that, as Frederick Douglass would say, we can hardly …

Intra-Group Diversity In Education: What If Abigail Fisher Were An Immigrant . . ., Dagmar Rita Myslinska

Pace Law Review

In Part I, this Article briefly describes some aspects of white immigrants’ educational experience (including extracurricular involvement and parental roles), exposing how it reflects immigrants’ lack of access to the cultural capital of native-born whites. The Article exposes some unique challenges faced by Caucasian immigrants in high school, during the college application process, and in taking advantage of college opportunities that amplify social benefits. These experiences are contrasted with those of American-born students who benefit from their families’ access to social capital that enables them to take advantage of its replication in college.

Part II addresses how some of the …

Place, Not Race: Affirmative Action And The Geography Of Educational Opportunity, Sheryll Cashin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ultimately, I argue that one important response to the demise of race-based affirmative action should be to incorporate the experience of segregation into diversity strategies. A college applicant who has thrived despite exposure to poverty in his school or neighborhood deserves special consideration. Those blessed to come of age in poverty-free havens do not. I conclude that use of place, rather than race, in diversity programming will better approximate the structural disadvantages many children of color actually endure, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. While I propose substituting …

The 'Compelling Government Interest' In School Diversity: Rebuilding The Case For An Affirmative Government Role, Philip Tegeler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

How far does Justice Kennedy’s “moral and ethical obligation” to avoid racial isolation extend? Does the obligation flow primarily from Supreme Court case law, does it derive from an evolving consensus in the social sciences, or does it also have a statutory basis in Title VI and other federal law? In addition to its value as a justification for non-individualized, race-conscious remedial efforts by state and local governments, does the compelling interest identified in Parents Involved also suggest an affirmative duty on the part of the federal government? And if so, how far does this affirmative duty extend, and how …

Opt-Out Education: School Choice As Racial Subordination, Osamudia R. James

Articles

Despite failure to improve academic outcomes or close the achievement gap, school-choice policies, advanced by education legislation and doctrine, have come to dominate public discourse on public education reform in the United States, with students of color disproportionately enrolling in voucher programs and charter schools. This Article moves past the typical market-based critiques of school choice to analyze the particularly racialized constraints on choice for marginalized students and their families in the public school system. The Article unpacks the blame-placing that occurs when the individualism and independence that school choice and choice rhetoric promote fail to improve academic outcomes, and …

Leveling Localism And Racial Inequality In Education Through The No Child Left Behind Act Public Choice Provision, Erika K. Wilson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

School district boundary lines play a pivotal role in shaping students' educational opportunities. Living on one side of a school district boundary rather than another can mean the difference between being able to attend a high-achieving resource-enriched school or having to attend a low-achieving resource-deprived school. Despite the prominent role that school district boundary lines play in dictating educational opportunities for students, remedies formulated by the federal judiciary-the institution frequently looked upon to address issues of school segregation and inequality-are ineffective in ameliorating disparities between school districts. They are ineffective because the federal judiciary evidences a doctrinal preference for localism …

Race And Education: The Future Of Desegregation In The United States, Gregory Coleman Jr.

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

From Pedagogical Sociology To Constitutional Adjudication: The Meaning Of Desegregation In Social Science Research And Law, Anne Richardson Oakes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the United States following the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) federal judges with responsibility for public school desegregation but no expertise in education or schools management appointed experts from the social sciences to act as court advisors. In Boston, MA, educational sociologists helped Judge W. Arthur Garrity design a plan with educational enhancement at its heart, but the educational outcomes were marginalized by a desegregation jurisprudence conceptualized in terms of race rather than education. This Article explores the frustration of outcomes in Boston by reference to the differing conceptualizations of desegregation in law and social science. …

(Still) Constitutional School De-Segregation Strategies: Teaching Racial Literacy To Secondary School Students And Preferencing Racially-Literate Applicants To Higher Education, Michael J. Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, the Supreme Court declared that it will continue to scrutinize race-conscious educational decisions to insure that they are narrowly-tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. This Article develops a strategy for enhancing racial diversity at all levels of American public education that can survive that rigorous constitutional scrutiny. The Article shows that school districts may prove that assigning a meaningful number of racially diverse students to their secondary schools is narrowly-tailored to achieve their compelling educational interest in teaching racial literacy. The constitutionality of this race-conscious educational …

Reading, Writing, And Reparations: Systemic Reform Of Public Schools As A Matter Of Justice, Verna L. Williams

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes Virginia's effort to remedy massive resistance and posits that, under reparations theory, a broader remedy is necessary to redress the scope of the state's wrongdoing. To do this, Part I briefly examines reparations theory, which provides the tools to identify the proper scope of the injury to be addressed, and, in turn, informs the proper choice of remedy. With this background, Part II discusses the Brown Fund Act and the massive resistance it seeks to remedy. In this connection, the Article demonstrates that the school shutdowns were part of a statewide decision to defy Brown and maintain …

Urban Legends, Desegregation And School Finance: Did Kansas City Really Prove That Money Doesn't Matter?, Preston C. Green Iii, Bruce D. Baker

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines whether conservative critics are correct in their assertion that the Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) desegregation plan clearly establishes that no correlation exists between funding and academic outcomes. The first section provides a summary of public education in KCMSD prior to 1977, the beginning of the Missouri v. Jenkins school desegregation litigation. The second and third sections analyze whether the Jenkins desegregation and concurrent school finance litigation (Committee for Educational Equality v. State) addressed these problems. The fourth section provides an overview of school finance litigation and explains how KCMSD desegregation plan has been …

A History Of Hollow Promises: How Choice Juisprudence Fails To Achieve Educational Equality, Anita F. Hill

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article combines analysis of case law at state and federal levels as well as federal educational policy in an effort to formulate a framework for addressing educational inequalities, of which the achievement gap is only one result. As individual rights concepts control the discourse of equal educational opportunity, community injury continues to be ignored. Because educational policy aimed at ending educational inequities is governed by equal protection analysis and guided by court decisions, limitations in legal opinions drive such policies. The lack of attention to community harm in law and educational policy limits the ability of education legal reforms …

Challenging The Bounds Of Education Litigation: Castaneda V. Regents And Daniel V. California, Alan E. Schoenfeld

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Note argues that by combining the normative suasion of educational finance litigation with the political imperatives manifested in affirmative action law and practice, those who seek to improve the quality of secondary education and expand access to higher education would likely effect greater change than they would working independently. Under the appropriate political and legal circumstances, access to public higher education ought to be treated as something akin to a fundamental right, the unequal distribution of which constitutes a violation of equal protection for students of color and for economically disadvantaged students. Using the Castaneda and Daniel lawsuits to …

Locked In Inequality: The Persistence Of Discrimination, Daria Roithmayr

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, the author argues that the practice of charging school fees to attend public school is an example of locked-in discrimination that persists over time, even in the absence of intentional discrimination. Exploring the lock-in model of discrimination in the unique context of South Africa, Roithmayr makes two central points. First, discriminatory practices often become locked into institutional structures because high switching costs-the costs of moving from a discriminatory practice to an inclusive one—make it too difficult for an institution to discontinue discriminating. Even when institutional actors are fully committed to eradicating racial disparity, they may be constrained …

Foreword, Separate But Unequal: The Status Of America's Public Schools, James Foreman Jr.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Symposium, convened by the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, was designed to address many of the issues raised by Donny Gonzalez, a student at a Washington, D.C. high school, on the subject of poverty and race and its effects on school-aged youth. Bringing together a diverse group of speakers and attracting a broad cross-section of the university and Ann Arbor communities, the Separate but Unequal Symposium addressed a range of issues, including: the ongoing relevance of integration, the role of charter schools and other alternative programs, and promising strategies for achieving greater educational equality. A theme linking …

"I'M Usually The Only Black In My Class": The Human And Social Costs Of Within-School Segregation, Carla O'Connor

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The work that has focused on within-school segregation has been most concerned with how this phenomenon limits the educational opportunities and might incur a psychological toll on the mass of Black students who find themselves relegated to lower-ability classrooms in integrated schools. This Article, however, allows us to begin to examine the other side of the coin. It reports on how within-school segregation practices create psychological, social, and educational pressures for those few Black students who have escaped enrollment in the least rigorous courses in their school. More precisely, the Article offers insight into how high achieving Black students in …

Separate But Unequal: The Status Of America's Public Schools, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Transcript of the symposium, which took place at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday, February 9, 2002 in Hutchins Hall.

Putting Black Kids Into A Trick Bag: Anatomizing The Inner-City Public School Reform, Wilbur C. Rich

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I of this Article discusses the history of Brown, and the legal and political barriers that prevented the nation from fulfilling Brown's promise. Part II, will examine the phenomenon of White flight, which resulted from the efforts to implement the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. The political and economic effects of White flight on school reform efforts will also be examined. Part III will provide the reader with possible explanations for why school desegregation failed. The author will argue that the unexpected complexity of the task of desegregation, the lack of a unified direction among the judiciary, and …

Conscious Use Of Race As A Voluntary Means To Educational Ends In Elementary And Secondary Education: A Legal Argument Derived From Recent Judicial Decisions, Julie F. Mead

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the ten recent court decisions concerning race-based student selection processes. As these cases will illustrate, school districts face increasing demands to justify any race-conscious selection process. The significance of meeting the demands and the implications for what appears to be an evolving legal theory is national in scope and broad in application. Some have even argued that some of these cases mark a departure away from the Court's thinking in Brown v. the Board of Education. It should also be noted that each of the cases mentioned above occurred in the context …

The Children Left Behind: How Zero Tolerance Impacts Our Most Vulnerable Youth, Ruth Zweifler, Julia De Beers

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Michigan Journal of Race & Law Symposium, February 8th and 9th, 2002, at the University of Michigan examined the issue: Separate but Unequal: The Status of America's Public Schools. In the past, children of color were expressly denied an equal education on the basis of their race. Today's policies deny many children of color access to educational programs and supports, for reasons that are neutral on their face, with devastating consequences to the students, their families and their communities. The following article explores the concerns and experiences of a public service agency with the growing application of "Zero Tolerance" …

The Naacp's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, Robert L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 by Mark Tushnet

When Honesty Is "Simply…Impractical" For The Supreme Court: How The Constitution Came To Require Busing For School Racial Balance, Lino A. Graglia

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court by Bernard Schwartz

Beyond Busing: Inside The Challenge To Urban Segregation, Lawrence T. Gresser

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Beyond Busing: Inside the Challenge to Urban Segregation by Paul R. Dimond

The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy And School Desegregation, Mary Jo Newborn

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation by Jennifer L. Hochschild

The Burden Of Brown: Thirty Years Of School Desegregation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation by Raymond Wolters

Just Schools: The Idea Of Racial Equality In American Education, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Just Schools: The Idea of Racial Equality in American Education by David L. Kirp

The Limits Of Litigation: Putting The Education Back Into Brown V. Board Of Education, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation edited by Derrick Bell