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Selected Works

Derek W. Black

2011

Constitutional Law

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Segregated Poverty And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access To Middle Income Peers, Derek W. Black Aug 2011

Segregated Poverty And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access To Middle Income Peers, Derek W. Black

Derek W. Black

Concentrated poverty in public schools continues to be a leading determinate of the educational opportunities that minority students receive. Since the effective end of mandatory desegregation, advocates have lacked legal tools to address it. As an alternative, some advocates and scholars have attempted to incorporate the concerns of concentrated poverty and racial segregation into educational litigation under state constitutions, but these efforts have not taken hold. Thus, all that has remained for students in poor and minority schools is the hope that school finance litigation could direct sufficient resources to mitigate their plight. This Article offers a better solution. Rather …


The Rise And Fall Of Education Reform: Causal Gaps And The Pressure To Exploit Them, Derek Black Feb 2011

The Rise And Fall Of Education Reform: Causal Gaps And The Pressure To Exploit Them, Derek Black

Derek W. Black

The Article provides a unified explanation for the limits of education legal reform. The politics and interests involved in school desegregation, school finance, student disability litigation, and claims on behalf of English Language Learners differ, but each of these reform movements have been undermined or ended by the same inability to establish a precise causal connection between the educational policy or input in question and student outcomes. This Article indentifies the role these causal gaps have played at crucial times in each movement and how they have limited reform. The Article then reveals why these gaps arise, exploring inherent aspects …