Education Law Commons^™

From Freedom Schools To Freedom: A New Vision Of Desegregation, Joseph Kim

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

I begin with Part I, where I hone in on the school integration movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. I start at Brown v. Board of Education. When asked about Brown, most if not all people associate it with the racial integration of segregated public schools and the demise of Plessy v. Ferguson’s separate-but-equal doctrine. However, importantly, I argue that racial integration was not necessarily required by Brown. Rather than mandating racial integration of segregated schools, Brown mandated desegregation of segregated schools. The distinction between “desegregation” and “racial integration” is an important one. While …

From 1957 To 2023: How The Supreme Court Prevented Little Rock Schools From Achieving The Ideal Of Desegregation, Nyssa Kruse

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Revisiting The “Tradition Of Local Control” In Public Education, Carter Brace

Michigan Law Review

In Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court declared “local control” the single most important tradition of public education. Milliken and other related cases developed this notion of a tradition, which has frustrated attempts to achieve equitable school funding and desegregation through federal courts. However, despite its significant impact on American education, most scholars have treated the “tradition of local control” as doctrinally insignificant. These scholars depict the tradition either as a policy preference with no formal legal meaning or as one principle among many that courts may use to determine equitable remedies. This Note argues that the Supreme Court …

Equality Opportunity And The Schoolhouse Gate, Derek Black, Michelle Adams

Faculty Publications

Public schools have generated some of the most far-reaching cases to come before the Supreme Court. They have involved nearly every major civil right and liberty found in the Bill of Rights. The cases are often reflections of larger societal ills and anxieties, from segregation and immigration to religion and civil discourse over war. In that respect, they go to the core of the nation’s values. Yet constitutional law scholars have largely ignored education law as a distinct area of study and importance.

Justin Driver’s book cures that shortcoming, offering a three-dimensional view of how the Court’s education law jurisprudence …

On Race, Teacher Activism, And The Right To Work: Historicizing The "Red For Ed" Movement In The American South, Jon N. Hale

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Latino Education In Texas: A History Of Systematic Recycling Discrimination, Albert H. Kauffman

Faculty Articles

All of Texas was once part of Mexico. Texas has never forgotten it. This is the historical basis for much of the Texas Latino population's struggle for equal educational opportunities. This article will discuss those struggles endured by the Latino population in their quest for equal educational opportunity from the time of Texas's entry into the Union in 1845 to present-with greater emphasis on the last half century. In each Section, I will briefly describe the history of discrimination against Mexican- Americans in that segment of education history and the relationship between the developments in that segment of education history …

“You Can't Afford To Flinch In The Face Of Duty”: Judge William Augustus Bootle And The Desegregation Of The University Of Georgia, Patrick Emery Longan

Articles

On January 6, 1961, United States District Judge William Augustus Bootle granted a permanent injunction that required the University of Georgia to admit its first two black students, Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne A. Hunter. The backlash began immediately. Newspaper editorials condemned the decision. The Governor of Georgia threatened to close the University. Students rioted. A man escaped from an insane asylum, armed himself and went looking for Charlayne Hunter at her dormitory. Judge Bootle received numerous critical letters, including some that were threatening. Yet Judge Bootle’s attitude was that he did no more than what his position as a …

Book Review: Courtrooms And Classrooms: A Legal History Of College Access, 1860-1960, Mark A. Addison

Journal of College Access

Issues of college access are increasingly met with resolutions within social and economic contexts. Models such as cost of production output, and race and socioeconomic-conscious strategies form the basis of such analyses (Jenkins & Rodriguez, 2013; Henriksen, 1995; Treager Huber, 2010; Schmidt, 2012). We can expect retooling and reinventing of such models with increasing college costs and changes in student demographics.

School Desegregation 2.0: What Is Required To Finally Integrate America's Public Schools, Jim Hilbert

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

School Desegregation 2.0: What Is Required To Finally Integrate America's Public Schools, Jim Hilbert

Faculty Scholarship

More than ten years have passed since the United States Supreme Court last addressed school desegregation. In its abbreviated tenure in the decades following Brown v. Board of Education, school desegregation was successful in many respects. Longstanding policies of state-sponsored educational apartheid eventually ended. A great many school buildings became more diverse. Countless students of color gained access to improved academic opportunities and better life outcomes. A consensus formed around the positive impacts that desegregation could have on both students of color and white students. When courts retreated from upholding desegregation policies, many communities developed their own voluntary plans, some …

Race, Rhetoric, And Judicial Opinions: Missouri As A Case Study, Brad Desnoyer, Anne Alexander

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Middle Class, Urban Schools And Choice, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Urban schools tend to be less attractive to middle-class parents than suburban schools; as a result, the public school system generates suburban sprawl.  This talk discusses both egalitarian and market-oriented means of making cities more attractive to parents.

A Jurisprudence Of Equality: The Fourteenth Amendment And School Desegregation, Stewart Graham

Akron Law Review

This paper will deal with the meaning of equality in legal discourse and the social context which underlies that meaning.

Equal Protection Challenges To The Use Of Racial Classifications To Promote Integrated Public Elementary And Secondary Student Enrollments, Kevin Brown

Akron Law Review

This essay is entitled Equal Protection Challenges to the Use of Racial Classifications to Promote Integrated Public Elementary and Secondary Student Enrollments. I delivered this essay as a speech in Akron, Ohio, at a conference titled “Education and the Constitution: Shaping Each Other and the Next Century” in March of 2000. The topic of this essay is particularly relevant for a conference with this title because it addresses one of the most significant issues in race and public education since the Supreme Court started America on the path of desegregation. Discussion of this topic in Akron, Ohio, is also particularly …

The Role Of The Judiciary In The European Union's (De)Segregation Of Roma Students, Lindsey M. Green

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—School Integration Reform—A Call For Desegregation Policies That Are More Than Skin Deep, Nikki L. Cox

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Untoward Consequences: The Ironic Legacy Of Keyes V. School District No. 1, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The Keyes case began with high hopes that desegregation would lead to educational equity for black and Latino students in the Denver Public Schools. The lawsuit made history by successfully using circumstantial evidence to establish intentional discrimination and bring court-ordered busing to a school system outside the South. In the intervening years, that initial success became laden with irony. Because Denver was a tri-ethnic community of whites, blacks, and Latinos, the litigation revealed the complexities of pursuing reform in a school district not defined by a history of black-white relations.

The courts had to decide whether Latinos would count as …

Middle Income Peers As Educational Resources And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

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 been slow to take 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 another solution. …

((Re)Considering Race In The Desegregation Of Higher Education, Maurice C. Daniels, Cameron V. Patterson

Georgia Law Review

This Essay examines the struggle to desegregate the
University of Georgia (UGA) in the context of the broader
strategies to defeat segregation in higher education. In
doing so, this Essay explores Horace T. Ward's struggle to
enroll in UGA School of Law in Ward v. Regents, the first
lawsuit in Georgia history to attempt to dismantle the
centuries-old practice of segregation at UGA. The Essay
then examines the Holmes v. Danner case, which led to the
admission of the first African-American students at UGA
and the dismantling of segregation statewide in Georgia's
public colleges and universities.
Building upon this backdrop, …

Middle-Income Peers As Educational Resources And The Constitutional Right To Equal Access, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

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 been slow to take 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 another solution. …

A New Era For Desegregation, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Minnie Liddell's Forty-Year Quest For Quality Public Education Remains A Dream Deferred, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article is a historic account of the hopes and dreams that a mother had for her children and her efforts to make those hopes and dreams come true. The mother, Minnie Liddell, never imagined, when she first became a mom in 1959, or years later after the birth of her fifth child, or even after she filed a lawsuit against a city school district, that she would become a pioneer and icon in the school desegregation history of St. Louis, Missouri. She really only wanted a quality public education for her children, for black children, for all children. This …

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 …

The Dream Of Equal Educational Opportunity Deferred, Giovanni Luciano Escobedo

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

After Unitary Status: Examining Voluntary Integration Strategies For Southern School Districts, Danielle R. Holley-Walker

Faculty Publications

This Article provides empirical data on student assignment plans that are currently being used by Southern school districts that have recently attained unitary status. As the facts of Parents Involved in Community Schools demonstrate, Southern school districts will likely continue to be at the forefront of the struggle over voluntary integration efforts. Many Southern school districts are being released from desegregation orders that allowed the district to use race-conscious remedies to address previous de jure racial segregation. Without those court orders, the school district is faced with a choice about whether to continue to make racial integration a priority and …

Examining Costs Of Diversity, Eboni S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

Although the Supreme Court struck down the voluntary race-based student-assignment plans employed in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. ] and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education as violative of the Equal Protection Clause, many school officials will seek refuge in Justice Kennedy's concurrence and continue their pursuit of racially diverse student bodies. This Article questions the wisdom of such a pursuit and urges school officials to pursue measures other than racial diversity to provide equal educational opportunities to minority students.

The Article begins with a discussion of the social, democratic, and educational benefits commonly …

A Narrow Path To Diversity: The Constitutionality Of Rezoning Plans And Strategic Site Selection Of Schools After Parents Involved, Steven T. Collis

Michigan Law Review

Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number 1 raised an important and timely constitutional issue: whether the Constitution permits K-12 public school districts not under existing desegregation orders to use site selection of new schools or rezoning plans to achieve racial diversity. Numerous scholars and journalists have interpreted Justice Kennedy's concurrence as explicitly answering the question in the affirmative. This Note argues that the opposite is true. Justice Kennedy's past jurisprudence, as well as his language in Parents Involved, favors the use of strict scrutiny. Indeed, in Parents Involved, Justice Kennedy …

The Uncertain Future Of School Desegregation And The Importance Of Goodwill, Good Sense, And A Misguided Decision, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

The article was part of a symposium on the jurisprudence of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. First, the article analyzed whether the Court’s decision in Parents Involved v. Seattle Schools was consistent with Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. The article concludes that Parents Involved narrowly construed the holding in Grutter and limited its effect. Second, the article assessed the practical import of the decision in Parents Involved. It found that the opinion made voluntary desegregation more difficult than it otherwise would be and, thus, would discourage many school districts from taking progressive action. Unfortunately, the article …

Judicial Decision-Making, Social Science Evidence, And Equal Educational Opportunity: Uneasy Relations And Uncertain Futures, Michael Heise

Seattle University Law Review

The full extent of what the Court decided in Grutter and Parents Involved remains in some dispute. What is far more certain is that both cases continue to stir deeply held passions that help frame public and legal debates about the Court and its role in affirmative action and school desegregation disputes. Amid these increasingly raucous debates, this Article expressly side steps the many questions (and controversies) about what the Court decided in those cases and seeks to escape from the frequently politically charged and volatile context of governmental uses of race. This Article instead focuses on how the Court …

Reflections On The Commemoration Of The 50th Anniversary Of The Crisis At Little Rock Central High School, Judge Wiley Branton Jr.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.