PRRAC - Current Projects

National Coalition on School Diversity: Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Education Policy

PRRAC is participating in a new coalition that is pressing for a more significant commitment to racial and economic integration in U.S. Department of Education programs – in magnet schools, charter schools, through interdistrict transfers under No Child Left Behind, and in the new education funds set up under the 2009 economic stimulus legislation (Race to the Top and the Innovation Fund).

The National Coalition on School Diversity is a network of national civil rights organizations, university-based research institutes, local educational advocacy groups, and academic researchers seeking a greater commitment to racial and economic diversity in federal K-12 education policy and funding. Participating organizations are listed below.

Policy Guides and Advocacy

Issue Brief 1: Key Principles for ESEA Reauthorization (February 2010)

Issue Brief 2: Federally Funded Charter Schools Should Foster Diversity (March 2010)

Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Education Policy (December 2009)

Race to the Top: PRRAC and other coalition members submitted comments calling on USDOE to set aside some portion of this $4.3 billion new fund to support school integration (August 2009)

Investing in Innovation: We also submitted formal comments urging the department to explicitly promote the use of this multi-billion dollar fund to promote school integration and deconcentration of poverty (November 2009)

Memo from Professor Gary Orfield to Assistant Secretaries Russlyn Ali and Carmel Martin re "The Basic Importance of Magnet Schools and the Need for Federal Support" (August 2009)

Research Summaries

The Benefits of School Integration: Powerpoint presentations by Prof. Roslyn Mickelson

Research summary on the impacts of school poverty concentration

Gina Chirichigno, "Student Assignment After Seattle & Louisville" (from the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute’s March 2010 "Golden Opportunity Summit" on educational equity in the Boston public schools)

Participating organizations and individuals include (but are not limited to): the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, ACLU, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA, University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley School of Law, Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, Professor Derek Black of Howard University School of Law, Professor Kevin Welner at the University of Colorado, Professor John C. Brittain at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law, and others.
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Notes from the November 2009 National Conference

Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Education Policy: Conference Brochure Howard University School of Law, Nov. 13, 2009

Watch the two morning panels on CSPAN

Read detailed conference notes from our live blogger Justin Massa

A post-conference commentary from Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation

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