On May 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division issued a fact sheet highlighting examples of the Division's recent work to protect students and combat segregation and race-based discrimination in schools. The Civil Rights Division has worked for decades to ensure equal educational opportunities for all of America's…

America's schools are more segregated today than they were three decades ago. After initial progress in the wake of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education"--further bolstered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as by several other rulings by the court--the nation's schools began a process of resegregation in…

Historically, students with disabilities experience less in-school preparation and postschool success compared with their peers without disabilities. U.S. federal legislation has evolved in an effort to promote successful in-school and postschool success for students with disabilities. Since 1990, legislation has emphasized the importance of…

This second brief of a three-part series explores the systemic underfunding of HBCUs in Maryland, and their attempts to correct these challenges, first through the courts and then through legislation. Maryland was one of the first states to reach such a monumental agreement in the sustainability of HBCUs. The first brief explored the national…

In 1974, the Education for all Handicapped Protection Act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford. This law which was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, established a federal entitlement to special education for eligible students with disabilities. In 1982 and again in 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court…

In the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are said to usher in the end of the world. That is why, in 1964, Judge Ben Cameron gave four of his fellow judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit the derisive nickname "the Fifth Circuit Four"--because they were ending the segregationist world of the Deep…

In 1969, four years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, African Americans in Greene County, Alabama, reclaimed control of local government, becoming the first community in the South to do so since Reconstruction. A half century later, however, Greene County remains an impoverished and largely segregated area with poor educational outcomes,…

The advent of critical race theory (CRT) in legal scholarship changed the way in which legal scholars think about race and racism in at least three ways. First, CRT scholars argue that the problem of racial justice is fundamental to American law, whereas the previous generation of civil rights scholars saw racial justice as a problem of…

In early care and education (ECE), including early intervention and early childhood special education (EI/ECSE), professionals regularly express a love for the individualized nature of the work with children and families as a large reason why they enter this workforce. This article aims to provide ECE professionals supporting young children with…

Culturally and linguistically diverse families present schools with unique challenges related to eligibility and programming for special education. There has been a dearth in the literature for this population, especially from a legal standpoint. Existing literature has offered scarce information to address the legal rights and responsibilities of…

The last several years have seen renewed debate over the role that race plays in higher education--a debate over "affirmative action." The report first considers "affirmative action" in its original sense: the "mandatory" race-conscious measures that the federal courts have imposed on "de jure" segregated…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is the latest reauthorization of the country's premier K-12 education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Under ESSA state education agencies (SEAs), along with local education agencies (LEAs) and the communities they serve assume significant new responsibilities, ranging from the formulation of…

Under Federal law, State and local educational agencies (hereinafter "districts") are required to provide all children with equal access to public education at the elementary and secondary level. Thie Dear Colleague letter was written to remind school districts of the Federal obligation to provide equal educational opportunities to all…

The coupling of literacy and race emphasizes their historic and contemporaneous intersection in literacy research. In this article, I draw on my scholarship and use three counternarratives to articulate how literacy and race significantly influence access, equity, and freedom. First, I examine access within the sociohistoric context of African…

This paper is the Office for Civil Rights's (OCR's) "Annual Report to Congress" for fiscal years 2007 and 2008. This report details OCR's accomplishments in enforcing the civil rights laws under which OCR has been granted jurisdiction to address and remedy discrimination. These enforcement efforts include complaint investigation and resolution,…