This research applies critical race theory to investigate Michigan's system for funding public schools, focusing on structural racism and discrimination embedded in education finance laws, housing policies, and residential and educational segregation. We find that the average Black student receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) receives $411…

The Honorable Judge Nathaniel Jones litigated the "Milliken v. Bradley I" case before the U.S. District Court and Supreme Court in 1971 and 1974. Nathaniel Jones was born May 12, 1926 in Youngstown, Ohio, and served as the general counsel for the NAACP from 1969-1979. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated Nathaniel Jones to the U.S.…

Popular understandings of segregation often emphasize the Jim Crow South before the 1954 "Brown" decision and, in many instances, explain continued segregation in schooling as the result of segregated housing patterns. The case of Flint, Michigan, complicates these views, at once illustrating the depth of governmental commitment to…

In this age of real and fake news, students need to be able to assess the trustworthiness of evidence. The authors' current research examines students' use of evidence in secondary social studies classrooms as students deliberate contemporary public policy issues. The authors found that students shifted their evaluations of the trustworthiness of…

Background/Context: "Milliken v. Bradley" (1974) ("Milliken I") is a pivotal Supreme Court case that halted a metropolitan school desegregation remedy between Detroit and 53 surrounding suburban school districts. In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, the "Milliken" ruling was a significant retraction from the landmark…

Background/Context: In "Milliken v. Bradley" (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan in Detroit that sought to achieve racial balance in part by busing white suburban students to the city's majority black schools. In a stark departure from "Brown v. Board of Education of…

Background/Context: This article employs critical policy analysis as it examines the historical underpinnings of racialized policy discrimination in Detroit. It considers histories, discourses, and oppressive structures as it seeks to understand how policies have been and currently are implemented by Whites in predominantly Black urban areas.…

Background: This article examines the contemporary implications of the "Milliken v. Bradley" (1974) decision for educational inequality between school districts in U.S. metropolitan areas. We focus upon four metropolitan areas that were highly segregated in the 1970s but which met different fates in court: We first examine Detroit and…

The public schools in Flint (Michigan) offer a good example of how magnet schools can help desegregate a school system effectively and voluntarily. (Author)

During 1968 the board of education of Kalamazoo, Michigan appointed a committee on desegregation and charged the group with developing a master plan with target dates for desegregating all levels of the public school system. The committee recommended a detailed three page program that was to lead to total desegregation of local schools by…

This timeline reflects some of the most significant legal and legislative milestones that have influenced higher education almost as long as Black Issues In Higher Education has been in print. The ongoing legal battles have primarily involved the further desegregation of schools and the use of race and gender in scholarships and university…

An important component of the school desegregation methods of Lansing, Michigan, was the Cluster Plan, which is described and evaluated in this article. (Author/AM)

Discusses a case which attempts to address the problems of city-suburban segregation: its significance lies in the uniqueness of the remedy applied to Detroit and in the high probability that this type of remedy, if applicable, would be applicable to other metropolitan areas. (Author/JM)

The Flint public school system, Michigan's second largest, has adopted an aggressive magnet school plan but the project has fallen short of ending segregation in the city's classrooms. (Author/AM)

Presents major portions of U.S. District Court Judge Fox's ruling in the Oliver case against the Kalamazoo School Board and the Michigan State Department of Education, among others; the former had voted on July 6, 1971 to abandon an integration plan adopted May 7, 1971. (JM)