In a context that privileges neighborhood zoning and school choice over within-district busing, we examine urban residents' perceptions of the benefits of racial diversity. We analyze public opinion trends by race and residents' experience as a student in a district under court-ordered desegregation--Nashville, TN. We find racial differences…

By the year 2045, demographers project that the United States will become a minority-majority nation--and in our elementary schools, this shift is already playing out. With these demographic changes also comes shifts and segregation in our neighborhoods--the compositions of public schools are strongly linked to individual housing choices, and…

In this historical examination, Amato Nocera, Kyle P. Steele, and John Hensley argue that the development of Black rural high schools in the decades leading up to the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision represented the dynamic between standardization, white supremacy, and Black self-definition that has shaped US education reform.…

Background/Context: To adapt to increasingly diverse classrooms, some school districts are trying to offer additional curriculum that represents the diversity of their students. California, where half of school-age children are Latinx, is at the forefront of including Latinx histories in its curriculum. The state's 2017 California History-Social…

Ten years ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down two local school board initiatives meant to reverse extreme racial segregation in public schools. The sharply divided 5-4 decision in "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District" marked the end of an era of efforts by local authorities to fulfill the promise…

The longstanding overrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) students in United States K-12 exclusionary school discipline outcomes (i.e., suspension, expulsions, referrals to law enforcement and arrests) underscores the unrecognized concept that school discipline disparities are a purported outcome--rather than a…

Whereas increased scholarly attention is focusing on contemporary school closings, noticeably absent is the placement of this scholarship within the historical context of Black people's social experiences. This paradigm shift would reveal a much longer history that has had devastating consequences for Black people. In this article, we identify…

This important volume brings together key writings from one of the most influential education scholars of our time. In this collection of her seminal essays on critical race theory (CRT), Gloria Ladson-Billings seeks to clear up some of the confusion and misconceptions that education researchers have around race and inequality. Beginning with her…

This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were…

Diversity is a ubiquitous concept in Education. Our contemporary racial discourse has been taken over by diversity talk. That is, to talk about race in the colorblind era in the contexts of school admissions or educational policy is to do so through the language of diversity. However, the hegemonic ascendancy of diversity has been dependent on the…

This short essay was written during this time of: "rising coronavirus cases, particularly among Blacks and other minorities," "increased racial tension," and the call for "justice and fairness in all systems within the UNITED States of America (U.S.)." As a highly concerned educator, I am here renewing the "call…

"Jim Crow's Pink Slip" exposes the decades-long repercussions of a too-little-known result of resistance to the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision: the systematic dismissal of Black educators from public schools. In 1954, the Supreme Court's "Brown" decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but…

East High School was opened in 1926 to over nine hundred students from the surrounding neighborhoods. At that time, East High School was an all-White suburban school in comparison to its identity today as the most diverse high school in the state with over forty languages and countries represented in its population. During the first decades of its…

Oregon needs Black educators in the K-12 public school system. In 35 school districts throughout the state, the number of students of color has risen by over 40% in recent years (Oregon Chief Education Office, 2019). The number of educators of color in the state is under 10%. The number of Black educators is even lower. Research has shown that…

The decades-long resistance to federally imposed school desegregation entered a new phase at the turn of the new century, when federal courts stopped pushing racial balance as a remedy for past segregation, adopting in its place a color-blind approach in judging local school districts' assignment plans. Using data that span 1998 to 2016 from North…