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…

The "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) decision was a significant change in social justice and human rights. There is ongoing debate about public education not as a private commodity but as a public good that must be made available on equal terms. Recently, schools are entering an era of second-generation segregation. Poor outcomes,…

There is not much debate regarding the "Brown" decision and the significance of the foundation it provided for access to equal educational opportunity and the school funding litigation movement; however, it is important to recognize that the inception of "Brown" can be traced back to a small rural town in South Carolina. Three…

Ghettos are a social evil. They are social atrocities maintained by inexcusable racist laws and practices, structures of class domination, and institutionalized political marginalization. After "Brown v. The Board of Education," educational reformers have increasingly (mis)framed the problem of "ghetto schools" as a failure to…

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled schools in the United States needed to desegregate and begin integration. The decision was a radical departure from the facilities argument initially presented; it added the issue that the segregation of Black students was having a deleterious effect on their self-concept. Many scholars argue the integration has…

School districts in Missouri are responsible for public K-12 education and must be accredited to educate children. As a result, there is an evoking interest, demanding attention in Missouri public schools' quality and the students who transfer from unaccredited, critically low-performing schools to accredited, significantly better-performing…

Derrick Bell's interest convergence thesis is a seminal framework to analyze social change within critical race theory. While interest convergence's influence has grown, two foundational questions have been raised: do interest groups act rationally; does interest convergence also offer a change prescription or only an explanation of prior events.…

Although it is clear that racial segregation is linked to academic achievement gaps, the mechanisms underlying this link have been debated since Coleman published his eponymous 1966 report. In this paper, I examine 16 distinct measures of segregation to determine which is most strongly associated with academic achievement gaps. I find very clear…

Few policies have affected American society as deeply as those related to the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision, "Brown v. Board of Education." Now, 60 years later, segregation persists along race and class divisions. This case study analysis of a merger that took place between 2010 and 2013 in Memphis and Shelby County,…

Building on the premise that closing achievement gaps is an economic imperative both to regain international educational supremacy and to maintain global economic competitiveness, I ask whether it is possible to rewrite the social contract so that education is a fundamental right--a statutory guarantee--that is both uniform across states and…

The South was the central focus of the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. The landmark ruling held that laws mandating segregation in the school systems of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, along with D.C. and six other states, violated the U.S. Constitution. Intense opposition met the…

Closing achievement gaps--disparities in academic achievement between minority and white students, and between low-income and higher-income students--has long been an unrealized goal of U.S. education policy. It has now been 60 years since the Supreme Court declared "separate but equal" schools unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of…

Equality and equity are often mischaracterized as interchangeable terms in public education. This may explain why efforts towards reform and restructure are often not met with any real measure of success. "Equity, Equality, and Reform in Contemporary Public Education" provides emerging research on the reformation of education curriculum…

The federal government's role in PreK-12 education has long been contentious and continues to evolve. Many have written about education governance, but few have attempted to define an appropriate role for the federal government. That is the core purpose of this essay. The authors articulate a set of principles to guide the federal role in…

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti-civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White…