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Civil Rights Groups Call For New K-12 “Accountability System”
By Whitney Robinson, Associate Editor Vol. 20 On Tuesday, a coalition of eleven national civil rights groups sent a letter to President Obama urging him to drop the standardized test-based K-12 “accountability" system. According to these groups, the current standardized test-based “accountability system” for K-12 education is “overly focused on narrow measures of success” and “discourage[s] schools from providing a rich curriculum.” The current system ignores the diverse needs of the increasingly large number of children who are growing up in poverty, and/or in homes where English is not the first language. After the break, read the entire letter, signed by the Advancement Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign, National Urban League (NUL), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC), National Indian Education Association (NIEA) and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC):It’s been 50 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the achievement gap between minorities and whites remains a salient issue
By: Daniela Tagtachian, Associate Editor Vol. 20 Students have the right to not be discriminated against based on race, color or national origin. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, in programs and activities that receive federal…Conservative proposal to censor AP U.S. History curriculum to promote “respect for authority” and “patriotism” removes its emphasis on “race, gender, class, ethnicity” and civil disobedience
By: Daniela Tagtachian, Associate Editor Vol. 20 A recent conservative initiative from South Carolina to Colorado has called for the AP U.S. History curriculum to be more in line with “patriotism” and “respect for authority.” The Republican National Committee adopted a resolution in August 2014 stating that the College Board’s…COMMENT: How The Diversity Rationale For Affirmative Action May One Day Limit The First Amendment Rights of Universities
By Pete Osornio, Associate Editor, Volume 19 I. Diversity (Re)affirmed Grutter v. Bollinger definitively authorized the use of affirmative action policies in higher education,[1] resolving the circuit split[2] that followed the Supreme Court’s fractured opinion in Regents of University of California v. Bakke.[3] In Grutter, the Supreme Court endorsed…On Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action
On Schuette Pete Osornio Associate Editor, Michigan Journal of Race & Law Volume 19 Yesterday, in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the Supreme Court upheld a state constitutional amendment prohibiting affirmative action preferences in college admissions, effectively making it more difficult for minorities to rectify the lasting impacts of…States Taking Charge: Examining the Role of Race, Party Affliation, and Preemption in the Development of in-state tuition laws for undocumented immigrant students
Part I of this Article details both the legislative and legal history of undocumented immigrants’ access to education in the United States. Part II then describes the current U.S. state laws in effect regarding in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students at state-funded colleges and universities. Part III further explores the development of laws and policies with a keen focus on potential correlations between (1) the racial composition of state legislatures and the passage of in-state tuition policies; (2) the race of governors and the passage of in-state tuition policies; (3) partisan composition of state legislatures and the passage of in-state tuition policies; and (4) party affiliation of governors and in-state tuition policies. Part IV describes the concept of preemption and discusses the extent to which preemption has impacted the state statutes identified in Part II of this Article. Finally, Part V discusses the practical and normative implications of this research.It’s Critical: Legal Participatory Action Research
This Article introduces a method of research that we term “legal participatory action research” or “legal PAR” as a way for legal scholars and activists to put various strands of critical legal theory into practice. Specifically, through the lens of legal PAR, this Article contributes to a rapidly developing legal literature on the “fringe economy” that comprises “alternative lending services” and products, including but not limited to pawnshops, check cashers, payday lenders, direct deposit loans, (tax) refund anticipation loans, and car title loans. As importantly, this article also contributes to the related fields of critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and critical race feminism by advocating legal PAR as a form of critical race/feminist praxis, which we employ, specifically, to address the ways in which race and gender remain inextricably linked to poverty and ever-widening economic inequalities and disparities. To demonstrate how legal PAR works in practice, we describe in this Article a local, community-based research project on predatory lending practices that we undertook from fall 2012 through summer 2013 in partnership with Public Allies Cincinnati, an AmeriCorps program whose goal is to identify, develop, and train a new “generation” of diverse community leaders and organizers. Further, we explain in this Article how and why our ongoing community-based research is grounded in theoretical commitments and values represented by critical race/feminism and the established, interdisciplinary field of participatory action research. Finally, we examine and reflect upon the challenges and benefits involved in doing legal PAR—both in practical and theoretical terms—in the context of our specific project, in the hopes that interested legal researchers, scholars, teachers, students, and activists will be inspired to develop legal PAR research projects of their own.The Promise of Grutter: Diverse Interactions at the University of Michigan Law School
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color on the University of Michigan Law School campus to yield diverse interactions and that positive interracial student exchanges are occurring. Nevertheless, the lively discussions drawing from this diversity anticipated by the Grutter Court are seldom taking place within the classroom, where they may be most important; by neglecting to foster "diversity discussions," law schools are failing to cultivate the academic and professional benefits associated with educational diversity. Only through classroom diversity can the promise of diversity envisioned by the Grutter Court be fully realized.Race, Educational Loans & Bankruptcy
This Article reports new data from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project revealing that college graduates and specifically White graduates are less likely to file for bankruptcy than their counterparts without a college degree. Although these observations suggest that a college degree helps graduates to weather the setbacks that sometimes lead to financial hardship as measured by bankruptcy, they also indicate that a college degree may not help everyone equally. African American college graduates are equally likely to file for bankruptcy as African Americans without a college degree. Thus, a college education may not confer the same protective benefit against financial hardship for African Americans that it does for their White counterparts. These observations draw attention to the tension between two federal policies with respect to educational attainment: educational lending policy that encourages Americans to take on debt to finance their educations and bankruptcy policy that makes discharge of educational debt practically impossible. Given preexisting wealth, educational loan borrowing, and post-graduate income data concerning African Americans, these data suggest that African Americans may experience Congress's restrictive educational loan discharge policy more acutely than Whites. Indeed, African Americans are more likely to borrow money for college, earn less after graduation, and yet are bound by the same duty to repay educational loans. Ultimately, these educational loan policies may reveal who, as a practical matter, should and who should not be going to college. More troubling is that this division seems to track socioeconomic and racial lines. Accordingly, this Article considers whether these findings should persuade Congress to reformulate its policy on the discharge of educational loans in bankruptcy or alternatively, to change the manner in which it supports educational attainment.Sliding Towards Educational Outcomes: A New Remedy for High-Stakes Education Lawsuits in a Post-NCLB World
Sheff v. O'Neill ushered in a new wave of education reform litigation that may challenge the constitutionality of de facto segregation under state education clauses, but its remedy has been inadequate. This Note proposes a new desegregation remedy-the sliding scale remedy-to address socioeconomic isolation in this unique constitutional context. The remedy employs varying degrees of equity power depending on students' academic outcomes. It balances concerns over local control and separation of powers with the court's need to effectuate right, establishes a clear remedial principle, and ensures that states and school districts focus on students as they implement remedies.
