September 17, 2013

 Call for Papers and Conference Announcement:
Historical Legacies, Contemporary Strategies and Promise for the Future

The Pennsylvania State University College of Education will host an interdisciplinary civil rights conference and related graduate student symposium in the summer of 2014. For this conference, we will commission conceptual, empirical, policy, and/or legal analyses that authors will present at the conference. Papers will be subsequently published in one or more volumes after the conference (pending successful revision in a book, special journal issue, and/or law review).

At the conference, we will also include invited speakers, such as federal government officials working in civil rights and education, educators who are currently implementing integration or affirmative action plans, and long-time scholars in the field. We plan to hold a graduate symposium on Friday morning, a dinner Friday evening with a major speaker, and a day and half-long conference beginning on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday. The conference is planned for June 6-7, 2014. The intended audience includes academics in education, social sciences, public policy & law, policymakers, practitioners (P-20), legal and policy advocates, civil rights groups, graduate students, journalists, political commentators, attorneys, community leaders, legislators, and judges.

While many policy proposals have focused on access to education, such as President Obama’s recent call for universal pre-K education, there has been much less attention to racial inequality and segregation in access to P-20 education even as the percentage of students of color is rapidly increasing. This conference seeks to explore what strategies have been most effective to expand quality access to, and meaningful integration within, educational settings for students of color in the past and what might hold promise for the future. We also intend to explore what some scholars have described as the “new Jim Crow” in education: the new dimensions of segregation and inequality for students of color given the multiracial, multidimensional nature of today’s under-18 population. We encourage scholarly consideration of curricular, political, and legal approaches to addressing civil rights issues in education.

In 2014, we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Brown decision and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the latter of which brought the weight of the federal government to bear on recalcitrant school districts in the South, thereby speeding integration. We also mark the 40^th anniversary of the Lau v. Nichols decision, which officially acknowledged the rights of language minority students to access the same curricula as their English-speaking peers and required schools to facilitate this access through appropriate means, including bilingual education. It is also the 40^th anniversary of events that began the legal and political backlash against desegregation: the Milliken decision in Detroit, Michigan and the highly publicized struggle over desegregation in Boston. Today, the federal government’s role regarding civil rights is in flux due to judicial and political changes, with the Shelby County v. Holder voting rights case representing the latest setback to civil rights legislation. Likewise, the re-authorization of both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act are under consideration by Congress, which may offer legislative possibilities or obstacles for civil rights efforts in P-20 education. Despite the setbacks, these laws, policies, and social movements have had far-ranging impacts as other groups have asserted their own rights to high-quality educational opportunities.

These legal and policy shifts have been coupled, in recent years, with dynamic shifts in the nation’s political landscape. With the election of Barack Obama as president among other examples of diversifying national leadership, pundits heralded the beginning of a “post-racial America” and many have questioned the need for race-conscious policies to expand access for students of color in K-12 and higher education. Such questioning perpetuates the trend toward eliminating long-standing desegregation practices that we have witnessed over the last two decades. As a result, it is critical that we examine best practices of ensuring equity in public education in an effort to continue addressing such critical needs.  While the Court in the Fisher affirmative action case endorsed the compelling interest of postsecondary institutions to attain the educational benefits of diversity, it also called on lower courts to review the ongoing need for race-conscious policies with great care, which may heighten burdens on universities to pursue diversity. What can we learn from earlier milestones as we think about the next several decades of access and equity in P-20 education and how can we implement new strategies that effectively diversify our nation’s schools?

 Call for Papers 

We seek papers from both legal and social science perspectives and both theoretical and empirical works are of interest. We are particularly interested in receiving proposals – for either completed work or studies already in progress (that will be ready for conference presentation in June 2014)  – in the following topical areas:

1. population trends and changes as well as traditional demographic barriers to integration (e.g., growing diversity, immigration, persisting residential segregation, widening racial and SES inequality, wealth gaps by race) and the implications of these trends for civil rights strategies in education;
2. the impact of federal, state, and local budget constraints and/or perceptions about funding for public education (P-20);
3. the changing politics of diversity/equity efforts in education, including evolving perceptions about role of government;
4. trends in public opinion about racial equity (both growing acceptance of diversity and colorblindness) and/or how these trends may affect political and legal decisions about civil rights in education;
5. the changing role/importance of education in today’s society–and/or growing privatization (e.g., the impact of lack of educational access on individuals and society);
6. what courts can/can’t do—or will/won’t do— today about education and civil rights (could include examination of promising legal/political strategies);
7. how accountability intersects with diversity efforts (for students, teachers, etc.) and/or an evaluation of whether the promise of accountability efforts for improving outcomes for students of color has been realized;
8. what happens within and across schools and universities that relates to unequal outcomes for students such as teacher preparation for diverse/segregated schools; disparities in referrals to special education and for discipline; ethnic studies curricula; access for minority students in graduate studies and the faculty pipeline; and disparate educational loan debt; and
9. the role of K-12 schools and universities in the education of immigrant students and language minority students and/or how schools and universities contribute to segregation or promote integration and positive intergroup relations among culturally and linguistically diverse student populations.
10. social movements as they pertain to creating demand for new educational policies;
11. the relationship of other types of social policy such as housing or voting rights law/policy to education policy, etc.
12. papers examining successful models (such as Head Start, Freedom Schools, dual language schools, etc.) and whether they are applicable to today’s context

Preliminary proposals should be no more than two (2) single-spaced pages in length and should include:
1) the title of the paper; 2) the author(s) name and affiliation(s); 3) the name of the primary contact with email and telephone number; 4) the questions or objective; 5) the conceptual framework; 6) the methods employed, if relevant; 7) related work completed to date, and 8) the potential contribution of the analysis to the conference theme.

We welcome inquiries from potential authors whose work does not explicitly fit into the categories above about whether to submit a proposal. We also are interested in interactive, multidisciplinary approaches to these topics that would speak to our multiple intended audiences. Proposals should make clear the particular connection between the proposed work and civil rights issues in education. Paper proposals will be reviewed by conference planning committee and by a small panel of expert advisors.

Authors are asked to submit proposals by October 15, 2013 to civilrights@psu.edu. Selection and notification will take place by November 15, 2013, and papers will be due to discussants by late April 2014. At least one author of any accepted paper must be available to participate in the conference on June 6-7, 2014 in University Park, PA.

A graduate student symposium will precede the conference, and will seek to build a new generation of researchers in this area, and to provide them with feedback on their work as well as introduction to more senior scholars in this field. The deadline for graduate student submissions will be in late fall or early winter.

Chosen authors will be invited to write a paper that is about 25 pages in length. The conference will bring together the authors of the draft papers for an intensive discussion of their work with other authors, civil rights, education, and policy experts in sessions aimed at strengthening the work and sharpening the focus to reach a broader audience. The papers should meet high academic standards, but should be written to reach beyond a solely scholarly audience. Any data and charts in the final paper should be presented in the most accessible way possible so that community groups, the press, students, and others can utilize and inject the new information and insights into public discussion.

Authors will have full final control of their own work and will receive full credit for it. Draft papers will be edited and prepared for publication. All papers will be published on Web sites and, pending agreement reached with a prospective publisher, select papers will be included in an edited volume of conference papers and/or in other venues such as a special issue of a law review or education journal. Presenters will be reimbursed for reasonable travel expenses to participate in the conference.

Questions? Visit the website for the conference at website for the conference at:http://www.outreach.psu.edu/civil-rights/ or Contact Erica Frankenberg (euf10@psu.edu) or Steven Nelson (sln175@psu.edu).

Conference planning committee:

Suzanne Adair
Erica Frankenberg
David Gamson
Liliana Garces
Megan Hopkins
Neal Hutchens
Mindy Kornhaber
Daniel Letwin
Steven Nelson
Leticia Oseguera
Carla Pratt
Crystal Sanders
Maria Schmidt
Jeanine Staples
Marylee Taylor

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