Informing the Debate: Bringing Civil Rights Research to Bear on the Reauthorization of the ESEA

Informing the Debate: 

Bringing Civil Rights Research to Bear on the Reauthorization of the ESEA

Presenters:
Gary Orfield and Patricia Gándara, Co-Directors, The Civil Rights Project
Christopher Swanson, Research Director, Editorial Projects in Education
Daniel Losen, Director, The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at The Civil Rights Project
Erica Frankenberg, Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University

Respondents:
Bethany Little, Senior Education Advisor, Senate HELP Committee, Sen. Tom Harkin
Republican Staffer TBD
Damon Hewitt, Director of the Education Practice, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Jim Ferg-Cadima, Regional Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Tanya Clay House, Director of Public Policy, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

At this event, leading scholars presented research findings on the civil rights implications of education policies and discussed them in terms of the reauthorization of the ESEA. Civil rights advocates and Congressional staffers opened the discussion to explore what lessons could be learned on the following: 

•    Improving graduation rates and reducing suspension rates: School accountability and the need to address early warning indicators of dropping out; special attention to issues of school climate and use of disciplinary exclusion. 

•    School accountability: effective turnarounds and the need for an entirely separate response to ensure robust yet reasonable accountability for low-performing subgroups.

•    Meeting the needs of English learners: accountability, appropriate test use and inadequate support of ELs 

•    Promoting diversity: mechanisms of school choice, inter-district transfers, magnet schools; the promise and pitfalls of increasing the numbers of charter schools

To access the policy papers and obtain more information about this briefing...