Dueling editorials in the NYT and WSJ about the DOE's new initiative. I don't know enough about this issue to comment, so I'll just include the two editorials below. Here's an excerpt from the NYT:

In a little more than a year in office, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has used his bully pulpit and a burgeoning discretionary budget to focus state governments on school reform as never before. Mr. Duncan has now promised to energize the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, which has done a poor job in recent years of enforcing federal laws that protect poor, minority and disabled students from discrimination.

If the secretary follows through, states and localities that have historically shortchanged these children — by saddling them, say, with watered-down curriculums and unqualified teachers — will be required to do better or risk losing federal education dollars.

Mr. Duncan announced his goals during a speech commemorating the 45th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, Ala., during which demonstrators were bludgeoned by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Mr. Duncan compared the voting rights struggle to the effort to secure educational opportunity for poor, minority and disadvantaged children.

And here's the WSJ:

The OCR under the Bush Administration rightly focused on reacting to actual complaints of discrimination and issued guidelines to help school districts comply with the law. By contrast, Mr. Duncan plans investigations based on the disparate impact of a school policy, even if no one has alleged any discrimination. Schools and districts that don't have enough blacks taking college prep courses, or don't suspend enough whites for fighting, could face litigation or have federal funding withheld.

Inevitably, pressure will be put on districts to get their numbers right and avoid federal scrutiny. Safety is already a major problem in many larger urban schools, where it's not uncommon for students to pass through metal detectors each morning. If districts are afraid to suspend students for fear of an OCR probe, a bad situation is made worse. And if AP classes will now be monitored for racial balance, schools will resort to quotas, lower standards or no longer offer the courses.

…Mr. Duncan does minorities no favors by suggesting that racist policies are causing the achievement gap while ignoring the impact of culture, family structure or failing schools. He would do better to focus his department's energies on improving educational choice, promoting performance-based pay for teachers and other reforms. Parents want better schools, not social engineering.

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March 16, 2010

Editorial

www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16tue2.html

Civil Rights in Education

Mr. Duncan said that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be pleased by the racial progress that the country has made but "would have been angered to see that disadvantaged students still have less-effective teachers; that they still have fewer opportunities to take rigorous college-prep courses in high school; that black, and brown, and low-income children are still languishing in aging facilities and high schools that are little more than dropout factories. He would have been downhearted that students with disabilities still do not get the educational support they need. And he would have been dismayed to learn of schools that seem to suspend and discipline only young African-American boys."

Mr. Duncan made clear that his department wants to ensure that all students have equal access to educational opportunity as defined by things like a college-prep curriculum, advanced courses and science classes. He seems keenly interested in ending the odious, widespread practice under which poorly qualified teachers are shunted into schools serving the neediest children.

The department said that it would soon notify thousands of school districts and colleges of their responsibilities under federal equal opportunity laws. Beyond that, the department's civil rights chief, Russlynn Ali, plans this year to open investigations, known as compliance reviews, in 38 school districts across the country.

Districts that are found to be out of compliance with federal law must formally agree to correct illegal practices. If they refuse, they could be sued or stripped of federal financing.

Sticking with the civil rights plan will be difficult once districts begin whining to legislators in Washington. The secretary will need cover from the White House to succeed.

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MARCH 16, 2010

Civil Rights Overreach

Quotas for college prep courses?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703625304575115970319827934.html

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last week that the Obama Administration will ramp up investigations of civil rights infractions in school districts, which might sound well and good. What it means in practice, however, is that his Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will revert to the Clinton Administration policy of equating statistical disparity with discrimination, which is troubling.

OCR oversees Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by race, color or national origin in public schools and colleges that receive federal funding. In a speech last week, Mr. Duncan said that "in the last decade"—that's short for the Bush years—"the Office for Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating racial and gender discrimination." He cited statistics showing that white students are more likely than their black peers to take Advanced Placement classes and less likely to be expelled from school.

Therefore, Mr. Duncan said, OCR "will collect and monitor data on equity." He added that the department will also conduct compliance reviews "to ensure that all students have equal access to educational opportunities" and to determine "whether districts and schools are disciplining students without regard to skin color."

Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity also notes that Mr. Duncan's disparate impact approach to civil rights enforcement may be constitutionally suspect. In a 2001 Supreme Court decision, Alexander v. Sandoval, the Court reaffirmed that Title VI prohibits only disparate treatment and not disparate impact. "There's no statutory basis for this," says Mr. Clegg.

Mr. Duncan does minorities no favors by suggesting that racist policies are causing the achievement gap while ignoring the impact of culture, family structure or failing schools. He would do better to focus his department's energies on improving educational choice, promoting performance-based pay for teachers and other reforms. Parents want better schools, not social engineering.

Whitney Tilson's School Reform Blog

Friday, March 19, 2010