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Amicus
Briefs Examine Benefits of School Integration
The
contested efforts of public school districts
in Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County,
Kentucky to maintain racial balance in their
schools are constitutionally valid and are
supported by a half-century of both legal
precedent and social science research, according
to an amicus brief filed in the
U.S. Supreme Court by one of the nation's
leading experts on school desegregation.
The Court's decision could profoundly alter
the ability of local school authorities
to pursue the vision articulated by the
Court in Brown v. Board of Education,
its landmark 1954 desegregation ruling.
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| “Dismantling
a Community,” Center for Community
Change Reports from New Orleans
More
than one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated
the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast,
communities in the region are still struggling
to rebuild their homes and their lives,
and part of this struggle is the effort
to rebuild their schools. “Dismantling
a Community,” a new publication from
the Center for Community Change, describes
the fragmented, decentralized, and under-funded
state of New Orleans schools and highlights
the problems facing public education in
the city. While New Orleans faces massive
challenges, school districts outside the
city are facing problems of their own, including
overcrowding resulting from thousands of
displaced students. In many areas affected
by the storm, however, people are working
together to rebuild their schools, and with
them their communities. Read
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| Neediest
Students Not Receiving Fair Allocation of
School Construction Funds
After
a decade of unprecedented enrollment growth
and spending on school construction, most
of the nation’s high-wealth and middle-class
communities have high quality public school
buildings, while inadequate facilities hamper
education for millions of low-wealth children
and their communities. A recent report from
the BEST collaborative, “Growth and
Disparity: A Decade of U.S. Public School
Construction,” calls for changes in
state and federal education policy to improve
school facilities, especially in places
where children now must try to learn in
dilapidated and inadequate buildings. The
report also explains that school facilities
equity has improved significantly for low-income
students in states that have faced successful
school funding lawsuits in the past decade.
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School
Funding Election Results Mixed Across States
Questions
of education funding appeared as ballot
measures in a dozen states on Tuesday, giving
voters a chance to directly influence the
debates surrounding education policy and
finance. Overall, 2006 voters approved funding
for preschool and some other school funding
measures, but rejected major changes and
“quick fixes,” such as Taxpayers'
Bill of Rights initiatives, 65 percent proposals,
and vouchers, at least as reflected in the
Ohio and Michigan gubernatorial races. Read
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| NCLB
Reauthorization Raises Practical and “Ten
Moral” Concerns
The
No Child Left Behind Act cannot achieve
its goals unless the federal government
provides more resources to states, say top
state education officials. In a policy statement
urging lawmakers to move beyond “prescriptive
compliance requirements” when they
reauthorize the law in 2007, the Council
of Chief State School Officers, an organization
that comprises the heads of state departments
of education and public instruction across
the country, said the federal government
must provide states with the resources necessary
to meet NCLB’s goals. “Ten Moral
Concerns” about NCLB, from the National
Council of Churches, also calls for changes
to the federal law, to address needs for
justice and opportunity. Read
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