2008 Enrollment In U.S. Expected To Set Record (Washington Post, June 9, 2008)
Public school enrollment across the country will hit a record high this year with just under 50 million students, and the student population is becoming more diverse in large part because of growth in the Latino population, according to a new federal report.

Parents Claim Racism in Alabama School (Education Week, May 27, 2008)
A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in Harper Lee's book To Kill a Mockingbird is finding itself as the backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism at school. The parents of several black junior high school students have filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming their children are subject to racial slurs and punished more harshly than white students at Monroeville Junior High School.

Keep Boys And Girls Together In The Classroom To Optimize Learning, Research Suggests (Science Daily, May 14, 2008)
Boys and girls may learn differently, but American parents should think twice before moving their children to sex-segregated schools. A new Tel Aviv University study has found that girls improve boys’ grades markedly at school.

Iowa Immigration Raid Called a 'Man-Made Disaster' (Education Week, May 14, 2008)
School officials in Postville, Iowa, were still working Wednesday to cope with the logistical and emotional aftermath of a raid on a local meatpacking plant by federal immigration authorities earlier this week that left some students’ parents in custody and tensions high in the local Latino community.

Schools address black students' suspensions (Washington Post, May 14, 2008)
Under pressure to reduce the suspension rate of black students, Anne Arundel County is making progress by training staff in how to work with people of different backgrounds and giving troublesome students more support.

African American Males in Education: Endangered or Ignored? (Teachers College Record, April 28, 2008)
An introduction to the special issue African American males in education - PK-12 and Higher Education: An Examination of Critical Stages within the Educational Pipeline for African American Males.

Black-White Gap Widens Faster for High Achievers (Education Week, April 17, 2008)
New research into what is commonly called the black-white “achievement gap” suggests that the students who lose the most ground academically in U.S. public schools may be the brightest African-American children. As black students move through elementary and middle school, these studies show, the test-score gaps that separate them from their better-performing white counterparts grow fastest among the most able students and the most slowly for those who start out with below-average academic skills.

Affirmative Action Foes Push Ballot Initiatives (Washington Post, March 26, 2008)
Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar organizations in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.

Flying in the Face of Controversy (Washington Post, March 22, 2008)
A high school principal's recent decision to ban wearing or displaying the Confederate flag, adopted by some white residents as a symbol of their history, has inflamed an already tense debate over racial sensitivity and freedom of speech. Deana Bryant allowed her 16-year-old son to wear a shirt emblazoned with the flag to school one day last week in open defiance of the ban. Speaking from behind the grocery counter where she works, Bryant said the flag is not about racism. "It's his heritage," she said, her blue eyes flashing.

AP Trends: Tests Soar, Scores Slip (Education Week, February 19, 2008)
While more American public school students are taking Advanced Placement tests, the proportion of tests receiving what is deemed a passing score has dipped, and the mean score is down for the fourth year in a row, an Education Week analysis of newly released data from the College Board shows.

You're Asian, How Could You Fail Math? (Rethinking Schools, February 12, 2008)
In January 1966, William Petersen penned an article for The New York Times Magazine entitled, "Success Story: Japanese American Style." In it, he praised the Japanese-American community for its apparent ability to successfully assimilate into mainstream American culture, and literally dubbed Japanese Americans a "model minority" - the first popular usage of the term. By the 1980s, Newsweek, The New Republic, Fortune, Parade, U.S. News and World Report, and Time all had run articles on the subject of Asian-American success in schools and society, and the Myth of the Model Minority was born. The Myth of the Model Minority asserts that, due to their adherence to traditional, Asian cultural values, Asian-American students are supposed to be devoted, obedient to authority, respectful of teachers, smart, good at math and science, diligent, hard workers, cooperative, well-behaved, docile, college-bound, quiet, and opportunistic.

Teachers Advised to 'Get Real' on Race (Education Week, February 1, 2008)
Everyone at Columbus High, the pseudonymously named school where researcher Mica Pollock taught in the 1990s, worried about the “hall wanderers”—students who roved the building, seemingly unimpeded, while their peers sat in class. Yet, although a disproportionate number of the wanderers were African-American, educators at the highly diverse high school shied away from raising the race flag when the hallway problem came up in faculty meetings. The issue was left to fester.

Illegal Immigrant Opponents Say Virginia is Losing Untold Money Through Education (NBC News, January 23, 2008)
Supporters of illegal immigration reform say they are pushing for Virginia's laws to be rewritten to protect citizens who live in the commonwealth legally.

Minority Students Become the Majority  (Washington Post, January 22, 2008)
Maryland may be majority white, but its public schools no longer are. White residents account for 58.3 percent of the state's population, according to 2006 U.S. Census Bureau data. But they make up only 47 percent of the student body this school year. The new majority belongs to blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities.

Cash for School Grades, it Works!  (The Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2008)
The use of "pay for performance" – linking a financial reward to measurable goals – works in business. But can it also motivate underachieving students? Though cash may at first seem a perverse incentive for education, one study of such a practice shows some promising results.

Minorities in Special Education Studied by U.S. Panel (Education Week, December 6, 2007)
A hearing by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on minority overrepresentation in special education expanded into a three-hour discussion that touched on parental choice, school officials’ judgment calls on special education placements, and effective early-childhood education. The commission plans to sift through the issues raised at the Dec. 3 hearing and make recommendations on the minority-overrepresentation issue, which has vexed educators for years.

In Md. Suburbs, Police Find Shifting Gang Allegiances (Washington Post, December 5, 2007)
In Montgomery, according to the latest gang assessment by county police detectives, the number of members of predominantly African American gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips recently surpassed the membership of Latino gangs, long the primary target of anti-gang initiatives. Police said the assessment, which said 36 separate gangs were active, is based on self-identifications by suspects, tattoos and clothing, reports from informants and other investigative methods.

Montgomery Hits A Testing Milestone For Black Students (Washington Post , December 4, 2007)
Black students in Montgomery County high schools passed 1,062 Advanced Placement tests this year, making the school system the first, along with the New York City public schools, to cross the thousand-test threshold. In the District, the number of AP exams taken by black students rose by nearly 50 percent, though the number of passing scores rose only slightly, the school district reported. AP performance among black students in Fairfax County was essentially unchanged.

Redefining What It Means to Be Black in America (NPR, November 29, 2007)
A poll released by the Pew Research Center, in association with NPR, finds that 67 percent of black men and 74 percent of black women think rap music is a bad influence on black America. In fact, 59 percent of black men and 63 percent of black women think the whole hip-hop industry — from the jailhouse fashion of pants hanging low, to indifference to work and school — is equally detrimental to black America.

Ed Board faces decision (Clarionledger.com, October 28, 2007)
The board will establish new, more rigorous testing standards in grades three through eight in language arts and mathematics, as well as in English II and Algebra I. These new standards will measure student academic success and will establish a higher bar for measuring school performance on state and national standards.

IDRA CN 23 - The Watch on Racism Cannot Stop (IDRA (audio), October 26, 2007)
Conversations about diversity in schools and in society typically put people in categories based on race, gender, and so on. As a result, the duality that minority girls and minority women live in often is overlooked. Dr. Shirley Nash Weber, former chair of the Department of Africana Studies and Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University, presented a keynote this summer on the challenge African American women in particular face in balancing gender and equity. The keynote was presented during the annual conference of the Association for Gender Equity Leadership in Education (AGELE), which was co-sponsored by the IDRA South Central Collaborative for Equity.

Symphony program nurtures young black musicians  (Ohio.com, October 26, 2007)
A classical ensemble composed of black high school musicians is getting free coaching by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as part of the orchestra's effort to recruit more minorities and attract a more diverse audience. The musicians, who auditioned for spots in the new ensemble, will perform for community groups and before some CSO concerts.

Use of Race a Concern for Magnet Schools (Education Week (Subscription Only), October 25, 2007)
Federal education officials were in the final stages of authorizing their latest round of grants for magnet schools when the U.S. Supreme Court in late June issued a major decision on whether school districts may consider race when assigning students to school. The high court, by a 5-4 majority, struck down race-conscious assignment policies in the Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., school districts because certain assignment decisions were based on individual students’ racial status. In a significant concurring opinion, however, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy stressed that districts were not barred from all consideration of race.

Schools Not Prepping Minorities for College, Report Says (Washington Post , October 25, 2007)
A report by a team of activists and students that concluded that the Alexandria school system fails to prepare its black and Hispanic students for college is being criticized by schools officials as a distorted mix of old data, incorrect assumptions and bad methodology. Despite the criticisms, Tenants and Workers United and the Advancement Project, the groups that sponsored the report, and schools officials said they plan to work together to ensure that minority students are encouraged to take challenging classes and continue their education after high school.

Reading Aid Seen to Lag in ELL Focus (Education Week, October 25, 2007)
The federal Reading First program must be altered to make it more effective for English-language learners, according to educators and education experts across the country who work with these students. A U.S. Department of Education advisory subcommittee will examine whether English-language learners' needs are being met, according to this article.

‘Because Race Can’t Be Ignored’ (Education Week (Subscription Only), October 23, 2007)
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This is how the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., cites the colorblind ideal to explain why American schools may no longer consider a student’s race as a factor in school placement. In his majority opinion in the case striking down volunatry integration plans in Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., which was handed down on June 28, Chief Justice Roberts contends that any policy that identifies children on the basis of their race is destructive. And, in a sense, he is right. Any policy that requires sorting individuals into racial categories reinforces the notion that “race” is real, while scientists tell us there is no such thing.

Student suspensions, expulsions soar (Baltimore Sun, October 17, 2007)
School suspensions and expulsions have risen significantly in Maryland, with African-Americans, boys and special education students more likely to be disciplined. "The odds that an African-American student will be suspended is two and a half times the odds of a white student being suspended."

Racial disharmony upsets a small town (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 17, 2007)
Lititz - On Oct. 3, 12 white students, some wearing Confederate-flag clothing, taunted three minority students at a flagpole in front of Warwick High School, where only 28 of the 1,600 students are black. Three of the perpetrators threw wadded paper and hard candy and yelled racial slurs, including the n-word.

An all-boys school with an unusual Latin focus (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 12, 2007)
At a brand-new boys school in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia, students are saying things they've never said before. Words such as agricola (farmer), femina (woman), patria (fatherland), puella (girl), terra (earth) and silva (woods). The boys, all African-American, repeat Latin words and phrases after their teacher. Boys' Latin is the city's first public charter school to have a single-sex student body, a fact that drew stern opposition from a coalition of education and women's-rights organizations during the charter-approval process last school year. (Three other noncharter public schools also have single-sex enrollments.)

Bristol parents angered by school letter (Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 12, 2007)
Some parents are angry over a letter from school administrators saying black and disabled students caused Virginia Middle School to fail to meet annual progress benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind Act. The one-page letter said some black students and students with disabilities didn't score high enough on their statewide reading and math exams, respectively, and the low scores prevented the school from meeting progress goals.

School Integration Efforts (The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2007)
Five decades ago, federal courts began forcing reluctant districts to use race-based assignments to integrate schools. But in June, a bitterly divided Supreme Court reversed course, concluding that two race-based enrollment plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle were unconstitutional. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Chief Justice John Roberts declared.

Racist Incident Roils Pa. High School (Associated Press, October 11, 2007)
For years, a clique of high school students in this prosperous and overwhelmingly white borough have worn clothes adorned with Confederate flags and parked their pickups in a section of the school parking lot known as "redneck row." The display, some parents of minority students say, was just one symptom of festering racism that school officials ignored until animosities boiled over last week. That's when three white 16-year-old students allegedly yelled racial slurs and threw paper wads at minority students outside the 1,600-student Warwick High School.

Success Amid a Shift (Washington Post, October 4, 2007)
A lot has changed since 1989, the last time St. Andrew Apostle School in Silver Spring won a Blue Ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education. Once a uniformly white, English-speaking campus, St. Andrew has seen dramatic demographic change in the past few years. The school that celebrated its second Blue Ribbon yesterday with blue balloons and cupcakes with blue frosting has a 41 percent minority population, with students who speak a dozen native tongues.

Opinion: Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America (New York Times, September 30, 2007)
The miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.

City schools to rethink magnets' racial makeup (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 28, 2007)
Because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June striking down race-based enrollment criteria at public schools in Seattle and in Jefferson County, Ky., Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have been advised to revamp the 28-year-old race-based enrollment process at popular magnet schools. "Racial balance has remained the driving tenet behind the district's magnet program since 1979," city public schools Solicitor Ira Weiss said in a Sept. 11 memo to Superintendent Mark Roosevelt.

Opinion: Education as civil right (USA Today, September 27, 2007)
Fifty years ago, U.S. Army troops dispatched by President Eisenhower escorted nine black teens into the all-white Little Rock Central High School, decisively ending federal tolerance of school segregation throughout the South. This week, the nine were feted for their role as pioneers. Achieving equality in education, however, has proved far more elusive.

Colleges See Flare In Racial Incidents (Washington Post, September 26, 2007)
A couple of weeks into classes at the University of Maryland, a rope tied into what looked like a noose was found hanging outside the campus's African American cultural center. Because so many colleges are more racially and culturally diverse than ever, with students hanging out, dating and studying together, such incidents have left many wondering: What's going on?

Black History Museum Debuts Online (Washington Post, September 26, 2007)
Though its physical construction is years away, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is inaugurating an online spot where visitors can help shape its content. One feature of the Web site, named after the museum, is a Memory Book, where people can submit a story, photograph or audio recording that tells something about themselves or a moment in African American history. Other components give a broad look at things the museum is likely to include, such as highlights of the museum's first exhibition, 100 portraits from the National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography, to open at the National Portrait Gallery next month.

Test a ‘step backward’ for minorities (The News Tribune, September 26, 2007)
Washington’s top education official isn’t going to spend much time celebrating federal test results that show the state’s students are above the national average in reading and math, because it also became clear Tuesday that minority students are losing ground. Although the summary of the National Assessment of Educational Progress – what some call “the nation’s report card” – showed that many minority groups across the country are making progress closing the achievement gap, Washington’s scores did not reflect that trend.

US students score sweeping gains on tests (The Christian Science Monitor, September 26, 2007)
American students – black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, male, and female – are improving in math and reading, especially those at the elementary level, where most of education reform has focused. Those are the modest but positive results from the most influential test in US education, the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Va. students ahead of U.S. average (Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 26, 2007)
Virginia's fourthand eighth-graders continue to score better than their national public school peers in nationwide math and reading tests. Minority scores improved in Virginia, but gaps between white and minority students persist nationally and in the state.

School discipline tougher on African Americans (Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2007)
In every state but Idaho, a Tribune analysis of the data shows, black students are being suspended in numbers greater than would be expected from their proportion of the student population. In 21 states—Illinois among them—that disproportionality is so pronounced that the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.

Charles County Schools Set To Become Majority Black (Washington Post, September 25, 2007)
African American students are poised to become the majority in Charles County public schools this year, a significant turning point for a system that just five years ago was predominantly white and the clearest sign yet of Southern Maryland's shifting demographics.

Race Report Finds Many Blacks Feel Unwelcome (Washington Post, September 25, 2007)
An internal report on race relations at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, where the principal made controversial remarks after a campus fight last winter, concludes that many in the black community have long found the institution and its predominantly white staff "the opposite of welcoming."

Schools Monday: Eliminating the Excuses (Washington Post, September 24, 2007)
For as long as I can remember, the mantra from the people in charge of the D.C. school system has been that we're really doing quite well--it's just that our schools are filled with kids from dysfunctional homes, kids who come to school with so many problems that it's unreasonable to hold them up to the same expectations and standards we have for suburban children. That rhetoric--that long roster of excuses for failure-- appears to be in its dying days.

Opinion: Schools can't be colorblind (LA Times, September 16, 2007)
The achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their white peers is stark and persistent. It has existed for decades, and it's growing more pronounced. The data refute what would be reassuring explanations. The gaps in reading and math test scores are not due to income disparities, nor are they attributable to parents' educational levels. The simple fact is that most black and brown children do not do as well in school as most whites.

African-American Homeschoolers on the Rise (NPR (audio), September 16, 2007)
Homeschooling is one of the fastest growing forms of education, expanding about 10 percent per year. Until recently, African Americans have made up only a tiny percentage of homeschoolers. But researchers say they are now the fastest growing minority in the homeschool movement.

Educator diversity lagging in Del. (Delaware Online, September 6, 2007)
Teachers and administrators in Delaware public schools don't reflect the diversity of their student body, according to a study released Friday by the State Human Relations Commission. The commission reviewed 19 school districts and 11 charter schools as a follow-up to a study that found similar disparity five years earlier.

What Schools in the City Can Learn From the Suburbs (Washington Post, August 30, 2007)
When the chiefs of public schools in Fairfax, Montgomery and the District gathered to talk to education policy wonks about improving their worst schools, the contrast between the suburbs and the city could hardly have been greater. Yet all three schools chiefs seemed riveted by the same persistent problem: the gulf between the achievement of Asian and non-Hispanic white students and that of Hispanic and black students.

For Some Students, SAT Can Open College (Washington Post, August 30, 2007)
Thousands of D.C. students in the Class of 2007 are part of the largest and most diverse group of students ever to take the college-entrance exam. The College Board ascribed this year's results to a more diverse pool of students taking the test.

Reading's racial disparity: Back to School: The First 'R' / Race (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 30, 2007)
A young black male has a better chance of getting teased for reading books instead of playing sports. Black children are less likely to have parents who read to them at an early age and expose them to books. "Socioeconomic background will better determine the parents' educational background and the expectations they have for their children," he said. "Two parents who have to work hard to put food on the table will not have as much time to work with a child on reading or read aloud to that child.

Report: Segregation in U.S. Schools is Increasing (Washington Post, August 29, 2007)
Public schools in the United States are becoming more racially segregated and the trend is likely to accelerate because of a Supreme Court decision in June.The rise in segregation threatens the quality of education received by non-white students, who now make up 43 percent of the total U.S. student body, said the report by the Civil Rights Project of the University of California in Los Angeles.

Finding Their Voices (Washingt Post Magazine, August 26, 2007)
Baltimore's Urban Debate League is part of a burgeoning national movement to bring debate to inner-city kids, with similar programs launched in more than 20 cities over the past decade, from Detroit to Chicago to Kansas City to Washington. The program in the District is still in its infancy: Approximately 300 students regularly participate, many from the city's charter schools. Colin Touhey, director of the District's program, says debate has reached a crucial turning point here, with the city's new chancellor willing to embrace and expand the program throughout the public schools.

Struggling Students Sent Back To the Fold (, August 23, 2007)
With 2,100 students, Montgomery County's Evening High School program was bigger than all but six of the county's traditional high schools. But it was hardly flourishing. By 2005, when school officials reevaluated the decades-old program, it had become a dumping ground for struggling students who had failed courses in their neighborhood schools. Four-fifths of the teenage students were black or Hispanic, and the failure rate was much higher than in traditional schools. This fall, the school system will begin to phase out evening study to make way for a new program, High School Plus.

Young, white Americans are happier (MSNBC, August 21, 2007)
According to an extensive survey of 1,280 people ages 13-24 by The Associated Press and MTV, 72 percent of whites say they are happy with life in general, compared with 51 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of blacks. 28 percent of minorities believe race will hurt them in the quest for a better life. Among whites, 20 percent feel their race will help in getting ahead.

School Board plan needs Feds (Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 9, 2007)
Federal civil-rights officials will have the last word on whether Richmond can abandon direct election of its School Board. A proposal by Richmond business leaders to abolish the elected School Board would have to be "pre-cleared" by the Justice Department to ensure that the change would not damage the voting rights of racial minorities protected under federal law.

Teaching tolerance in the street (Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 2007)
For young children in North Philadelphia, it's a way to have fun and learn a few things in the waning weeks of summer. Yet for the 43 mostly Asian volunteers of the three-week "play street" program in the 2100 block of Uber Street, it's a way to bridge communities, spread Christian faith, and reach out to a neighborhood in need. The program also brings together Asian Americans and African Americans in new ways.

New Study: Making Black Girls "Ladylike" Discourages Achievement? (Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, August 7, 2007)
A new study shows that teachers tend to view the behavior of black girls as not "ladylike" and therefore focus disciplinary action on encouraging behaviors like passivity, deference, and bodily control at the expense of curiosity, outspokenness, and assertiveness.

Social Programs to Combat Gangs Seen as More Effective Than Police (Washington Post, July 18, 2007)
In a report being issued today, "Gang Wars," the Justice-Policy Institute says it found overwhelming evidence that cities such as New York and suburbs and rural areas that use extensive social resources -- job training, mentoring, after-school activities, recreational programs -- make significant dents in gang violence. Areas that rely heavily on police enforcement, such as Los Angeles, have far less impact.

Affirmative Action for Whites? (NPR Online, July 17, 2007)
Vivianne Njoku is an artist living in Washington D.C., who shares her experience of being denied admission to the high school of her dreams because of the color of her skin.

No Sanctions in N.M. School Race Project (Washington Post, July 17, 2007)
School leaders in a southern New Mexico district will not face federal sanctions for allowing a high school project on racism in which students posted signs reading "Whites Only" and "People of Color" above water faucets, officials said. But the Truth or Consequences school district will have to implement procedures for addressing racial harassment claims and offer lessons about racial harassment to students and staff.

School Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some (New York Times, July 15, 2007)
When San Francisco started trying to promote socioeconomic diversity in its public schools, officials hoped racial diversity would result as well. San Francisco began considering factors like family income, instead of race, in school assignments when it modified a court-ordered desegregation plan in response to a lawsuit. But school officials have found that the 55,000-student city school district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic group followed by Hispanics, blacks and whites, is resegregrating.

Montgomery Finds Racial Slur Offends, No Matter the Context (Washington Post, July 13, 2007)
Montgomery County educators are replacing a lesson that called for students to read about and discuss a racial epithet against African Americans as a precursor to reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in ninth-grade English classes. The lesson, called "Questionable Words," focused on two reading selections, an essay and a poem, each dealing with the epithet and how the author was hurt by its use. Curriculum officials reexamined the lesson after an African American student told the school board in the fall that the class had upset her.

Research Links Summer Break, Achievement Gap  (NPR Online, July 9, 2007)
Research indicates that low-income school kids lose an average of two months of reading achievement over the summer. The achievement gap between whites and minority children is being attributed to this factor.

Justice Secures His Place as a Critic of Integration (New York Times, July 9, 2007)
When Justice Clarence Thomas provided a pivotal vote last month as the Supreme Court struck down school integration plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, he suggested the concept of integration was inherently demeaning to black children because it implied they needed to mix with whites to achieve excellence.

Ruling puts a stop to discrimination (Baltimore Sun, July 5, 2007)
The U.S. Supreme Court ended its term with a historic decision that teaches a lesson to our children - and the people running our public schools. While the reaction from some corners has painted this decision as turning back the clock on race relations, it in fact is part of our country's continuing transformation into a society where we do not judge people based on their skin color.

School Board Chief Calls Busing the Wrong Path to Racial Balance (Washington Post, July 5, 2007)
After last week's 5 to 4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court limiting the use of race in school integration plans, the question was put to Prince William School Board Chairman Lucy S. Beauchamp: Should the county use more aggressive steps to achieve racial balance in schools -- like busing minorities into whiter schools and vice versa -- like the programs in Seattle and Louisville? Her answer was no.

Black Boys’ Educational Plight Spurs Single-Gender Schools (Education Week (subscription only), June 18, 2007)
In the face of mounting evidence that schools are losing alarming numbers of young black men, a small band of educators gathered here recently to bolster one response to the crisis: creating public schools designed to serve African-American males.

African Students Open Window on Their Lives (Washington Post, June 13, 2007)
Two students of African heritage at Silverbrook High School is Silver Spring, MD, wanted their classmates to understand how their lives were different from the other students. The resulting work, "Who Am I?," explores the issue of identity through the viewpoint of an immigrant teenage girl who is being raised by her African father in the United States.

A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights (Education Week (subscription only), June 6, 2007)
Does the federal No Child Left Behind Act represent a historic advance for civil rights, or a giant step backward for the children it purports to help? This argument has divided the civil rights community itself, along with its traditional allies in Congress. One side supports stern measures designed to force educators to pay attention to long-neglected students and enable all children to reach “proficiency” in key subjects. The other side argues that the law’s tools of choice—high-stakes testing, unrealistic achievement targets, and punitive sanctions—have not only proved ineffective in holding schools accountable, they also are pushing “left behind” groups even further behind.

Annual U.S. Data Report Probes AP Trends (Education Week (subscription only), May 31, 2007)
The numbers of black and Hispanic students in public and private high schools who are taking Advanced Placement exams soared from 1997 to 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s latest annual compendium of education statistics.

Baltimore District Tackles High Suspension Rates (Education Week (subscription only), April 24, 2007)
Driven by an increasing belief that zero-tolerance disciplinary policies are ineffective, more educators are embracing strategies that do not exclude misbehaving students from school for offenses such as insubordination, disrespect, cutting class, tardiness, and bringing cellphones to campus.

Opinion: Attacking the Gap (Baltimore Sun, April 23, 2007)
If an identifiable group of students is having a hard time keeping up in school, is it fair to single those kids out for special help? It's a dilemma that many school systems, including some in Maryland, are facing when it comes to African-American boys, who are often on the low end of the achievement gap.

Voicing Concern for English-Learners in Debate Over NCLB: Peter Zamora brings varied experience to role as advocate (Education Week (subscription only), April 4, 2007)
Peter Zamora—lawyer, former high school teacher, and energetic advocate for the needs of English-language learners—can trace his concern for such students to time spent in a California high school. Over a three-year stint teaching English, before he quit to go to law school, he chafed at what he describes as a “rigid tracking system” that left Latino and African-American students behind.

Apparent Gang Initiation Disrupted (Washington Post, March 28, 2007)
A teacher who heard a commotion inside a bathroom at a Fairfax County high school ducked inside and apparently broke up a gang initiation ceremony among five teenagers, the latest of several recent inductions. Those involved in the Hayfield gang activity were from a variety of races and ethnicities: Latino, African American, Middle Eastern and Caucasian. He said that although many gangs are stereotyped as being of a particular racial group, gangs often are multiracial.

Students Learn to Seal the Deal, African Style (Washington Post, March 26, 2007)
Students at several county elementary schools in recent weeks have received unusual instruction in the art of bargaining. They've learned how it works in less-developed countries where farmers and fishermen sell their wares in open markets, with a special focus on economic customs of the West African nation of Mali.

Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions (Washington Post, February 20, 2007)
Tom and Renee Carter joined last year with about 15 families, including the parents of nearly every black male sixth-grader, to push their sons to graduate on time in 2012 with options for the future and without lowering their expectations or test scores along the way. They call it Club 2012.

Two Phila. lawmakers propose incentives to encourage teachers (Philadelphia Inquirer, February 6, 2007)
Evans and Roebuck propose establishing a Governor's School for Teaching in Philadelphia, similar to one at Millersville University that attracts top high school students for a five-week residential program each summer. And they want to bring South Carolina's successful "Call Me Mister" program, based at Clemson University, to campuses in this state to encourage more male minority students to become certified elementary school teachers.

A Very Good Place to Grow Up, for Almost Everyone (Washington Post, January 30, 2007)
The Washington region is one of the nation's best metropolitan areas for Hispanic, Asian and non-Hispanic white children, based on a study of health, housing, economic, crime and education data released last week by the Harvard School of Public Health. For black children, the D.C. area ranks about average on most factors, according to the study, titled "Children Left Behind: How Metropolitan Areas Are Failing America's Children."

Colleges Regroup After Voters Ban Race Preferences (The New York Times, January 26, 2007)
With Michigan’s new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.

Diversity in the balance (Baltimore Sun, January 19, 2007)
Ethnic diversity will be an important factor when Howard County Executive Ken Ulman announces his choice to fill a vacant seat on the school board. "I've had a number of meetings with people that care that county government reflects the diversity of our community," Ulman said. "It is one of the factors that we are looking at. The biggest factor is appointing someone who believes in keeping our school system No. 1 in the state."

One Dream, Many Lives (Delaware News Journal, January 12, 2007)
Before the Civil Rights Act, blacks in Delaware had taken that responsibility urged by King. "Education was really the important thing," Mitchell said. "It disrupted everything in Delaware." Black children who lived in the southern part of the state had almost no access to academics after the eighth grade, Mitchell said. At the end of the 19th century, the only options for a secondary education were Delaware State College, now called Delaware State University, in Dover and Howard High School in Wilmington.

Opinion: The Conflicting Rules of Race Trip Up a Principal's Tongue (Washington Post, January 9, 2007)
After a bunch of kids fought outside Churchill High School in Potomac last week, the police caught them and they were charged with assault and various other infractions. Principal Benz knew that many Churchill parents were talking about the fact that the kids in the fight were black, as are only 6 percent of the school's students. The principal, trying to address that chatter head-on, stumbled over the murky, contradictory rules that govern language in our oh-so-sensitive times.

Schools Seek and Find 'Gifted' Students (Washington Post, January 3, 2007)
Montgomery County's screening process has evolved in a continuing effort to identify more low-income, black and Hispanic students who are gifted. Nonetheless, those groups remain underrepresented, and a coalition of community groups has urged the school board to abandon the gifted label. Evie Frankl, co-chair of the Montgomery County Education Forum and a leader in the movement to do away with officially sanctioned giftedness, believes education leaders award the designation liberally as "a gift to the white middle class, to keep them in the school system," rather than to serve the goals of diversity and inclusiveness.

Trying to Find Solutions in Chaotic Middle Schools (The New York Times, January 3, 2007)
The first article in a series called "The Critical Years," this reporter examines the struggle to reform middle schools and discusses the difficulty in educating this age group and how it is especially hard to do in cities where problems are acute. Smaller gains in math scores and stagnant reading scores for middle school students are seen as critical obstacle to improving dropout rates and the achievement gap between white and black students.

In or Out Of the Game? A Battle-Scarred Hustler Waits for a Second Act (Washington Post, December 31, 2006)
"These guys are conditioned to have this hard exterior, to lash out at their families, their girlfriends, us at CSOSA," said Atkinson. "Once you strip it bare, you find out these are grown men who've experienced a lot of pain in their lives. They don't know how to process it. All they know is how to act out. It's a sad cycle."

The Hard Core Of Cool: Confidence, Grace And Underneath It All, the Need to Be Recognized (Washington Post, December 30, 2006)
Confidence is cool's most essential element. Perhaps that's why black men -- for whom the appearance of assurance can be a matter of life or death -- so often radiate it.

Special Agent: His Feet in Two Worlds, an FBI Man Climbs to the Top (Washington Post, December 24, 2006)
And there it was. For his entire life, Mason had been determined to not be defined by race. But race was a formidable foe. Even though he knew the arrest was fake and he probably would never see the onlookers again, the feelings had cornered him there on the ground -- and they cut deep.

Speaking Truth to Power on School Desegregation (Education Week (subscription required), December 23, 2006)
On Sunday, Dec. 3, two Teachers College graduate students and I traveled from New York City to Washington to camp out in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. We were in line to get the few public tickets for the Monday morning oral arguments in the Jefferson County, Ky., and Seattle voluntary-school-integration cases. As the night wore on, we were joined by cold but guardedly optimistic lawyers and advocates, who, like us, support the school districts’ position that they have a compelling interest in using race as one factor in how they assign students to their schools.

Educators want to reopen 'Brown v. Board' school (USA Today, December 22, 2006)
Publicly funded but, in most cases, privately run charter schools, first proposed in the 1990s, have become the leading tool of grassroots reformers impatient with districts' slow progress improving poor and minority children's schools. Nationwide, charter schools enroll much larger proportions of poor and minority students than public schools, leading some observers to worry that they could be contributing, in a small way, to a resegregation of public schools.

A Close Bond Sheds Light on Race Relations (NPR, December 20, 2006)
"Honestly, I think adults make more of a stink about race than kids do," Luzietti says. "I've known Amanda too long to feel like I have to walk on eggshells with her.... On the issues of racial equality, I think that we pretty much agree. I feel that I can talk to Amanda about anything."

The Meaning of Work: For Chris Dansby, the Search for a Job Is About More Than a Paycheck (Washington Post, December 19, 2006)
Why does Chris Dansby not have a job? What happened? What can he do about it? What did he do wrong? As Chris navigates the part of the nation populated by black men like himself looking for work, there isn't a day he doesn't wonder about these questions, the last one most of all.

Dad, Redefined: He's Not There in the House. Will He Be There for His Son? (Washington Post, December 17, 2006)
Federal statistics show that 69 percent of all black children are born to single mothers, more than twice the national average and almost triple the rate of whites. In Potomac Gardens, a public housing complex on Capitol Hill where virtually all residents are black, the president of the residents' association says that of the 208 families, 180 are headed by single moms. Some dads help out a lot, others not at all.

Ideas to aid black youths (Baltimore Sun, December 14, 2006)
To push more black male students toward success, Maryland should turn to academic solutions such as single-sex classrooms and street-level fixes such as pairing ex-convicts with young men in the neighborhood, a panel of education experts told the state school board yesterday.

Opinion: A Slide Toward Segregation (Washington Post, November 29, 2006)
A half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, it's come, amazingly, to this: The Supreme Court, in the name of preventing race discrimination, is being asked to stop local schools from voluntarily adopting plans to promote integration. Even more amazingly, the federal government -- a government that sided with the black schoolchildren in Brown and has spent years helping enforce the court's desegregation decree -- has entered the case on the side of white parents challenging the plans.

The Old Kinship: Team 33 Laments Disintegration of Traditional Values, Ties (Washington Post, November 29, 2006)
The retired ex-union guys have watched the rules change. In two generations, they've seen some of their deepest beliefs -- in work, family, respect and responsibility -- fall out of vogue with some younger black men. And they've seen their vaunted brotherhood, an answer when the old Negro spiritual wondered how their souls got over, dissipate as black men maim and kill one another over the smallest slights. It's something they could not have imagined as young men, laboring to find their places.

Escaping 'Average': Innovative Programs Make the Case That High-Level Classes Aren't Just for the Gifted (Washington Post, November 28, 2006)
Throughout the country, the desire to coax average students into high-level courses has inspired many innovations. Nearly all seek to teach students how to take notes, write papers and prepare for exams. They harness what is perhaps the greatest force in U.S. schools -- the urge to be a part of a group -- by giving the students a sense they are moving onto the college track with others who share their doubts and middling academic records.

Harvard civil rights group headed to LA (Boston Glove, November 28, 2006)
The Civil Rights Project at Harvard is moving to the University of California at Los Angeles, along with its director, Gary Orfield, depriving the university of a prominent voice in the national debate about racial justice. The 10-year-old center, which Orfield cofounded at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, has produced reams of influential research on inequality, particularly in education -- on the resegregation of schools, for example.

Schools Slow in Closing Gaps Between Races  (New York Times (subscription needed), November 20, 2006)
When President Bush signed his sweeping education law a year into his presidency, it set 2014 as the deadline by which schools were to close the test-score gaps between minority and white students that have persisted since standardized testing began. Now, as Congress prepares to consider reauthorizing the law next year, researchers and a half-dozen recent studies, including three issued last week, are reporting little progress toward that goal. Slight gains have been seen for some grade levels.

Black Enrollment in AP Surges in Montgomery (Washington Post, November 20, 2006)
Montgomery County public schools this year passed a milestone in college preparation: Half of the 9,737 black high school students are enrolled in honors or Advanced Placement courses. Five years ago, barely one-third of African Americans participated in such classes, despite the county's reputation as a national leader in college prep. Now, a black student in Montgomery is more likely to take an AP test than a white student elsewhere in the nation.

New Focus on Affirmative Action (Washington Post, November 17, 2006)
The number of minorities -- particularly black Americans -- winning government contracts and being admitted to public colleges and universities in California has dwindled since a ballot measure was passed 10 years ago outlawing preferential treatment for minorities in those areas, according to a study released recently. The report comes as the longtime controversy over affirmative action is gaining new attention.

Report Maps Schools' Needs (Baltimore Sun, November 17, 2006)
Anne Arundel County middle school pupils aren't making consistent progress on state assessments in reading and math. Black and Hispanic pupils aren't doing as well as others on those tests, and males in those groups have the county's lowest graduation rates.

U.S. Seen as Falling Short on Basic Supports for Children (Education Week - (subscription required), November 15, 2006)
More than two-thirds of American children ages 6 to 17 lack the sustained supports needed to put them on track for adult success, according to a report scheduled for release this week.

Schools’ Role in Achievement Gaps Scrutinized (Education Week - must have subscription to access, November 15, 2006)
Two new studies shed light on how the achievement gaps between groups of students grow as they move from elementary to middle school. The studies both found that black students start out school trailing behind their white counterparts, learn less over the course of the school year, and fall further behind as they progress through school.

Financial Aid Falls Short for Minority, Low-Income College Students (USA Today, November 15, 2006)
The nation's top public universities "are becoming disproportionately whiter and richer," says a new report that looks at enrollment and graduation rates at 50 public flagship universities. The report argues that financial aid practices at those and similar institutions create barriers for low-income and minority students.

Persistent Race Disparities Found (Washington Post, November 14, 2006)
Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing. "Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not be direct discrimination, but it still matters indirectly," said Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University and the author of "Being Black, Living in the Red."

Justices to Weigh School Diversity (USA Today, November 14, 2006)
A pair of legal disputes, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, test whether public schools can use race as a factor in determining where students go to school. The key legal question in the lawsuits — which were filed by parents of white students who weren't allowed to attend the schools of their choice — is whether school-assignment plans that use students' race as a factor violate the Constitution's guarantee of equality.

Opinion: Racial ignorance still plagues campuses (USA Today, November 8, 2006)
According to The Review of Higher Education, a research journal, 1 million incidents of bias occur every year on campuses in the USA. Many incidents aren't reported, though, because schools perceived as racially insensitive could see a backlash in the form of lost gifts and contributions, the lifeblood of universities.

Melee Puts Parents, Educators on Guard (Washington Post, November 8, 2006)
Fights in P.G. County Public Schools reflect cultural friction as majority-black Prince George's absorbs a rapidly expanding Hispanic population. Hispanic enrollment in the 135,000-student school system has nearly tripled, from 6,500 students a decade ago to 18,600 students now. In some schools, such as Northwestern High in Hyattsville, the black and Hispanic populations are about even.

Outside, a 'Fight for Equality' (Washington Post, November 5, 2006)
Demonstrators from as far as California, along with students from Washington area high schools and universities, braved the breezy, 40-degree weather and gathered on the court steps as early as Sunday night to protest a case that the demonstrators said could reinstitute school segregation. Then, holding signs saying "Fight for Equality" and chanting "by any means necessary," they marched down Independence Avenue for a rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Schools Race Highlights City's Gaps (Washington Post, November 2, 2006)
To understand a prominent theme in today's school board race east of the Anacostia River, go back almost four decades to a time when everything was black and white. In what was considered one of the most significant school cases since Brown v. Board of Education, a federal judge in 1967 ruled that the D.C. school system was committing "criminal" discrimination against black students by segregating them in inferior schools east of the Anacostia River.

Seeking 'Fresh Breath of Air' for D.C. Schools (The Washington Post, October 31, 2006)
Timothy Jenkins traveled to rural Mississippi in the early 1960s to help establish Freedom Schools. Operating in churches, houses and even barns, the Freedom Schools were aimed at educating and empowering black children displaced when local officials shuttered public schools to avoid federal integration orders. Forty-five years later, Jenkins, a candidate for D.C. Board of Education president, said he considers himself to be in the middle of a modern-day civil rights struggle in the nation's capital.

Editorial: Ensure That All Children Learn (The Intelligencer, October 29, 2006)
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued a report entitled, “How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?” In terms of student achievement, West Virginia public schools received a “D” grade from the institute.

Closing the Gap, Child by Child (Washington Post, October 27, 2006)
In 2004, Hollin Meadows Elementary School had been jolted by news that 60 percent of black students in selected grades didn't pass the state reading test and that the school had failed to make academic progress required under federal law. New state data show that many black students are making significant progress countywide.

District 3 Offers Candidates Myriad Challenges (Washington Post, October 27, 2006)
The candidate who emerges from a pack of five looking to become the next school board member from District 3, which represents Wards 5 and 6, will face these parental frustrations and more. The victor must look for ways to address those concerns and other pressing issues of student achievement, the condition of school buildings and the future of charter schools in the District.

Word Gets Out on Deseg Busing (Philadelphia Inquirer, October 26, 2006)
The school district has quietly informed parents that starting next September, it will end its decades-long policy of providing free busing for desegregation purposes.

Families with Children in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District (W-SSD) May Be Reminded These Days of the Ancient Chinese Curse (News of Delaware County, October 26, 2006)
Mark Linkins outlined a challenge for the Wallingford-Swarthmore district that comes as a result of disappointing scores among the 67 black students who participated in the test and who represent approximately eight percent of the student population.

Kids shoot for cultural understanding (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.basketball30oct30,0,1266045.story?coll=bal-pe-maryland, October 10, 2006)
Sneakers squeaked, shouts echoed and hands flew in the air yesterday as the children - dressed in shirts of maroon, green and various shades of blue - dashed between hoops, hoping for that desired swish that would score points for their teams. It was another Sunday afternoon pickup basketball game - with a twist. The players were a rainbow of colors and backgrounds: children from Baltimore City and suburbia, from public, private and home schools. Children who were white, black, Latino, Korean, biracial, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. Children who discovered, over the last four Sundays, that despite their differences, they had much in common.

Excluded Student Sues Over Workshop (Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 27, 2006)
Parents of a Monacan High School student yesterday filed a federal lawsuit claiming the girl was excluded from a Virginia Commonwealth University/Times-Dispatch educational program for minorities because she is white. Jane and Steven Smith, parents of Emily Smith, 15, are suing the sponsors of the Urban Journalism Workshop in a class-action complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond. They are represented by The Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit law firm in Washington that has been a leader in attacks on affirmative action.

Historically Black Colleges Losing Grip on Top Students (The Baltimore Sun, September 26, 2006)
Some black schools are struggling to market themselves to youngsters who do not feel as duty-bound to attend black colleges as their parents did.

Blacks Take Education Into Their Own Hands  (San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2006)
A desire for more rigorous academics and greater emphasis on black history also has led black families into homeschooling, educators say.

Report Calls for Improvement in K-8 Science Education (The Washington Post, September 22, 2006)
The report, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Merck Institute for Science Education, reiterates concerns that have been expressed for years by business leaders and educators who fear the country is in danger of losing its scientific superiority because of a poorly trained workforce. It also cites the continuing achievement gap between white and Asian students and economically disadvantaged black and Latino students.

Black-White Gap Disappears for Childhood Shots (The Seattle Times, September 15, 2006)
For the first time in at least a decade, the vaccination rate for black children in the United States has caught up to that of youngsters in other racial groups, the government reported Thursday.

Digital Divide Separates White, Minority Students (The Boston Globe, September 6, 2006)
Many more white children use the Internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone, according to a new study released by the National Center for Education Statistics.

White House Fights Race-Based Admissions Policies (The Washington Post, September 4, 2006)
The Bush administration is siding with opponents of public school policies that assign students by race to some K-12 institutions, in the most important affirmative-action-related Supreme Court case since the justices upheld some forms of race-conscious admissions for higher education in 2003. At issue are programs in Louisville and Seattle, which seek to ensure that the student bodies of public schools reflect the cities' ethnic composition. White parents have challenged the policies in court, arguing that their children were denied admission to their preferred schools because of race.

More Minority Students Take SAT (The Baltimore Sun, September 3, 2006)
Despite the recent news that last year's seniors saw the biggest dip in SAT scores in decades, Carroll school officials latched onto a silver lining in the results: impressive gains locally in the numbers of students, particularly among minorities, taking the college entrance exam.

Bush Administration Opposes Integration Plans (The Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2006)
The Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down voluntary school integration programs across the nation that exclude some students because of their race. Administration lawyers filed briefs this week in pending cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., on the side of white parents who are challenging "racial balancing" programs as unconstitutional. The parents say the integration guidelines amount to racial discrimination and violate the Constitution's guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. They lost in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court will hear their appeals in the fall. In the briefs, U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the justices to rule that "the use of a racial classification to achieve a desired racial balance in public schools" is just as unconstitutional as old-fashioned racial segregation.

Judge Releases Chicago Public Schools From Some Desegregation Rules (USA Today, August 15, 2006)
After a quarter century, a judge has released portions of Chicago Public Schools' desegregation plan from federal oversight. In a decree issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras eliminated a set of spending and reporting requirements from the original 1980 agreement covering the nation's third-largest school system, which has about 431,000 students.

Education Quality for Minorities Faulted (San Francisco Chronicle, August 11, 2006)
Most states have shirked the law by failing to ensure that poor and minority students get their fair share of qualified teachers, a new analysis contends.

Proposal Adds Options for Students to Specify Race  (The New York Times, August 9, 2006)
For years, some mixed-heritage students have rebelled against schools’ and colleges’ efforts to get them to identify themselves as one race or another. Now the federal Education Department has proposed new regulations that would let students circle as many categories as they want. In releasing its proposal, the department is complying with guidelines set forth nine years ago by the Office of Management and Budget that mandated that people be allowed to mark more than one race on federally required forms.

Academic Gap Narrows but Disparities Remain in Baltimore (The Baltimore Sun, August 8, 2006)
Many students are achieving greater academic success in Baltimore County public schools, but disparities persist between white and minority students, including the number of students taking challenging classes, according to a county school system report. The number of African-American students taking Advanced Placement courses in county schools doubled to 4 percent in 2005, while about 13 percent of white children took the classes, according to the Minority Achievement Report, published by the school system's Office of Equity and Assurance. The study also found that nearly one in six African-American students was suspended during the 2004-2005 school year, compared with one in 13 white students.

Gates Foundation Expands Scholars Program (The Baltimore Sun, August 7, 2006)
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says it will add $58 million to expand its $1 billion Millennium Scholars program to target low-income and minority students seeking a graduate degree in public health. It's the first time the foundation has added money to the scholarship program since it was established in 1999. The program has already given scholarships to more than 10,000 students for undergraduate education in their choice of major and for graduate work in public health, education, science, math, engineering and library science.

Black Colleges Vie for Hispanic Surge (The Washington Times, August 6, 2006)
Pressed by stiff competition for their traditional students, historically black colleges are making a push to recruit Hispanics. The campuses are hiring Hispanic recruiters, distributing brochures featuring Hispanic students and establishing special scholarships for Hispanics in an attempt to tap the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority.

Minority-Run Firm Sues Over City Schools Contract (The Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2006)
The city school board's decision to declare an "emergency" so it could award a no-bid food contract to an Ohio firm has sparked a lawsuit from a local minority-run firm that was the low bidder. The lawsuit alleges that the school board illegally awarded the contract to Clovervale Farms Inc., a firm that is not minority-owned and has no experience in food distribution.

Plan to Restructure City Schools Concerns Some Parents (Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 14, 2006)
Some Richmond residents spoke yesterday of a school restructuring plan as a road to progress. Others voiced concerns about the impact it might have on students. Jane Tally, a board member of Hope in the Cities, which promotes income and racial integration in the schools, said she agreed with the vision of the city school system.

Being a Black Man (The Washington Post, July 13, 2006)
A special series of articles on the lives of black men in the United States.

Gender Gap on Campus Widens (The Baltimore Sun, July 12, 2006)
Women are increasingly outnumbering men at America's colleges, a gap that is widest - and most troublesome - among low-income and minority students, researchers said in a report released yesterday. The share of males age 24 and younger dropped to 45 percent in 2003-2004, from 48 percent in 1995-1996. The gap is even wider for students older than 25, and among African-Americans and Latinos, particularly those from low-income families.

Opinion: Race, Youth and an Issue of Stereotypes (The Washington Post, July 9, 2006)
Two July 4 features on black children brought a complaint from reader Andre Barnett of Columbia, who felt that the articles promoted racial stereotypes.

Three in Four Va. Students Graduate, Study Says (The Washington Post, July 6, 2006)
About three-quarters of the students in Virginia's public high schools graduate in four years, but the rates of black students are far below those of whites, according to a new report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

Program Focuses on Tolerance (The Baltimore Sun, July 2, 2006)
About a year ago, Liberty High was the first school in Carroll County to host a two-day leadership workshop called, "Student Problem Identification and Resolution of Issues Together." More commonly known as SPIRIT, the program is a collaboration of the U.S. Department of Justice and local schools. It is aimed at increasing understanding across racial and ethnic lines to alleviate tensions among students and help them develop better relationships.

Steering Minority Teens Into Teaching (The Washington Post, June 29, 2006)
In an attempt to entice more minority and disadvantaged students to become educators, Prince William County school officials are launching a partnership with a New York-based nonprofit organization that will help high school graduates earn significant college scholarships if they decide to become teachers. Prince William school officials hope to begin the program in the fall with about 50 students from the freshman, sophomore and junior classes. Once the students are accepted, the nonprofit organization, Today's Students, Tomorrow's Teachers, will link them with paid mentoring teachers in their schools, place them in SAT preparation courses and help them apply to a select group of colleges that promise to reduce the students' tuition by at least 50 percent.

Education Offers Freedom; You Just Have to Say Yes (Philadelphia Daily News, June 27, 2006)
The Freedom Summer program for Philadelphia children includes a curriculum that strengthens areas such as math and reading, while allowing a sense of belonging and a relaxed, creative environment. It revolves around the principles of Kwanzaa, the African-American cultural observance, emphasizing the coming together of people for a common goal.

Schools' Efforts on Race Await Justices' Ruling (The New York Times, June 24, 2006)
Over the past 15 years, courts have ended desegregation orders in scores of school districts. But many districts around the country seek to maintain diversity with voluntary programs like magnet schools and magnet programs, clustering plans that group schools in black neighborhoods with those in white, and weighted admissions lotteries that assign classroom seats by race. All of this is now a gray area of the law until there is guidance from the Supreme Court on how far school systems may go in the quest for racial diversity.

Performance Gap on Tests Uneven for Black Students (The Washington Post, June 22, 2006)
Black students trail white students more in mathematics than in reading, especially in middle school grades, an analysis of Maryland test scores shows. But the achievement gap for Hispanic students is virtually the same in both academic subjects, a contrast that perplexed some school testing experts. Maryland School Assessment data made public this week show that the state's two largest school systems -- in Montgomery and Prince George's counties -- continue to face enormous racial and ethnic disparities in educational achievement.

Preferential Hawaiian School Admissions Questioned in Court (USA Today, June 20, 2006)
A wealthy private school created exclusively for its indigenous people is asking a federal appeals court to allow it to continue its race-based admissions policy. Fifteen judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in San Francisco about whether the Kamehameha Schools can continue to limit enrollment to Native Hawaiians.

Role of Special Education Questioned (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 16, 2006)
The Virginia Department of Education recently issued a study that says about 90 of Virginia's 132 school districts have shifted a disproportionately large percentage of minority students to some special-education classes.

Racial Bias in Schools is Alleged (The Baltimore Sun, June 6, 2006)
The whistleblower who leaked allegations leading to last week's firing of the Baltimore schools' chief operating officer continued his assault against the school system's top leaders yesterday as he hurled charges of institutional racism.

WVDE Embraces High Need Populations (West Virginia Department of Education, June 6, 2006)
State Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine leads a newly developed task force to eliminate student achievement gaps in high need populations. Paine has challenged the Task Force to Improve Results for High Need Populations to design a strategic plan by July 31, 2006, with the goal of increasing student achievement for students with unique learning needs related to disability, economic disadvantage and cultural differences. “West Virginia is committed to helping all students – African-American, white, poor, non-English speaking, special education – learn and succeed in the fiercely competitive global economy,” said Paine. “I expect this task force to tackle the issues facing high need students and build a powerful plan that gets to the core of what students need as they develop into 21st century citizens.”

Justices to Rule on Race and Education (The New York Times, June 5, 2006)
The Supreme Court agreed today to consider an issue of enormous importance to parents and educators across the country: the extent to which public school administrators can use racial factors in assigning children to schools. The court accepted cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., for its next term. The school districts in both cities defeated challenges to their assignment procedures in the lower courts.

Schools' Disparities Studied (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 4, 2006)
In metropolitan Richmond, where most schools largely end up segregated by income, the poorer schools lag behind their wealthier peers. This finding is among the reasons Hope in the Cities, a Richmond-based organization that promotes racial healing, wants to form a regional task force of corporate leaders to examine new approaches for improving all schools.

Virginia Students Show Gains in Science (The Washington Post, June 4, 2006)
More of Virginia's elementary and middle school students show a solid grasp of science than they did five years ago, and the state's students performed better overall than their peers nationwide, a recent report shows. Virginia was one of only a handful of states showing significant improvement in science, according to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress. But considerable achievement gaps remain among racial groups. White and Asian students continue to outperform black and Hispanic students.

Minorities Call School a Hostile Place, Poll Finds (The Seattle Times, May 31, 2006)
The findings suggest that many minority kids are struggling in the equivalent of a hostile work environment, according to Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research group that tracks education trends. Minority children in public middle and high schools are more likely than white children to describe profanity, truancy, fighting, weapons and drug abuse as "very serious" problems.

Race, Politics and the Schools (The Baltimore Sun, May 28, 2006)
Marion Orr has been casting an analytical eye on Baltimore schools for decades. And he finds decisions made decades ago resonating in the current controversies embroiling the system as the city and state fight for control. Orr's 1999 book, Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, draws on data gathered as part of an 11-city study of urban school reform. Based on research conducted in the middle 1990s, the book builds on the dissertation Orr completed at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992.

NAACP Seeks School Parity (The Baltimore Sun, May 19, 2006)
The local branch of the NAACP has called on the Anne Arundel County (Maryland) Board of Education to put together an affirmative action plan to increase what it called an "appalling" number of minority teachers and administrators.

3 Schools Close Achievement Gaps Among Students (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 18, 2006)
Three Richmond-area schools have been recognized by Standard & Poor's for narrowing achievement gaps between black, Hispanic or economically disadvantaged students and higher-performing peers. And the schools did it while raising the average proficiency rates for all of those groups. The schools -- Henrico County's Varina Elementary School, Hopewell High School and Richmond's Albert Hill Middle School -- were among 69 schools from 41 districts in the state.

Most Blacks in Low-Rung School Jobs (The Washington Post, May 15, 2006)
Blacks are well represented in Anne Arundel's public school workforce, but more work as custodians than teachers, according to an internal school-system document that has circulated among Annapolis civil rights leaders. Blacks make up nearly 23 percent of the county's student body but only 8 percent of the teaching staff. The school system employs 1,360 blacks, but the largest group, -- 455 -- works as custodians. The county has a comparatively large number of black principals and assistant principals. But only one African American, Les Mobray, is part of Interim Superintendent Nancy Mann's executive staff. Mobray is acting director of student discipline and safety.

Of U.S. Children Under 5, Nearly Half Are Minorities (The Washington Post, May 10, 2006)
Nearly half of the nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census report released today. Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group. They accounted for 49 percent of the country's growth from 2004 to 2005, the report shows.

Program Will Help Teens with College Admissions (The Baltimore Sun, May 10, 2006)
Jovan Edmunds has guided 316 seniors through the college admissions process as a school counselor for the Class of 2006 at Dundalk High School. She presented college information to all senior classes, wrote recommendation letters for at least 100 students and reminded others to sign up for college entrance exams. Next fall, she and other counselors at Dundalk and Woodlawn high schools will have a little more help, thanks to a new program coordinated through 100 Black Men of Maryland.

Science Teaching Gets Weak Diversity Grade (USA Today, May 9, 2006)
A survey of 100 top technology executives gives the nation's public schools a C-minus for efforts to encourage girls and minorities to pursue science and technology careers.

300,000 Children in U.S. Found to Have Autism (The Washington Post, May 5, 2006)
About 300,000 American children have been diagnosed as having autism, according to the first comprehensive national surveys of the developmental disorder. Boys were four times more likely than girls to have the disorder, which is characterized by verbal, social and emotional problems. White families with higher incomes were also more likely to report having children with the disorder, a fact that federal experts said probably reflected unequal access to medical services.

Black Students Lagging in Fairfax County (Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 15, 2006)
In Fairfax County, nearly 90 percent of public-school graduates go on to college or other schools. The district's SAT scores were the best in the county's history last year -- and 8.4 percent above the national average.But school officials hadn't noticed that many black students were not making the grade.In fact, black students in Fairfax County are scoring consistently lower on state standardized tests than black students in Richmond, Norfolk and other comparatively poor Virginia districts.

Racial Slurs Prompt Closed Meeting (The Washington Post, April 8, 2006)
Educators at Thomas W. Pyle Middle School met with parent leaders, county officials and community groups yesterday to map out strategies for dealing with what some fear is a "pattern of racial intolerance" developing at the Bethesda area campus. The closed meeting came after five incidents in which racial slurs were used against black students. This week, Principal Michael J. Zarchin sent a letter home to parents outlining the issues.

Public Forums Held on Schools' Civil Rights Action Plan (The Baltimore Sun, April 7, 2006)
Six months after Anne Arundel County school officials and civil rights groups signed an agreement to eliminate disparities between black and white students in the school system, the first of a series of mandated community forums were held this week to discuss how the school system would comply with the accord.

3 Counties Narrow Graduation Gap (The Washington Times, April 7, 2006)
Three Maryland counties ranked among the most successful in the country at narrowing the achievement gap between black and white male students, according to a study. Some specialists argued however, that the report -- which compared 2004 graduation rates -- says more about the demographics of Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George's counties than the efforts of the school systems. Black boys in Baltimore County had an 80 percent graduation rate in 2004, compared with 81 percent for white boys, according to the report by the Schott Foundation, based in Cambridge, Mass. Montgomery and Prince George's counties had graduation rates slightly lower than Baltimore County's, according to the study, which focused on school districts with more than 10,000 black male students. Together, the three counties enroll the nation's third-largest population of black male students.

Digital Divide Closing as Blacks Turn to Internet (The New York Times, March 31, 2006)
African-Americans are steadily gaining access to and ease with the Internet, signaling a remarkable closing of the "digital divide" that many experts had worried would be a crippling disadvantage in achieving success.

Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn (The New York Times, March 20, 2006)
Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years.

Some Say Montessori Move 'Slap in Face' (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 28, 2006)
Neighborhood violence is threatening the racially mixed Homewood Montessori, prompting the school board to consider moving it elsewhere and upsetting some black parents whose children would attend another school in the building. "The role of our school is to be a multicultural entity, and where we are now seems to stifle that," said Montessori Principal Victoria Thompson Bey. "People perceive that there is violence in the surrounding community, and that perception has created fear." The academically high-achieving school has been a source of pride for Pittsburgh Public Schools and Homewood for 25 years, but it is facing declining enrollment.

After Policy Change, Thomas Jefferson High Makes Small Gains in Student Diversity (The Washington Post, February 26, 2006)
Minority enrollment at Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has increased only slightly under a new admissions policy intended to ensure greater diversity at the selective school. In this year's freshman class, the first to use the new admissions procedures, 19 Hispanic students were admitted, compared with 10 the year before. Twelve black students were admitted, compared with 11 the year before. A total of 495 students were accepted.

Teacher Brings Past to Life with a Visit from Rosa Parks (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 25, 2006)
A 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air pulled into the bus loop at Manchester High School yesterday, and from the car stepped a petite woman in vintage clothing. For the day, Manchester special education teacher Tina Jackson-Hanson personified the late Rosa Parks. Manchester Principal Peter Koste designated yesterday as Rosa Parks day, part of the school's Black History Month activities.

Battling Over Black History Facts (The Baltimore Sun, February 24, 2006)
For the past few months, students at Oakland Mills, in the county and across the state have been memorizing facts, quizzing one another and priming their competitive juices in preparation for the Black Saga competition, a nine-year-old trivia contest that tests pupils' knowledge of black history.

College Fair Offers Black Students Help, Hope (The Washington Times, February 21, 2006)
This year, 250 students were admitted to historically black colleges and universities as part of the growing annual Alfred Street Baptist Church College Festival, representing 40 historically black colleges and universities.

If They Are Accepted, They Get a Free Ride (The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 19, 2006)
Graduate scholarships, which total as much as $25 million, were arranged by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) in conjunction with 17 Pennsylvania colleges, the State System of Higher Education and the Educational Advancement Alliance Inc., a Philadelphia nonprofit devoted to aiding underrepresented students. Several elected officials said the scholarships will help bridge a racial disparity in higher education, helping African American, Latino and other minority students get a foothold in graduate school.

Student Arrested in 'KKK' Graffiti (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 15, 2006)
A male student was arrested after "KKK" was spray-painted on a wall in a bathroom at Goochland High School. The spray-paint incident occurred Friday. The student was arrested Monday morning, said Goochland School Superintendent Frank Morgan.

Bush Education Policy Called 'Uneven' in Study (The Houston Chronicle, February 14, 2006)
President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education policy has in some cases benefited white middle-class children over blacks and other minorities in poorer regions, a Harvard University study showed on Tuesday.

Home Schooling Draws More Blacks (The Baltimore Sun, January 23, 2006)
Black home-schooling families say they are seeing their numbers increase noticeably in Baltimore, Washington and surrounding suburbs, areas with large black populations and, in some cases, notoriously underperforming schools.

School Segregation Growing in California, Study Finds (San Jose Mercury News, January 17, 2006)
California's schools are among the most segregated in the nation—and they are becoming even more divided, with Latino and African-American students clustered together and isolated from whites, according to a study released this week by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Home Schools Are Becoming More Popular Among Blacks (The New York Times, December 12, 2005)
The move toward home schooling, advocates say, reflects a wider desire among families of all races to guide their children's religious upbringing, but it also reflects concerns about other issues like substandard schools and the preservation of cultural heritage.

Pols Push to Kill Schools' K12 Contract (Philadelphia Daily News, December 8, 2005)
African-American politicians in Philadelphia have joined the chorus of those calling on the School Reform Commission to reverse itself and terminate the contract of curriculum developer K12, Inc., whose co-founder, William J. Bennett, is under fire for remarks on race.

Studying's Reward: Stigma (St. Petersburg Times, December 5, 2005)
For years, educators have cited the stigma of "acting white" as a factor in the persistent achievement gap between white and minority students. But there was little evidence beyond stories and a couple of studies even suggested it was myth. Now comes a new study by a Harvard economist who says his analysis of friendship patterns shows minority students do pay a high price for academic success.

Opinion: Race, Schools, Income (The Baltimore Sun, November 29, 2005)
"Virtually everywhere across this country, school systems are struggling with the problem of how to reduce the persistent overall correlation between race and school achievement - with many publicly setting the goal of wiping out racial achievement differences within a few years. In September, for example, Anne Arundel County schools reached an agreement with civil rights leaders that calls for erasing the black-white achievement gap by 2007."

Building Ties Across Cultures (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 6, 2005)
Latino, white and African American students mingle in easy camaraderie, playing Ping-Pong and practicing break-dancing. In the computer lab, students research the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Called the Garage, the center on South Union Street once sheltered cars. Now it shelters and cares for Kennett Square's youths.

Md. School Closes Achievement Gap (The Washington Post, October 31, 2005)
At North Glen Elementary School in the spring, all but one of the 16 black students in the third grade, including Joshua Franklin, scored well enough on the statewide Maryland School Assessment test to be rated proficient. They scored higher than almost every other group of black third-graders in Maryland. Over the past three years, this Anne Arundel school has achieved a goal that eludes most of the nation's public schools. It has closed the achievement gap between black and white students.

School Proposal Could Face Hurdles (Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 27, 2005)
Richmond's school system awarded $10.38 million in construction contracts during fiscal year 2005. Of that amount, 13 percent, or $1.33 million, went to black firms. School Board member Reginald M. Malone Sr. would like to see that percentage increase.

Minding the Gap in Gifted and Talented Programs (The Washington Post, October 27, 2005)
At board meetings and public appearances, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast speaks often about closing the achievement gap, but a recent report on the system's gifted and talented program demonstrates that the school system still has a ways to go if it hopes to ensure that all students have access to the kind of higher-level courses that are important to their success in school. The issue of minority representation in gifted and talented, or GT, programs surfaced earlier this year when a group of black parents began asking why so few black and Hispanic students were identified as gifted and talented. Members of African American Parents of Montgomery County said school officials needed to rethink their identification process.

Students Improve on State Testing  (The Baltimore Sun, October 23, 2005)
Harford County students improved on statewide standardized tests last year, following a trend of better performance around Maryland. However, four of the county's schools are struggling to address the needs of some children who did not reach annual targets on these exams.

Racial Tiebreaker Will Stand (The Seattle Times, October 21, 2005)
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld Seattle Public Schools' use of race as a tiebreaker in assigning students to popular high schools, and the plaintiffs vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Minority Students Are Closing Gap in Math and Reading (The Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2005)
Black and Hispanic students are narrowing the achievement gap with whites in reading and math, but overall the nation's progress is small or slipping.

Opinion: Theories on Why Black Students in Fairfax Trail Virginia Peers (The Washington Post, October 20, 2005)
"Repeatedly over the past 10 years, Fairfax teachers have cited test scores to show that our programs are not working, especially for minority students. Fairfax administrators, however, have opposed using programs proven elsewhere in place of locally written curriculums that keep local administrators employed."

'Offensive' Remarks, Local Outrage Force Bennett From Job (Philadelphia Daily News, October 4, 2005)
William J. Bennett, the former U.S. education secretary who touched off a firestorm last week for suggesting that aborting black babies would reduce crime, has resigned from the board of directors of the education company he co-founded. The Daily News reported exclusively Saturday that Philadelphia parents and education activists entered the fray to demand that the School District of Philadelphia end the approximately $3 million in contracts it awarded in April to Bennett's K12 Inc.

Curriculum Empowers Black Parents (The Washington Times, October 3, 2005)
Black families are turning to home-schooling in increasing numbers, a trend seen in the Washington metro area.

School Chief to Congress: Minorities Closing Gap (Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 30, 2005)
Black and Hispanic students in Richmond are achieving at rates approaching those of their white peers, Deborah Jewell-Sherman told a congressional committee yesterday. Jewell-Sherman, Richmond's school superintendent, testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce during a hearing on "Closing the Achievement Gap in America's schools: the No Child Left Behind Act."

Schools Directed to Expand History Courses (The New York Times, September 28, 2005)
State legislators across the country are increasingly directing their schools to teach students more about the struggles and triumphs of different races and ethnic groups -- a move critics say amounts to politically correct meddling.

Project On Racism Invites Students To Compete in Essay Contest (West Virginia Department of Education, September 23, 2005)
One of the most important responsibilities of living in a democracy is voicing your ideas and listening to the ideas of others. Now, students across West Virginia have their opportunity to lend their voices in the 13th Annual Project on Racism Essay Contest, sponsored by the YWCA of Wheeling and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission.

Va. School District Wins Top Education Prize (CNN.com, September 20, 2005)
Norfolk Public Schools, a 36,700-student district, won the largest share of the $1 million Broad Prize for Public Education. The award annually honors urban districts that make big gains in test scores, particularly among poor and minority students.

Black Studies Attract 5,000 pupils (Philadelphia Daily News, September 15, 2005)
Five thousand high school students are now enrolled in the Philadelphia School District's new African and African-American history course, delighted school officials said yesterday.

Superintendent Smith, By the Numbers (The Washington Post, September 15, 2005)
The Anne Arundel school board hired Superintendent Eric J. Smith in summer 2002 to raise the bar and close the gap: to elevate performance for all students, and also to improve the academic standing of minorities, particularly blacks, relative to whites. Many superintendents have found success in one or the other of those measures; Smith, based on his performance in Charlotte, N.C., and elsewhere, had proved himself one of a few innovators who could do both.

U.Va Names First Diversity Chief (Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 14, 2005)
University of Virginia officials yesterday named a national expert on college diversity to a newly created position combating racial tension on campus. William B. Harvey, 57, former vice president of the Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity in Washington, will begin as the vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity at the Charlottesville campus on Nov. 1.

Program Aims to Increase Number of Male Black Teachers (The Baltimore Sun, September 12, 2005)
Prince George's County schools and Bowie State University have teamed up in an effort to attack a chronic problem in Maryland education—the shortage of African-American men teaching in public schools. The recently announced Men Equipped to Nurture program will help male teachers earn full certification by paying for their classes and certification exam fees. Other institutions in Maryland and beyond are watching closely.

From Baltimore to Hopkins (The Baltimore Sun, September 8, 2005)
Things are changing for Baltimore public school students at Hopkins. In fact, one of the reasons why Strange applied to Hopkins is it guaranteed her a full ride upon acceptance, enrolling her as one of the first participants in its inaugural Baltimore Scholars program. The Baltimore Scholars are Hopkins-bound, high-achieving students from Baltimore public schools who in the past may have been overlooked by the university.

Blacks and Hispanics Show Progress on SAT (The Baltimore Sun, September 4, 2005)
With Howard County's average SAT score at its highest ever, school officials are encouraged by what they see as a gradual improvement among the school system's black and Hispanic students, who have consistently lagged behind their white and Asian counterparts.

Deal Allows Charter to Open on Time (The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 10, 2005)
The settlement of a federal lawsuit will allow the Erin Dudley Forbes Charter School to open for students later this month in Oxford Borough and move to new quarters in January, school officials said yesterday. In late June, after negotiations broke down on whether the school would be allowed to stay in Oxford until its new quarters were ready, the Forbes school sued the borough. The school accused Borough Council of "illegal and racial animus" in its challenge of the school's zoning status last year. The school is 80 percent African American and Hispanic. A Headstart center and a day-care center that have mostly white students have been allowed to operate in the borough, the lawsuit said.

Arundel Sets Goal of Abolishing Racial Achievement Gap (The Washington Post, August 4, 2005)
Civil rights leaders have reached a tentative agreement with the Anne Arundel school board that sets a goal of erasing the achievement gap between black and white students by 2007, according to an official who negotiated the terms. The agreement, which is being revised and is subject to school board approval, would end a lawsuit filed last year, on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The suit alleges discrimination against black students in the county's public schools.

Special-Ed Racial Imbalance Spurs Sanctions (The Washington Post, August 2, 2005)
The Montgomery and Anne Arundel county public school systems are among five that face state sanctions for steering too many struggling black students into special education with problems that, in a number of cases, could be addressed in a regular classroom, according to federal education officials. Starting this summer, the systems must spend a combined $8 million a year on efforts to reduce the number of black students in special-ed.

Initiative Goes After More Support, State Funds for Schools (The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 2, 2005)
A statewide campaign aimed at giving struggling students more classroom support and directing more state money to 80 percent of all school districts was launched yesterday with the release of two reports. The Education Law Center, a legal aid and advocacy group based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, said it would use the two reports to back up its Closing the Gaps initiative. Recent moves by Gov. Rendell and the legislature to look at improving funding equity and academic standards have encouraged law center officials.

More Minority Students in State (Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 2, 2005)
In 15 years, the proportion of Hispanics graduating from Virginia's public high schools is expected to quadruple, from 4 percent of the total to 17 percent. The percentage of blacks is expected to slip from 23 percent to 21 percent. Together, the two minority groups will constitute nearly 40 percent of Virginia's high school graduates. If current patterns persist, many of those graduates aren't expected to go on to get a college degree. In 2002, Hispanics represented only 2 percent of Virginia students earning bachelor's degrees and blacks only 14 percent.

Charter School Seeks a Home (The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 2005)
The Sankofa Academy Charter School, the Philadelphia suburbs' first "African-centered" charter, set to open in September, is still looking for a home. School officials said this week it would not open as planned at the Charles A. Melton Arts and Education Center in West Chester because they failed to negotiate a lease.

Text Approved for Black History Course (The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 21, 2005)
A high school version of a popular college textbook will be the primary book for the new African American history course that all incoming Philadelphia public school 9th graders will be required to take before they graduate.

Black, Hispanic Students Closing Race Gap (The Boston Globe, July 15, 2005)
African-American and Hispanic students at the elementary school level are catching up with their white counterparts in reading and math, but there has been little closing of the achievement gap in the higher grades, according to a study released yesterday.

State Moves Toward Merging Schools (Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 5, 2005)
One school was founded in the Shenandoah Valley in 1838 for deaf and blind students. The other opened in southeastern Virginia in 1909 for black students barred by segregation from attending the first school. Because of declining enrollment and increased maintenance costs, Virginia will consolidate the schools, a process that has been on the horizon for decades but is finally becoming reality.

Black Caucus Backs Mandate on History (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 23, 2005)
The General Assembly's Black Caucus issued a clear message to House Speaker John Perzel yesterday: African American history must be preserved as a mandate in the curriculum of Philadelphia schools. In a highly unusual move, 12 of the 15 House members of the caucus descended on the Capitol newsroom, while the House was in session, to protest a letter sent this week by Perzel to James Nevels, chairman of Philadelphia's School Reform Commission. In the letter, the Northeast Philadelphia Republican called the new African American history requirement "unnecessary" and asked the commission to reconsider its mandate. Perzel wrote that he was concerned the mandate would "divide, rather than unite, the district's student body."

Schools Urge Race as Admission Factor (Associated Press, June 22, 2005)
The Seattle School District urged a federal appeals court to allow it to use race as a key element in admissions, a program it scrapped in 2002 amid legal challenges from parents complaining skin color should not be a deciding factor.

Perzel Roils African Studies Debate (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2005)
The Philadelphia School District's new African American history mandate has attracted a powerful objector - State House Speaker John Perzel.

Schools' challenge: Issue is Not Whether, But How, to Teach Class. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2005)
Philadelphia's decision to require an African American history course for graduation has unleashed a debate among historians and again highlighted how controversial it is for schools to decide what to teach about the past and how to teach it. Some support the move - a national first - and say the long-neglected subject is integral to understanding U.S. and world history. And, they say, it's a subject important to emphasize in a school system in which two-thirds of the students are African American. Others say that the subject needs more emphasis, but that it would be better infused into U.S. history and world history, even if it means expanding those courses.

School Official's Passion Won Over Her Colleagues (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2005)
Without Sandra Dungee Glenn, the Philadelphia School District's mandated African American history course probably would not exist. The school reform commissioner - a graduate of Philadelphia High School for Girls and former chief of staff for then-State Sen. Chaka Fattah - met with each of the other four commissioners and made her case.

Va. Scholarships Aim to Atone For Abuses During Desegregation (The Washington Post, June 21, 2005)
The first 60 recipients of a Virginia scholarship program were announced yesterday, part of an effort to make amends for locking dozens of students out of schools during the state's "massive resistance" campaign against desegregation. The recipients of the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship, named for the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled "separate but equal" public schools unconstitutional, will receive awards of up to $5,500 apiece to use toward a college degree or a high school diploma. The program was approved by the state legislature last year and dedicates $2 million toward the scholarships, which will be awarded over the next three years. Half of the money was contributed by John Kluge, a Charlottesville philanthropist who offered the sum to persuade hesitant lawmakers to come up with their share of the funds.

Maryland Boy Wearing Bolo Tie Denied Diploma (The Boston Globe, June 13, 2005)
Thomas Benya wore a braided bolo tie under his purple graduation gown this week as a subtle tribute to his Native American heritage. Administrators at his school in Charles County, Md., decided that the string tie was too skinny. They denied him his diploma, at least temporarily, as punishment.

School Narrows the Gap (The Baltimore Sun, June 12, 2005)
At Bryant Woods Elementary in Columbia, teachers and administrators see the latest statewide test results as a sign that they are moving closer to their goal of narrowing the academic gap between minority and white pupils. The school - where half of the population is African-American and where many are from low-income families - saw combined scores for third- and fifth-grade black pupils in reading or math increase at least 10 percentage points over a three-year period.

Racial Gaps a Focus for New St. Mary's Schools Chief (The Washington Post, June 12, 2005)
Michael J. Martirano, who will take over in July as superintendent of the St. Mary's County public schools, said one of his priorities will be to continue efforts to close the achievement gap between white and minority students.

Diversity Committee Flunks Barney Video (The Miami Herald, June 12, 2005)
A video that aims to teach tolerance to schoolchildren has been canceled for Broward County schools after critics said it could confuse preschool and elementary kids about the difference between family members and strangers and open the door to discussion about sexual orientation.

Diversity Tints New Kind of Generation Gap (USA Today, June 9, 2005)
Generational differences highlighted in Census Bureau population estimates released today add complexity to everything from politics to marketing. Even segments of society that once seemed homogeneous are far more difficult to define today.

More Pupils Meet Achievement Goals, but Hispanics, African-Americans Lag (The Baltimore Sun, June 8, 2005)
More children in Anne Arundel County scored well on recent Maryland School Assessments than last year, although African-American and Hispanic pupils still lag behind their white and Asian-American counterparts. Yesterday, Superintendent Eric J. Smith attributed the success at nearly all grade levels to expert teachers executing a new phonics-based reading curriculum and a new math program, which were established countywide in 2003.

Opinion: In Virginia, Reopening the Gap (The Washington Post, June 6, 2005)
"NCLB's accountability provisions are sparking progress. Many states, including Virginia, are narrowing previously stubborn gaps and boosting overall achievement. While the law certainly isn't perfect, these early results are too encouraging to allow the clock to be turned back on NCLB's accountability provisions. But a proposal from Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) would do just that. Allen's bill would allow states simply to walk away from their responsibility to educate African American, Latino and low-income students."

Principal Must Approve CAPA Scripts (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 6, 2005)
The principal of the city's High School for the Creative and Performing Arts must approve the selection of student plays and musicals, a school district administrator said, after some parents complained about two racially charged musicals produced at the school this spring and last spring.

Colonial District to Form Panel on Diversity (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3, 2005)
After two 10th graders spray-painted swastikas and other racist graffiti at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School last month, school administrators decided to establish a district-wide committee to promote diversity and tolerance.

Atlanta Scouts Inflated Numbers (The Washington Post, June 1, 2005)
An independent investigation of the Atlanta area Boy Scouts found that the organization inflated its number of black Boy Scouts by nearly 5,000 in a program for inner-city youth -- including 200 Scout units that did not exist. The audit led to the resignation Tuesday of the Atlanta Area Council's executive director, David Larkin, who said he took full responsibility for his organization's actions.

Opinion: Filling the Racial Gap in Academia (The Washington Post, May 31, 2005)
A report released last week by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reveals that while the numbers have been improving with regard to university enrollment, still a small fraction of the doctoral degrees granted by those universities go to blacks or Hispanics -- about 7 percent in 2003. And most of that tiny number is awarded in a small range of disciplines, such as education.

School Law Spurs Efforts to End the Minority Gap (The New York Times, May 27, 2005)
Spurred by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, educators across the nation are putting extraordinary effort into improving the achievement of minority students, who lag so sharply that by 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic student can read and do arithmetic only as well as the average eighth-grade white student.

Agency to guide Truman on Race (The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 25, 2005)
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission has promised to help combat racial discord and related problems at Harry S Truman High School, the commission chairman said yesterday. The investigation was sparked by an uproar among African American parents over the use of police dogs at the Bristol Township school in October when there were fears of a brawl. But it also addressed several race-related incidents at the school, including student fights and the wearing of clothing with racial slogans.

Montgomery Parents Rally for Black Students (The Washington Post, May 24, 2005)
A group of black parents in Montgomery County yesterday resumed its campaign to pressure the school system to take more aggressive steps toward narrowing the achievement gaps between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts.

Study: Exotic Names Don't Make Grade For Black Students (ThePittsburghChannel.com, May 12, 2005)
A new study suggests that black students with exotic names don't do as well in school as black students with more common names. Researchers said that black students with unusual names are also less likely to meet teacher expectations and be referred to gifted programs than black students with more common names, such as Dwayne.

The Valley’s Educational Engine: Foundation Seeks Help in Spreading Word About State (The Charleston Gazette, May 11, 2005)
West Virginia State is justifiably proud of its century-old role as a historic African-American school and the contribution it has made and continues to make to education in this state and in this country. What many readers may not know is that in this most diverse of all West Virginia colleges and universities, 83 percent of the students are white, the vast majority from the Kanawha Valley. Today, West Virginia State consists of the university and the community and technical college, both fully accessible, racially integrated and multigenerational. It is truly “a living laboratory of human relations,” committed to academic excellence, community service, applied research, economic development and cultural and racial diversity.

'Dixie' Field Trip Angers Elementary School Parent (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 6, 2005)
A decision in Hanover County to send a group of elementary school students to a Sons of Confederate Veterans-sponsored event today has a Mechanicsville family up in arms.

Closing Student Gap Not Open-and-Shut (Kansas City Star, May 1, 2005)
According to members of the National Education Association's Black Caucus, gaps exist between students of different races and incomes, and between districts in urban, suburban and rural areas. And without changes in funding, laws and school procedures, the gaps will continue to widen.

'Skill Gap' Between Races Stagnant  (Chicago Sun-Times, April 28, 2005)
The achievement gap between blacks and whites has stayed the same since 1990, and absent significant changes, the gulf could persist for much of the 21st century, according to new research by a University of Chicago economist.

Black Teacher Alleges Racism in Federal Suit (The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2005)
A black teacher at Centennial High School in Ellicott City has filed a $1.5 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the Howard County school system, alleging that a white former school administrator and colleagues made racial comments, retaliated against her when she complained and committed other acts of harassment. Michelle Maupin - who teaches English at Centennial, where black students and parents have reported racial discrimination in recent years - claims that the problems began soon after she was hired in August 2003 when white parents complained to then-Principal Lynda Mitic about Maupin's teaching style.

Achievement Gap Report for 2004 Released (Delaware Department of Education, April 21, 2005)
The Delaware State Board of Education released the 2004 achievement gap report entitled Awareness to Action Revisited: Tracking the Achievement Gap in Delaware Schools. The report was compiled by the Research and Development Center at the University of Delaware.

SOL Tests Affecting Minority Seniors (The Washington Post, April 18, 2005)
A study commissioned by the Virginia Department of Education has found that high school graduation rates held steady for white students in 2004 -- the first year in which Standards of Learning exams were required for a diploma -- but dropped significantly for black and Hispanic students. According to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, the on-time graduation rate for white students last year was 77.4 percent, compared with 61.3 percent for black students and 66.5 percent for Hispanics. Those figures represented a drop of 4.9 percentage points from 2003 for black students and of 11.6 percentage points for Hispanics.

Opinion: Investing in High Schools (The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 18, 2005)
"While Pennsylvania outperforms the national average, hundreds of thousands of the commonwealth's students finish their high school years unprepared to function in modern society. And for African Americans, the dropout rate is twice that of white students. Clearly, high schools must be redesigned to set higher standards and provide services and funding to meet them. The situation is dire, the timing urgent, and the ramifications clear."

Balto. Co. Students Progress, But Gaps Remain (The Baltimore Sun, April 12, 2005)
Baltimore County students of all races are making academic progress by many measures, but wide gaps in the achievement and suspension rates between whites and minorities remain, according to a report released yesterday.

Action Urged to Add Minority Teachers (The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 2005)
The Philadelphia School District, teacher preparatory colleges, and the state should work together to increase the number of minority teachers in city schools, a community organizing group urged yesterday. Although the district serves a largely black and Hispanic student population, only a third of its teachers are black and just 3 percent are Hispanic. Much of the disparity is caused by a short supply of minority teachers, according to a report from the Pennsylvania Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn).

$655 Million School Budget Approved in Pr. William (The Washington Post, March 31, 2005)
The Prince William County School Board adopted a $655 million operating budget last night that includes an expanded all-day kindergarten program designed to help meet requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and narrow the achievement gap between minorities and whites.

Black Parents Tackle a Gap (The Boston Globe, March 28, 2005)
Aisha Tomlinson's transformation as a parent is the kind that a concerted effort launched in the 2003-04 school year by African-American academics, social workers, and the College Board aims to achieve widely in Harlem—to get black parents, regardless of their income, to match well-to-do white parents in being deeply involved in the education of their children and providing learning experiences outside the classroom. Both are proven strategies for boosting academic performance.

Black, Asian Women Who Have Degrees Earn More Than Whites (The Baltimore Sun, March 28, 2005)
Black and Asian women with bachelor's degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees make more than anyone else. A white woman with a bachelor's degree typically earned nearly $37,800 in 2003, compared with nearly $43,700 for a college-educated Asian woman and $41,100 for a college-educated black woman, according to data being released today by the Census Bureau. Hispanic women took home slightly less, at $37,600 a year.

Black Students' Progress Noted (The Baltimore Sun, March 27, 2005)
Howard County's African-American students have made significant progress in academic performance, with black pupils at several elementary and middle schools meeting or exceeding standards on state tests, according to the 2004 Howard County NAACP Education Report Card.

Black Parents Protest in Montgomery (The Washington Post, March 22, 2005)
A group of black parents in Montgomery County staged a protest last night in hopes of encouraging the school board to reexamine the admissions process for magnet school programs that have been dominated by Asian and white students. About 30 parents and their children, all members of African American Parents of Magnet School Applicants, marched in a circle at the board's meeting, carrying signs with such slogans as "MCPS, a tale of two cities."

Keeping a Scorecard of Black Achievements (The Baltimore Sun, March 20, 2005)
The Black Saga quiz competition -- created by Charles M. Christian, a University of Maryland professor -- helps elementary and middle school pupils master knowledge of the lessons and footnotes of African-American history.

Ehrlich Offers Supplemental Budget (The Baltimore Sun, March 19, 2005)
Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. released a $21 million supplemental budget proposal yesterday,which would add $1 million to help private schools purchase textbooks; $3.8 million for research into cancer and other tobacco-related diseases; $1.1 million to help cover costs of the opening of the Maryland African-American history museum, scheduled for this summer; and $300,000 in grants to screen children for lead poisoning.

More Swastikas Found at Lower Merion High School (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 15, 2005)
Three new swastikas have been found etched into doors at Lower Merion High School, and administrators say they will work with the Anti-Defamation League to participate in its "No Place For Hate" program.

'Color-blind' Schools Urged (The Washington Times, March 15, 2005)
Virginia Delegate Robert F. McDonnell, who is running for state attorney general, said yesterday state colleges should not base admissions decisions on race.

Opinion: Closing the Racial Gap (The Washington Post, March 11, 2005)
"The numbers for black students are still much lower than those for whites and Asians; in Montgomery County, as in a large majority of school districts nationwide, a racial achievement gap remains a stubborn, serious problem that merits intense scrutiny. But that does not diminish the facts that the trend in Montgomery, while it could be better, is positive and that reforms instituted since 2000 by Superintendent Jerry D. Weast seem to be producing results for minority children. All of this calls into question the demand by a group of Montgomery parents for a halt to the magnet program applications process, on the grounds that black students are getting the short end of the stick."

Young Students Make Gains In Reading (The Washington Post, March 8, 2005)
More than 70 percent of Montgomery County (Md.) students in kindergarten through second grade are reading at their grade level, with black and Hispanic children making the biggest strides, according to data released yesterday by school officials.

Parents Protest Magnet Makeup (The Washington Post, March 8, 2005)
A group of black parents has asked the Montgomery County school board to suspend the middle school magnet application process on the grounds that too few black students are accepted into some of the specialized programs. In a memo e-mailed to school board members last week, a group calling itself the African American Parents of Magnet School Applicants said that a three-year review of data found that African American students are admitted to middle school magnet programs in smaller numbers than whites and Asians.

Proposed School's Leaders to Appeal (The Baltimore Sun, March 4, 2005)
KIPP, or Knowledge Is Power Program, operates 38 schools targeting low-performing students around the country. Anne Arundel County School board members voted 5-3 against KIPP's proposal to open a charter school in Annapolis that would seek to address the achievement gap between black and white students on state tests.

House Bill to Remove Segregation Language (The Charleston Gazette, March 2, 2005)
Delegates Sharon Spencer and Charlene Marshall had similar thoughts Tuesday in the House Education Committee when the panel unanimously agreed to recommend the Legislature wipe out the last vestiges of segregationist language left in West Virginia’s Constitution. The bill (HB2466) takes out language allowing school districts to “employ one Negro assistant superintendent” if they employed 50 or more “Negro teachers.” It also removes language relating to the “Negro Board of Education.”

Putting Costly Schools in More Blacks' Reach (The Washington Post, March 1, 2005)
Avis C. Robinson created the Washington Metropolitan Scholars Program in 2003 to draw more black students to elite universities and help them pay for it.

School Celebrates Heritage (The Baltimore Sun, February 27, 2005)
As they looked ahead to critical state tests this week, pupils at Van Bokkelen Elementary School in Severn considered where they came from and where they're going at the school's recent African American Heritage Night.

History Lesson: Students Trace African Ancestry (The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 22, 2005)
The Philadelphia School Reform Commission last week adopted a new policy that will require African and African American history courses to be offered in all 60 high schools this fall. The commission is scheduled to decide by next month whether to make the courses mandatory for graduation.

The Roots of Change (The Washington Post, February 17, 2005)
With black history in the spotlight this month, educators across the Washington, D.C. region and the nation are changing their approach to teaching about civil rights, emphasizing the grass-roots support that propelled the movement.

Schools See Looming Staff Retirements (The Baltimore Sun, February 9, 2005)
A review of the Carroll County school system's hiring practices has found that more than a third of the district's workers are at or near retirement age, racial minorities make up 3 percent of its employees and women constitute 76 percent of the work force, according to a report school officials are scheduled to discuss at tonight's school board meeting. The report, prepared by the district's human resources department, is a snapshot of the district's hiring and recruitment efforts during the past five years.

In Pa., Racial Gap in Scores Shrinks (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2005)
A divide persists between white and minority student achievement in the Pennsylvania suburbs, but more than half of the schools have narrowed that gap, based on the most recent test results.

School's Discord Spurs Meeting (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2005)
As part of its investigation into racial discord at Harry S Truman High School, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission will hold a public town meeting to solicit input from students, parents, school and Bristol Township officials, and community leaders.

Motivating Black Males to Learn (The Baltimore Sun, January 26, 2005)
If black males are to succeed in school, their parents must push them academically, develop relationships with their teachers and surround them with people with positive values, according to Mychal Wynn, an education consultant for the past 22 years and author of 16 books, including Empowering African-American Males to Succeed, said parents should focus on college and push their children to the "breaking point" when it comes to schoolwork.

Day of Celebration: Remembering King; Event Brings Community Together (The Leader & State Register, January 19, 2005)
Two venues that shared a common bond - the spirit and hope of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - showcased the 2005 MLK Day of Celebration in Seaford. From Angie Kilog's riveting rendition of the Lord's Prayer during the prayer breakfast at Seaford Golf & Country Club to events at the Boys & Girls Club of Western Sussex, youths and adults rekindled the message of the civil rights leader who fell victim to an assassin's bullet in April 1968.

Events honors King's deeds: Activites slated in Lewes, Dewey Beach and Ellendale (Sussex Post, January 12, 2005)
Commemoration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. begins in Sussex County Saturday with parades, banquets and worship services. This year's event is called "A New Day, A New Vision, A New Attitude."

White House Paid Commentator to Promote Law (USA Today, January 7, 2005)
Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

Parent, Cannaday Discuss Lesson (Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 6, 2005)
After meeting with Chesterfield County School Superintendent Billy K. Cannaday Jr., Michelle Wilson said she's hopeful she and school officials can come to an agreement about how teachers approach sensitive issues such as slavery. Wilson raised concerns with school officials after learning that her daughter's teacher held what was described as a mock slave auction during a lesson on slavery.

Reliving History Raises Test Scores (Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 6, 2005)
A $565,000 federal grant has allowed schools to work with area museums and the National Council for History Education to help teachers in these grades make history more relevant and interesting. So far the project appears to be helping raise the history scores of minority and low-income students on Virginia's standardized testing program, said Jane Bailey, coordinator for the federal Foundations of Freedom grant received by schools in 2002. The grant lasts until 2006.

Educator Nominated For Charles Board (The Washington Post, January 6, 2005)
A community college administrator was nominated to fill an open seat on the Charles County Board of Commissioners late Tuesday night, putting her in position to become the county's first black commissioner.

A Better Chance Supports High-Achieving Students (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 1, 2005)
Since its founding in 1963 in Boston by officials from 23 private preparatory schools seeking more minority students, A Better Chance has expanded educational opportunities for nearly 11,000 high-achieving young men and women.

MLK Jr. Summit Hopes to Inspire: Forum Encourages Education (The Leader & State Register, December 29, 2004)
An annual celebration that marks the vision, spirit and hope of the late Martin Luther King Jr. takes center stage next month in Seaford, with particular focus on teenagers punctuating the second segment of festivities.

Board to Consider 'African-Centered' School (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 23, 2004)
The director of a West Chester community center, concerned by the poor academic performance of many area African American students, wants to open a charter school in the borough with an "African-centered" curriculum that he says will improve their educational showing.

SPEAK Gains National Focus (The Leader & State Register, December 7, 2004)
Natasha Mullen, among the co-founders of SPEAK (Seaford Parents for the Education of African American Kids), will be featured in an Essence magazine article whose primary focus is on parental advocacy for children's needs.

Black History Comes Alive in Pilot Program (The Washington Post, December 4, 2004)
Judith Crawford is one of 118 teachers across Maryland piloting an African American history curriculum that state officials plan to start using in every school in August. Initially, students in grades 4 through 8 will be taught the material, but state officials are considering expanding it to other grades.

Enforcement of Civil Rights Law Declined Since '99, Study Finds (The New York Times, November 22, 2004)
Federal enforcement of civil rights laws has dropped sharply since 1999, as the level of complaints received by the Justice Department has remained relatively constant, according to Justice Department data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Universities Record Drop In Black Admissions (The Washington Post, November 22, 2004)
A decline in the number of incoming black students has been recorded at many state universities across the country, from California to Georgia to much of the Midwest.

Panelists Mull Area Schools (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 13, 2004)
Richmond schools are grappling with issues of poverty and lagging test scores among a predominantly black student population, while surrounding, more-affluent counties enjoy bigger budgets and better test scores with a white-majority student population. What's to be done? That's what panelists mulled yesterday morning in a discussion sponsored by Hope in the Cities.

Opinion: If Every Child Were My Child . . . (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 11, 2004)
Public School students in Chesterfield, Hanover, Henrico, and Richmond are collectively 55 percent white and 45 percent children of color, according to state Department of Education data. Yet the average white student in the county schools is exposed to a student body that is less than 10 percent students of color, while the average student of color in the city schools is ex- posed to a student body 5.5 percent white.

Groups Push for Teacher Diversity (CNN.com, November 9, 2004)
A small but growing body of research shows minorities tend to do better in class and face higher expectations when taught by teachers from their racial or ethnic group, says the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, a partnership led by six groups.

Education Obligation Hits Snags (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 7, 2004)
Virginia's much-anticipated Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship Program is getting off to a slow start, and funds will likely not be awarded to students until the fall semester of next year, one of its legislative sponsors said last week. The $2 million dollar program was approved by the General Assembly earlier this year as a way to compensate members of the "lost generation" - the mostly black students whose educations were interrupted when their public schools were closed in the 1950s and'60s to avoid court-ordered desegregation.

Making the Case for a Signal Event in State History (The Charleston Gazette, November 5, 2004)
IT was 1898. J.R. Clifford, a black attorney, took on an all-white school board in front of an all-white Tucker County jury. And won.

DSU Rally Urges Black Vote (Delaware State News, November 2, 2004)
A small but energetic crowd gathered at Delaware State University's Education and Humanities Theatre on Monday for the college's first Promote the Vote Rally. Sponsored by the Black Studies Program, the event encouraged all registered voters, particularly African-Americans, to voice their opinions during today's elections. In the 2000 presidential election, less than 50 percent of registered African-American voters went to the polls.

Two Approaches to School Accountability (Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 2004)
US taxpayers spend more than $500 billion a year on K-12 education, but American student achievement lags behind that in many other industrialized nations. Not even 1 in 3 American fourth and eighth graders meets US proficiency standards in reading and mathematics. Black and Hispanic students still often score several grade levels below their white counterparts.

Enrollment Is Shifting At Black Universities (The Washington Post, October 31, 2004)
Increasingly, white students are enrolling at the nation's 120 historically black colleges and universities, changing the landscape of institutions that were created when African Americans were barred from attending most colleges. In the past quarter-century, the number of white students at these campuses has risen 65 percent, from 21,000 to nearly 35,000 -- an increase driven partly by court orders aimed at desegregation and partly by interest in programs these schools offer. Some of these universities, such as West Virginia State University and Lincoln University of Missouri, are now majority-white. Others, struggling to meet court mandates for more white students, are using scant scholarship money to lure students from as far away as Russia.

Racial Divide Must End, Harvard Professor Says  (The Charleston Gazette, October 29, 2004)
Fifty years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Charles Ogletree said the country has a long way to go. The Harvard Law School professor said he’s struck by the irony of then and now. Staggering differences in the quality of life between blacks and other races compared to whites in the nation don’t show progress, he said. Ogletree spoke Thursday night at West Virginia State University on “Reflections of Brown v. Board of Education” for the 2004 Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities.

Student Suspensions Drop; Blacks Make Up Nearly Half (The Baltimore Sun, October 29, 2004)
Suspensions in Howard County schools declined by 7 percent in the 2003-2004 school year, but a disproportionate number of incidents involved African-American pupils, according to a report presented to the school board yesterday. Nearly 47 percent of all suspensions involved African-American students. While African-American males represent 9.6 percent of the nearly 48,000 student population, 14 percent of them were suspended.

Kanawha Magistrate Hopefuls Discuss Diversity (The Charleston Gazette, October 21, 2004)
Candidates for Kanawha County Magistrate discussed the impact of race and religion in the judicial system and how to work with the state Supreme Court at a meeting Wednesday.

More County Students Take SAT, AP Tests (The Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2004)
The number of Baltimore County students taking the SAT and Advanced Placement exams continued to grow in the 2003-04 school year, according to a report presented to the school board last night. The report, issued annually, contains a compilation of test scores and other indicators of student achievement from the 2003-2004 school year. It shows many test scores improving, and a narrowing of the achievement gap between African-American and white students in reading.

Teacher's Ouster for Slur Fought (The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 20, 2004)
West Chester Henderson High School teacher Donna Seivwright used the N word in a class in December. Seivwright hasn't commented publicly, but her union, the West Chester Area Education Association, said she repeated the term only after a student used it first, in an effort to engage her class in a discussion of its meaning. Still, in January, the school board fired Seivwright, a 17-year veteran of the district, on "grounds of immorality, cruelty, intemperance and willful neglect of duties," saying she used "racially inflammatory language."

Study Says White Families' Wealth Advantage Has Grown (The New York Times, October 18, 2004)
The enormous wealth gap between white families and black and Hispanic families grew larger after the most recent recession. White households had a median net worth of greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times that of Hispanic households and more than 14 times that of black households, according to an analysis of government data by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Study Finds Progress in Reading, Math, But Results Fall Short of Standards (The Seattle Times, October 15, 2004)
Elementary-students' performance in reading and math is improving and gaps in racial and economic achievement are closing in many states, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Education Trust, a nonprofit education-advocacy group.

Prince George's Schools CEO to Face Ethics Probe (The Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2004)
The head of the Prince George's County schools faces an ethics inquiry and state legislators are calling for additional action in response to questions raised by CEO Andre J. Hornsby's dealings with education software companies.

Essay Contest to Focus on Brown v. Board of Education (West Virginia Department of Education, October 13, 2004)
The YWCA of Wheeling and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Commission are pleased to announce the 12th Annual Project on Racism Essay Contest. It is the hope of the Commission and the YWCA to further the teachings and lessons of Dr. King by providing for students a venue to share their vision of his legacy. This year’s theme is “50 Years of Integration: Did Brown v. Board of Education Work?”

Schools Chief Eager To Bridge Learning Gap (The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 2004)
Bridging the academic-achievement chasm between black and white students is a challenge that State Education Secretary nominee Francis Barnes, who is poised to become the first African American to take the position, is eager to tackle. From his perspective, one source of the so-called achievement gap can be traced to the introduction of slavery in the colonial era, as well as early laws that denied blacks the right to be educated, own property, or marry.

Concerns About Card To Be Heard (Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 7, 2004)
The Prince Edward County School Board voted yesterday to hire a Charlottesville-area consultant to hear teacher concerns at the elementary school over circulation of a card that included a racist remark.

Panel Suggests Diversity, Equity Officer For U.Va. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 3, 2004)
A committee that was formed after racially tinged incidents at the University of Virginia recommended yesterday the creation of an officer for "diversity and equity" who would report to the president.

Whites-Only School Reunion Splits Maryland Community (St. Petersburg Times, September 23, 2004)
The reunion Saturday is only for those who graduated from Washington High School before it opened its doors to black students in the fall of 1969. Some black leaders say the all-white reunion is sad and painful evidence that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, some things have not changed that much in this community on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Kentucky District Opens Path To Racial Diversity (The Baltimore Sun, September 22, 2004)
When Louisville and Jefferson County schools merged in 1974, a howl ensued, but today the integration plan is praised for its success.

Study Shows Charter Schools Better (The Washington Times, September 18, 2004)
The vast majority of children attending the nation's 1,146 charter schools with at least 10 students are more proficient in reading and math than their nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition, a Harvard University study found.

Phila. Charter School Wins Federal Blue Ribbon Award (The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 17, 2004)
The Laboratory Charter School of Communications and Languages in Philadelphia is one of several schools in the state that has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. Philadelphia's School Reform Commission announced the school's achievement at a meeting Wednesday.

Strong Gains Made In Every Category Of HSA Testing (The Baltimore Sun, September 15, 2004)
Howard County high school students showed solid gains in every category of the Maryland High School Assessment tests, with more than 70 percent passing the English, algebra, biology and government exams. Howard's scores surpassed the state average and most of its counterparts' in the Baltimore region, according to results released yesterday by state education officials. While black teens still lag behind their white classmates, they made significant strides in each test. Other student population groups also showed improvement on the tests, including Hispanics and those receiving free and reduced-price meals, a measure school systems use to identify students from low-income families.

Enrolling Few Minorities, A College Wonders Why (The Baltimore Sun, September 14, 2004)
With a student body that is 89 percent white, St. John's College in Annapolis pushes for a better racial mix on campus.

TJ Will Cast A Wider Net For Applicants (The Washington Post, September 11, 2004)
Students applying to become next year's freshmen at the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology will be the first affected by a new admissions policy adopted by the Fairfax County School Board, a school official said. The new policy is meant to ensure that the school admits more minority students. School staff members must now work out details and write new regulations reflecting the board's wishes.

District To Offer 2 Courses For Afro-Americans (Philadelphia Daily News, September 9, 2004)
Beginning in January the Philadelphia School District will offer two new courses on the histories of Africans and African-Americans. Officials said the high school courses are sorely needed in the 185,000-student district in which 65 percent of the students are African-American.

Schools Target Test-Score Gaps (The Washington Times, September 6, 2004)
Sanford Elementary School in Newport News, VA essentially did in 2003 what a nation of schools now must do: eliminate test-score gaps in reading and math among groups of students, particularly blacks and whites.

Record Number Of Minorities Take SAT (USA Today, September 1, 2004)
More than a half-million minority students in the high school class of 2004 took the SAT — a record and a sign that the nation's college-bound population is growing more diverse.

Encouraging School Success (The Baltimore Sun, August 25, 2004)
Motivational speaker Mychal Wynn speaks at Mount Hebron High School about bridging the racial achievement gap.

Vallas Boosts Biz To Women, Minorities (Philadelphia Daily News, August 24, 2004)
Over the last two years, the school district, under the direction of school chief Paul Vallas, has made doing business with minority and female-owned businesses a priority. At the same time that Mayor Street has come under fire for the low percentage of city contracts awarded to minority firms, some say Vallas is rewriting the book on how to bring women and business people of color into the fold.

School System Plans To Study, Document Acts Of Discrimination (The Baltimore Sun, August 22, 2004)
Anne Arundel County school officials plan to better document discriminatory acts as community leaders try to build support among parents concerned about inequities within the schools. Starting this academic year, school staff will submit reports about incidents that may be motivated by bias based on religion, disability, sexual orientation, race or nationality, so district officials can track where and when they occur.

A Stark Race Gap—In Kids' Books (Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2004)
Before the explosion of multicultural children's literature in the early '90s, books by black authors with black protagonists were largely missing from the canon—absent from bookstores and school reading curricula. While few educators would suggest that this vacancy has contributed to the achievement gap, anecdotal evidence suggests that these books may be inspiring more black children to read, and perhaps helping to redress the pernicious divide.

NAACP Protests Board Choices (The Baltimore Sun, August 11, 2004)
The Baltimore County NAACP branch criticized yesterday Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s recent appointments to the county school board, saying they do not reflect the diversity of the county or its increasingly diverse public school system.

Bush Opposes 'Legacy' Edge In College Admissions (The Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2004)
President Bush, whose father and grandfather preceded him in attending Yale University, said Friday that he opposed special treatment in college admission for children of alumni, just as he opposed special treatment for racial and ethnic minorities.

Seattle School District To Fight For Racial Tiebreaking (The Seattle Times, August 3, 2004)
The Seattle School District will appeal a federal court's ruling that struck down the district's use of race to assign some students to a few popular high schools, officials said yesterday.

Opinion: Seven Myths About Diverse Schools (The Washington Post, August 3, 2004)
"Diverse can mean a nice blend of all ethnicities, but can also mean lots of low-income black and Hispanic children, and to many people who have not thought about this very deeply, that is a bad thing. They are wrong, and their failure to understand what is actually happening in many heavily minority schools is aggravating both our racial problems and our education problems."

Seattle Schools' Racial Tiebreaker Ruled Improper (The Seattle Times, July 28, 2004)
Using race as a tiebreaker to assign students to Seattle public schools violates their constitutional right of equal protection, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sympathized with the Seattle School District's desire to promote diversity, but struck down its racial tiebreaker in a withering critique.

Math Skills Will Ensure That These Kids Count (The Baltimore Sun, July 28, 2004)
for the third consecutive year, Charles Johnson-Bey, a 38-year-old electrical engineering professor at Morgan, held a one-week math, science and engineering summer camp for 5- to 10-year-olds.

Schools Chief Chosen For Pa. Post  (The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 23, 2004)
A northern Bucks County school superintendent has been nominated as the state's first black secretary of education. Gov. Rendell announced yesterday that he has chosen Francis V. Barnes, superintendent of the Palisades School District, to replace Vicki Phillips, who has accepted the top job in Portland, Ore.

Crossing A Bridge Into Learning (The Baltimore Sun, July 21, 2004)
This summer, 10-year-old Jared Cole-Lewis has a rare luxury: daily computer time at school. Jared and his classmates are editing an action movie they scripted and videotaped as part of the Black Student Achievement Program's Summer Bridge program.

Fairfax To Debate School's Admissions Rules (The Washington Times, July 21, 2004)
Fairfax County residents get one more chance tonight to weigh in on recommendations to equalize racial enrollment and increase considerations for students applying for admission to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

Allegations Of Racism Mar Selection Of Valedictorian (Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 19, 2004)
Moreko Griggs' grandmother used to stop people in the post office and brag when he finished the ninth grade ranked No. 1 in his class. She was even more proud when he was named the first black valedictorian in Waynesboro High School history. Then, the day before graduation in June, his grandmother, Joann Billingsley, received a call from the principal. "He said there's been a change and new grades have come in and we have two more valedictorians," Griggs recalled her saying. "We were stunned."

Scholarships Aim To Fill Learning Gap (Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 18, 2004)
This year's General Assembly appropriated $2 million for the scholarship fund, including $1 million given by philanthropist John Kluge, to aid people whose schooling was interrupted by school closings in Prince Edward and other Virginia localities during the era of Massive Resistance to desegregation of public schools.

Workshop Looks At Education (Philadelphia Daily News, July 12, 2004)
Over the past several years, the NAACP has stepped up its vigilance in monitoring how states are addressing disparities that minority students experience in the areas of teacher quality, resources, college preparation and funding, among others.

Black Teen Girls At Very High Risk For HIV Infection (The Washington Times, July 11, 2004)
Sexually active black teenage girls are at particular risk for infection with the virus that causes AIDS, but specially tailored prevention programs built around race and culture can help reduce their risk, according to a new report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

40 Years Later, Civil Rights Makes Page One (The New York Times, July 9, 2004)
Deep into a speech on journalism ethics in May, John S. Carroll, now the editor of The Los Angeles Times, told University of Oregon students about his days as editor of The Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky., where the running gag among newsroom staff members was that they should print the following "clarification": "It has come to the editor's attention that The Herald neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission."

Cross Burned In Lawn In Howard (The Washington Post, July 9, 2004)
A 12-foot cross was scorched in the neatly trimmed suburban lawn of a high-ranking black school official who was implicated and then cleared in a grade-fixing scandal in Howard County. Police announced yesterday that they were offering a $2,500 reward to anyone who could help them arrest the person or persons responsible for the large cross-shaped burn in the lawn of Kimberly Statham, chief academic officer of Howard County schools. Statham was one of two black school officials initially demoted in a dispute over whether she had used her influence to change her daughter's academic record.

Minority Enrollment Up At U.Va. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 2, 2004)
The University of Virginia's Class of 2008 will include more African-Americans, more Asian-Americans, more Hispanic and Latino students and more academically qualified entrants than last year, according to the school's admissions office.

Opinion: Affirmative Action's Future (The Washington Times, June 30, 2004)
As colleges and universities complete their first round of admissions following last year's affirmative action decisions in the two Michigan cases, it is becoming clear that final victory for either side is proving elusive.

Education Level Continues To Rise In United States (Houston Chronicle, June 29, 2004)
More U.S. residents than ever have high school and college diplomas, although rates still vary greatly by race and ethnicity, the Census Bureau says. More than 89 percent of whites graduated from high school, compared with 88 percent of Asians, 80 percent of blacks and 57 percent of Hispanics. Nearly 50 percent of Asians hold a college degree or more, compared with 30 percent of whites, 17 percent of blacks and 11 percent of Hispanics.

Kerry Vows To Help Low-Income Students (The Boston Globe, June 29, 2004)
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says if he's elected president, 1 million more students will graduate from college during his first five years in office and he will bring a special focus to boosting opportunities for low-income and minority students.

Top Colleges Take More Blacks, But Which Ones? (The New York Times, June 24, 2004)
While about 8 percent of Harvard's undergraduates were black, only about a third of the were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. The trend concerned some professors.

North Philadelphia Charter School Gets A State Grant (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 2004)
Multi-Cultural Academy Charter School in North Philadelphia has received a $50,000 grant from the state Department of Education to help it share its successful practices with other charter and public schools in Pennsylvania and beyond.

Diversity Called An Advantage In Student Politics (The Baltimore Sun, June 23, 2004)
Why do students at Wilde Lake High School do so well in government?Assistant Principal Marcy Leonard attributes their success to the school's "very diverse student body." "That diversity is ethnic; it's socio-economic; it's a political diversity," Leonard said. "The student member can't possibly represent every student in Howard County. They [Wilde Lake students] are able to have input from their experiences with students from diverse backgrounds."

New State Program Targets Schools' Chronic Achievement Gaps (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 23, 2004)
Public education officials hope the seeds planted yesterday during discussions will eventually bear fruit in the form of reducing the chronic achievement gap between white, middle-class students and minority students from low-income families. Sixteen schools statewide were chosen last month to take part in the Pennsylvania Achievement Gap Effort, or PAGE1.

Survey of 40 W.Va. Students Says Teachers Favor Whites (The Charleston Gazette, June 19, 2004)
Teachers and guidance counselors favor white students, racist comments from other students are common, and black students are more likely to be disciplined than white students, according to a survey of students at four West Virginia high schools released Friday. Of the 20 black students who participated in the survey, 10 were on the honor roll and 10 had low grade-point averages. Of the 20 white students who participated, all were low-income. Half were on the honor roll and half had low grade-point averages. Three high schools were rural and one was urban. All of the black student focus groups, both high-achieving and struggling students, reported being subjected to racism in schools. They have been called names, taunted and some said when they notified a teacher or administrator, no action was taken.

DSTP Scores Please Officials: ‘Achievement Gap' Not Closing (Delaware State News, June 18, 2004)
Although DSTP scores have risen this year, there is still a concern about whether the achievement gap between upper-income white students, students with disabilities, and minority and low-income students is closing. Secretary of Education Valerie Woodruff said that while the scores of minority and low-income students are rising, they aren't rising much above the rate of other students' performance, still leaving a gap.

Anne Arundel Pupils Gain Ground (The Baltimore Sun, June 16, 2004)
Anne Arundel County students performed better than the state average in reading and math on this year's Maryland School Assessment and made bigger gains over last year than their peers statewide, according to data released yesterday. The test scores also indicated that the county is having some success in narrowing an achievement gap between white or privileged pupils and those of minority or disadvantaged backgrounds, although special-education pupils fell further behind their peers.

Fighting A Race Gap In Colleges (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 16, 2004)
Only about 46 percent of black students and 47 percent of Hispanic students graduate within six years of entering college, according to U.S. Department of Education data.

School Boundary Shift Upsets Parents (The Washington Post, June 15, 2004)
In Prince George's County, parents with children in schools that draw from poor and working-class neighborhoods say they don't get the same caliber of teachers, quality of facilities or educational materials. Meanwhile, the district's middle- to upper-class parents say they don't want their children to be forced to give up any of those resources by going to lower-performing schools.

Typecasting Is Out On High School Stage (The Washington Post, June 13, 2004)
As schools throughout the Washington area diversify, drama teachers say they are casting across cultures, creating racially eclectic families and forcing audiences to stretch their imaginations a bit more. But colorblind casting, as the practice is known, has its challenges: Scripts often need to be retooled to eliminate references to tans or hair color, and students of different backgrounds have to be persuaded to try out for shows not written for them.

Getting Students Into The Sciences (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 11, 2004)
NASA last month announced that Shaw Middle School in Philadelphia is one of 50 U.S. schools selected to participate in a three-year partnership designed to interest more students in math, science and technology careers. Woodbury Junior-Senior High School in Gloucester County also was selected for the program, called NASA Explorer Schools. Eighty percent of the schools are based in high-poverty areas, with 75 percent representing predominantly minority communities. Teachers will receive training at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and NASA personnel will visit the school periodically. The school also will receive $30,000 over three years from NASA to upgrade computer hardware and software, and for other expenses to advance science, math and technical programs.

Protesters Claim Principal Biased Against Asians (Philadelphia Daily News, June 9, 2004)
Yesterday morning, about 50 children, teens and adults from the Asian-American community protested outside Southwark Elementary School to demand that Principal Anna Jenkins punish students who attack Asian-American children, and that she report all such incidents.

Ousted Annapolis Principal Sues System (The Baltimore Sun, June 8, 2004)
Ousted Annapolis High School Principal Deborah Williams is suing the Anne Arundel County Board of Education and Superintendent Eric J. Smith, saying she is being wrongfully terminated from the school system at the end of this month because of racial discrimination.

Poor Schools Sue For Funding (The Washington Post, June 7, 2004)
According to experts who track the lawsuits, half the states in the country are now involved in litigation over education funding. Similar lawsuits arguing for education equity between rich and poor districts were filed frequently in the 1980s. The more recent lawsuits, which seek sufficient funding for poor districts rather than parity with affluent ones, have been fueled, in part, by the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind initiative, which is designed to make every child in the country proficient in math and reading by 2014. Many poor school districts that fail to meet the targets established by the law have gone to court to argue that they lack the resources to compete with their richer neighbors. These "educational adequacy" complaints have largely replaced desegregation lawsuits as the focus of legal efforts to ensure equality of opportunity between different social and ethnic groups.

Schools Receive Total Of $92,097 For Performances On State Tests (The Baltimore Sun, June 6, 2004)
Harford County public schools will receive $92,097 in awards for the performance of elementary and middle schools on the first Maryland Schools Assessment, administered last spring. Thirty of 40 eligible schools in the county will be awarded between $2,900 and $4,000, based on achievement or improvement on the exams among subgroups, which include minorities, English as a second language students and special-education students. High schools are not eligible for monetary awards, but three of the nine high schools in the county received certificates of achievement.

Class Of Diversity Gets Diplomas (The Washington Post, June 6, 2004)
Jerry D. Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County schools, spent last week watching graduating seniors traverse stages to receive their diplomas -- including students who got their starts in Kenya, El Salvador, Vietnam, Iran and many other countries. "It" is the most racially and ethnically diverse graduating class the county has seen, and likely the last to be majority-white, according to school system data. Since the seniors graduating this month started kindergarten, the student body of Montgomery County public schools has grown larger by 16,000 Hispanics, 12,000 blacks, 7,000 Asians and 100 Native Americans. The number of non-Hispanic white students has declined by 3,000.

Harford Schools Target Of Racial-Bias Complaints (The Baltimore Sun, June 3, 2004)
An Aberdeen-based African-American advocacy organization -- GrassRoots Steering Foundation Inc. -- alleges that black students in the Harford County public school system are discriminated against in the way they are punished for school offenses.

Study Faults Colleges On Graduation Rates (The New York Times, May 27, 2004)
As growing numbers of Americans enter college, most colleges and universities have failed to ensure that those students will graduate, according to a study released yesterday by the Education Trust. Graduation rates are especially low for minority students and those from low-income families, the trust said. Only 46 percent of black students, 47 percent of Latino students and 54 percent of low-income students graduate within six years.

Diversity On Schools' Agenda (Philadelphia Daily News, May 26, 2004)
Female and minority contractors have received 17 percent of the school district contracts awarded this year, up from 5 percent at this time last year, said Karen Burke, the Philadelphia school district's chief operating officer. But she confirmed that 72 of the 77 people that the school district employs in the painter/masonry area white and that only five are African-American.

Brown Case ‘Almost a Hollow Victory,’ Lawyer Says (The Charleston Gazette, May 24, 2004)
"De facto” segregation is still prevalent, says civil rights lawyer Herbert Henderson. In education, housing and employment, West Virginia and the country are nearly as segregated today as then.

Supreme Court's Griffin Case Came 10 Years After Brown (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 23, 2004)
this week will mark the 40th anniversary of another Supreme Court decision that originated in Prince Edward County, VA and influenced the course of public education in America - Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward.

Seeking To Close Gaps In Student Achievement (The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 20, 2004)
Three local schools were among 16 named yesterday to take part in a state initiative aimed at eliminating low academic achievement among poor, minority and special-education students. The participating schools are Elkins Park School in Cheltenham, Montgomery County; Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Delaware County; and Fairhill Elementary in North Philadelphia.

Race Gap In Anne Arundel Not Bias (The Washington Times, May 19, 2004)
Discrimination is not the reason too few black students are in advanced-placement classes and a disproportionate number of them have been suspended or expelled, Anne Arundel schools Superintendent Eric J. Smith said yesterday. However, he acknowledged that black and Hispanic students in county schools are significantly behind their white classmates.

Bush And Kerry Agree: Not All Equal Yet In U.S. (Chicago Sun-Times, May 18, 2004)
Half a century after the Supreme Court banned school segregation, President Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry found agreement Monday on the point that America still falls short of racial equality despite progress across many fronts.

Students Mark 50 Years Of School Desegregation (The Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2004)
Fifty years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court declared intentionally segregated schools "inherently unequal," a new generation of students marked the occasion Monday by plumbing the ruling's lessons and agitating for more change.

'Bunk' In Eye Of Governor A Longtime Schools Priority (The Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2004)
It might be "bunk" to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., but multiculturalism has been a priority in Maryland public schools since 1970s, when the State Board of Education first issued regulations addressing the contributions of other cultures, which Ehrlich is sworn to uphold.

Rights Complaint Targets Arundel Schools (The Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2004)
With the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education as a backdrop, a group of black leaders filed a civil rights complaint yesterday against the Anne Arundel County school system that alleges unequal treatment of African-American students. The group contends that the school system "has institutionalized separate and unequal advance placement opportunities for white and African American students," according to its complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

Two Schools, Big Differences (Philadelphia Daily News, May 18, 2004)
Bridesburg in the Northeast and Tanner Duckrey in North Philly are schools on the move. But one school is charging ahead; the other is learning how to walk. It's been 50 years since Brown v. the Board of Education ripped apart the concept of "separate but equal." Look at Bridesburg and Duckrey, though, and you see stark differences that remain in some public schools to this day: Bridesburg is nearly all white -- Duckrey is all black; Bridesburg's state reading and math scores are soaring -- Duckrey's are near the bottom; Bridesburg's funding is about $1.57 million -- Duckrey's is better, about $1.75 million. As budget comparisons between Duckrey and Bridesburg show, inequities between schools are often more complex than what dollars can measure.

City School Board Honors Brown Ruling (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 18, 2004)
The Richmond School Board last night unanimously approved a proclamation recognizing the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision - but not without debate. Before the vote, board member Reginald M. Malone Sr., of the 7th District, asserted that the Brown ruling "did nothing for public education."

Opinion: Inequality In Education (The Washington Times, May 18, 2004)
A review of Educational Freedom in Urban America: Brown V. Board After Half A Century, edited by David Salisbury and Casey Lartigue Jr.

Schools' Historic Ties To An Unequal Past (The Baltimore Sun, May 17, 2004)
In the years following Brown, black schools boarded up their doors as pupils left for better-equipped white schools. Many of the black schools were torn down; others were simply forgotten. In recent years, however, emotional ties and a renewed interest in the historical significance of black schools have prompted communities and preservation groups to find and restore surviving schoolhouses. They have been adapted for modern uses, including museums, senior centers, residences and church buildings. The largest movement - led by the Washington-based nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation - is focused on a group of more than 5,300 black schools built between 1917 and 1932 with the help of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, a Sears, Roebuck and Co. executive inspired by Booker T. Washington.

Schools And Lives Are Still Separate (The Washington Post, May 17, 2004)
Fifty years after the Brown decision, white children and black children in Summerton still lead largely separate lives. Scott's Branch High School, a segregated, all-black school in 1954, is still more than 98 percent African American. Its 480 students include just six whites and two Hispanics. Rather than permit their children to be educated with blacks, most white families in Summerton pulled them out of the public school system in 1970 after losing a rearguard fight against integration.

Black Students Sent Away (The Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2004)
Those who know the story first-hand have dwindled to a precious few. For more than 40 years, Maryland taxpayers paid for the graduate education of hundreds of African-American teachers, lest they breach the walls of segregation at the University of Maryland. From the mid-1930s until 1957, the teachers boarded trains in Baltimore for weekend and summer study at some of the finest schools in the land, including New York University, Columbia University, Oberlin College and the University of Chicago. Tuition, travel and living expenses were paid by a state government afraid of lawsuits like the one that forced the University of Maryland to open its law school to an African-American, Donald G. Murray, in 1935. (Murray's lawyer was a young African-American from Baltimore named Thurgood Marshall.)

50 Years Later, Sousa Still Struggling Over Brown (The Washington Times, May 14, 2004)
Along with D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings -- Maryland Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus -- is sponsoring the bipartisan Student Bill of Rights proposal that will require states to bridge the economic and achievement gap among urban, rural and minority school districts.

Progress Made In City's Schools, But More To Go (The Washington Post, May 13, 2004)
Tiara Coelho, the biracial daughter of working-class parents, and Brooke Macy, the daughter of white professionals, share a third-grade classroom here with African Americans, Hispanics and a sprinkling of Native Americans. Their friendship is an unremarkable sight in this magnet school just down the road from the all-black elementary school that was closed as a result of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The two have a difficult time trying to imagine life in a segregated school system until a painful truth dawns on Brooke. She grips Tiara's arm. "You and I wouldn't have gone to school together," she says. "We couldn't be friends."

Shaping An Argument -- And An Era (The Washington Post, May 13, 2004)
As private lawyers working with the NAACP on Brown v. Board of Education, Oliver White Hill and Julian Dugas helped steer one of the most dramatic eras of social change in American history, succeeding in removing barriers to desegregation in public schools and breaking down the old divisions of black and white.

Opinion: Still Separate And Unequal (The Washington Post, May 13, 2004)
"In his "two Americas" stump speech -- the single most powerful message anyone delivered in the Democratic primaries this winter -- Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina talked bluntly about the differences between the education, health care, housing and other basics available to the well-off and the working poor in this country. "We have two different school systems," Edwards said in countless appearances, "one for people in the most affluent communities and another for everyone else." That message -- largely dismissed by the Bush White House and de-emphasized by John Kerry in his reach for middle-class votes -- is of special relevance as the nation prepares to note the 50th anniversary on Monday of the Supreme Court decision that formally ended racial segregation in our schools."

50 Years Later, Gaps Separate The Races In Our Schools (The Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2004)
Shannon Johnson was born 32 1/2 years after the Supreme Court proclaimed "separate but equal" education unconstitutional on May 17, 1954. It was 49 years later, in the same month, that Johnson, an African-American, was elected the junior class president at Baltimore County's Franklin High School, where the racial breakdown of the student population is just over 70 percent white, a little less than 20 percent black, 6.5 percent Asian and 3.3 percent Hispanic and American Indian. Johnson, 17, said her election was a first for Franklin, where "no black person had ever run for office, ever."

Fight For School Equality Still Leaves Scars For Many (The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 2004)
The Prince Edward school system was one of five in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that struck down school segregation 50 years ago this month. A 1951 walkout by black students demanding a better school had led to the Prince Edward system's unlikely role in the national spotlight, and when the court ordered integration, the County responded by closing its public schools and establishing a private academy for white students. Other Virginia schools closed briefly in "massive resistance" to integration, but only in Prince Edward County did it persist. In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy noted that outside of Africa, "the only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras - and Prince Edward County, Virginia."

Behavior Problems Hurt Teachers, Students (The Washington Times, May 12, 2004)
Unruly behavior in middle and high schools is a serious and pervasive problem that drives out teachers and undermines students' academic achievement, according to a study based on surveys of teachers and parents by the nonprofit research group Public Agenda.

Opinion: Brown Vs. Board: Then Vs. Now (The Washington Times, May 12, 2004)
"Back then: Black kids went to all-black schools and whites went to all-white schools because the government told them to. Today: Schools still are largely segregated by race because our housing and social patterns are segregated by race. Conclusion: You can have as much integration as you want in schools and neighborhoods, as long as you can afford it."

Opinion: We All Played Role In Failure Of City School Integration (The Baltimore Sun, May 11, 2004)
"Fifty years after children integrated the schools, we can see black parents who didn't hold their families together, and white parents who took their families and ran as far as they could. In the city of Baltimore, that's our common ground on school integration: our mutual failure."

'Cohort' Tackles Tougher Courses As A Team (The Washington Post, May 11, 2004)
The "Cohort" program at Wakefield High School unique effort to persuade adolescent black and Hispanic boys that they could, if they pushed hard enough, get their high school -- and eventually the world beyond their school -- to take them seriously.

In Southeast D.C., It's Every Child Left Behind (The Washington Times, May 11, 2004)
Sheila Williams, a parent in the Fort Dupont neighborhood in Southeast and treasurer of the Ward 7 Education Council, says that President Bush "came into office with the No Child Left Behind Act, but this ward has been left behind for ages." Now, Ms. Williams and the council say the learning environment in the 24 public schools east of the Anacostia River has gotten so bad that they are planning to take to the streets. They will demand more equitable resources for their neglected neighborhood schools, which have become "the throwaway zone for poor and black children."

50 Years After Desegregation Decision, Academic Achievement Gaps Remain (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 8, 2004)
When Bill Isler joined the city of Pittsburgh school board, he said it took three years before the board asked an important question about the achievement gap: Was it racial or economic? "It was overwhelmingly racial,'' Isler, now board president, yesterday told a conference examining segregation and academic underachievement in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

Opinion: Poor Education Prognosis (The Washington Times, May 6, 2004)
Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's new book "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" shows the government education whites receive is nothing to write home about, but for blacks, it's no less than a disgraceful disaster.

Center Stage Highlights Brown Decision (The Baltimore Sun, May 4, 2004)
In a Center Stage production, Brown v. Board Revisited: A Commemoration and Community Forum, a cast that included leaders from Baltimore's legal and media communities offered a look back at the Supreme Court's 1954 decision to integrate schools.

Minority Lawyers to Mark 50 Years of Brown Decision (The Charleston Gazette, April 28, 2004)
The Minority Lawyer Committee of the West Virginia State Bar will present a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education at 6 p.m. May 4 at the U.S. Courthouse in Charleston.

Studies, Trips Convey Barriers Overcome (The Washington Post, April 27, 2004)
In school lessons and trips inspired by the approaching 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, American students are delving deeply into a struggle that was part of the daily news when their parents or grandparents were growing up but that has few regular reminders these days.

Poll Finds Split On Educational Equality (USA Today, April 26, 2004)
In a Gallup poll released Tuesday, 90% of adults agree that black children's educational opportunities have improved since 1954. But only 31% of blacks say black children's options equal those of their white peers; 63% of whites say opportunities are the same. Overall, among those of both races who believe that blacks have fewer opportunities (38%), about one in three say it's due to discrimination; the rest believe it's because of other factors.

Craving A Taste Of Their Heritage (The Washington Post, April 26, 2004)
Historically black colleges and universities -- virtually the only higher-education option available to their grandparents' generation -- have an emotional allure for today's top African American students who could go almost anywhere they choose.

Schools Becoming Racially Isolated (Cleveland Plain-Dealer, April 25, 2004)
"Since the late 1980s, public schools in the U.S. are becoming increasingly segregated again," Christopher Edley Jr., co-founder and director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, said at a symposium at John Carroll University.

Community Colleges Facing A 'Capacity Crisis' (USA Today, April 25, 2004)
With their low cost, open-door policies and mandates to serve local needs, community colleges have prided themselves on being a key point of access to higher education. It's a role they've maintained as the number of people seeking higher education has risen, and the percentage of minorities has risen. But there is a marked difference by race/ethnicity: From 52% to 55% of traditional-age Hispanic college students start at community colleges, compared with 37% to 38% of whites, blacks and Asians.

School Integration Helps In Game Of Life (USA Today, April 14, 2004)
Students who attended racially integrated public high schools in the 1970s would do it again, says a study looking at racial attitudes a half-century after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation. The study, based on interviews with 242 members of the Class of 1980 from six racially diverse high schools across the country, suggests there is "a silent majority" of Americans now in their 40s who say the experience made them more tolerant and comfortable with people of other races and ethnicities, says lead author Amy Stuart Wells, who studies the sociology of education at Columbia University's Teachers College.

Nudging The Needy Into Nation's Top Colleges (The Washington Post, April 13, 2004)
When William G. Bowen -- former Princeton University president -- began analyzing data about admissions at the nation's elite colleges nearly a decade ago, one thing seemed clear to him from the start: Despite their efforts to recruit students from all walks of life, those campuses were still overwhelmingly dominated by the children of wealthy families. In a series of speeches this month at the University of Virginia, Bowen is calling upon selective colleges to open their doors to more students whose parents are poor or did not attend college by giving them the same extra consideration granted to minorities or children of alumni.

Editorial: The Glass Half Full / Race Relations Are Better But Work Needs To Be Done  (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 12, 2004)
According to the Gallup Organization for the AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, approval of interracial marriage (a key barometer of tolerance in the past) is up dramatically, along with acceptance of affirmative action and racially mixed neighborhoods. The bad news is that closer to home -- especially in Allegheny County, where pockets of segregation and hopelessness hold sway -- pessimism continues to expand from a breeding ground of accumulated injustices.

'No Child' Advocate Scores Points With Facts (The Washington Post, April 6, 2004)
PowerPoint presentations at educational conferences usually are a good time for a snooze. The lights are low. No one is going to call on you. Close your eyes and let the jargon about budget priorities and test validation lull you to sleep. Unless, conference veterans say, Kati Haycock is the speaker.

Beyond Black And White (The Washington Post, April 4, 2004)
An account of the racial and ethnic diversity at Montgomery Blair High School.

Paige Advises Colleges On 'Race-Neutral' Policies (The Washington Times, March 27, 2004)
Education Secretary Rod Paige yesterday issued a second annual report advising colleges and universities on "race-neutral ways to achieve diversity" in admissions. Kenneth L. Marcus, the Education Department's acting civil rights chief, said the report is intended to help schools achieve diversity in constructive ways "without falling back upon illegal quotas," following the Supreme Court's decision last year in the University of Michigan affirmative action case.

Dismissed Principal Stands Behind Her Actions (The Baltimore Sun, March 21, 2004)
A day after being forced to leave her post as Annapolis High School's principal last week, a hurt but resigned Deborah Williams said she believed her efforts to solve academic and discipline problems at the troubled school were doomed by factors beyond her control. Speaking publicly for the first time since her removal, Williams said she was surprised in her first year at the high school to find what she considered a culture of indifference toward the low academic performance of minority students, who make up half the school's population.

Losing Out for Integrating (The Charleston Gazette, March 21, 2004)
The first report in an occasional series looking at the impact and lasting legacy of the 50-year-old Brown v. Board of Education integration ruling.

Plan May End 33-Year-Old Desegregation Suit In Phila. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 19, 2004)
With much praise for efforts by the Philadelphia School District to improve education for minority students, a Commonwealth Court judge yesterday approved a three-year plan that could lead to the end of a 33-year-old desegregation lawsuit against the district.

Schools Aren't Totally Diverse Yet (Philadelphia Daily News, March 19, 2004)
While school district has diversified teaching and administrative forces, maintenance managers remain largely white and male. In a school system in which more than 80 percent of the students are members of minority groups, that's a problem, said Kevin McAfee, a building engineer at William Penn High, during this week's meeting of the School Reform Commission.

Opinion: Let's Celebrate 'Brown,' Then Finish What It Started (The Baltimore Sun, March 18, 2004)
"America's public schools, as you may have noticed, remain largely divided by race in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. As the 50th anniversary of that decision approaches on May 17, it is fashionable for some civil rights reformers to declare that Brown has not lived up to its promise. But look at the story behind the numbers and you might notice something more complex and perplexing: Racial segregation persists in public schools not so much in spite of Brown as because of it."

Minority Statistics Tell Two Stories At Temple (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 17, 2004)
Temple University officials have been proud to talk up the school's impressive enrollment jump over the last five years. But some students and alumni say the university has lost touch with its traditional mission to offer a low-cost college education to the city's underserved.

Court Spoke, But Affirmative Action Back At Issue In Michigan (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 12, 2004)
Only months after a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action in higher education stemming from cases at the University of Michigan, this state has again become an epicenter in the fight over racial preferences. Opponents of affirmative action have launched a bid to amend Michigan's constitution to strip racial preferences from state university admissions, state hiring, and contracting.

Opinion: Blackboard Hero (The Washington Post, March 10, 2004)
Corinthian Nutter died a peaceful death last month at age 97 in her Shawnee, Kan., home. Her name is not a household word, but it deserves to be better known as we reflect on the Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down 50 years ago this spring. "Miss Nutter," as her students knew her, was one of thousands of unsung female foot soldiers in the civil rights movement -- ordinary Americans who placed careers and personal safety in jeopardy to fight racial segregation in public schools.

Minority Students' Rights Violated, Complaint Says (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 9, 2004)
Minority students in Philadelphia's public schools are more likely to be taught by inexperienced and uncertified teachers, which violates their civil rights, according to a federal complaint filed yesterday.

'Lower Standards' For Blacks Ripped (The Washington Times, March 5, 2004)
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says she supports "soft affirmative action," but that it should never be associated with "lower expectations" or "lower standards" for blacks and women.

Reflecting On Lost Chances (The Washington Post, March 4, 2004)
When Prince Edward County schools closed in 1959 -- five years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that called for desegregating schools "with all deliberate speed" -- a private academy was established for white students. Black parents, many of them sharecroppers with little education, had to move or send their children away or put them to work in the fields until the high court intervened again and the schools reopened in 1964.

Exploring Two Childhoods, One Black and One White, in Charleston’s South Hills (The Charleston Gazette, March 3, 2004)
Bill Drennen didn’t think much about racism while growing up in an upper-middle class neighborhood in 1950s Charleston. But Kojo Jones didn’t have that luxury. “Here is what happened,” Jones, now 61, writes in the recently published “Red, White, Black & Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia” (Ohio University Press).

Desegregation Results Mixed (The Boston Globe, February 29, 2004)
The contrast between two nearby high schools offers vivid evidence that, nearly 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated public schools unconstitutional, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling remains a work in progress.

Prince Edward Parents Honored (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 29, 2004)
In 1951, black students marched in protest of inferior conditions at segregated Robert Russa Moton High School in Prince Edward County. Yesterday, the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People honored the parents who supported their children in the protest and allowed them to become plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the separate and unequal conditions. The lawsuit became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

Looking To Brown For Lessons Today (The Washington Post, February 29, 2004)
Elizabeth Davis's eighth-grade students at John Philip Sousa Middle School in Southeast have spent weeks studying the Brown v. Board of Education court decision that declared school segregation unconstitutional -- and they know all too well the ways in which public schools remain unequal.

Bias Victims Get Empathy, No Funds (The Washington Post, February 26, 2004)
50 years after the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools, the Virginia House and Senate have unanimously passed legislation creating scholarships for the thousands of people who were denied an education during the period in Virginia history known as Massive Resistance. But the General Assembly might deny that educational opportunity all over again.

Texas A&M Group Fights Race-Based Quotas Via Pen (The Washington Times, February 24, 2004)
A conservative group at Texas A&M University has established a $10,000 essay contest for students who disagree with affirmative action.

YMCA Program Tests Students on Black History (The Charleston Gazette, February 21, 2004)
About 20 Charleston high school students will compete today in a black history quiz competition at the Charleston YMCA, the director said Friday.

Students Of History Schooled On Rights (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 19, 2004)
The woman whose family helped lead the desegregation of Warren County public schools told high school students yesterday to learn their history and appreciate education. Betty Kilby Fisher recounted how her father helped force the admission of blacks at Warren County High School in the late 1950s as angry locals mutilated her family's farm animals and shot into her home.

Student Group Offers Whites-Only Scholarship (The Washington Post, February 15, 2004)
Student Republicans at Roger Williams University are offering a scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action. The application for the $250 award requires an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and a recent picture to "confirm whiteness."

Opinion: Black Potential Lost (The Charleston Gazette, February 12, 2004)
The good news is that African-American grade school children lag behind their white counterparts less in West Virginia than in any other state. But the bad news is that the “achievement gap” worsens as the youths mature, leaving many young Mountain State blacks doomed to limited lives.

Schools' Racial Makeup Changes (The Baltimore Sun, February 8, 2004)
In this 50th year since the Supreme Court's historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ending legal segregation in schools, racial concentrations of students continue to be a concern - even in Howard County and Columbia. In the past five years, white enrollments have dropped substantially in many Columbia and North Laurel schools, nearly tripling the number of schools with mostly minority students in a county where 65 percent of students are white. At the same time, three older Columbia schools that once had black majorities have gained white students in recent years. Asian-American and Hispanic enrollments are growing quickly, too. Despite the changes, the drift in Howard seems to stop short of the heavily lopsided racial enrollments common in nearby Baltimore County. No Howard school is more than 75 percent minority this year; only one is majority African-American. By all appearances, Columbia enjoys a trait highly valued by many of its residents - the diversity that seems so fleeting elsewhere.

Civil War Of Words Rages At Va. Schools (The Baltimore Sun, February 8, 2004)
At Jefferson Davis Middle School, a civil war of words is being waged over a petition drive to erase the name of the slave-owning Confederate president from the school. Opinion is mixed, and it's not necessarily along racial lines.

Family Ties: An Unfair Advantage? (Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2004)
Amid debate over racial preferences, legacy admissions are suddenly cast in a harsher light.

Event Remembers Milford, Delaware Desegregation (Milford Chronicle, February 6, 2004)
In observance of Black History Month, the Delaware Public Archives will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown vs. Board of Education case by focusing on efforts to desegregate Milford High School in the fall of 1954.

In Fighting Stereotypes, Students Lift Test Scores (The New York Times, January 20, 2004)
Girls and low-income minority students are more likely to improve their scores on standardized tests when they are taught ways to overcome the pressures associated with negative stereotypes, according to a new study of seventh graders.

Sharing A Leader's Vision (The Baltimore Sun, January 19, 2004)
In an effort to include children in remembering the slain civil rights leader, McDaniel College's Office of Multicultural Services sponsored its first essay contest as part of its celebration this year.

U.S. School Segregation Now At '69 Level (The Washington Post, January 18, 2004)
Half a century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, according to a report released today by the Harvard Civil Rights Project.

Bill Targets Students Victimized By Segregation (Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 16, 2004)
Former students in Virginia locales where schools were closed because of segregation would be eligible for scholarships under a bill submitted by Del. Viola O. Baskerville, D-Richmond.

Fighting Hate, Across Cultures and Generations (The New York Times, January 14, 2004)
A 75-year-old Holocaust survivor and a 19-year-old victim of the Rwandan wars speak to New York high school students about genocide.

Annapolis Council Approves Resolution On Improving Black Students' Scores (The Baltimore Sun, January 13, 2004)
The Annapolis city council voted 8-1 last night to approve a resolution supporting attempts to boost black students' test scores at Annapolis High School.

Principal Who Used Epithet Is Reassigned (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 13, 2004)
Faced with demands for her ouster from some parents and a School Reform Commission member, the elementary school principal who used a racial epithet in admonishing students about disparaging words that they should not use has agreed to step down.

Arundel Schools Met Goal On Buying From Minority Companies (The Baltimore Sun, January 8, 2004)
The Anne Arundel County school system exceeded its goal of buying 14 percent of its supplies and services last year from businesses owned by women or racial minorities, but spent less with such businesses than in previous years, according to a report presented to the school board yesterday.

Hearing To Focus On County School Contracts For Minority Firms (The Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2004)
An Anne Arundel County schools task force will hold a public hearing Saturday on recommendations aimed at increasing the share of school contracts that go to minority-owned firms. The task force's draft report, released yesterday, states that the school system struggled to meet goals for minority participation in 2002.

Md. High School Test Scores Barely Improve (The Baltimore Sun, January 3, 2004)
Maryland students scored poorly on the new high school competency examinations again last year, and officials said they expect no improvement until passing the tests is required for graduation. About half of 65,000 students failed the 2003 algebra and biology tests, about the same rate as 2002. Four in 10 failed government, and six in 10 failed English, including a large majority of poor and minority students and those with disabilities.

Colleges Cut Back Minority Programs (San Francisco Chronicle, December 30, 2003)
The Supreme Court's June rulings on racial preferences in University of Michigan admissions were widely interpreted as a victory for affirmative action. Six months later, the impact looks considerably more ambiguous.

Confederate School Names Spur Debate (CNN.com, December 26, 2003)
At Jefferson Davis Middle School in Hampton, Virginia, a civil war of words is being waged over a petition drive to erase the name of the slave-owning Confederate president from the school.

Diverse Schools More Likely To Be Labeled As Failing, Study Says (The New York Times, December 25, 2003)
Public schools with diverse student populations are far more likely than those with homogeneous populations to be labeled as failing under President Bush's education law, according to a new California study.

Mom Blasts Rule Keeping Principal (Philadelphia Daily News, December 17, 2003)
An African-American mother, who accused a white Philadelphia school principal of using the N-word against black students, yesterday said the school district's decision not to oust the principal amounts to a slap-on-the-wrist punishment. District spokeswoman Cecilia Cummings said the preliminary findings indicate that the principal did not use the slur against students but instead mentioned it only in the context of explaining that it should not be used.

School Board Losing Most Of Minority Voice (The Washington Post, December 17, 2003)
Tomorrow, Robert Frye, 67, will end a long chapter of his public life, attending his last meeting as a member of the Fairfax County School Board. He and fellow board member Ernestine C. Heastie (Providence), who also is retiring, became the county's first black elected officials in 1995. Two other minority members also are stepping down: retiring board Chairman Isis M. Castro (Mount Vernon), Virginia's first elected Hispanic official, and Rita Thompson (At Large), an African American who did not win reelection. Their departures leave one minority member, newly elected Korean immigrant Ilryong Moon (At Large), on the 12-member board at a time when Fairfax is continuing to diversify. Nearly one-third of county residents are minorities, and county officials project that minority students soon will outnumber whites.

Black Parents Pressed To Get Involved In Kids' Education (Chicago Sun-Times, December 15, 2003)
Former Chicago Housing Authority Director Phillip Jackson's Black Star Project will begin passing out "contracts" to students in predominantly black schools called "Dropping Out of School -- a contract for 21st Century slavery."

Minority Students Trail In Suburbs (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 14, 2003)
Across the Pennsylvania suburbs, high-achieving and well-funded schools are facing sizeable gaps in achievement between white and minority students.

Racial Tension Felt At School (The Baltimore Sun, December 14, 2003)
Despite state and Howard County regulations prohibiting racial discrimination against students, African-American parents say it still goes on - even at Centennial High School, where high test scores make it easy to believe all is well.

'Challenge' Settings Outlined For Schools (Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 9, 2003)
School divisions with high concentrations of students in poverty, blacks and adults who are not college-educated are more likely to fare poorly on Virginia's Standards of Learning tests, according to a report titled "Review of Factors and Practices Associated with School Performance in Virginia," completed by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the General Assembly's investigative arm.

Rancor Over New Principal Divides Annapolis High School (The Washington Post, December 7, 2003)
In the past several decades, as jobs and families migrated to the suburbs, inner-city schools became poorer and less economically and racially diverse. With some exceptions, they are also the least academically successful. At the same time, suburbs became melting pots of diversity, and their school systems inherited challenges that urban students and educators had long known. And in many of these suburban communities -- such as Anne Arundel County -- where Superintendent Eric Smith fights to keep families from switching their students to private schools, the public school often functions as two schools within the same building. There's an unspoken elite class of student, typically affluent and mostly white, taking Advanced Placement or other college-prep courses. Then there are the others, often low-income or minority students, routed into regular classes. These academic divisions accentuate social barriers, educators say.

Opinion: Annapolis Principal Stares Into The Faces Of The Gap (The Baltimore Sun, December 3, 2003)
"Students' grades are only as good as their parents expect. Asian parents expect no less than an A-minus from their children. White parents settle for a B-minus, while black and Hispanic parents become concerned if the grade is below a C-minus."

Opinion: Black Students - Equal Treatment Crucial (The Charleston Gazette, November 29, 2003)
"In Kanawha County, fewer than 40 percent of black students score above the national average on standardized tests, compared with 60 percent of white students who meet that score. Kanawha County is not alone. Across the country, black students’ scores trail those of their white classmates. This gap raises questions about tests, home life, poverty, expectations of students and many other cultural obstacles."

Poor, Minority Kids Face Long Odds (USA Today, November 23, 2003)
Before they're even born, poor and minority children are at risk of doing poorly in school, a new report suggests. In one of the most in-depth looks ever at the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their white and middle-class peers, researcher Paul Barton of Educational Testing Service cites 14 factors. These include low birth weight, poor nutrition, family mobility and too much television, as well as school factors such as unqualified or inexperienced teachers and unsafe schools.

Opinion: Effects Of Brown Decision Now Seem To Be Overrated (The Baltimore Sun, November 22, 2003)
"Did the Brown decision do for blacks educationally all that the NAACP leaders hoped it would? Are black students in, say, Baltimore -- with our $52 million budget deficit and pitiful public schools -- better off now than they were in 1954? Is the Brown decision and its effects overrated?"

Pa. Tests Show A Racial Divide (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 20, 2003)
52.3 percent of students reached proficiency in math and 60.3 percent in reading in the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests for the 2002-03 school year. But when the scores are broken down by the student subgroups, enormous gaps emerge. Among all students tested in math, 59.2 percent of whites and 68.3 of Asian students reached proficiency compared with 20.6 percent of blacks, 25.6 percent of Latinos, and 42 percent of Native Americans. In reading, 67.5 percent of whites and 64.5 percent of Asian students reached proficiency compared with 29.8 percent of blacks, 30.1 percent of Latinos, and 52.5 percent of Native Americans. The data show a gap in every area - test scores, attendance, and graduation rates.

Minority Educators Back Bush Initiative (The Hartford Courant, November 19, 2003)
Many of the nation's black and Hispanic school superintendents, including four from Connecticut, lashed out at critics of President Bush's school accountability law Tuesday, saying the criticism is misguided.

Getting To Root Of School Discipline Disparities (The Baltimore Sun, November 19, 2003)
"The folks at the Maryland Justice Policy Institute -- a pretty liberal outfit dedicated to finding alternative ways of dealing with crime and punishment -- dared to wade in where many fear to tread. Their Web site listed data for the 1998-1999 school year, breaking down suspensions in Maryland public schools by race. The data showed that 11.2 percent of Maryland's 307,906 black students received suspensions, a higher rate than other groups: 5.8 percent of the state's 463,280 white students, 8.8 percent of 2,840 Native American students, 5 percent of 33,580 Hispanic students and 2.2 percent of 34,065 Asian students. Maryland State Department of Education figures for the school year 2000-2001 show a black suspension rate of 56.76 percent, a white rate of 38.63 percent, a Hispanic rate of 3 percent and an Asian rate of 1.8 percent."

Protesters: More Afrocentric Lessons (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 18, 2003)
The Philadelphia School District employs too few black teachers and inadequately teaches African and African American history to its student body, demonstrators charged yesterday.

Where the Toot, Toot, Tootling Is in Earnest (The Washington Post, November 18, 2003)
At Ella Baker School on New York City's East Side. Music teacher Stern introduces a repertoire to youngsters from the Bronx and Harlem that reaches back centuries and around the world, to cultures where the students have their roots. There are songs from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, as well as American spirituals, pieces from the 12th century and, coming soon, Renaissance works -- all selected to be rhythmically and melodically interesting enough to appeal to children who know only hip-hop.

Schools' GT Program Seeks Wider Appeal (The Baltimore Sun, November 16, 2003)
When African-American teens from nine of Howard County's 11 high schools systematically stood up at a recent forum and outlined a disparity of minority representation in gifted-and-talented programs, their words - though impassioned - weren't shocking to school officials.

At Colleges, an Affirmative Reaction (The Washington Post, November 15, 2003)
Some conservative organizations argue that various minority outreach programs at colleges across the country are unconstitutional if they exclude other racial groups. They have threatened legal action and, in some cases, have filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education.

Opinion: Helping! Minority! Students! Achieve! (Philadelphia Daily News, November 12, 2003)
"If black youngsters remain second-class students, they will be second-class citizens - a racially identifiable and enduring group of have-nots," write Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning." Culture is what counts, the book argues. Underfunded schools, segregation, second-rate teachers and the rest of the usual suspects explain only a fraction of the knowledge and skills gap.

Opinion: School Case Influenced City Diversity, But Issues Linger (The Baltimore Sun, November 5, 2003)
"Coming up soon: the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. It was on May 17, 1954, that the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in America's schools, proclaiming the doctrine of "separate but equal" established in Plessy vs. Ferguson 58 years earlier "inherently unequal." The news media will deluge you with anniversary stories that day and, indeed, the entire week. But a decision that momentous should be looked at throughout the entire school year, shouldn't it?"

Balto. Co. Schools Get Mix Of Scores (The Baltimore Sun, November 5, 2003)
Baltimore County school officials reviewed a mixed bag of test results last night - showing strong elementary school scores and a major increase in Advanced Placement exam participation in recent years amid gloomy news of sagging math scores and a persisting minority achievement gap.

More Ills Cited In Students Of Mixed Race (The Boston Globe, October 31, 2003)
Students who consider themselves of more than one race are more likely to feel depressed, have trouble sleeping, skip school, smoke, and drink alcohol, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Delaware's Capital District Accused of Discrimination (Delaware State News, October 22, 2003)
Long-term substitute teacher Bernard Coleman charged that racial and age discrimination are the reasons why the Capital School District has not hired him as a full-time teacher.

Education Reform Highlights Scoring Gap (The Washington Times, October 20, 2003)
The No Child Left Behind Act is forcing many schools to examine why there is such a large achievement gap between white and minority students, according to a new national study by the Education Trust.

Slurs Spur Schools To Teach Tolerance (The Washington Post, October 20, 2003)
At South River High School in Anne Arundel County, where swastikas and racial slurs were spray-painted inside the building and on campus grounds last March and April, daily announcements now include facts about foreign cultures, ethnic dance lessons are offered after school, and classroom posters remind students to always show respect.

Opinion: Getting The Message On Rendell Plan To Improve Schools (Philadelphia Daily News, October 15, 2003)
"Gov. Rendell intends to ensure that every child has an equal educational opportunity. To do this, he realizes that we need to equalize funding and end our reliance on property taxes to fund our schools . . . Some misguided members of the legislature, however, are claiming that we "adequately fund" education in the Commonwealth. Even a quick look at the level of education funding - Pennsylvania ranks 49th in the nation in its level of funding for basic education - disproves that argument."

Montgomery Schools At Diversity Landmark (The Washington Post, October 14, 2003)
The Class of 2003 is the last group of graduating seniors in Montgomery County public schools to be majority white, according to enrollment projections the superintendent will present to the Board of Education today.

Pursuing Happiness, Through Hard Work (The Washington Post, October 14, 2003)
After 19 years at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles, Rafe Esquith has proven that a teacher who thinks very big -- much harder lessons, larger projects, extra class time -- can help disadvantaged children in ways most educators never imagine.

New Order In The Court: Popularity Is Out, Diversity In at Homecomings (The Washington Post, October 12, 2003)
As most homecoming traditions -- from bonfires to pep rallies to football games -- have endured, the criteria for selecting who's cool in school has not. Indeed, high SAT scores and grade-point averages are in -- maybe more than athletic prowess at some schools.

Budget Needs Clash With Special Needs (The Washington Post, October 6, 2003)
Even as enrollment declines at both the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind and Multi-Disabled at Hampton, the state spends $12 million each year to keep them open -- about $63,000 per child, tens of thousands of dollars more than local school districts spend to educate students with disabilities. For years, Virginia legislators have debated whether to merge them, and this year they say they're determined to do it.

Opinion: A Gap That Won't Go Away On Its Own (The Washington Post, October 6, 2003)
Education cannot be just delivered -- it has to be actively sought and received. And that fact may account as much as any other single factor for the academic achievement gap between blacks and whites in America. Two very different books make that point with compelling clarity. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom ("No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning") . . . plow through the reasons -- poor funding, underprepared teachers, feelings of being an outsider, racial isolation -- and they acknowledge that all of them probably have some impact on educational outcomes. But they also point to a wide variety of schools, public and private, whose low-income, inner-city students are achieving well above the national average. Their point: It can be done . . .John Ogbu, who died in August, focused on a problem that in many ways is more puzzling: the consistent underachievement of black children in affluent suburbs . . .Ogbu and his researchers ran through the usual suspects: low teacher expectations, prejudiced personnel, the distractions of race. . . But he found something else that must have surprised him. The black students were quite open in telling the researchers that, in general, their white classmates studied more, worked harder and cared more about getting good grades. There is plenty of literature on why black youngsters put forth less academic effort -- some of it linked to peer pressure and a great deal of the rest attributed to the alienating effects of racism, white cultural domination or "Eurocentrism." Most of it, I suspect, contains at least a grain of truth."

Greater Mix Is Urged In Schools (The Baltimore Sun, September 28, 2003)
When poor children attend school with students from wealthier backgrounds, they perform much better on standardized tests, according to a new study of Baltimore-area schools written for the Abell Foundation by economist and urban policy authority David Rusk.

Education Chief Says Schools Failing Minorities (The Boston Globe, September 25, 2003)
Education Secretary Rod Paige said yesterday that many minority children are so badly served by public schools that their circumstances can be compared to apartheid.

Men Trailing In College Achievement (The Baltimore Sun, September 24, 2003)
Between 1975 and 2001, the number of bachelor's degrees earned by men increased by 5 percent. The number earned by women increased by 70 percent. Among African-Americans, about twice as many women as men are now earning four-year degrees.

Teacher Shortage Or Glut? (The Baltimore Sun, September 17, 2003)
That teacher shortage we've read and heard so much about? It really doesn't exist. The problem isn't the number; it's the distribution, not only by content area but by gender and, to some extent, by race.

West Virginia Graduation Rate 5th Highest in Nation (press release) (West Virginia Department of Education, September 17, 2003)
West Virginia’s overall graduation rate was the fifth highest in the nation at 84% and its graduation rate for black students was 70%, the second highest in the nation, according to data released today by the Manhattan Institute as part of the Public High School Graduation and College Readiness Rates in the United States Study.

U.S. Officials Pull Questions From Surveys About Children (The New York Times, September 16, 2003)
The board that oversees national achievement tests has moved to curtail sharply the background surveys of students, teachers and principals that accompany the examinations, alarming researchers and others who rely on the surveys as an important source of information.

Schools Try To Build Bridges To Immigrant, Poor Parents (The Seattle Times, September 15, 2003)
As suburban areas become more diverse, school districts are facing a challenge urban educators have long struggled to meet: building trust and involvement from immigrants and low-income parents of color.

First Person Singular: Rod Paige - Secretary Of Education (The Washington Post, September 7, 2003)
"In my senior year, I began to be aware -- in my freshman year in college, I came to be extremely aware -- to understand what segregation meant. You began to talk to your classmates. You began to resent the fact when we, the freshmen, get a Sunday off and go out to the movie and you couldn't go into the movie. The fact that you didn't have a chance to go to the restaurants and get a sandwich or a hot dog or something like that. This was an awakening that there's another world out there that we're not having the chance to experience, and we're not happy about that."

Blacks, Special Pupils Score Poorly (The Charleston Gazette, September 6, 2003)
About two-thirds of special education and one-third of black high school students in West Virginia have failed to meet performance standards under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

U-Michigan Reveals New Admissions Policy (The Washington Post, August 29, 2003)
The University of Michigan unveiled a new undergraduate admissions policy yesterday, replacing the point-based scheme rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in June with an approach that places a higher priority on academic achievement but continues to use race as a more subtle factor.

NAACP Challenge Attacks FCATS (St. Petersburg Times, August 29, 2003)
The Florida NAACP is accusing the state of discriminating against African-American students by perpetuating a system of segregation and unequal education.

Half Of Students Fail Unofficial Exit Exams At Md. High Schools (The Baltimore Sun, August 27, 2003)
Half of the high school students who took the new Maryland end-of-course examinations failed under standards approved yesterday by the State Board of Education - a result so dismal that the board is further delaying making the tests a requirement of graduation. A third of white students and almost three-quarters of African-American students, for example, failed the algebra test. Ninety-one percent of students with disabilities failed the English test, while 70 percent of students from low-income families failed in biology.

U.S. Teaching Force Experienced But Lacks Diversity, Survey Finds (USA Today, August 27, 2003)
Even as public school classrooms get more diverse, the teaching force remains overwhelmingly white and has its lowest share of men in 40 years, a survey by the nation's largest teacher union finds.

High-School Exit Exams Show Their Staying Power, Study Says (The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 13, 2003)
High-school graduation now hinges on exit exams for more than half of public school students, a number on the rise despite some messy consequences -- unexpected costs, greater failure rates for minorities and maybe more dropouts -- according to a study by the Center on Education Policy study.

Fairfax Official Laments Magnet's Scant Diversity (The Washington Post, August 9, 2003)
Of the 1,689 students enrolled at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology -- Fairfax County's elite magnet school -- only 40 are Hispanic.

Opinion: What Black Parents Must Do Now ...  (Houston Chronicle, August 5, 2003)
Distressed that their teen-aged children's grades were lagging behind those of their white counterparts, despite having similar socioeconomic advantages in the racially mixed school district of Shaker Heights, an affluent suburb of Cleveland, some black parents organized their own investigation. They invited anthropology Prof. John U. Ogbu, a well-known figure in the field of student achievement, to examine the district's 5,000 students and figure out why the black-white performance gap persists. Not all of the parents are pleased with Ogbu's conclusions. That's because he found part of the problem to be the parents.

Job, Contract Access Among Ways to Help Blacks, Panel Told (The Charleston Gazette, August 5, 2003)
Black West Virginians need the same access to highway jobs, small-business grants and other state investments that white residents have, several speakers told a legislative Select Committee on Minority Issues on Monday. The committee was formed last year to search for ways to improve conditions of the state’s black residents. Compared to white residents, African-Americans do not do as well in school, have higher dropout rates, are more likely to go to jail and have higher unemployment rates.

Ohio City Ends Plan To Let White Teacher Instruct Black History (The Washington Times, August 4, 2003)
An Ohio school district has scrapped its plan to assign a certified white teacher for a combined black-history and U.S.-government course because a black instructor was not certified to teach government.

Opinion: Berated Law Can Benefit Kids Who Most Need Help (The Baltimore Sun, August 3, 2003)
"THERE ARE a lot of negatives about the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal measure that has the schools of America scrambling. It has unrealistic rules, regulations and timetables. It's a huge financial burden for states and school districts. Even its title is negative. Why didn't they call it the "Every Child Progressing Act"? But then you think about its purpose."

Court Dispute In Affirmative Action Case Ruled Moot (The Washington Post, August 1, 2003)
A bitter dispute between liberal and conservative federal judges over an affirmative action case apparently concluded yesterday with a judicial disciplinary body's ruling that allegations of misconduct against the chief judge of a key appeals court are now moot.

Majority Of Students Pass Md.'S New Tests (The Baltimore Sun, July 23, 2003)
Half to two-thirds of students who took the state's new tests in March performed at a "proficient" - or passing - level under scoring standards approved yesterday by the state Board of Education. But the overall proficiency of the 260,000 children in grades three, five, eight and 10 who took the tests in reading and math masked a poor performance by minorities, children from families in poverty and those with disabilities. In third-grade mathematics, for example, fewer than half of black children scored at the proficient and advanced levels, while four of five white children met that target. Among special education children, a little more than a third in grades three and five and a fifth in grade eight passed the reading test, while 8.4 percent of eighth-graders passed the math exam.

Opinion: Exit Exams Raise Political, Equity Issues For States (The Baltimore Sun, July 16, 2003)
The higher the passing standard, the more students who will be denied diplomas, and most of those denied will be poor and black kids from Baltimore City and Prince George's County.

Racial Data Measure Attacked (The Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2003)
Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday announced his opposition to a proposition on the March ballot that would prohibit government agencies and schools in California from collecting most kinds of racial and ethnic information. Flanked by members of the Greenlining Institute, executives who fight for equal treatment of minorities, Davis said outlawing the classification of Californians on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin would hand a setback to accountability in the schools and to medical research.

Poor Care, Abuses Alleged at Riverside (The Washington Post, July 15, 2003)
Once perceived as a savior for the District's foster children and juveniles, Riverside Hospital has been beset by criticisms of its care and allegations that it kept children for unneeded treatment, according to government and hospital records and interviews with former employees, social workers, relatives and attorneys for the children.

GOP Shuns Affirmative Action Vote (The Detroit News, July 8, 2003)
California activist Ward Connerly is coming to the University of Michigan today to launch a $1 million campaign to collect at least 317,517 signatures and force a November 2004 referendum on whether race can be a factor in school admissions, but the state Republican party is denouncing Connerly's effort as divisive and unnecessary.

Rulings May Back Seattle Schools' Racial Tiebreaker (The Seattle Times, July 7, 2003)
The highest courts of Washington and the nation recently gave the Seattle School District added clout in its legal defense of race-based assignments of students to schools.

Law Redefines Va.'S Approach To SOL Exams: Federal Test Standard Labeled Unreasonable (The Washington Post, July 3, 2003)
Children at Fairfax County's Holmes Middle School have been acing the state Standards of Learning exams. But Holmes, along with hundreds of other Virginia schools, will likely be told in August that it "needs improvement" because under the federal government's No Child Left Behind law a school is performing adequately only if every subgroup -- including minority children, special education students and those who speak little English -- progresses on the tests at the same rate as a school's total student body.

The Face Of The American Teacher (USA Today, July 2, 2003)
While public school students have grown much more diverse in the past 30 years, schools still rely overwhelmingly on white women to teach them. And despite decades of efforts to attract more minorities and men, they simply aren't stepping into the frame.

Ruling On Race Likely To Spur Fight (The Washington Times, June 30, 2003)
The new Supreme Court decision allowing public universities to choose students by race likely was the first shot in what will be a political war fought state by state. While the ruling in the University of Michigan cases allowed states to have affirmative-action plans, it did not require them and warned that race-neutral alternatives must be tested first. The decision did not reverse bans on race references in the constitutions of California and Washington, or the race-neutral program imposed in Florida by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, who pledged to keep it.

Opinion: No 'Roe' Replay On Affirmative Action (The Washington Post, June 27, 2003)
"Let's remember: The court did not mandate affirmative action. It only permitted affirmative action. The people and the politicians are entirely empowered to do away with it. True, the abolition movement has slowed since its successes in California and Washington, and most of the political class -- both Democratic and Republican -- lacks the courage to take up the fight."

U-Mich. Rulings Spur Strategic Scramble (The Washington Post, June 25, 2003)
Emboldened by Monday's Supreme Court decisions upholding race-conscious college admissions, state legislators and education activists on both sides of the debate are scrambling for a position in the legal landscape created by the rulings. As supporters looked for ways to expand affirmative action's reach, opponents examined the feasibility of promoting ballot initiatives to outlaw affirmative action in states across the country. They also said they will file new lawsuits challenging affirmative action programs that they feel go beyond the limits the Supreme Court set.

Opinion: A Ruling Not Entirely Of This Reality (The Washington Post, June 25, 2003)
"For 10 years now, the far right has been spending millions trying to limit the access of blacks and Latinos to higher education, but not saying a word about all the advantages whites get," said Elaine Jones, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "The parental legacies, the financial contributions to the schools, all of that built-in head wind is fine as long as they make sure the few blacks and browns don't get in."

Evolution Of Affirmative Action (Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2003)
When President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 in 1961, he directed government contractors to "take affirmative action" to ensure that hiring and employment practices were free of racial discrimination. It was the first official use of that controversial phrase, a big step in the nation's evolution from legal slavery to a color-blind society.

Court Upholds Use of Race in University Admissions (USA Today, June 24, 2003)
The Supreme Court's ruling Monday that colleges can favor minority students in admissions represents a historic endorsement of affirmative action at a time when critics had hoped the justices were about to declare that such policies had run their course.

Va. Schools Seem To Comply (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 24, 2003)
Virginia higher-education officials say the systems they use to consider race as a factor in admitting applicants seem to meet the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.

Court Mirrors Public Opinion (The Washington Post, June 24, 2003)
Opinion polls make clear that affirmative action is an idea most Americans approve of in theory, but are wary of in practice. The Supreme Court mirrored the approval and the wariness. Six of the nine justices agreed that the goal of diversity is sufficiently important to justify "narrowly tailored" programs to admit minority students to higher education in place of other students with better grades or higher test scores. But the justices struck down number-based scorecard programs, in which every minority applicant automatically received bonus points.

In Split Decision, Court Backs Affirmative Action (The Washington Post, June 23, 2003)
The Supreme Court issued a qualified but resounding endorsement of affirmative action in higher education today, in a pair of historic decisions that, taken together, ratified diversity as a rationale for race-conscious admissions and laid out constitutionally acceptable means for achieving it.

D.C. Puts Best Face On School Report (The Washington Times, June 21, 2003)
The superintendent of D.C. public schools yesterday said he had found some good news in a new national report that ranks D.C. schoolchildren as the country's worst readers and only slightly better than some non-English-speaking children in the U.S. territories. Superintendent Paul L. Vance said the achievement gap between white, black and Hispanic students has narrowed.

A Study in Diversity, Making a Difference (The Washington Post, June 19, 2003)
When Brian Lamb, president and chief executive of C-SPAN, interviewed 27 high school students from Einstein High School in Kensington, MD, he not only elicited stories of courage and persistence, but also uncovered a culture of tolerance and sheer niceness that is often thought not to exist among high school students.

School Research Gets To Race Gap (The Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2003)
After years of hand-wringing over an "intolerable and persistent" racial achievement gap at Oak Park and River Forest High School, school leaders have released new research that suggests grade inflation for white students and identity issues for black students play major roles.

Black Caucus Says It Will Fight Head Start Changes (San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2003)
Giving states control of Head Start funding would weaken the federal preschool program and divert its money to other uses, members of the Congressional Black Caucus said Tuesday, promising to fight proposed changes they contend would adversely affect minority children.

An Unusual Path (Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 10, 2003)
A Better Chance Scholars Program identifies academically talented minority students living in situations that leave them at risk of failing in school, and places them in more motivating and supportive academic environments.

Survey: Most Against Race-Based Admissions (CNN.com, June 9, 2003)
The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll found that 85 percent of those polled think college students at diverse universities are better prepared to live and work in society. But 80 percent of respondents opposed using race as a factor in college admissions.

Diverse View Of College Diversity (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 2003)
The Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed 45 students, chosen randomly, at seven selective colleges in the Philadelphia area region, for their opinions on how affirmative action and diversity these affect the college experience.

Race Unity Day Comes to Legislative Mall in Dover, Delaware, This Weekend  (Delaware State News, June 6, 2003)
Local residents from varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds will gather at Legislative Mall on Sunday for Dover's 14th annual Race Unity Day celebration.

A Wildcard On Affirmative Action (The Washington Post, June 2, 2003)
While Justice Rehnquist is widely seen as a safe vote against affirmative action this time, most court observers expect Justice Stevens to vote for both the undergraduate program at Michigan, which awards extra points to Latinos, African Americans and Native Americans, and the Michigan law school program, which seeks a "critical mass" of students from these groups. The reason is the development of Stevens's views on race-conscious government policies since Bakke, a story that illustrates both the independent streak in Stevens's thinking and how a Supreme Court justice can stick to the letter of his past writings, even as his views seem to shift over the course of a long, life-tenure career.

College-Bound Students Often Skip Race Question (The Washington Post, June 1, 2003)
In the past few years, many college officials say they've seen a striking surge in the number of applications from students who conspicuously decline to state their race.

A Broad Challenge To Shine (The Washington Post, May 21, 2003)
Anne Arundel County Superintendent Eric J. Smith is a firm believer in the educational trend in which U.S. school systems pay for students in grades 9, 10 and 11 to take the PSAT and then use the scores to determine who should be urged to enroll in high-level classes. This year in Anne Arundel's 12 high schools, 2,753 students have taken AP classes. By fall, officials expect the figure to jump to 4,902. The number of black students in AP courses is projected to grow from 193 to 528, a step toward Smith's goal of narrowing the achievement gap between the county's white and black students.

Principal Credited For Rescue Of School (The Baltimore Sun, May 19, 2003)
An account of Principal Paul Vandenberg's success in dealing with racial tensions at Southern High School in northern Anne Arundel County.

Opinion: Sit In For School Equality (The Washington Post, May 19, 2003)
"Originally intended to be a social equalizer, public schools more often than not perpetuate the inequalities that exist in our society . . . Imagine, though, that children could once again lead us to see the absurdity of this injustice. Imagine that next fall, all across the country, children forced to attend poorly equipped and failing schools showed up at the doors of good suburban schools and simply sat down . . . A sit-in movement that targeted good, suburban schools obviously would not on its own solve the problem of educational inequality, but it just might make that problem impossible to ignore."

A Scarcity Of Minority Teachers (The Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2003)
Reflecting racial diversity is a problem districts across the nation are facing as the pool of minority teacher applicants dwindles while the country becomes more and more nonwhite.

A Minority Teacher Shortage (The Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2003)
A scarcity of nonwhite public school educators in Howard County echoes a situation in systems around the state.

Opinion: Owed An Education (The Washington Post, May 18, 2003)
"John Hurt had just finished first grade when the public schools in Prince Edward County, Va., closed. It was 1959, and the closure was the commonwealth's way of avoiding integration . . . Schools also shut down in three other Virginia localities as part of the commonwealth's resistance to integrated education . . . Many Prince Edward youngsters, such as Hurt, were never able to recover the education that had been stolen from them. Now, as the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision looms, it is time to make amends."

Event Honors School Strikers (Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 17, 2003)
Forty-nine years ago, a lawsuit linked to the strike at a black high school in Farmville, VA was part of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that would resound through the nation with great impact: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. Figures who brought about that historic decision in 1954, striking down racially segregated schools as unconstitutional, were saluted at an event that will be mirrored in Virginia and elsewhere around the nation during the next year.

Refreshing The Brown V. Board Of Ed Legacy (CNN.com, May 16, 2003)
People linked to the landmark school desegregation court case from almost a half-century ago will spend the next year reminding the public about how it came about -- and why it matters.

For Supreme Court, Affirmative Action Isn't Just Academic (San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 2003)
The nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are expected soon to decide the fate of racial preferences in college admissions. A majority of the justices are already familiar with another type of admissions preference: "legacy preference." Five justices or their children qualified for this preference, which most U.S. colleges give to the sons and daughters of their alumni. This preference is sometimes criticized as affirmative action for wealthy whites.

Schools Subpar For Blacks And Poor (The Detroit News, May 14, 2003)
Almost 50 years after the legal end of school segregation, many minority and poor students still receive a substandard education, according to a report released Tuesday by the Education Trust.

Black Colleges Drawn Into Fight Over Affirmative-Action Policies (The Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2003)
In an unlikely twist, opponents of racial preferences in college admissions have seized on historically black colleges to help make their argument against affirmative action. Their reasoning goes: If racial diversity on campuses is as important a goal as proponents of affirmative action say it is, how does one account for the success of the country's 105 historically black colleges?

Opinion: Liberal Orthodoxy Vs. Minority Students  (The Washington Times, May 12, 2003)
"D.C. Mayor Tony Williams — whose support for school choice for city students doesn't sit well with congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton — isn't the only local black leader ruffling some feathers by challenging the canons of orthodox left-liberalism. In neighboring Maryland, the state chapter of the NAACP is urging Gov. Robert Ehrlich to delay signing a bill that would give lower in-state college tuition rates for illegal immigrants. Although the great majority of black lawmakers in the General Assembly voted in favor of the bill during this year's legislative session, black Marylanders seem to be having second thoughts, to the displeasure of the staunchest liberal ideologues in Maryland's Legislative Black Caucus, like Delegate Salima Marriott of Baltimore."

Tuition Issue Makes For Unusual Alliances (The Washington Post, May 9, 2003)
An unusual set of coalitions has emerged to lobby Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) on one of the more controversial measures passed by the General Assembly this past session: a bill to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at Maryland colleges. Conservative Republicans and groups favoring curbs on immigration have been joined by some African American lawmakers and the state NAACP. They argue that the measure would unwisely reward illegal immigration and come at the expense of Maryland's underprivileged citizens, who would face increased competition for slots at state colleges and universities.

Reading, Writing, Rapping (The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 7, 2003)
Hip-hop's going from the top of the charts to the head of the class, even into Scholastic children's books. Teachers are using it as a learning tool - sometimes on the sly.

Magnets' Future Still In Flux (The Washington Post, May 1, 2003)
Last summer, a federal judge ordered Prince George's County to restructure its magnet schools as part of a settlement of a decades-long desegregation lawsuit. But a year after the court order, departing schools chief Iris Metts and the county Board of Education have made little progress, other than to decide to remove race as a criterion for admissions and to agree that the issue needs more study. The magnets will stay as they are through the 2003-04 school year.

Report Finds Number of Black Children in Deep Poverty Rising (The New York Times, April 30, 2003)
The number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures in 1980, according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund, a child welfare advocacy group.

Education Secretary Stresses Race-Neutral Options (The Miami Herald, April 29, 2003)
Regardless of how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a high-profile case that could determine the future of affirmative action in college admissions, the Bush administration will pursue race-neutral alternatives, U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige said Monday in Miami.

Poll: Split On College Affirmative Action (USA Today, April 28, 2003)
A new survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights Americans' conflicted feelings about affirmative action at colleges: A majority of those polled said it benefits society, but even more said schools should not admit minorities who have lower grades than other qualified candidates.

Board Decries Racist Graffiti (The Baltimore Sun, April 24, 2003)
The Anne Arundel County school board condemned last night the racist graffiti found at South River High School several times in recent weeks targeting African-American students, and it urged the community to stand together against harassment in county schools.

Opinion: Our Education Obligations Extend Far Beyond Affirmative Action (The Washington Post, April 24, 2003)
"selective institutions have used affirmative action to deflect attention from their obligation to improve the nation's elementary and secondary school systems. The most obvious role they should be playing, of course, is ensuring that their graduates who go into teaching are fully prepared to teach. This is a role they have, as a group, failed at miserably . . ."

Testing Gaps Still Big In City Schools (The Washington Times, April 23, 2003)
Eight of the nation's 10 top-spending, inner-city school systems, including District of Columbia Public Schools, have made marginal improvements in the achievement gap between whites and minorities during the past two decades, according to a report issued by the Council of the Great City Schools.

Amid Learning, Racial Fears (The Baltimore Sun, April 23, 2003)
Three recent acts of vandalism - graffiti depicting swastikas, racial slurs and death threats - have alarmed parents and students, triggered a police investigation and prompted administrators to try to calm fears at South River High School, a predominantly white school of more than 2,000 students in southern Anne Arundel County.

Gates Vows Billions To Boost Minority Education (The Washington Times, April 21, 2003)
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates is committing billions of dollars to radically redesign failing public high schools into smaller, more academically rigorous institutions in predominantly black and Hispanic communities in which less than half the students graduate.

Wider Fallout Seen From Race-Neutral Admissions (The Washington Post, April 19, 2003)
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, if its member schools relied strictly on academic measures for admissions, the proportions of black, Hispanic and Native American medical students would fall from the current 11 percent to no more than 3 percent. The situation is similar for the nation's law schools, particularly highly selective ones, the Law School Admission Council said.

Enrollment Increases For AP Classes In Arundel (The Baltimore Sun, April 17, 2003)
In Anne Arundel County, the number of African-American students who signed up for AP classes went up from 193 students this year to 511 next year -- a 165 percent jump. And among students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, the increase was 270 percent -- from 40 this year to 148 next year.

More Blacks Teach Children At Home (Raleign News & Observer, April 16, 2003)
A growing number of African-American parents nationwide who are opting to home-school their children. They say traditional schools don't offer their children a sense of belonging or adequate knowledge of their history and culture, because they are not structured with African-American children in mind.

Raise The Bar For Poor, Minority Kids, Paige Urges Educators  (The Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2003)
Education Secretary Rod Paige urged hundreds of educators gathered for a conference in Anaheim to raise their expectations of poor and minority children.

Racial Incidents Trouble High School (The Baltimore Sun, April 12, 2003)
A series of racial disturbances at South River High School has prompted Anne Arundel County school officials to suspend more than a dozen students during the past year and provide sensitivity training schoolwide, school system officials said at a briefing yesterday.

Race-Neutral Policies Planned At Va. Tech (The Washington Post, April 8, 2003)
The chairman of Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors vowed yesterday that the school will follow race-neutral admissions and scholarship policies despite Sunday's decision to abandon a controversial resolution ending affirmative action at the Virginia university.

Missing On Top Campuses: The Poor (The Seattle Times, April 7, 2003)
The most under-represented group of Americans at the nation's top colleges and universities is not blacks or Hispanics, but students from low-income families, according to a report released last week by the Educational Testing Service.

Virginia Tech's Restores Affirmative Action (USA Today, April 6, 2003)
Virginia Tech reinstated its affirmative action policy Sunday, despite assertions from the attorney general's office that some of its diversity programs are unconstitutional.

Pass/Fail (The Washington Post, April 6, 2003)
One idealistic young Teach for America recruit meets with inspiring success inside a troubled D.C. school, the other with a night in jail and a $20 million lawsuit.

Magnet Schools To Stay During A Year Of Study (The Washington Post, April 3, 2003)
In Prince George's County, Magnet programs will remain for at least one more school year in the public schools that house them, but race will no longer be used to help decide who is admitted.

On Affirmative Action, High Court Seeks Nuance (The New York Times, April 2, 2003)
Opponents of affirmative action came to the Supreme Court today to make an absolute case against race-conscious government policies but found the justices impatient with absolutes and hungry for nuance.

O'Connor Questions Foes Of U-Michigan Policy (The Washington Post, April 2, 2003)
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, widely viewed as holding the likely swing vote on an otherwise evenly divided court, seemed to take issue with the idea that University of Michigan admissions criteria intended to boost minority enrollment were necessarily to blame for the rejection of Barbara Grutter and other white students.

Admission Bias Charge Stirs Jefferson (The Washington Post, April 2, 2003)
A George Mason University law professor's article about what he calls "invidious race discrimination" in admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has caused controversy at the Fairfax County magnet school even before its publication.

Race Case Could Affect Admissions At Schools (The Washington Times, April 2, 2003)
Solicitor General Theodore Olson yesterday told the Supreme Court that the use of race as an admissions factor could end at universities and military schools nationwide if the court declares a University of Michigan plan unconstitutional.

Justices Hear Admissions Case Today (USA Today, April 1, 2003)
An attorney for white students who are trying to end racial preferences in college admissions faced a skeptical Supreme Court during arguments Tuesday in a case that could determine the future of affirmative action policies nationwide.

NAACP Says Goals Of Schools At Risk (The Baltimore Sun, April 1, 2003)
The Howard County chapter of the NAACP told school board members last night that if they didn't mend ailing relationships among staff and community, the school system's achievement goals would never be met.

At U-Michigan, Minority Students Find Access -- And Sense Of Isolation (The Washington Post, April 1, 2003)
Godfrey Dillard, an attorney for the Detroit branch of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the nuanced suffering of minorities at Michigan has not been argued in the legal challenge to Michigan's undergraduate admissions process, which pits a white complainant against the university. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the legal system cannot remedy historical discrimination, some observers of the case feel that Michigan's history sits like an elephant in the courtroom.

Schools May Add Income Policy (USA Today, March 31, 2003)
The nation's most selective colleges and universities could retain nearly current levels of racial diversity on their campuses without using affirmative action if they adopt a policy that gives preferences to applicants from low-income families, according to a new study by the Century Foundation. The report doesn't recommend that income-based preferences replace race-based affirmative action policies; rather, it recommends that schools expand preferences to include low-income students and strengthen financial-aid policies.

Opinion: Affirmative Action: There's A Third Way (The Washington Post, March 31, 2003)
"With the issue of affirmative action going before the Supreme Court tomorrow for oral argument, the debate has come to focus almost entirely on two different approaches: racial preference plans of the kind used by the University of Michigan (and favored by Democrats and most of the business and education establishment) and the "top 10 percent" plan used by the University of Texas (which is supported by the Bush administration and a few other groups). Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to a third alternative that has few political patrons but is supported by two-thirds of Americans: affirmative action for low-income students of all races."

Attack On Colleges' Aid To Minorities Widens (The New York Times, March 30, 2003)
As the Supreme Court prepares itself to tackle affirmative action in university admissions this week, a new offensive is well under way against scholarships and summer programs intended to ease minority students into college life.

At Boston U., 'Holistic' Admissions Beyond Black And White (The Washington Post, March 30, 2003)
Earlier this month, Boston University allowed The Washington Post to observe two of its admissions committees as they debated and voted on dozens of applications.

Books Explore Why Achievement Gap Persists (Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 2003)
Four new books by black authors address the issue of the black-white achievement gap.

Minority Students Narrow Test Gap (Houston Chronicle, March 24, 2003)
Black and Hispanic students in Houston schools are closing in on their Anglo counterparts on standardized tests, according to a new study by the Council of Great City Schools.

Education Pays Off Most For White Men (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 21, 2003)
Educational gaps between men and women and whites and blacks have narrowed in recent years, but this much has not changed: A highly educated white man makes much more money than anyone else, according to Census Bureau estimates being released today.

W. Chester Council Wants School Boundaries Revised (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 21, 2003)
The West Chester Borough Council passed a resolution by a 6-1 vote, saying that a redistricting plan adopted by the West Chester Area School District Board of Education earlier this month "divides [West Chester] neighborhoods along unnatural boundaries and isolates children." Borough resident Steven Handzel, a former school board member who lost a bid for reelection in 1999, said children from three separate pockets of mostly black students are slated to be the only borough students attending East High School after the Rustin High School opens in 2006. "That is segregation, and it's wrong," he said.

'Race-Neutral' Stance At Tech Creates Concern (Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 19, 2003)
The rector of Virginia Tech's governing board defended the school's new "race-neutral" policy on admissions and hiring yesterday, saying it was crafted for legal reasons and fairness. Governor Mark Warner said the board should have waited to craft its anti-discrimination policy until the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, expected this summer, in a case challenging race-conscious admissions at the University of Michigan.

Academies Supply Path To De Facto Segregation (The Baltimore Sun, March 16, 2003)
For schoolchildren who live amid the vast flatlands of this Mississippi Delta county, the era of segregation never really ended. Private academies sprang up in west-central Mississippi's Washington County and other parts of the rural South decades ago just as the gavel fell on court-ordered integration. They created a dual system of de facto segregation that still thrives - public schools for blacks, private schools for whites.

New Va. Tech Rules Rile Warner, Campus (The Washington Post, March 14, 2003)
The governing board of Virginia Tech drew fire from Gov. Mark R. Warner yesterday -- as well as from faculty and students -- over several surprise actions this week that appear to overturn affirmative action efforts, eliminate protections for gay men and lesbians and place new restrictions on campus gatherings.

Va. Tech Bars Bias By Race, Gender (Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 12, 2003)
Virginia's Tech's governing board has officially prohibited the consideration of race and gender in its admissions process, following the advice of the state attorney general.

Reexamining Minority Admissions (The Washington Post, March 12, 2003)
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to race-conscious admissions at the University of Michigan, the internal maneuverings at William and Mary point to a gap between the words and actions of many elite colleges. Even as they assert their right to continue considering the ethnicity of applicants in the pursuit of diversity, several schools have subtly changed the way they make those decisions in an effort to stay beneath the radar of affirmative-action foes.

'Friend' Briefs Set Record In Michigan Case (The Washington Times, March 3, 2003)
Not since the Supreme Court received its first "friend of the court" brief in 1821 have so many organizations filed so many words on one topic as they did Feb. 19 about the University of Michigan's affirmative-action case. When the Feb. 19 deadline passed, 66 amicus curiae briefs by about 300 organizations had been filed in support of the university's admissions policy of giving preferences to blacks, Hispanics and American Indians. Four briefs took neutral stances, and 11 briefs argued that the practice is unconstitutional.

Schools Seek Gifted Among Minorities (The Washington Times, February 24, 2003)
Maryland school districts and nonprofit groups are trying to address the underrepresentation of minority children in programs for the gifted.

Groups Support University Of Michigan Affirmative Action Case (The New York Times, February 18, 2003)
A month after the Bush administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court opposing affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan, more than 300 organizations representing academia, major corporations, labor unions and nearly 30 of the nation's top former military and civilian defense officials, announced that they would file briefs supporting the university.

To Reach Minorities, Schools Rethink How To Calculate 'Gifted'  (The Baltimore Sun, February 16, 2003)
School districts and nonprofit groups from California to Georgia - including some in Maryland - are taking steps to address the under-representation of minority children in gifted programs.

Opinion: Not Affirmative, Sir  (The Washington Post, February 16, 2003)
"Like many institutions of higher education, the Naval Academy uses race as a criterion in its admissions process. The practice leads to obvious absurdities, even inequities . . . At the same time, it's difficult not to sympathize with the goal of representativeness implicit in all affirmative-action policies."

How Did The Black Saga Competition Come About (The Washington Post, February 16, 2003)
Students from 52 Maryland schools are taking part in the Black Saga Competition, developed in 1992 by University of Maryland Prof. Charles Christian to teach African American history to elementary and middle school students.

Regrets For Segregation Ploy Resolution On School Closings (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 14, 2003)
The General Assembly officially expressed remorse yesterday for public-school closings in Prince Edward County from 1959 to 1964 under policies enacted by the legislature to thwart court-ordered integration. Without debate, the Virginia Senate gave final and unanimous approval to a resolution by Del. Viola O. Baskerville, D-Richmond, expressing "profound regret" for the Prince Edward closings that disrupted - in some cases, ended - the education of black students in the rural Southside county.

MIT To End Programs' Racial Exclusiveness (The Washington Post, February 12, 2003)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under pressure from federal investigators, will change the admissions policy for two summer enrichment programs aimed at enhancing the math and science skills of underrepresented minority high school students and incoming freshmen.

Opinion: Bowing Before The Altar Of Diversity (The Washington Times, February 12, 2003)
"When justifying his recent stand against race preferences at the University of Michigan, President Bush felt compelled to place a generous pinch of incense at the politically correct altar of diversity. This obligatory ritual, practiced ostentatiously by virtually all public figures, is not only vague and redundant. It subverts equal opportunity and tears at our social fabric. America is diversity, the world's melting simmering with past and present immigrants."

Admissions Studies Find Flaws (The Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2003)
College admissions "percent plans," which guarantee admission to top high school students, do not make a significant difference on their own in maintaining ethnic diversity, according to two reports released Monday by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project.

MIT Drops A Policy For Minorities (The Boston Globe, February 11, 2003)
Under investigation by the federal Office for Civil Rights, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has scrapped the minority-only admission policy for two summer programs designed to build science and math skills in high-school students and incoming college freshmen.

Boston's Policy On School Choice Returns To Court (The Washington Times, February 11, 2003)
The decades-long, racially charged fight over assignments of thousands of children to Boston's public schools returned to federal court with plaintiffs saying race is still a consideration. At issue is the district's 3-year-old student-assignment policy, which reserves half the seats in the district's elementary and middle schools for children who live within the schools' "walk zones," and half for children from other neighborhoods.

Large Companies Back Michigan: Affirmative Action Favored (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 7, 2003)
Dozens of big companies are backing the University of Michigan and its affirmative action policy before the Supreme Court, saying such programs help produce better workers of all races and ethnic backgrounds.

Princeton to End Minority Program (Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 7, 2003)
Princeton University will stop offering a summer enrichment program for minority students because of concerns that it could be targeted in an affirmative action lawsuit. Administrators of the Woodrow Wilson School Junior Summer Institute made the decision earlier this week after Princeton's lawyers determined the program's race-based admissions policy could not be defended in court.

Bush Likely To Weigh In On Affirmative Action Case (The San Diego-Union Tribune, February 4, 2003)
The Bush administration will probably go before the Supreme Court to explain its stance in a politically and racially charged affirmative action case, a senior official said yesterday.

Some Companies Back Michigan's Affirmative Action Policy (The New York Times, January 29, 2003)
Some of the country's biggest corporations, concerned about their ability to recruit women and minority applicants, are supporting the University of Michigan in its court battle to preserve affirmative action in opposition to the Bush administration.

Opinion: Affirmative Action: Goal Vs. Issue (The Washington Post, January 27, 2003)
"My own conclusion -- perhaps because it reflects the pulls and tugs of my own mind -- is that virtually all of us are both for and against affirmative action. How we argue about it publicly depends very much on whether we see diversity as a goal -- or only as an issue."

Opinion: Affirmative Action Fog Index (The Washington Times, January 24, 2003)
"One of the questions to ask proponents of affirmative action is: When will it end?"

Opinion: Race Preference Least Of Admissions Unfairnesses (St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, January 23, 2003)
Now that the Supreme Court is about to examine whether the University of Michigan's admissions policy is, as the Bush administration has called it, "fundamentally flawed," a good case could be made that the entire college admissions process is totally messed up.

Study: Schools Have Become Resegregated (The Washington Times, January 22, 2003)
Public schools are slipping back into racial segregation, according to a study by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. The researchers blame the resegregation trend on a series of court decisions, beginning with the 1991 Supreme Court ruling Oklahoma City v. Dowell, which backed away from the court-enforced desegregation laws of the 1960s.

Schools Resegregate, Study Finds (The New York Times, January 21, 2003)
According to a new study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, black and Latino students are now more isolated from their white counterparts than they were three decades ago, before many of the overhauls from the civil rights movement had even begun to take hold.

Opinion: Craton Liddell's Legacy (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 21, 2003)
Like Linda Brown of Topeka, Kan., Craton Liddell was among those American youngsters whose lawsuits resulted in dramatic changes in public education. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was the most far-reaching of these desegregation lawsuits. But it was Liddell v. Board of Education of St. Louis in 1972 that brought integrated education to hundreds of thousands of St. Louis schoolchildren.

White Teachers Flee Black Schools (Christian Science Monitor, January 21, 2003)
Certain neighborhoods in the South are weathering a new version of an old phenomenon: white flight. Across the region, white, often middle-class, teachers are leaving schools dominated by African-Americans almost as fast as they arrive. Many are moving to school districts with smaller populations of blacks, new studies show. Critics see the exodus as a new form of segregation, encouraged by court rulings that no longer enforce racial diversity. But teachers say that cultural and economic barriers, not racial ones, are fueling the trend in a region where more than 40 percent of the public school population is black.

Schools' Plan For Integration Challenged (The Baltimore Sun, January 19, 2003)
Word that a federal judge could throw out the 22-year-old desegregation plan for Chicago's public schools as early as this spring has caught school officials and advocates off guard.

Administration Urges 'Race-Neutral' Method (The Boston Globe, January 17, 2003)
The Bush administration told the Supreme Court yesterday that university admissions programs that give an edge to minority students are unconstitutional and ignore race-neutral alternatives that could boost minority presence on campuses.

Balto. Co. Group Offers Ideas On Achievement (The Baltimore Sun, January 17, 2003)
Baltimore County's Minority Achievement Advisory Group urged principals at poorly performing schools yesterday to observe classes more frequently and limit the number of students in hallways to help improve standardized test scores. The group submitted the ideas to Superintendent Joe A. Hairston and the Board of Education as part of a package of recommendations.

White House Files Brief Opposing 'Flawed' Affirmative Action (CNN.com, January 17, 2003)
The Bush administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court outlining its opposition to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program.

Arlington's Nauck Wants Its School Back (The Washington Post, January 16, 2003)
In the post-civil rights movement 1970s, school boundaries were initially drawn by race and economic status, and children were bused in all directions to achieve diversity. Later, special academic programs were created to draw white students voluntarily into all-black schools. Now, many minority communities are urging a return to neighborhood schools.

President To Oppose Race-Based Admissions (The Washington Post, January 15, 2003)
President Bush plans to declare his opposition to University of Michigan admissions policies that give preference to black and Hispanic students, injecting the White House into the Supreme Court's most far-reaching affirmative action case in a generation, administration officials say.

Group Protests School Decision (Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 12, 2003)
Every school district in the state of Virginia will pause Jan. 20 with a day off to honor Martin Luther King Jr. except for Chesterfield County.

Education Act Ties Cash To Exams (San Francisco Chronicle, January 9, 2003)
By 2014, it will be illegal to do poorly in school. That's essentially what the new federal Education Act says, requiring every student group—blacks, whites, Latinos, English-learners and the disabled—to do well in school or jeopardize federal Title I funding for poor students.

Gap Continues In Schools On Black-White Achievement (The Baltimore Sun, January 9, 2003)
Two years after concerned parents and community activists declared "a state of crisis" in the growing achievement gap among students of different races, Carroll County's African-American students' test scores continue to lag far behind their white classmates on many state and national assessments.

Studying Race, Privilege and Intellectual Levels (The New York Times, January 8, 2003)
Profile of Edmund W. Gordon, head of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Columbia's Teachers College.

Affirmative Action Faces A New Wave Of Anger (The New York Times, January 5, 2003)
A fierce race and class struggle is being waged in the arena of highly selective college admissions.

States Worry New Law Sets Schools Up To Fail (The Washington Post, January 2, 2003)
State education officials are warning that a new federal education law's requirement that each racial and demographic subgroup in a school show annual improvement on standardized tests will result in the majority of the nation's schools being deemed failing.

A Ban On Hate, Or Heritage? (The Washington Post, December 30, 2002)
Disputes over the confederate flag are being played out more frequently in school systems—and courtrooms—across the South and elsewhere, as a new generation's fashion choices raise questions about where historical pride ends and racial insult begins.

Students Score High Despite Demographic Odds (The Washington Times, December 29, 2002)
A student population that's 81 percent black and 80 percent below the poverty line isn't supposed to add up to some of the highest test scores in the state. But that's exactly what happened at Stono Park Elementary School in Charleston, S.C.

Some Fear Southern Schools Are Resegregating (CNN.com, December 28, 2002)
For years, Charlotte was known as "the city that made busing work." But that all changed this year, when, with federal court approval, the district began allowing parents to send their kids to schools closer to home.

Opinion: Closing The Gap (San Francisco Chronicle, December 27, 2002)
John Ogbu, a Nigerian-born anthropologist at UC Berkeley, has a right to be irritated about how his three decades of work challenging conventional views on minority school achievement have been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and at times caricatured. The current orthodoxy is that schools are entirely responsible for the stubborn gap in test scores between blacks and American-born Latinos on the one hand, and whites and Asians on the other. Ogbu argues that deeply rooted attitudes, shaped by the historical experience of each group, also help explain the differences. For real change to occur, those attitudes have to change as well.

Opinion: Can Maryland Close The Achievement Gap? (The Washington Post, December 24, 2002)
"Recent statewide reports on academic performance by race and ethnicity are dismal . . . the Maryland Department of Education's report on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program exam reported that black and Hispanic students achieve academically at just half the rate of their white and Asian classmates . . . The good news is that there is a growing national consensus about how to mitigate the academic achievement gap. The preponderance of research demonstrates that high-quality preschool programs not only prepare children for later success in school but also produce tremendous social and economic benefits, including reduced crime rates, lower remediation costs and increased income levels over time."

A Substitute For An Education (USA Today, December 22, 2002)
Half of public schools serving minority children fill long-term teaching vacancies with substitutes, many of whom lack even basic teaching qualifications, a Gannett News Service investigation has found. The problem is even more staggering at predominantly black schools, where nearly six out of 10 principals use substitutes. At schools with few black children, only about one in four principals use substitutes.

More Skip Ethnicity Declaration On Tests (The Baltimore Sun, December 17, 2002)
Rising numbers of teens who do not declare their ethnicity on college prep tests might be missing out on thousands of dollars in education aid set aside for minorities. In Maryland, the number of students not identifying their race on last year's PSAT more than doubled from the year before, to 1,134 students. There was a similar increase nationally.

Inspired To Do Their Part For Diversity (The Baltimore Sun, December 16, 2002)
Students from 17 Baltimore area private schools attended a recent Student Diversity Leadership Conference at New Psalmist Baptist Church in West Baltimore.

Advisory Panel Asks Funds Rise For Black Schools (The Washington Times, December 13, 2002)
A White House advisory board -- the President's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)-- has recommended designating 10 percent of all federal money spent on higher education for historically black schools, which represent 3 percent of the nation's public colleges and universities.

Signs Of The Achievement Gap (The Washington Post, December 12, 2002)
Howard County's (Md.) public schools share at least one serious problem with schools across the country: The achievement gap for minority students is pervasive here.

County's High Schools Score Poorly On New Test (The Washington Post, December 12, 2002)
Prince George's County students posted dismal scores on a new state exam that high school students will be required to pass before earning a diploma starting in 2007. The first-ever results of the Maryland High School Assessment, released by the Maryland State Department of Education last week, also showed that black, Hispanic and Native American high school students are more poorly prepared to pass the exam than their white and Asian counterparts in Prince George's and statewide.

Opinion: Times Have Changed For Black Students (St. Petersburg Times, December 11, 2002)
A teacher reflects on the attitudes of today's black youth, who feel a special obligation to succeed in order to combat negative stereotypes of African-American students.

Economy Halts Program That Aids Black Scholars (The Washington Post, December 11, 2002)
Project Excellence, a scholarship program founded by Carl T. Rowan to help local black students attend college, is ceasing operations after 15 years because the economic downturn has made it harder to raise funds. Since its 1987 inception, the program has awarded about $109.5 million in scholarships, including as much as $700,000 a year in cash grants, to more than 4,200 District and suburban high school seniors. The organization will fulfill its financial obligations through 2005, but it will not award new scholarships after the current school year.

Achievement Gap 'Un-American' (The Indianapolis Star, December 10, 2002)
The gap between black and white student achievement is real, growing and unacceptable, U.S. Education Secretary Roderick Paige told a national group of state lawmakers.

African American, Hispanic Students Gain In Tests (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 2002)
African American and Hispanic fifth graders across Pennsylvania improved in reading on this year's state assessment tests, according to data released this week by the state Department of Education.

Opinion: Why Black Kids Lag (The Washington Post, December 9, 2002)
"John U. Ogbu, author of 'Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb', sees culture as the overriding determinant of why African American children perform more poorly than while children, while Ronald Ross, a distinguished fellow at the National Urban League, looks at the same scene and sees race first and foremost. If there's a critical difference between these two thoughtful men, it is that Ross sees it as of greater importance than Ogbu that white people confront their racism."

Minorities' Scores Lag On Revised Md. Exam (The Washington Post, December 6, 2002)
Thousands of low-income and minority high school students in Maryland are poorly prepared to pass a new state exam that will be required for a diploma by 2007. The first-ever results of the Maryland High School Assessment, released yesterday, provide a stark reminder of a racial achievement gap that educators across the country are wrestling with at every grade level. As a group, Asian and non-Hispanic white students consistently scored higher than black, Hispanic and Native American students in each of the five Maryland High School Assessment test subjects: English, biology, geometry, government and algebra.

Teacher Training Paying Off: More Black Students Meet Reading Standards (The Seattle Times, December 4, 2002)
A teacher-training program aimed at boosting students' reading and writing skills is paying off for many struggling students, particularly African Americans, an analysis by the Seattle School District shows.

Opinion: Affirmative Action Showdown (The Washington Post, December 4, 2002)
The authors write: "In our view, the court would be wise to leave Michigan's program alone . . . It is certainly reasonable to demand that preference programs be carefully designed. But it would be wrong for the courts to decree that equal protection -- a doctrine meant to prevent the subjugation of one race by another -- demands race-blindness from all schools. Diversity may be an interest whose value is difficult to quantify. But in a multicultural democratic society, where universities often serve as training grounds for citizenship, diversity has educational benefits. For the courts to dismiss the desire to expose students to others unlike themselves as an inadequate justification for a race-conscious policy would be a heavy-handed imposition by judges."

High Court To Review Race-Based Admissions (The Washington Post, December 3, 2002)
The Supreme Court announced that it would decide whether race-conscious university admissions procedures intended to promote racial and ethnic diversity illegally discriminate against white applicants -- setting the stage for a historic battle at the court over access to American higher education.

African Americans Hit Hard By Uproar Over Naming A School (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 3, 2002)
Those who oppose naming a new high schoolin West Chester after civil-rights leader Bayard Rustin, a native son, say their opposition has nothing to do with his race. But many African Americans in this community wonder whether Rustin would face such criticism if he had been white.

Court Nears 'High Noon' On Race-Based Admissions (The Washington Times, December 3, 2002)
The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to review whether universities may consider a student's race in admission decisions, setting the stage for a ruling that could outlaw affirmative action or establish a role for race in the college entrance process.

Supreme Court Takes Case on Race and School Admissions (The New York Times, December 2, 2002)
The Supreme Court re-entered the debate over affirmative action Monday, agreeing to decide if minorities can be given a boost to get into universities.

Debate On Black Students Rages (The Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2002)
A Pasadena teacher's note blaming disruptive African Americans for low test scores has stirred anger, pain and soul-searching.

More Black Families Opt For Home-Schooling (The Washington Times, November 25, 2002)
Three years ago, black families accounted for 1 percent of the 850,000 American families who home-schooled their children, according to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics. That is about 8,500 black families. But that number has since skyrocketed to 80,000 black families, or about 5 percent of the 1.6 million children that are home-schooled now, according to Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.

Survey Affirms Home Schooling Favors No Color (The Baltimore Sun, November 24, 2002)
According to a survey conducted by Professor Arnita Hicks McArthur, five hundred of the 1,200 home-schooled Baltimore children are black.

Scholarship Created For Students With Hepatitis C (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 22, 2002)
The Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and Hispanic Scholarship Fund have created a New Horizons Scholars Program to provide college scholarships to Hispanic and African American students who have hepatitis C or are dependents of someone with the disease. The program is funded by the Roche Foundation. The scholarships are designed to improve African American and Hispanic student enrollment in higher education. The program will provide 50 scholarships per year to students planning to enroll for the first time in a four-year college during the 2003-2004 or 2004-2005 academic years.

Trading Places In the Cafeteria (The Washington Post, November 22, 2002)
Across the country this week, schools tried to shake up the invisible boundaries -- race, class, clothes, sports -- that come into stark relief in the shifting social structure of the school cafeteria. Mix It Up was the first nationwide activity sponsored by Teaching Tolerance, a program of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

Admission Policies Not Leading To More Diversity, Report Says (The Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2002)
Policies in California, Texas and Florida that guarantee admission to public universities for top high school graduates do not make campuses more diverse, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said Tuesday in a draft report. Minority students in those three states are faring worse or no better than they were under affirmative action programs, according to the report.

Study: Minority Students Equally Driven (CNN.com, November 20, 2002)
Black and Hispanic students have as much desire to succeed in school as their white and Asian peers, according to a study by the Minority Student Achievement Network. The conclusion is based on a survey of 40,000 high school students in 15 school districts across the country.

Main Line Schools Seeking Minorities (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16, 2002)
The Lower Merion School District will take the unusual step next week of holding its own job fair in an effort to attract teachers of color. The ranks of minority teachers in the district remain slim. About 7 percent of the 600-member professional staff is minority, according to Marty Yoder, human resources director, while its student body is 7 percent black, 1 percent Asian, and 5 percent Hispanic, according to district data. Initiatives aimed at hiring minorities are under way in many districts in the country, and educators view the push to attract people of color into teaching as both essential and overdue.

Lessons Planned: Black Families Boost Ranks Of Home-Schoolers (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 15, 2002)
Once perceived as a preserve of white conservatives and separatists, home-schooling is undergoing an image change. More black families are taking on the responsibility of teaching their children at home. Their reasons include religious beliefs and what they see as a failure of public schools to diversify curriculum, keep their children safe and hire teachers who can address the needs of children from all backgrounds.

165 Pupils Start New Reading Program (The Baltimore Sun, November 15, 2002)
If officials at the Greater Baltimore Urban League have their way, the new Freedom Readers Program will prompt Sequoia and hundreds of other middle school pupils to read an hour or more daily. The pilot program, which began yesterday at the Enoch Pratt Free Library's main branch, is designed to improve children's reading skills -- and make them enthusiastic about it -- by having them read aloud from inspirational and motivational works by people of color.

State Steps In To Help School's Racial Tensions (The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 15, 2002)
Racist name-calling in the lunchroom at Bucks County Technical High School prompted the state Human Relations Commission to meet yesterday with school administrators in a closed-door session to gauge the extent of racial tensions at the school. In the last month, seven students have been suspended for three separate incidents, including an Oct. 31 shouting match between white and black male students during lunchtime, officials said.

Board Backs Smith's AP Expansion Plan (The Washington Post, November 14, 2002)
AP classes have, in the past, been courses open only to students who write essays or get teacher recommendations. For the most part, only the smartest and hardest-working college-bound students sign up to take them. Anne Arundel Public Schools Superintendent Eric Smith has insisted that a signature element of his tenure will be opening up AP opportunities to all students -- including poor students, black and Hispanic students and students who perform in the middle of the pack. The Anne Arundel school board has voted unanimously to support this "cornerstone" of the superintendent's vision for the school system.

A Classroom Crusade (The Washington Post, November 10, 2002)
Eric Smith wants to prove he can eliminate the achievement gap that divides blacks and Hispanics from Asians and whites. His stint in Maryland will put him to the test.

U.Va. Is Opening Teaching Center (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 7, 2002)
Aided by a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, a University of Virginia institute will open a teaching center this month devoted to new ways of understanding race, gender and nationhood. U.Va.'s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies will use the grant money to establish the Center for the Study of Local Knowledge in the Construction of Race, Gender and Nation. It opens Nov. 14.

Opinion: Families Out in The Cold (The Washington Post, November 3, 2002)
The author writes: "In this predominantly African American city [Washington, D.C.], most of the top public schools are clustered in majority-white neighborhoods. Fair access to the best public education is inherently compromised."

School Teaching In Chinese Is A Lure For Black Children (The New York Times, November 2, 2002)
At Shuang Wen Academy -- a public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where much of the day is spent learning Mandarin -- most of the students are children of Chinese immigrants, but almost 10 percent of the students are black, and many of them come from the outer reaches of the city, enduring long trips for the chance to attend a school that has developed a reputation for excellence.

Race-Based Tiebreaker For Schools Is Argued (The Seattle Times, October 25, 2002)
The Washington state constitution guarantees every student the right to the highest-quality education possible. Over the years, that's been interpreted to mean eliminating racial segregation at schools. Whether that's a mandate or just a recommendation was the discussion yesterday in the state Supreme Court, as attorneys argued over the Seattle School District's use of race as a factor in assigning students to schools.

Hispanics, Blacks Do Better On SOL Tests (The Washington Post, October 24, 2002)
The percentage of African American and Hispanic students who passed their Standards of Learning tests in Virginia increased again this year, although their scores continued to lag behind those of white students.

Black Students Narrow Test Gap (Richmond Times-Dispatch, October 24, 2002)
While students from all races have posted improvements on most Standards of Learning tests in the last five years, an "achievement gap" persists between minority students and their white counterparts. According to results released yesterday by the Virginia Department of Education, black students narrowed this gap in most tests, while the difference between Hispanic and white students has widened in most cases.

The Divide Between Black Familes And Schools (Raleign News & Observer, October 20, 2002)
For its recent series, "The Parent Gap," The Raleigh News & Observer spent six months interviewing almost 100 parents, teachers and education leaders about the relationships between black parents and the public schools. It also examined test scores and survey data that measure links among achievement, parental attitudes and the ways in which parents govern their children's time outside the classroom.

Jefferson High's Test-Prep Course Is Overly Popular (The Washington Post, October 19, 2002)
So many students signed up for a new test-preparation course for eighth-graders interested in attending Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology that some educators say it is diluting the initial intent -- to encourage applications from black and Hispanic students.

Opinion: Race And IQ Scores (The Washington Times, October 2, 2002)
The author challenges why research on race and IQ has become taboo in many places.

Nonprofit Foundation Hopes To Preserve Tubman School (The Baltimore Sun, September 29, 2002)
African-American leaders in Howard County will soon begin raising funds in the hopes of developing a museum and community center in the former Harriet Tubman Junior-Senior High School.

'Chance To Make A Difference' (The Baltimore Sun, September 23, 2002)
The Turning the Corner Achievement Program is a five-year program -- funded by investor-philanthropist Eddie C. Brown's family foundation -- to provide educational and personal support to African-American children.

Minority Teacher Training Stressed (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 17, 2002)
Education Secretary Rod Paige asked black college and university leaders Monday(September 16)to do a better job of training teachers to educate disadvantaged children.

Monitoring Of Little Rock Integration Ends (The New York Times, September 14, 2002)
A federal judge ended more than 40 years of court-supervised desegregation monitoring in the Little Rock, Arkansas' schools on September 14, 2002, closing a chapter in a battle over integration that began in the 1950's.

Boosting The Male Minority (The (Raleigh, NC ) News and Observeer, September 12, 2002)
Historically black colleges are attempting to recruit more men to campuses.

Schools Chief Aiming To Cut Minority Gap (The Baltimore Sun, September 10, 2002)
Anne Arundel County Superintendent Eric J. Smith has announced plans to funnel more minority students into college-level classes and give them the support they need to succeed. He has put in place new, proven reading and math curricula at 14 elementary schools with high minority enrollment, and has promised the school board that he would reduce the achievement gap - the gulf between test scores of whites and blacks - to less than 10 percent on all measures by 2007. He is so sure he can do it that he bet his $20,000 bonus on steady progress.

School Not Yet Open, Parents Questioning Its Racial Makeup  (The Baltimore Sun, September 5, 2002)
A year before it is scheduled to open, Baltimore County's first new high school in a quarter-century - the $35 million, state-of-the-art New Town High - is already bruising feelings and provoking fears among some parents who worry that the school system will cater to the wealthy New Town neighborhood, limiting enrollment to its children, possibly by making the school a magnet, while excluding students from predominantly black communities nearby.

SAT Scores For Blacks Drop Again (The Washington Post, August 29, 2002)
Despite overall gains, the achievement gap between white and Asian students and other minorities on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) remains substantial. White students and Asian students posted their highest-ever average scores, 1159 for white students and 1138 for Asian students. Hispanic students showed a modest increase -- from 949 to 950 -- but remained 45 points below the average of five years ago. The average scores of African American students -- which have dropped steadily in the past five years -- declined another five points this year, from 911 to 906.

SAT Scores Dip Slightly Overall (The Washington Post, August 29, 2002)
High school students in Anne Arundel County scored four points lower on the recent round of SAT scores, dipping from a total score of 1052 to 1048 out of a possible 1600. But while the overall drop in scores was minor, there is major concern in the county about the widening gap between the performances of African Americans and white students who took the college prep test.

More Black Men Are In Jail Than Are Enrolled In College (The Arizona Republic, August 28, 2002)
The number of Black men in jail or prison has grown fivefold in the past 20 years, to the point where more Black men are behind bars than are enrolled in colleges or universities, according to a study released by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that supports alternatives to incarceration.

Jewell-Sherman Addresses NAACP (Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 28, 2002)
Deborah Jewell-Sherman, Richmond's recently appointed schools superintendent, addressed the city's branch of the NAACP yesterday as part of her continuing effort to reach out to the community.

Merit Scholarships: Robin Hood In Reverse? (The Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 2002)
A new analysis, "Merit Scholarships: Who Is Really Being Served?" released yesterday by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project, points to a host of problems with "merit-based" scholarships funded by taxpayers. It warns of negative consequences to American society if such programs "lead to larger wage and income gaps along racial lines."

On the Road to Improvement  (The Washington Post, August 22, 2002)
After months of working out the specifics, Howard County school officials say they are ready to implement the first steps of the "Comprehensive Plan for Accelerated School Improvement," which targets schools with the lowest test scores or highest percentage of poor students.

New Middle School Ready to Show True Colors (The Washington Post, August 15, 2002)
Liberty Middle School -- the only new one to open in Fairfax this year -- will have a diverse student population. 42 percent of the students are minorities. About 13 percent are on free or reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty. An estimated 130 special education students will attend Liberty, with 15 enrolled in a program for emotionally disabled students and 15 enrolled in a program for students with autism. Students not fluent in English number 95.

Exit Tests Hurt At-Risk Students (The Washington Post, August 14, 2002)
As more states adopt high school graduation tests, an increasing number of poor, black and Latino students are at risk of being denied diplomas because schools do a bad job of preparing them for the high-stakes exams, according to a report by the Center on Education Policy.

Exploring Race Through White Teens' Eyes  (The Christian Science Monitor , August 13, 2002)
Sociologist Pamela Perry compares students' experiences in two high schools with vastly different racial compositions.

School Desegregation Policy Is Challenged  (The New York Times, August 12, 2002)
School districts nationwide are quietly grappling with continuing uncertainty about just how and when they can legally take race into account in assigning children to schools, allowing transfers, admitting children to magnet schools or drawing school boundaries. But Samantha Comfort's case against the Lynn (Massachusetts) School District, in which Judge Nancy Gertner of Federal District Court in Boston will hear closing arguments in September, is the first challenge of a district's voluntary desegregation plan to go to trial.

St. Mary's Takes Aim at Shortfalls in Achievement  (The Washington Post, August 11, 2002)
The St. Mary's County public schools will present for the first time next week a draft of a five-year plan for eliminating the achievement gap among its students.

Public Schools Resegregating, New Study Finds  (The Washington Times, August 10, 2002)
Public schools are becoming increasingly divided by race, despite the rise in minority populations nationwide, according to a new study released yesterday by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project.

Study: Schools Resegregating By Race  (The Washington Post, August 9, 2002)
Almost 50 years after state-sponsored school segregation was outlawed, public schools are becoming increasingly divided by race, even as minority populations increase nationwide, according to a new report by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Opinion: Acknowledge Students Who Overcome Hardship - But Not As A Code For Race  (The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 8, 2002)
"Ever since California voters banned racial preferences in college admissions to state schools in 1996, university administrators have been trying to come up with a way to boost their minority admissions. Now, the University of California thinks it has a solution: Give extra points to students who've survived some special hardship."

UGA Nixes Use Of Race In Admissions  (CNN.com, August 1, 2002)
In response to a federal appeals court ruling, the University of Georgia announced a new admissions policy Wednesday that doesn't consider race.

Schools Chief Vows To Meet Benchmarks  (The Baltimore Sun, July 25, 2002)
At the school board's summer retreat, Anne Arundel Superintendent Eric J. Smith pledged to narrow the racial achievement gap in test scores, improve special education and, by the end of his four-year term, get 85 percent of third-graders reading on grade level.

Poll Finds Most Blacks Favor Charter, Private Schools  (The Washington Post, July 19, 2002)
According to a poll conducted by the Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC) last month, sixty-three percent of blacks would prefer to remove their children from a public school and enroll them in a charter or private school, and forty-six percent supported the idea of charter schools operated by local residents,

Desegregation Aftereffects Anger Parents  (The Washington Post, July 7, 2002)
Prince George's County continues to assign children to its magnet schools on the basis of race, despite a federal judge's recent decision ending three decades of court-ordered desegregation and a demographic shift that has left the county school population decidedly African American.

Minorities Swell Pool Of Gifted In Fairfax  (The Washington Post, July 3, 2002)
Years of criticism that Fairfax County's classes for the gifted and talented were filled primarily with white and wealthy students provoked a campaign this year to change that pattern. As a result, in September, there will be 168 percent more Hispanics, 41 percent more African Americans and 53 percent more Asians in the elite program. But school officials in Fairfax -- the Washington region's biggest and most cramped district -- say they don't have enough space for the new students.

Committee Sets Goals to Narrow Achievement Gap  (The Washington Post, June 27, 2002)
Loudoun County schools should embark on an ambitious program to eliminate the achievement gap between minority and white students, the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee told the School Board on Tuesday.

School Desegregation Suit Dismissed in Pr. George's  (The Washington Post, June 26, 2002)
A federal judge yesterday lifted a court order and ended the desegregation lawsuit that had bound Prince George's County schools for 30 years, closing one of the most turbulent eras in the county's history.

Racial Discord In A Md. Town  (The Washington Post, June 24, 2002)
An incident earlier this year in which three white teenagers and one Asian youth attacked a black teenager has deeply divided the once rural, once all-white town of Damascus, causing long-simmering racial tensions to erupt and forcing the town to confront its reputation for being hostile to outsiders and minorities.

Crisis Center Not Welcome At Tubman School  (The Baltimore Sun, June 21, 2002)
More than 60 neighbors and alumni of the former Harriet Tubman High School in Columbia packed a nearby church last night to oppose - almost unanimously - a proposal to transform the site into a crisis support center. The 54-year-old school, the first in Howard County to offer 12th grade for African-American students, is the only black high school standing and serves a strong symbol of segregation and community history.

School Programs Help Students Blossom  (The Washington Post, June 20, 2002)
To help minority teens cope with the pressures of adolescence, some Washington-area schools have implemented programs -- such as cotillion ball -- to help the youngsters develop self-esteem and confidence. The effort is part of what educators say is a broader campaign to resolve a long-standing problem: the academic achievement gap separating some minorities from white students.

Districts Find No Easy Solution For School Inequity (Houston Chronicle, June 3, 2002)
After decades of school desegregation and nation-changing turmoil, only half of black Americans believe it is possible to get what the court orders intended, an equal education for black and white children.

Opinion: Teachers' Cultural Ignorance Imperils Student Success  (USA Today, May 29, 2002)
The author writes: "Minority students are plagued by the fact that most teachers aren't trained to overcome cultural stereotypes and classroom misunderstandings. As a result, students of color are subjected to harsher disciplinary procedures than white students, and are routinely banished to the academic wastelands."

Use of Race in Law School Entry Upheld  (The Washington Post, May 15, 2002)
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the University of Michigan Law School may consider race in student admissions, overturning a lower court decision.

City's Schools Lead U.S. In Segregation  (The Baltimore Sun, August 11, 2001)
By one key measure -- the isolation of black students -- Baltimore has the most segregated school system in the nation.

Opinion: The Prep-School PC Plague (City Journal, December 31, 1969)
The author writes: "Aping the fractured curriculum of the university, many prep schools offer courses in “gay voices,” the “construction of gender,” and “racial identity.” ... This rush to import all that is divisive from the universities is a grievous missed opportunity to create an integrated, color-indifferent society."

Rules Changed for Florida Schools (, December 31, 1969)
An Education Department decision that favored Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, weakened a key accountability goal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act on behalf of minorities, a former department official said.

Is It Good for the Kids? (ASCD, December 31, 1969)