schoolinfosystem.org
Last October, Madison Superintendent Jen Cheatham signed a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights regarding OCR’s compliance review of access to advanced coursework by Hispanic and African-American students in the District. The resolution agreement was presented at the December 5, 2016 Instruction Workgroup meeting (agenda item 6.1): http://www.boarddocs.com/wi/mmsd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=AFL2QH731563 The […]
Bruce Vielmetti: A violent arrest of an unarmed man in West Allis — made possible by a secret police spy plane with night vision — is now the subject of a civil rights lawsuit on claims of excessive force. Reynaldo Narvaez, 22, drove away from police early one morning in 2018 and thought he’d lost them […]
Caitlin Emma:: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said she is “returning” the Office for Civil Rights “to its role as a neutral, impartial, investigative agency.” In a July 11 letter to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, DeVos asserted that the department’s civil rights arm under the Obama administration “had descended into a pattern of overreaching, of setting […]
Patrick McDonald: The Graduate School of Education’s DEI shutdown is part of a broader trend at Harvard. Campus Reform has reported that the university has taken steps away from DEI during the Trump administration. Earlier this year, for instance, Harvard Medical School renamed its DEI office to the Office for Culture and Community Engagement amid growing federal pressure. Harvard […]
US Dept of Education Civil Rights Office Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department).1 This letter explains and reiterates […]
Steven Hayward: There has been some salutary progress in recent months shutting down the divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” rackets on college campuses in many red states, but after the job of ridding us of the scourge of DEI attention needs to be turned to admissions offices. Thesis: Most admissions offices should be purged wholesale. […]
Steven Hayward: There has been some salutary progress in recent months shutting down the divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” rackets on college campuses in many red states, but after the job of ridding us of the scourge of DEI attention needs to be turned to admissions offices. Thesis: Most admissions offices should be purged wholesale. […]
Ilya Somin: Today is Martin Luther King Day. One of King’s most important legacies was his advocacy of civil disobedience as a strategy for resisting injustice. In 2022, I wrote a Martin Luther King Day post addressing some common misperceptions about King’s views on this topic. I built, in part, on a piece on King by Georgetown Prof. Jason […]
Emilia David: The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject. As announced in the Federal Register, the agency wants to answer three main questions: how AI models should use copyrighted data in training; whether AI-generated material […]
WILL: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) following a troubling incident that occurred at Sun Prairie Area School District (SPASD), where an 18-year-old biological male exposed himself to four female girls in the shower and stated “I’m trans, by the way.” […]
Richard Hanania: That’s a lot of material. When I started writing for a public consumption, I was 35. That means I’d spent two decades thinking about American culture and politics, so I was brimming with insights. Inevitably, I’ve said many of the things I wanted to say, and continuing to write on the topic will […]
Matt Taibbi: But, they say, don’t worry, we’re not using any of those secrets, you can trust us. After all, we’re United States Attorneys. (And their paralegals. And legal assistants. And, perhaps, a few IRS or DEA or FBI agents, whose only job is to make cases against the types of people in those files. But still, […]
Alexa L. Gervasi and Daryl James: Defense attorneys must wait to hear decisions from the bench, but retired prosecutor Ralph Petty avoided the suspense during his career in West Texas. He often knew what judges would say in advance because he wrote the script. For 20 years, as USA Today reported last year, Mr. Petty […]
Mark Perry: I was informed last Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that another of my (now) 231 complaints (probably the most ever filed by a single individual) alleging Title IX violations in higher education has been successfully resolved in my favor. That brings the total number of Title IX […]
US Department of Education: We have been deeply affected by the recent events that have contributed to racial discord and strife throughout our country. Like so many of you, we continue to be concerned about the impact of these events on our children and on the future of our country. Racism has no place in […]
Colin Kalmbacher: Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) and progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have joined forces to introduce a bill in the House of Representatives that would eliminate the controversial doctrine of qualified immunity for police officers. “As part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Congress allowed individuals to sue state and local officials, including police officers, who violate […]
Seth Harp: In retrospect, I was naive about the kind of agency CBP has become in the Trump era. Though I’ve reported several magazine stories in Mexico, none have been about immigration. Of course, I knew these were the guys putting kids in cages, separating refugee children from their parents, and that Trump’s whole shtick […]
Annie Waldeman: Under federal law, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Office for Civil Rights is responsible for ensuring equal access to education and investigating allegations of discrimination in the country’s schools and colleges. Families and students can file complaints with the office, which then investigates and determines whether a college or school […]
Taylor Kilgore: Jim Bradshaw of the Office for Civil Rights’ Washington D.C. office confirmed in an email that “the process is ongoing.” Greg Jones, president of the NAACP says it is important to know “what the district has done to comply with their agreement with Office for Civil Rights.” “Given the urgency of education outcomes […]
Mark Walsh: A federal appeals court has ruled that the at-large voting system for the school board covering Ferguson, Mo., where the police shooting of an African-American man sparked weeks of racial unrest in 2014, violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The seven-member board of the Ferguson-Florissant school district, which serves all or part […]
Annie Waldman: Beside a highway in Bryan, Texas, tucked between a motorcycle bar and the county jail, stands a low-slung, sprawling complex with tinted windows, sandstone walls and barbed wire lining parts of its roof. A roadside sign identifies it as the Brazos County Juvenile Justice Center. One Friday afternoon last October, after an incident […]
Jessica Huseman and Annie Waldman The Department of Education has laid out plans to loosen requirements on investigations into civil rights complaints, according to an internal memo sent to staff on June 8 and obtained by ProPublica. Under the Obama administration, the department’s office for civil rights applied an expansive approach to investigations. Individual complaints […]
A trove of documents created during a federal investigation into Princeton University offers an unprecedented glimpse at how elite college admissions officers talk about race. Outsiders have long debated how the secretive Ivy League admissions system considers the race of its applicants. Within the schools, such discussions form one of the most closely guarded elements […]
Nathan Hansen: Despite collecting the information, by law, for more than 40 years, public schools continue to struggle to report accurate and comparable civil rights data to the Department of Education. “The issue is whether different districts are providing the same type of data and working on the same definition,” said outgoing Sparta Superintendent John […]
Justin Fenton and Kevin Rector: Seven Baltimore police officers who served in a high-profile gun unit were indicted Wednesday on federal racketeering charges — allegations that throw into question scores of cases aimed at getting weapons off the streets. The officers are accused of shaking down citizens, filing false court paperwork and making fraudulent overtime […]
Sarah Phillips The state of Texas recently threatened to pull out of the federal refugee resettlement program over security concerns related to Syrian refugees, a move that the Texas Civil Rights Project has condemned as furthering suffering of populations of the world. On Sept. 21, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office announced its intention to withdraw from […]
Ursula Wolfe-Rocco: This month marks the 45th anniversary of a dramatic moment in U.S. history. On March 8, 1971—while Muhammad Ali was fighting Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, and as millions sat glued to their TVs watching the bout unfold—a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole […]
Jacob Gershman: group of law professors are accusing the civil rights office of the U.S. Education Department of taking “unlawful actions” that have led to “pervasive and severe infringements” of speech rights and due-process protections on college campuses. An open letter signed by Harvard University professor Alan Dershowitz and 20 other legal scholars blasts a […]
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last week that the Obama Administration will ramp up investigations of civil rights infractions in school districts, which might sound well and good. What it means in practice, however, is that his Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will revert to the Clinton Administration policy of equating statistical disparity with discrimination, which is troubling.
OCR oversees Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by race, color or national origin in public schools and colleges that receive federal funding. In a speech last week, Mr. Duncan said that “in the last decade”–that’s short for the Bush years–“the Office for Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating racial and gender discrimination.” He cited statistics showing that white students are more likely than their black peers to take Advanced Placement classes and less likely to be expelled from school.
Therefore, Mr. Duncan said, OCR “will collect and monitor data on equity.” He added that the department will also conduct compliance reviews “to ensure that all students have equal access to educational opportunities” and to determine “whether districts and schools are disciplining students without regard to skin color.”
The Madison Metropolitan School District has an image problem with teachers of color, says a consultant who recommends using the district’s mission of creating an environment where all students thrive to recruit a more diverse workforce.
The number of minority teachers in the district, while growing, is not keeping pace with the growing proportion of minority students, consultant Monica Rosen told Madison School Board members Monday.
“You’ll never catch up at the rate you’re going. I think there needs to be something more aggressive,” said Rosen, a partner in the national firm Cross & Joftus.
The gap between the number of students of color and the number of teachers of color has been brought into sharp focus as the school district works to close a persistent academic achievement gap between students of color and their white classmates.
A leader in the African-American community in November filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, charging that the district was discriminating against people of color in its hiring.
And nearly all the school district personnel interviewed as part of Cross & Joftus’ review mentioned their own concerns about the lack of diversity among school district staff, Rosen reported.
David DesRoches, via a kind reader:
Darien’s issues have highlighted a special education flaw that exists across the state and nation. The question over what is appropriate has drawn a deep divide among residents. Parents from several states and Connecticut towns have contacted The Times, saying that Darien’s problems happen everywhere, and in most cases, the problems are worse.
Sue Gamm, the Chicago attorney hired by the Board of Education to investigate how deep the special education problems went, told The Darien Times that her work in town was the most difficult job in her 40-plus year career. Gamm formerly was a top administrator for Chicago Public Schools and a division director for the U.S. Office of Civil Rights. She has performed similar duties in more than 50 school districts across the United States.
John Verre, the man charged with overhauling Darien’s special education program, has also noted the difficult challenge Darien presents.
“Darien is a particularly challenging combination of problems,” Verre told The Times shortly after he was hired in October. “It compares to the most challenging situation I’ve ever found.”
A number of people have resigned from their top-earning positions, including the schools’ superintendent, Steve Falcone, along with Matt Byrnes, a former assistant superintendent, Dick Huot, the finance director, and Antoinette Fornshell, the literacy coordinator. Most recently, one of the people who has been consistently named as having contributed to the illegal special education program, Liz Wesolowski, announced to fellow staff members she was leaving Darien for a position with Shelton Public Schools.
Fornshell and Wesolowski played key roles in the implementation of the district’s SRBI program, which Gamm criticized for its lack of data and poor implementation due to staff being poorly trained. There was also no manual for SRBI, which is an intervention program designed to give children extra help if they fall behind in their class work. It’s intended to prevent children from needing more expensive special education services, but critics say it is more often used to delay providing special ed to children with legally-defined disabilities.
The federal government has begun investigating a complaint that Durham Public Schools suspends black and disabled students at disproportionately high rates, a group that filed the complaint said Thursday.
Advocates for Children’s Services, a project of Legal Aid of North Carolina, and the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the Civil Rights Project of UCLA filed the complaint against DPS in April with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
In the 2009-2010 school year, 14.1 percent of black students were suspended while 3.3 percent of white students were; 17 percent of disabled students were suspended while 8.4 percent of non-disabled students were, according to the complaint.
It describes the experiences of two students identified only as “N.B.” and “T.H.” Both are black and both spent years in DPS; both were suspended from school repeatedly.
“N.B.,” a 17-year-old student diagnosed with several mental health issues, wasn’t evaluated for her eligibility for special education and related services by DPS until she was well into high school. “T.H.” has been diagnosed with behavioral disabilities; instead of addressing those issues which the complaint says contributed to his falling behind in school, “(his school) responded punitively with out-of-school suspension.”
Every few months, a handful of education reform advocates push the idea that the public education system’s woes could be fixed if only there were more black or Hispanic teachers in classrooms.
You’ll surely hear this in the wake of the U.S. Department of Education’s alarming data, published last week by the Office of Civil Rights, showing that though Hispanic and black students represent 45 percent of public school populations, they account for 56 percent of students expelled under zero-tolerance school discipline policies.
Worse, black students are three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white peers, and more than 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement are Hispanic or African-American.
Distressing new federal data on the disciplinary treatment of black students adds urgency to investigations into the treatment of minority children in a dozen school districts around the country by the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education. The agency, which is negotiating policies with some of these districts, needs to push for procedures that keep children in school.
The new 2009-10 federal data, drawn from more than 72,000 schools, serving about 85 percent of the nation’s students, covers a range of issues, including student discipline and retention.
Black students made up only 18 percent of those in the sample but 35 percent of those suspended one time and 39 percent of all expulsions. Blacks, in general, are three-and-a-half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers, and more than 70 percent of the students who were involved in arrests or referred to law enforcement agencies were black or Hispanic.
A Minnesota school district must report to the federal government any future allegations of harassment against Somali students as part of a tentative agreement to end a civil rights investigation, the district’s superintendent said Monday.
St. Cloud Superintendent Bruce Watkins said all but the final details of the agreement had been reached with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The deal up for board approval Thursday night requires that the district make its schools more welcoming to Somalis; it finds that the district broke no federal rules in handling previous incidents, Watkins said.An Oklahoma school district is facing a lawsuit for allegedly forbidding organizers of a Christian club from promoting events on campus.
“This is a simple matter of a school district targeting a Christian organization,” said Matt Sharp, an attorney representing the “Kids for Christ,” a community-led Christian group suing the Owasso Public Schools.
The U.S. Department of Education’s office of civil rights is investigating whether black male students are punished disproportionately in the Christina School District in Wilmington and Newark, one of five districts nationwide under scrutiny for its discipline record.
Federal investigators are in the process of visiting all of Christina’s schools and have requested detailed discipline data for at least the last two academic years.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan first mentioned districts were being investigated at a conference in late September hosted by the Department of Education’s civil rights office and the Department of Justice’s civil rights division. Besides Delaware, the school districts under review are in New York, North Carolina, Utah and Minnesota.
Milwaukee Public Schools is not complying with civil rights law in effectively teaching English to Spanish-speaking students, according to a federal complaint filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin.
The complaint, filed at the Office of Civil Rights in the U. S. Department of Education office in Chicago, claims MPS and the Milwaukee School Board are not complying with the Civil Rights Act.
The district receives federal funds for teaching English to students who speak another language, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school districts must help such students overcome language barriers so they can succeed in all of their classes, said Darryl Morin, state director of LULAC.
“LULAC of Wisconsin has serious concerns regarding the education theory, programming and resources allocated to these efforts at MPS,” he said.
Morin said MPS has used uncertified and unqualified teachers in the program.
The U.S. Department of Education confirmed that its Office of Civil Rights has received the complaint. Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the department in Washington, D.C., said the office is evaluating the complaint to determine whether an investigation is appropriate. The evaluation process should take about a month, he said.
MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said district officials can’t comment because they just received the complaint Tuesday and have not reviewed it.
The Schott Foundation for Public Education:
50+ Years Post Brown v. Board of Education, Schott Foundation Report Reveals that States and Districts Fail to Educate the Majority of Male Black Students
The release of the 2008 Schott Foundation Report entitled “Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education for Black Males,” details the disturbing reality of America’s national racial achievement gap. State-by-state data demonstrate that districts with large Black enrollments educate their White, non-Hispanic peers, but fail to educate the majority of their Black male students.Individual state reports (Wisconsin):
This section includes United States Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics state and district data for Black and White male students for states in which there are districts listed in the preceding section and for those districts themselves. Data are also included from the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights 2004 Elementary and Secondary School Survey concerning Special Education, Gifted and Talented and Discipline reports; National Assessment of Educational Progress; and Advanced Placement.
Kimberly Wethal On April 9, nonprofit Defending Education, also known as Parents Defending Education, filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over UW-Madison’s Lawton Undergraduate Minority Retention Grant program. Though only UW-Madison is named in the complaint, the Lawton grant law applies to all Universities of Wisconsin schools and […]
Douglas Belkin and Liz Essley Whyte: Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong met with anxious faculty over the weekend in an effort to generate support, warn of the jeopardy the school faces and downplay concerns that the deal the school cut with the government on Friday undermined its academic independence. In meetings with about 75 […]
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi (DOJ) against Westosha Central High School for endangering the safety and privacy of multiple female students. Over parent objections, the school allowed […]
Sean Stevens & Greg Lukianoff: The event never happened. Just as it was about to begin, some student protesters became disruptive. One of them pulled the fire alarm. Windows were broken and objects, including noisemakers, were thrown into the room. Krolczyk and members of the Turning Point USA chapter barricaded themselves inside until they were […]
Jason Riley: The Education Department’s main functions include sending states money to help fund low-income school districts, though that’s something Washington managed before the existence of a stand-alone education department. It also enforces civil-rights laws and manages student loans. There’s no reason, however, that the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights couldn’t be absorbed by […]
Aaron Sibarium: HHS announced last week that it had launched an investigation of the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program, which is dedicated to “treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities,” and its Minority Men’s Health Center, which screens black and Hispanic men for disease, in response to a discrimination complaintfiled by Do No Harm, an advocacy group that opposes […]
By Rick Hess As for the specifics of Project 2025? There’s a good chance that it doesn’t say what you think it does. For instance, one graphic that’s been widely circulated (which The Dispatch reportshas racked up millions of views across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, and X) lists 31 policies supposedly found in Project 2025. These falsehoods include raising the retirement age, […]
Paul Caron: Professor Joshua Mitts (Columbia Law School) argues that Columbia university violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by fostering and tolerating a hostile educational environment on campus. Mitts writes: Since October 7, Jewish students at Columbia have been subject to appalling episodes of antisemitism both on campus and just outside the campus gates, […]
William Jacobson: The Equal Protection Project (EPP)(EqualProtect.org) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation has challenged numerous racially discriminatory programs done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This discrimination comes in a variety of ways, but the overarching theme is to exclude or diminish some people, and promote others, based on race, color, or ethnicity. The latest […]
Matthew Barakat: Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is launching an investigation into one of the state’s most prestigious high schools, acting on complaints that students there weren’t properly recognized for their achievements on a standardized test. Miyares said at a news conference Wednesday that his Office of Civil Rights is investigating the Thomas Jefferson High […]
Do no harm: Why are so many medical schools violating civil rights? That’s the question Do No Harm is asking in five complaints filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. These schools offer scholarships that are eligible to people of certain races, which is incompatible with the Constitution and […]
KC Johnson: ‘One of the most sweeping bipartisan judicial rejections of an administration’s policy in decades,” commentator David French recently noted, involved the Obama administration using Title IX to undermine due process on American college campuses. The administration’s record, French wrote, “has been rejected by judges across the ideological spectrum and has cost universities millions.” Given this […]
Jordan Morales: Switching now to MPS, we see that according to the Department of Public Instruction’s 2018-19 Report Card, 71% of Black or African-American students had a “Below Basic” score in mathematics. Indeed, only 10% of Black students had either a proficient or advanced understanding of mathematics. Meanwhile, only 30% of white students scored “Below […]
Dana Ansel: Last year, the Massachusetts Legislature decided that the time had come to understand the state of education that gifted students receive in Massachusetts. They issued a mandate for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to review the policy and practices of education in public schools for gifted students as well as for […]
T Keung Hui : The federal government has agreed to close its long-running investigation into how the Wake County school system handles school discipline, following changes that have reduced how many students are suspended. In 2010, the state NAACP and several other groups filed a federal civil rights complaint accusing the Wake school system of […]
Kelly Meyerhofer: The Madison School District’s new long-term plan looks vaguely similar to its predecessor, a strategic framework produced in 2013. Two of three overarching goals share similar language. The third goal, however, stands out from its 2013 counterpart by explicitly vowing to do better for African-American students. Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said she attended nearly […]
Peter Wood: Several days ago I published an essay about a new policy on sexual harassment issued by the U.S. Office of Civil Rights. The policy, which expands the definition of sexual harassment and removes various procedural protections for those accused, was presented in a letter to the president of the University of Montana. The […]
http://freebeacon.com/culture/no-touching/Bruce Fleming Think that’s scary? What happens next is even worse. Following guidelines from the Obama administration Office of Civil Rights, you will likely be denied representation by a lawyer, forbidden from presenting exonerating evidence or asking questions of your accuser (who will invariably be referred to as the “victim” or the “survivor”), be subject […]
Ive noticed in several postings that people have criticized the Madison School Board for lack of leadership. I believe that true leadership happens in the community and then comes to the board level for action. This has been the case in many actions that have been taken place in the past, present and will undoubtedly […]
FixNOLA: 👏 “Crime skyrockets in cities with consent decrees… Multi-billion dollar industry making America more unsafe.” $200 million cost per city. @HarmeetKDhillon, Asst. US AG for @CivilRights, was interviewed this week and explains why her office is getting rid of consent decrees.
Marc Eisen: “Those communities are still building single-family homes in places where people can develop generational wealth, which they can’t do when they’re renting. That’s my biggest concernquite frankly. Apartments don’t build generational wealth.” That’s one big reason Bauman thinks the economic inequality gap “hasn’t improved one bit” in the Madison area. The Rev. Alex Gee’s “Justified Anger” essay is a powerful document for exploring […]
Heather MacDonald: Disparate-impact theory holds that if a neutral, colorblind standard of achievement or behavior has a disproportionately negative effect on underrepresented minorities (overwhelmingly, on blacks), it violates civil rights laws. It has been used to invalidate literacy and numeracy standards for police officers and firemen, cognitive skills and basic knowledge tests for teachers, the […]
Victor Davis Hanson: Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation. Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on […]
Tom Singleton: US politicians, civil rights campaigners and the BBC are all calling for a High Court hearing about a data privacy row between Apple and the UK government to be held in public. The tech giant is taking legal action after the Home Office demanded the right to access customer data protected by its […]
Matt Taibbi: As is standard in any story relating to Trump, a lot of the press hysteria about these stories ignore key angles. Both the crusade against DEI and Trump’s Hannibal-esque assault on Columbia University at least in theory could be looked at as anti-discriminatory moves, designed to get the government out of the business of […]
Steve Mcguire UMich has 249 full-time DEI staff at a cost of $32 million, enough to cover tuition for 1,800 students, according to a new report by @Mark_J_Perry. Analyzing the DEI plan, he found that another 874 people assist with DEI for a total of 1,123 employees who work on it. And this doesn’t include […]
Christopher Rufo: As part of this initiative, the White House required each federal agency to submit detailed DEI progress reports regularly, appoint a chief diversity officer, and create “Agency Equity Teams,” whose leaders were tasked with “delivering equitable outcomes.” These requirements contributed to what the president called “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.” The gender component of this […]
Matt Lamb: The Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation filed the complainttoday with the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education. It identifies 19 scholarships that discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX. “Eight scholarships are offered exclusively to female students, eight state a preference for female students, […]
NCLA: “Today, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to vacate a historic preliminary injunction granted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case of Murthy v. Missouri, finding that the Respondents protected by the injunction lacked standing to support injunctive (that is, future) relief. The injunction had barred officials from […]
From Tammy Baldwin’s office, via email. source Thank you for contacting me about the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is good to hear from you. On April 19, 2024, Congress voted to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Keeping our families safe should not come […]
Luke Rosiak and Christopher F. Rufo: Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on “Indigenous womxn” and “two-spirits.” Future doctors had to take a class on “structural racism” and were led in a “Free Palestine” chant by a Hamas-praising […]
Joshua Dunn: The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education has long been known for its tendency to overstep in its rulemaking. Many federal agencies are tempted to avoid the notice-and-comment requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) by fabricating administrative law in the form of “clarifications” and “guidance”—but no agency has […]
Rachel Bowman: A Wisconsin school district has been criticized for offering a whites only racism class that encourages participants to explore their ‘privilege, whiteness and racism.’ In an email shared on social media, Director of Student, Family and Staff Engagement at Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, Mr. Tony R. Dugas, invited the community to participate […]
Wall Street Journal: The University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine requires that first year students take a class called “Structural Racism and Health Equity” as part of the standard curriculum. In one exercise for the course, students divide by racial group and retreat to different areas to discuss antiracist prompts. This is known […]
Sean O’Driscoll An internal report found that a third-placed job applicant, who was Black, was given a tenure-track assistant professor job last April, above white and Asian candidates who were ranked higher in the selection process. Other violations included excluding white staff from meetings with job candidates, deleting a passage from a hiring report to […]
Ilya Somin: My wife, Alison Somin (an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, and former special assistant at the US Commission on Civil Rights) has an article about anti-Asian discrimination in education, and how federal agencies have mostly ignored it: Discrimination against Asian-American students in admissions at selective universities has been an open secret for decades. An […]
Christopher Rufo Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into New College of Florida, where I serve as a trustee, regarding alleged “disability discrimination.” The investigation was prompted by a complaint by ACLU attorney Jennifer Granick, alleging that the college’s trustees and administrators violated civil rights law by removing […]
Christopher Rufo The fight for New College of Florida has taken another turn. Earlier today, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the Sarasota-based university, where I serve as a trustee, for alleged “discrimination on the basis of disability.” The investigation stems from a complaint by unnamed “students, faculty, and […]
Wall Street Journal: Tina Descovich found herself surrounded by “Muslim dads.” The scene was a school-board meeting late last year in Dearborn, Mich. Local parents were angry about sex-themed books at the school library, which they regarded as “pornography.” After chatting with Ms. Descovich for a few minutes, a Dearborn dad realized she was a […]
Federalist During President Obama’s second term, the U.S. Education Department began sharing studies indicating that black students were disciplined at higher rates than their white peers. These data were viewed as evidence of racial bias, and, in 2014, the Education and Justice Departments jointly published a resource package to help American schools “…promote fair and […]
Jonathan Butcher: Pearson, the world’s largest educational publisher, calls itself “the world’s learning company.”1 The British publishing giant produced the exam that was once administered to students in 24 U.S. states and Washington, DC, as part of the Common Core national standards; it has contracted with the U.S. government to produce assessments for federal employees; it […]
Jeff Goldstein: Covington Catholic High School’s Nick Sandmann never tried to stare down a phony Native American activist. Smugly or otherwise. And we all should have known it. Morgan Bettinger never threatened to run over BLM protesters, nor did she make any of the supposedly racist remarks Zyahna Bryant claimed she did. Bryant — a “social justice” activist and […]
Lom3z The historical longhouse was a large communal hall, serving as the social focal point for many cultures and peoples throughout the world that were typically more sedentary and agrarian. In online discourse, this historical function gets generalized to contemporary patterns of social organization, in particular the exchange of privacy—and its attendant autonomy—for the modest […]
Stanley Goldfarb and Mark J. Perry: The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is no conservative bastion. Staffed mostly by liberal career attorneys, and situated within one of the government’s most aggressively woke departments, it is charged with upholding federal antidiscrimination laws in education, including Title VI and Title IX. OCR is required by law […]
Tom Knighton Over at Reason, they have a story about just how much of an issue this really is. In 2014, [James] King was walking from one job to the next when [FBI agent Douglas] Brownback and [Grand Rapids detective Todd] Allen, who were not in uniform, accosted him without identifying themselves as law enforcement. “Are you […]
Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of the Biden Administration’s use of federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources against parents voicing concerns about controversial curricula and education-related policies at local school board meetings. This oversight began in […]
Ilya Shapiro: Many Americans despair of reforming the culture of higher education. But a substantial majority of college students attend public institutions, and these schools are subject to state law. If legislators are determined to restore free speech and academic freedom, there’s a lot they can do. In cooperation with the Goldwater Institute, we’ve developed […]
William Jacobson: Second, I learned about Prof. Mark Perry. I knew “of” him, but I don’t know him personally. He’s a legend for filing civil rights complaints over discriminatory campus policies and administrative conduct that is oh so politically correct, but illegal. His list of complaints he has filed notes that as of the end of 2022: […]
James Bovard: The history of the FBI provides perhaps the best guide to the abuses that may be now occurring. From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI’s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between […]
Asta Nomani: “This is a victory for every parent,” said Oettinger. “In 2020, we knew that the actions that FCPS was taking were in noncompliance with IDEA. We are now vindicated, and every parents should contact FCPS to make sure that every child receives COMPENSATORY EDUCATION and other services that meet their needs.” The key […]
Jana Winter In response to a request from Peters for more information, DHS said that it had “expanded its evaluation of online activity as part of efforts to assess and prevent acts of violence, in ways that ensure robust protections for Americans’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” according to the Senate report. But the […]
Ian Rowe In 1966, the U.S. Office of Education commissioned the landmark survey “Equality of Educational Opportunity” to study the “lack of availability of equal educational opportunities for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin in public educational institutions.” James Coleman, who led the study, was a noted sociologist and civil-rights advocate […]
David Lat: The nation’s capital is also the latest front in the law-school culture wars. Two law schools in D.C., American University Washington College of Law and the George Washington University Law School, have experienced free speech and cancel culture controversies in the past week. Here’s what’s going at American University (“AU”), per Karen Sloan […]
Tate Ryan-Mosley & Sam Richards: Law enforcement agencies in Minnesota have been carrying out a secretive, long-running surveillance program targeting civil rights activists and journalists in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Run under a consortium known as Operation Safety Net, the program was set up a year ago, ostensibly […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The request comes after the board voted unanimously to rename James Madison Memorial High School to Vel Phillips Memorial High School, in honor of the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School School, win a seat on the Milwaukee City Council, become a judge in Wisconsin and get […]
Tristan Justice: Except the agency wasn’t dedicated to protecting MLK. In fact, the peaceful pioneer of 20th-century civil rights was targeted by the law enforcement agency as a domestic enemy. The FBI once told King in a letter to kill himself. King, the FBI wrote in a memo highlighted by a new documentary out last fall, was “the […]
Edmond Ng and James Pomfret: Hong Kong pro-democracy media outlet Stand News shut down on Wednesday after police raided its office, froze its assets and arrested senior staff on suspected “seditious publication” offences in the latest crackdown on the city’s media. The raid raises more concerns about press freedom in the former British colony, which […]
Elizabeth Beyer: “Folks are ready to change, it’s to what extent that we’re discussing tonight,” board president Ali Muldrow said. A committee of community members charged with the task of renaming the high school brought their suggestion before a board committee at the beginning of November after a five-month deliberation process. The committee whittled a […]
Chuck Ross: House Republicans are requesting information from U.S. attorneys’ offices regarding their involvement with the Biden administration’s effort to monitor school board meetings for potential acts of domestic terrorism. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to all 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices Monday asking for information about discussions authorized by Attorney General Merrick […]
Wall Street Journal: “Nearly seven decades of Supreme Court precedent have made two things clear: Public schools cannot segregate students by race, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” says the suit filed in federal court Tuesday afternoon by the nonprofit Parents Defending Education. The suit says Wellesley Public […]
Bradley Thompson: Garland’s letter is a moral, political, and constitutional abomination. To say there are serious problems with the Attorney General’s Orwellian letter would be an understatement. The letter asserts, for instance, that “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” It […]
Hans Bader: The highlighted passages were highlighted by Professor Russell Skiba, in an attachment to his May 28, 2021 2:25 AM email to Carolyn Seugling of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and James Eichner of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The Education Department sought out Skiba’s advice. Skiba notes that the School Safety Commission report is […]