The Supreme Court and School Desegregation

November 29, 2006, 12:00pm – 1:30pm

About This Event

On November 29, ACS and CAP will host a briefing on the two cases to be heard in the Supreme Court on December 4, involving challenges to the authority of public school districts to adopt plans aimed at racially integrated schools—one in Louisville, Kentucky and one in Seattle, Washington. The speakers are experts in the field, including several who represent amici in the litigation and one who will describe new research findings based on data collected under the No Child Left Behind Act showing that African American and Hispanic students learn more in integrated schools. The panelists will present a variety of perspectives on the legal and historical implications of these cases, and their impact on public education, race relations, and the promise of Brown v. Board of Education.

Professor Douglas Harris will also be releasing his latest work on desegregation: Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises A National Analysis of School Racial Segregation, Student Achievement, and “Controlled Choice” Plans, published by the Center for American Progress.

Featured Panelists:
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Professor of Law and History, University of Virginia School of Law
Douglas N. Harris, Assistant Professor of Education and Economics, Florida State University; Affiliated Scholar, Center for American Progress
Francisco M. Negrón, Assoc. Exec. Dir. and General Counsel, National School Boards Association
John Payton, Partner, Wilmer Hale
Terence J. Pell, President, Center for Individual Rights

Moderated by:
Philip Tegeler, Executive Director, Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Biographies

Tomiko Brown-Nagin is a Professor of Law and History at the University of Virginia School of Law. Brown-Nagin holds a doctorate in history from Duke University and a law degree from Yale University, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She clerked for the Hon. Robert L. Carter of the U. S. District Court, Southern District of New York and the Hon. Jane Roth of the United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. Brown-Nagin served as an associate professor of law and history at Washington University, St. Louis, before joining Virginia’s faculty. Prior to teaching at Washington University, Brown-Nagin was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. Before entering private practice, Brown-Nagin held the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellowship at Harvard Law School and the Samuel I. Golieb Fellowship in Legal History at New York University School of Law. Brown-Nagin teaches courses on American social and legal history, public interest lawyering, education law and policy, constitutional law, and remedies. She has published in both law and history journals and currently is working on a book that explores African American ambivalence about liberal legalism before and after Brown v. Board of Education. She is the lead historian on the amicus brief of historians of the civil rights era filed in the school desegregation cases pending in the Supreme Court.

Douglas Harris is an assistant professor of education and economics at Florida State University. His research interests include achievement gaps and inequities, teacher quality, accountability, school finance, and the relationship between education and economic competitiveness. This event marks the release of Professor Harris' latest work on desegregation, Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises A National Analysis of School Racial Segregation, Student Achievement, and “Controlled Choice” Plans, a paper published by the Center for American Progress. In addition to his academic research, he advises elected officials and other policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels and is frequently cited in the national media, including Education Week, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University. Dr. Harris has recently presented his work achievement gaps and "high flying" schools at recent meetings of the Harvard Achievement Gap Initiative. Several other current projects focus on improving teacher quality. He is leading a team of researchers to investigate various approaches to training and selecting teachers, including the role of teacher certification and school principals' discretion in the hiring process. He is also investigating the possible effects of NBPTS teacher certification on student achievement.

Francisco Negrón provides leadership for the National School Board Association's nationally recognized legal advocacy program and 3,000-member Council of School Attorneys, as well as overseeing the association's corporate legal work. He has also served as the general counsel for the State Education Office of the District of Columbia, where he was responsible for all legal matters of the agency including corporate counsel, employment, education law, and risk management issues. Previously, he served as general counsel to the Escambia County School Board in Pensacola, Fla., a school district of 45,000 students and 6,300 employees; as the staff counsel to the Florida Education Association/United, a 64,000-member American Federation of Teachers’ affiliate located in Tallahassee; and as an assistant attorney general for the state of Florida. Negrón holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from the University of West Florida and a Juris Doctorate from the Florida State University College of Law. He is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and Florida, and was president and co-founder of the Tallahassee Hispanic Bar Association.

John Payton is a partner at Wilmer Hale. Payton’s practice ranges from complex commercial matters to the most challenging civil rights matters. He is counsel of record for amicus the American Psychological Association and others in the school desegregation cases pending in the Supreme Court. He was the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in successfully defending the use of race in the admissions process at its undergraduate college and at its law school, and argued Gratz v. Bollinger in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision represented the vindication of a strategy, devised and implemented over more than six years, to build a case to support the educational benefits of diversity. In addition, his extensive civil rights experience includes defending the use of race-based measures to address continuing problems in our society. He represented Richmond in the Supreme Court in Richmond v. Croson and has filed numerous amicus briefs in the Supreme Court in other civil rights cases. Mr. Payton served as president of the District of Columbia Bar from June 2001 to June 2002. He was a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates from June 2000 to June 2002 and currently is a member of the Council of the ABA’s Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities and the ABA's Commission on Immigration Policy. Mr. Payton is on the Board of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and on the Board of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He has served as co-chair of each organization. He also serves on the Board of Global Rights. He is a past Vice Chair of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service. Mr. Payton has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and at the Georgetown Law Center. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. In addition, he is a Master in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court. Mr. Payton has clerked for the Hon. Cecil F. Poole, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He received his B.A. from Pomona College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Terence J. Pell is President of the Center for Individual Rights. Pell received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1996, his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1981, and his B.A. from Haverford College in 1976. Prior to joining CIR, Mr. Pell worked as an attorney with the firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn. From 1985-1988, Mr. Pell was a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. He later served as General Counsel and Chief of Staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He joined CIR in 1997. Mr. Pell is the author of many articles including: "Racial Preferences and Formal Equality." Journal of Social Philosophy (Forthcoming, Summer 2003); "Does 'Diversity' Justify Quotas? The Courts Say No." The Wall Street Journal November 24, 1998, Sec. A p. 22; "Racial Preferences and Racial Progress: Analyzing Nathan Glazer's Argument." Academic Questions, 11 (Fall, 1998) No. 4: 81-85; "Conservatives and the Courts: Judicial Activism on the Right." Philanthropy (May/June, 1998). In addition, Mr. Pell regularly appears on television and radio shows and participates in panel discussions on CIR's cases and issues.

Philip Tegeler is the Executive Director for the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. Tegeler is a civil rights lawyer with more than 20 years experience in fair housing, educational equity, land use law, and institutional reform litigation. PRRAC is a civil rights policy organization convened by major civil rights and anti-poverty groups in 1989. PRRAC's primary mission is to help connect social scientists with advocates working on race and poverty issues, and to promote a research-based advocacy strategy on issues of structural racial inequality. Before coming to PRRAC, Tegeler was with the Connecticut ACLU, where he served as Legal Director from 1997-2003. He has also worked as Legal Projects Director at the Metropolitan Action Institute in New York City, and taught at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Mr. Tegeler's significant cases at the Connecticut ACLU included Sheff v. O'Neill (1996) (interdistrict school desegregation case); Rivera v. Rowland (1999) (class action challenge to high caseloads in statewide public defender system); NAACP of Greater New Haven v. Milford Housing Authority (1998) (challenging suburban town’s rejection of federal funds for scattered site public housing); Pitt v. Hartford Housing Authority (1998) (class action on behalf of families displaced from public housing demolition); and Christian Community Action v. Kemp (1995) (class action challenging segregated public housing site selection). Mr. Tegeler was also involved in a variety of prisoners’ rights, First Amendment, gay rights, and exclusionary zoning cases. He has published many articles on housing segregation and other issues. Mr. Tegeler was co-founder and the first board president of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, served as a member of the Connecticut Housing Coalition Board for nine years, and was an appointed member of the Connecticut Blue Ribbon Commission on Affordable Housing in 1999-2000. He is an active member of the Housing Justice Network.