The Future of School Integration

May 10, 2007, 9:00am – 10:30am

About This Event

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly in high-profile cases challenging voluntary racial school integration programs in Seattle and Louisville. The cases raise the question of whether school integration matters, and, if so, why?

In her fascinating new book, The Children in Room E4, Susan Eaton provides a compelling answer. The book tells the story surrounding a 1989 lawsuit, Sheff v. O’Neill, that argued that the Connecticut constitution’s affirmative provision that all children should be provided a “substantially equal education” meant the right not only to receive equal funding but also to attend racially and economically integrated schools -- whether or not the state was itself responsible for segregation, and whether or not students lived in the city or suburbs.

Eaton’s book tells the story of a band of dedicated lawyers who brought the suit, won a Connecticut Supreme Court victory in 1996, and have struggled since then to have the decision enforced. About half of the book describes what life is like for students in one segregated Hartford school, Simpson-Waverly Elementary, particularly the third-grade class in room E4 led by a heroic teacher, Lois Luddy. While Luddy does a wonderful job with her students, she is also a strong supporter of the Sheff litigation. “Everyone separate? It’s not working,” Luddy says.

Join us for a roundtable discussion on the future of racial school integration with Susan Eaton and a panel of other experts. Is school integration important? If the Supreme Court curtails the use of race, what alternatives might be available to districts?

Download a full transcript of this event (PDF)

Featured Participants:
John Brittain, Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Right Under Law
Susan Eaton, Research Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School
Frederick M. Hess, Resident scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Richard D. Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

Moderator:
Cynthia G. Brown, Director of Education Policy, Center for American Progress

Location

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

Biographies

John C. Brittain is the Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., a 43-year-old public interest legal organization started by President John F. Kennedy to enlist private lawyers to take pro bono civil rights cases.  Brittain, a veteran former law school dean, law professor, and public interest civil rights lawyer with a career spanning 37 years with residences in four states, has served as the president of the National Lawyers' Guild, on the Executive Committee and the Board of the ACLU, and legal counsel to NAACP local branches, state conference, and office of the General Counsel.  He is a school desegregation specialist and one of the lead counsel in Sheff v. O'Neill, a landmark case decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1996. He was frequently mentioned in the book The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial by Susan Eaton, an excellent chronicle of the Sheff case. In addition, Brittain is a part of a legal team that filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the NAACP in the PICS v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (Louisville) school cases pending in the U.S. Supreme Court (2007) concerning voluntary race-conscious student assignment plans. 

 

He has traveled extensively throughout the world on international human rights delegations in Africa, Central America, Middle East, Europe, and the Caribbean.  He is the author of numerous articles and amici briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. He loves reading books, running in national masters competition and sailing. 

 

Susan Eaton is research director at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. Her research and writing interests center around racial, ethnic and linguistic inequalities in the United States, particularly as they affect children. She is most concerned with the challenges of schooling and child-rearing in high-poverty, urban neighborhoods.  She has researched, written, and lectured about related topics as a journalist, scholar, and activist across the United States, South Africa, and Japan. Eaton is author, most recently, of the Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial. She is also author of The Other Boston Busing Story: What's Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line and co-author of Dismantling Desegregation (with Gary Orfield). Her writing has appeared in numerous popular and scholarly publications including The New York Times, The Nation, Harvard Law and Policy Review, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review and Newsday. She is currently at work on a book about Latino immigration.

 

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and executive editor of Education Next.  His many books include No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang 2006), With the Best of Intentions (Harvard Education Press 2005), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan 2004), Revolution at the Margins (Brookings 2002), and Spinning Wheels (Brookings 1999).  His work has appeared in scholarly and more popular publications including Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Journal of Teacher Education, Educational Policy, Urban Affairs Review, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, The Boston Globe, National Review, and The Washington Post. He serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the research advisory board for the National Center for Educational Accountability.  A former public high school social studies teacher in Louisiana and professor at the University of Virginia, he holds an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about education, equal opportunity, and civil rights. He is the author of All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice (Brookings Institution Press, 2001), which argues for socioeconomic integration of public schools; The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action (Basic Books, 1996), which calls for affirmative action based on class; and Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), which details the way in which idealistic liberal law students are turned to corporate law. In September, Columbia University Press will publish his latest book, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy. In addition, Kahlenberg is the editor of four Century Foundation books: America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education (2004); Public School Choice vs. Private School Vouchers (2003); Divided We Fail: Coming Together Through Public School Choice. The Report of The Century Foundation Task Force on the Common School, Chaired by Lowell Weicker (Executive Director) (2002); and A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility (Editor) (2000). Before coming to The Century Foundation, Kahlenberg was a Fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Cynthia G. Brown is Director of Education Policy at the Center for American Progress. She has also served as Director of the Renewing our Schools, Securing our Future National Task Force on Public Education, a joint initiative of the Center and the Institute for America's Future. Cindy has spent more than 35 years working in a variety of professional positions addressing high-quality, equitable public education. Prior to joining the Center for American Progress, she was an independent education consultant who advised and wrote for local and state school systems, education associations, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and a corporation. From 1986 to 2001, Brown served as director of the Resource Center on Educational Equity of the Council of Chief State School Officers. She was appointed by President Carter as the first assistant secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education (1980). Prior to that position, she served as principal deputy of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's Office for Civil Rights. Subsequent to this government service, she was co-director of the nonprofit Equality Center. Before serving in the Carter administration, she worked for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law, the Children's Defense Fund, and began her career in the HEW Office for Civil Rights as an investigator. Brown has a master’s in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. She serves as chair of the American Youth Policy Forum Board of Directors and on the Boards of Directors of the Hyde Leadership Public Charter School and the National Association for Teen Fitness and Exercise.

The Century Foundation conducts public policy research and analyses of economic, social, and foreign policy issues, including inequality, retirement security, election reform, media studies, homeland security, and international affairs. The foundation produces books, reports, and other publications, convenes task forces and working groups, and operates seven informational Web sites. With offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., The Century Foundation is nonprofit and nonpartisan and was founded in 1919 by Edward A. Filene.