Phyllis McClure

Phyllis McClure’s professional career has centered on school desegregation and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965. Her involvement began in the 1960s in the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She continued her career commitment to educational equity for poor and minority students at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1969 until 1994. Throughout those years she played a direct role in monitoring enforcement of Title I and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, conducting workshops on Title I for black parents and community groups, investigations, filing complaints about misuse of Title I funds and the adverse racial impact of ability grouping on black students, and studying the implementation of school desegregation plans. She was co-author of the 1969 report "Title I of ESEA: Is It Helping Poor Children?" an expose about the initial failure of Title I to spend federal money on the educational needs of disadvantaged children in high poverty schools. McClure then served on the U.S. Office of Education’s Title I Task Force in 1969 -1970 that helped create the first rules on comparability.

In addition to her community focus, McClure served on two National Assessments of Chapter 1 (1990-1993) and Title I (1995-2000) and on the Board of Governors of the New Standards Project. Exposure to research about Title I and the beginnings of the standards movement lead to participation in the Chapter 1 Commission, a private-sector initiative that recommended many of the Title I reforms that were incorporated in the 1994 reauthorization and strengthened the federal government’s capacity to promote educational equity.

McClure holds a B.A. from the University of Connecticut, an M.A. in History from the University of California Berkeley, and an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was an early Peace Crops volunteer in Nigeria. In addition to her extensive writing and research about Title I, Phyllis is presently researching and writing about Rosenwald Schools in Virginia and the Anna T. Jeanes program, two Jim Crow-era philanthropic initiatives in support of black public schools.