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A groundbreaking school desegregation case in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Court rejected the constitutionality of school district plans in Seattle and Louisville that used race as a factor in student assignment in an effort to address racial segregation in K-12 schools. DECIDED

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: media@aclu.org NEW YORK - After Governor Eliot Spitzer pledged yesterday to spend billions more dollars on education for New York State children, the New York Civil Liberties Union today urged the new governor to focus not only on funding but also on implementing school-based reform. Statewide school-based reform will tailor remedial measures to failing schools' specific deficiencies, and decrease persistent racial inequality in the education system, said the NYCLU. "There are schools in upstate New York and in Westchester County and on Long Island that display patterns of failure that are as abysmal and distressing as those experienced by New York City children," said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU Executive Director. "Our consultations with leading education experts have shown that the characteristics of school success and failure will vary from school to school, and that therefore the state must develop a school-based approach toward school reform." The NYCLU endorsed the Alliance for Quality Education's recommendation that Spitzer allocate $8.5 billion dollars in state funds toward improving public schools and satisfying the state's constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education to every child. The NYCLU also urged the governor to address persistent racial segregation and disadvantage in the provision of public education. The NYCLU recommended that the governor implement school-based reform throughout the state in order to supplement its compliance with the requirements of the settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit on behalf of the children in New York City. The NYCLU's additional recommendations were informed by years of substantial investigative work that has revealed persistent problems in certain failing schools. To implement school-based reform, the NYCLU said, state Education Department officials must: identify the failing schools; assess the sources of failure within each of these schools; work with local school officials and parents and community leaders to develop a school-based remedial plan for each school; and provide the resources - fiscal, pedagogical and administrative - to implement each of the remedial plans. The recommendation that the state work to decrease racial inequality in the education system arises from Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation, a recent study of racial segregation in public schools, prepared by Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee for the Harvard Civil Rights Project, which showed that "[t]he highest levels of black segregation [are] found in New York, Illinois, California and Michigan. In these states, the average black student attended schools with less than one-quarter white students in 2003." The NYCLU urged the governor to adopt a vigorous program to combat school segregation, including introducing effective magnet schools and adopting transfer programs that foster integration. "Racially segregated schools lead to inadequate educational opportunities for children of color; which lead to disparities in job opportunities and income; which lead to racially segregated housing and communities; which lead to segregated schools," said NYCLU Legal Director Arthur Eisenberg. "This is an all-too familiar cycle of discrimination and disadvantage. At long last, the state must seek to break that cycle." Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation is available online at www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/deseg06.php The NYCLU's letter to Spitzer is available online at www.nyclu.org/pdfs/education_reform_ltr_010407.pdf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LOUISVILLE, KY -- Responding to a court challenge to a 1975 school desegregation order, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky today said that the order should not be set aside because the promise of equal education has not yet been fully realized. "African American and other minority students still are not enjoying the same opportunities for academic success as their white counterparts," said Jeff Vessels, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kentucky. Vessels said that disparities in disciplinary actions and admittance to Advanced Placement programs, among other things, show that the desegregation decree has not eliminated all vestiges of discrimination. The issue arose in April 1998, when six African American parents challenged the County school attendance plan in court because their children had been denied admission to Central High School in Jefferson County. The parents sought an exception to the school attendance policy that required enrollment numbers at each public school to be between 15 percent and 50 percent of African American students. The parents said that the racial limit violates students' and parents' constitutional and civil rights. On June 10, 1999, Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled that some parts of the 1975 desegregation decree are still in effect and that the county school board is still required to "operate a school system free from the vestige of racially identifiable schools." However, Judge Heyburn's order also opened the door to any parties wishing to dissolve remaining portions of the 1975 decree and also invited responses to such a motion. To dissolve the decree, Judge Heyburn specified that a party must demonstrate that the Jefferson County Board of Education "has continued in good faith compliance with its obligations and that it has removed the vestiges of discrimination to the extent possible." Further, Judge Heyburn said, "If the decree is dissolved, the court could then consider plaintiffs' challenge that the school board's current student-assignment plan violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Following Judge Heyburn's order, a group of parents filed a motion to terminate the 1975 decree. The ACLU of Kentucky opposes that motion because it believes the 1975 decree has not yet resulted in equal access to educational opportunities for African American and other minority students.