NCJ Number
210322
Journal
Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2005 Pages: 95-134
Date Published
2005
Length
40 pages
Annotation
This article critiques the current No Child Left Behind Act’s (NCLBAs) implementing regulation that subjugates desegregation to school choice.
Abstract
The NCLBA brought the most sweeping Federal education reform initiatives seen in decades. One of the most controversial issues surrounding the NCLBA is that schools earning a failing grade on their aptitude for preparing students to reach academic proficiency and then fail to demonstrate sufficient improvement must provide parents with the option of withdrawing their children and placing them in non-failing schools. The problem here is that desegregation laws prohibit school choice in districts across the country, yet these same school districts are required to offer school choice by the NCLBA. Implementing regulations of the NCLBA anticipated this conflict and wrote in an explicit subjugation of desegregation to school choice. The author offers a detailed critique of the subjugation of desegregation to school choice as he argues that consistency with congressional will requires that school districts ensure that any school choice plan also advance desegregation goals. The author further maintains subjugating desegregation to school choice is bad policy because absent some type of regulation, school choice will become another mechanism through which society maintains a separate and unequal public school system. The article begins with a review of the current state of the public school system and then turns to an analysis of the NCLBA and the desegregation movement. Following a discussion of the conflict between school choice and integration, the author describes the educational and democratic benefits of socioeconomic school integration and offers legal and policy-based strategies for achieving the socioeconomic integration of the public school system. Footnotes