Student Experience of Civil Rights Enforcement in Education
In an increasingly polarized, multiracial educational landscape in the US, education policy and research that centers civil rights protections is ever more crucial to foster equitable student experiences in K-12 schools. Through this inaugural initiative, the AdvancED Equity team will inform research, policy, and practice that centers civil rights policies and enforcement in the US through three interrelated aims:
Conference for interdisciplinary agenda setting
Harmonization and dissemination of shared public data resources from the Office for Civil Rights
Analysis of historic civil rights data
Overview
In the 1960s, when OCR issued guidelines for desegregating schools to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it dramatically transformed student experiences in southern schools within a decade, especially opening opportunities to better resourced schools for Black students. Today, OCR retains broad bipartisan support and has a unique role in facilitating equitable educational opportunity structures that include all students and foundationally shape student experiences across the country. Yet, despite its significance for millions of children, education policy researchers have, until recently, paid limited attention to the various enforcement activities of OCR even as it has expanded its efforts to meet the civil rights challenges of the 21st century.
Scholars and practitioners have made important calls to center civil rights protections within the federal education policy agenda. Yet, a unifying research agenda that is rigorous, policy-relevant, and can guide the field to better understand how civil rights protections shape student experiences, is lacking. Specifically, shared knowledge-building and dissemination of OCR’s key functions, the structures it creates, and the impact it has on promoting equitable student experiences is both novel and a required addition to the student experience research agenda.
Core Aims
We have three core aims as part of this initiative:
Aim 1: Develop a core, interdisciplinary, research agenda that focuses on federal civil rights policies in educational institutions by bringing interdisciplinary experts together. We will organize a two-day conference to build consensus on an interdisciplinary research agenda that aligns and bridges work on civil rights protections across research, practice, and policy in the US.
Aim 2: Harmonize quantitative and qualitative data resources from the OCR. We will integrate the rich (but often disparate) data resources published by the OCR to improve research that examines if, for whom, and in what contexts student experiences are equitable.
Aim 3: Analyze the historical Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). We will examine the long-term trends and patterns in the CRDC (1968-present) with particular emphasis on how access and barriers to educational opportunities in the US have changed for students from marginalized backgrounds.