[House Report 117-176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
117th Congress } { Report
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1st Session } { 117-176
======================================================================
STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY ACT OF 2021
_______
November 23, 2021.--Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on
the State of the Union and ordered to be printed
_______
Mr. Scott of Virginia, from the Committee on Education and Labor,
submitted the following
R E P O R T
together with
MINORITY VIEWS
[To accompany H.R. 729]
[Including cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office]
The Committee on Education and Labor, to whom was referred
the bill (H.R. 729) to establish the Strength in Diversity
Program, and for other purposes, having considered the same,
reports favorably thereon with an amendment and recommends that
the bill as amended do pass.
CONTENTS
Page
Purpose and Summary.............................................. 5
Committee Action................................................. 7
Committee Views.................................................. 13
Section-by-Section Analysis...................................... 28
Explanation of Amendments........................................ 30
Application of Law to the Legislative Branch..................... 30
Unfunded Mandate Statement....................................... 30
Earmark Statement................................................ 30
Roll Call Votes.................................................. 30
Statement of Performance Goals and Objectives.................... 35
Duplication of Federal Programs.................................. 35
Hearings......................................................... 35
Statement of Oversight Findings and Recommendations of the
Committee...................................................... 35
New Budget Authority and CBO Cost Estimate....................... 35
Committee Cost Estimate.......................................... 37
Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported............ 37
Minority Views................................................... 38
The amendment is as follows:
Strike all after the enacting clause and insert the
following:
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Strength in Diversity Act of 2021''.
SEC. 2. PURPOSE.
The purpose of this Act is to support the development,
implementation, and evaluation of comprehensive strategies to address
the effects of racial isolation or concentrated poverty by increasing
diversity, including racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity, in
covered schools.
SEC. 3. RESERVATION FOR NATIONAL AND STATE ACTIVITIES.
(a) National Activities.--The Secretary may reserve not more than 5
percent of the amounts made available under section 9 for a fiscal year
to carry out activities of national significance relating to this Act,
which may include--
(1) research, development, data collection, monitoring,
technical assistance, evaluation, or dissemination activities;
and
(2) the development and maintenance of best practices for
recipients of grants under section 4 and other experts in the
field of school diversity.
(b) State Activities.--The Secretary may reserve not more than 10
percent of the amounts made available under section 9 for a fiscal year
for planning grants and implementation grants made to State educational
agencies under section 4.
SEC. 4. GRANT PROGRAM AUTHORIZED.
(a) Authorization.--
(1) In general.--From the amounts made available under
section 9 and not reserved under section 3 for a fiscal year,
the Secretary shall award grants in accordance with subsection
(b) to eligible entities to develop or implement plans to
improve diversity and reduce or eliminate racial or
socioeconomic isolation in covered schools.
(2) Types of grants.--The Secretary may, in any fiscal year,
award--
(A) planning grants to carry out the activities
described in section 6(a);
(B) implementation grants to carry out the activities
described in section 6(b); or
(C) both such planning grants and implementation
grants.
(b) Award Basis.--
(1) Criteria for evaluating applications.--The Secretary
shall award grants under this section on a competitive basis,
based on--
(A) the quality of the application submitted by an
eligible entity under section 5;
(B) the likelihood, as determined by the Secretary,
that the eligible entity will use the grant to improve
student outcomes or outcomes on other performance
measures described in section 7; and
(C) the likelihood that the grant will lead to a
meaningful reduction in racial and economic isolation
for children in covered schools.
(2) Priority.--In awarding grants under this section, the
Secretary shall give priority to the following eligible
entities:
(A) First, to an eligible entity that submitted an
application for a grant under the Opening Doors,
Expanding Opportunities program described in the notice
published by the Department of Education in the Federal
Register on December 14, 2016 (81 Fed. Reg. 90343 et
seq.).
(B) Second, to an eligible entity that proposes, in
an application submitted under section 5, to use the
grant to support a program that addresses racial
isolation.
(C) Third, to an eligible entity that proposes, in an
application submitted under section 5, to use the grant
to support a program that extends beyond one local
educational agency, such as an inter-district or
regional program.
(D) Fourth, to an eligible entity that demonstrates
meaningful coordination with local housing agencies to
increase access to schools that have a
disproportionately low number of low-income students.
(c) Duration of Grants.--
(1) Planning grant.--A planning grant awarded under this
section shall be for a period of not more than 1 year.
(2) Implementation grant.--An implementation grant awarded
under this section shall be for a period of not more than 3
years, except that the Secretary may extend an implementation
grant for an additional 2-year period if the eligible entity
receiving the grant demonstrates to the Secretary that the
eligible entity is making significant progress, as determined
by the Secretary, on the program performance measures described
in section 7.
SEC. 5. APPLICATIONS.
In order to receive a grant under section 4, an eligible entity shall
submit an application to the Secretary at such time and in such manner
as the Secretary may require. Such application shall include--
(1) a description of the program for which the eligible
entity is seeking a grant, including--
(A) how the eligible entity proposes to use the grant
to improve the academic and life outcomes of students
in racial or socioeconomic isolation in covered schools
by supporting interventions that increase diversity for
students in such covered schools;
(B) in the case of an implementation grant, the
implementation grant plan described in section 6(b)(1);
and
(C) evidence, or if such evidence is not available, a
rationale based on current research, regarding how the
program will increase diversity;
(2) in the case of an eligible entity proposing to use any of
the grant to benefit covered schools that are racially
isolated, a description of how the eligible entity will
identify and define racial isolation;
(3) in the case of an eligible entity proposing to use any
portion of the grant to benefit high-poverty covered schools, a
description of how the eligible entity will identify and define
income level and socioeconomic status;
(4) a description of the plan of the eligible entity for
continuing the program after the grant period ends;
(5) a description of how the eligible entity will assess,
monitor, and evaluate the impact of the activities funded under
the grant on student achievement and student enrollment
diversity, and teacher diversity;
(6) an assurance that the eligible entity has conducted, or
will conduct, robust parent and community engagement, while
planning for and implementing the program, such as through--
(A) consultation with appropriate officials from
Indian Tribes or Tribal organizations approved by the
Tribes located in the area served by the eligible
entity;
(B) consultation with other community entities,
including local housing or transportation authorities;
(C) public hearings or other open forums to inform
the development of any formal strategy to increase
diversity; and
(D) outreach to parents and students, in a language
that parents and students can understand, and
consultation with students and families in the targeted
district or region that is designed to ensure
participation in the planning and development of any
formal strategy to increase diversity;
(7) an estimate of the number of students that the eligible
entity plans to serve under the program and the number of
students to be served through additional expansion of the
program after the grant period ends;
(8) an assurance that the eligible entity will--
(A) cooperate with the Secretary in evaluating the
program, including any evaluation that might require
data and information from multiple recipients of grants
under section 4; and
(B) engage in the best practices developed under
section 3(a)(2);
(9) an assurance that, to the extent possible, the eligible
entity has considered the potential implications of the grant
activities on the demographics and student enrollment of nearby
covered schools not included in the activities of the grant;
(10) in the case of an eligible entity applying for an
implementation grant, a description of how the eligible entity
will--
(A) implement, replicate, or expand a strategy based
on a strong or moderate level of evidence (as described
in subclause (I) or (II) of section 8101(21)(A)(i) of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20
U.S.C. 7801(21)(A)(i))); or
(B) test a promising strategy to increase diversity
in covered schools;
(11) in the case of an application by a consortium of local
educational agencies, a specification of which agency is the
lead applicant, and how the grant funds will be divided among
the school districts served by such consortium; and
(12) in the case of an application by a State educational
agency, a demonstration that the agency has procedures in
place--
(A) to assess and prevent the redrawing of school
district lines in a manner that increases racial or
socioeconomic isolation;
(B) to assess the segregation impacts of new school
construction proposals and to prioritize school
construction funding that will foreseeably increase
racial and economic integration; and
(C) to include progress toward reduction of racial
and economic isolation as a factor in its State plan
under section 1111 of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311).
SEC. 6. USES OF FUNDS.
(a) Planning Grants.--Each eligible entity that receives a planning
grant under section 4 shall use the grant to support students in
covered schools through the following activities:
(1) Completing a comprehensive assessment of, with respect to
the geographic area served by such eligible entity--
(A) the educational outcomes and racial and
socioeconomic stratification of children attending
covered schools;
(B) an analysis of the location and capacity of
program and school facilities and the adequacy of local
or regional transportation infrastructure; and
(C) teacher diversity in covered schools, and plans
for expanding teacher diversity.
(2) Developing and implementing a robust family, student, and
community engagement plan, including, where feasible, public
hearings or other open forums that would precede and inform the
development of a formal strategy to improve diversity in
covered schools.
(3) Developing options, including timelines and cost
estimates, for improving diversity in covered schools, such as
weighted lotteries, revised feeder patterns, school boundary
redesign, or regional coordination.
(4) Developing an implementation plan based on community
preferences among the options developed under paragraph (3).
(5) Building the capacity to collect and analyze data that
provide information for transparency, continuous improvement,
and evaluation.
(6) Developing an implementation plan to comply with a court-
ordered school desegregation plan.
(7) Engaging in best practices developed under section
3(a)(2).
(8) If applicable, developing an implementation plan to
replace entrance exams or other competitive application
procedures with methods of student assignment to promote racial
and socioeconomic diversity.
(b) Implementation Grants.--
(1) Implementation grant plan.--Each eligible entity that
receives an implementation grant under section 4 shall
implement a high-quality plan to support students in covered
schools that includes--
(A) a comprehensive set of strategies designed to
improve academic outcomes for all students,
particularly students of color and low-income students,
by increasing diversity in covered schools;
(B) evidence of strong family and community support
for such strategies, including evidence that the
eligible entity has engaged in meaningful family and
community outreach activities;
(C) goals to increase diversity, including teacher
diversity, in covered schools over the course of the
grant period;
(D) collection and analysis of data to provide
transparency and support continuous improvement
throughout the grant period; and
(E) a rigorous method of evaluation of the
effectiveness of the program.
(2) Implementation grant activities.--Each eligible entity
that receives an implementation grant under section 4 may use
the grant to carry out one or more of the following activities:
(A) Recruiting, hiring, or training additional
teachers, administrators, school counselors, and other
instructional and support staff in new, expanded, or
restructured covered schools, or other professional
development activities for staff and administrators.
(B) Investing in specialized academic programs or
facilities designed to encourage inter-district school
attendance patterns.
(C) Developing or initiating a transportation plan
for bringing students to and from covered schools, if
such transportation is sustainable beyond the grant
period and does not represent a significant portion of
the grant received by an eligible entity under section
4.
(D) Developing innovative and equitable school
assignment plans.
(E) Carrying out innovative activities designed to
increase racial and socioeconomic school diversity and
engagement between children from different racial,
economic, and cultural backgrounds.
(F) Creating or improving systems and partnerships to
create a one-stop enrollment process for students with
multiple public school options, including making school
information and data more accessible and easy to
understand, in order to ensure access to low poverty or
high-performing schools for low-income children and to
promote racial and socioeconomic diversity.
(G) Increasing teacher diversity in covered schools.
SEC. 7. PERFORMANCE MEASURES.
The Secretary shall establish performance measures for the programs
and activities carried out through a grant under section 4. These
measures, at a minimum, shall track the progress of each eligible
entity in--
(1) improving academic and other developmental or
noncognitive outcomes for each subgroup described in section
1111(b)(2)(B)(xi) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(2)(B)(xi)) that is served by the
eligible entity on measures, including, as applicable, by--
(A) increasing school readiness;
(B) increasing student achievement and decreasing
achievement gaps;
(C) increasing high school graduation rates;
(D) increasing readiness for postsecondary education
and careers;
(E) improving access to mental health and social-
emotional learning;
(F) reducing school discipline rates; and
(G) any other indicator the Secretary or eligible
entity may identify; and
(2) increasing diversity and decreasing racial or
socioeconomic isolation in covered schools.
SEC. 8. ANNUAL REPORTS.
An eligible entity that receives a grant under section 4 shall submit
to the Secretary, at such time and in such manner as the Secretary may
require, an annual report that includes--
(1) a description of the efforts of the eligible entity to
increase inclusivity;
(2) information on the progress of the eligible entity with
respect to the performance measures described in section 7;
(3) the data supporting such progress;
(4) a description of how the eligible entity will continue to
make improvements toward increasing diversity and decreasing
racial or socioeconomic isolation in covered schools and
sustaining inclusion; and
(5) information on the progress of regional programs on
reducing racial and socioeconomic isolation in covered schools,
if applicable.
SEC. 9. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this Act such
sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2022 and each of the 5
succeeding fiscal years.
SEC. 10. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) Covered school.--The term ``covered school'' means--
(A) a publicly-funded early childhood education
program;
(B) a public elementary school; or
(C) a public secondary school.
(2) Eligible entity.--The term ``eligible entity'' means a
State educational agency, a local educational agency, a
consortium of such agencies, an educational service agency, or
a regional educational agency that at the time of the
application of such eligible entity has significant achievement
gaps and socioeconomic or racial segregation within or between
the school districts served by such entity.
(3) ESEA terms.--The terms ``educational service agency'',
``elementary school'', ``local educational agency'',
``secondary school'', ``Secretary'', and ``State educational
agency'' have the meanings given such terms in section 8101 of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C.
7801).
(4) Publicly-funded early childhood education program.--The
term ``publicly-funded early childhood education program''
means an early childhood education program (as defined in
section 103(8) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C.
1003(8)) that receives State or Federal funds.
SEC. 11. PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION.
No provision of this Act shall be construed to authorize any
department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to
exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum,
program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational
institution, school, or school system.
PURPOSE AND SUMMARY
H.R. 729, the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021, introduced
by Chairman Bobby Scott and Congressman Mondaire Jones, if
passed, would authorize the first new investment in school
integration since the federal government began providing
funding for magnet schools for the purposes of school
desegregation in the Emergency School Aid Act of 1972.\1\ This
legislation supports local educational agencies (LEAs) in
realizing the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, that
separate is inherently unequal and that educational opportunity
is a ``right which must be made available to all on equal
terms.''\2\ The bill is consistent with U.S. Supreme Court
precedent which holds that public schools may use race-
conscious measures to ensure equal educational opportunity.\3\
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\1\Pub. L. No. 92-318, 86 Stat. 235, June 23, 1972.
\2\Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954).
\3\Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551
U.S. 701, 797-98 (2007) (``This Nation has a moral and ethical
obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated
society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children. A
compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest
that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to
pursue . . . The decision today should not prevent school districts
from continuing the important work of bringing together students of
different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.'') (Kennedy, J.,
concurring).
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Our nation has never come close to achieving full racial
integration of its public education system. But there is now a
growing prevalence of racial segregation and, in certain
regions of the country, re-segregation in public schools. These
trends undermine the meaningful progress made toward racial
integration in the decades following the Brown decision and
deny millions of students of color high-quality public
education. According to recent reports, public schools are now
more segregated by race and class than any time since the
1960s.\4\ Federal intervention is needed to confront this
persistent, pervasive injustice, yet the federal government has
continually retreated from its role in promoting school
integration.
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\4\Erica Frankenberg, et al. Harming Our Common Future: America's
Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown, 10 May 2019,
www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-
and-diversity/harming-our-common-future-americas-segregated-schools-65-
years-after-brown/Brown-65-050919v4-final.pdf.; see Nikole Hannah-
Jones, Segregation Now, ProPublica, Apr. 16, 2014, available at https:/
/www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-full-text; see also U.S.
Gov't Accountability Office, GAO-16-345, K-12 Education: Better Use of
Information Could Help Agencies Identify Disparities and Address Racial
Discrimination (2016) (documenting the growth in school districts with
high concentrations of low-income Black and Hispanic students, and
recognizing the inequitable conditions many of them share).
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The purpose of H.R. 729 is to provide federal support for
school integration. The bill authorizes federal funding for
states and LEAs to develop and implement evidence-based plans
to tackle racial and socioeconomic segregation in public
schools. Planning grants authorized by the bill will allow LEAs
to study segregation in their schools, evaluate current
policies to identify revisions necessary to achieve
integration, and develop a robust family, student, and
community engagement plan to carry out voluntary integration
efforts. Implementation grants authorized by the bill provide
resources to LEAs to implement an evidence-based integration
plan and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of the plan.
Implementation grants may also be used to recruit, hire, and
train teachers to improve diversity in the teaching profession,
support activities in a district under a court-ordered
desegregation plan, and fund other innovative activities
designed to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in
schools, prioritizing funding for school districts that address
racial isolation in their schools. H.R. 729 also strengthens
other federal efforts to promote integration, including
providing dedicated research funding.
As of the filing of this report, H.R. 729 is supported by
the following organizations: American Federation of Teachers
(AFT); Association of University Centers on Disabilities
(AUCD); Augustus F. Hawkins Foundation; Center on Law,
Inequality, and Metropolitan Equity--Rutgers Law School; Center
for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University;
Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA; Charles
Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice--Harvard Law
School; Children's Defense Fund; Institute for Social Progress
at Wayne County Community College District; Intercultural
Development Research Association (IDRA); Magnet Schools of
America; National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE);
National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP);
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP);
National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD); National
Education Association (NEA); National Women's Law Center
(NWLC); New York Appleseed; NC Justice Center; New York
Appleseed; Poverty & Race Research Action Council; Public
Advocacy for Kids; The School Superintendents Association
(AASA); The Bell; NAACP Legal Defense Fund; UnidosUS;
IntegrateNYC; and the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice
Corporation.
COMMITTEE ACTION
101ST CONGRESS
On November 28, 1989, the Committee held a hearing titled
``Hearing on the Federal Enforcement of Equal Education
Opportunity Laws'' to assess the Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights' (OCR's) enforcement of laws
prohibiting discrimination in federally-funded education
programs on the basis of race, sex, or disability. This
oversight hearing included an examination of OCR's lack of
enforcement of civil rights, with a specific focus on racial
discrimination and school desegregation orders, the
resegregation of public schools, racial tensions on college
campuses and concern that the policies of the George H.W. Bush
Administration regarding school choice would entrench existing
segregation and allow for more resegregation in public
education. Testifying before the Committee were William L.
Smith, Acting Assistant Secretary, Office for Civil Rights,
Department of Education; James P. Turner, Acting Assistant
Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice;
Phyllis McClure, Director, Division of Policy and Information,
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Elliott C. Lichtman,
Attorney; Ethel Simon-McWilliams, Director, Desegregation
Assistance Center, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory;
Gary Orfield, Director, Metropolitan Opportunity Project,
University of Chicago; David F. Chavkin, Senior Program
Analyst, National Center for Clinical Infant Programs; Ellen J.
Vargyas, Chair, National Coalition for Women and Girls in
Education, National Women's Law Center; Pamela M. Young,
Legislative Counsel, D.C. Bureau, NAACP; Norma V. Cantu,
Director, Elementary and Secondary Programs, Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Elliot M. Mincberg, Legal
Director, People for the American Way, Citizens Commission on
Civil Rights; and James J. Lyons, National Association for
Bilingual Education.
114TH CONGRESS
On February 11, 2015, the Committee marked up and ordered
to be reported the bill H.R. 5, the Student Success Act to the
House by a vote of 21-16. The bill was passed by the House on
July 8, 2015 by a vote of 218-213. The Senate Committee on
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions reported the bill S.
1177, the Every Child Achieves Act to the Senate on April 30,
2015. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 79-18 on July 16,
2015. Subsequently, both chambers agreed to a conference to
resolve the differences between the two bills. The conference
report on S. 1177, retitled the Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA), was filed November 30, 2015. On December 2, 2015, the
House agreed to the conference report on ESSA by a vote of 359-
64. The Senate agreed to the conference report on December 9,
2015 by a vote of 85-12. ESSA was signed into law on December
10, 2015.
Among the provisions included in ESSA was the
reauthorization of the Magnet Schools Assistance Program
(MSAP). MSAP provides support to local educational agencies to
establish and operate magnet schools for the purposes of
implementing a court-ordered desegregation plan or a voluntary
federally approved desegregation plan. ESSA exempted MSAP from
GEPA section 426, allowing funds under the program to be used
to provide transportation for students to and from magnet
schools. ESSA also included provisions to support states and
LEAs in using racial integration to support school improvement
strategies required under Title I-A and support diversity in
the Charter School Program.\5\
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\5\See 20 U.S.C. Sec. 6311(d)(1)(B), (2)(C) (requiring the
identification of resource inequities at schools identified by the
State for a comprehensive support and improvement plan and also
requiring that same identification in the case of schools where a
subgroup of students would on their own lead to identification for
comprehensive support and improvement); 20 U.S.C. Sec. 7221d(b)(5)(A)
(``In awarding grants under this section, the Secretary shall give
priority to eligible entities that plan to operate or manage high-
quality charter schools with racially and socioeconomically diverse
student bodies''); see generally GAO-16-345, supra note 4, at 10-15
(``The Percentage of High-Poverty Schools with Mostly Black or Hispanic
Students Increased over Time, and Such Schools Tend to Have Fewer
Resources'').
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115TH CONGRESS
First Session, Other Legislative Action
The Committee worked with the Committee on Appropriations
to develop a provision for inclusion in H.R. 3358, the
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education,
and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018. The provision
revised one of two long-standing prohibitions on funds
appropriated under the bill from being used for the
transportation of students or staff to comply with title VI of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI). The new language
exempted the establishment of a magnet school from the relevant
long-standing prohibition. As modified, the language was
eventually included in section 302 of H.R. 1625, the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (FY18 Omnibus), which was
signed into law on March 23, 2018. In an explanatory statement
in the Congressional Record, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen,
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations commented,
``[t]he agreement includes a new general provision to exempt
the Magnet Schools program from one long-standing general
provision on transporting students. ESSA reauthorized the
Magnet School program in 2015 and allowed funds to be used for
transportation and this agreement should not impede the Magnet
School program from doing so. The agreement notes that the
Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives
and the Senate should consider a longer-term solution to this
issue during the fiscal year 2019 appropriations process.''\6\
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\6\164 Cong. Rec. H2697, 2707 (daily ed. Mar. 22, 2018) (statement
of Rep. Frelinghuysen).
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Second Session, Other Legislative Action
The Committee again worked with the Committee on
Appropriations on longstanding anti-integration riders during
the Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) appropriations process. As a
result, H.R. 6470, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations
Act, 2019, advanced without the rider prohibiting funds from
being used for the transportation of students or teachers in
order to overcome racial imbalances or to carry out a plan of
racial desegregation. The bill also advanced without the rider
prohibiting funds from being used to require the transportation
of any student to a school other than the school which is
nearest the student's home in order to comply with Title VI.
Both riders were absent from H.R. 6157, the Department of
Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education
Appropriations Act, 2019 and Continuing Appropriations Act,
2019 (FY19 Omnibus), which was signed into law on September 28,
2019. Enactment of H.R. 6157 (115th) marked the first annual
appropriations law since 1974 to be enacted without these anti-
integration provisions.
116TH CONGRESS
On April 30, 2019, the Committee held a legislative hearing
on school integration and civil rights enforcement. A review of
Committee archives suggests this is the first hearing focused
on school segregation since the 101st Congress, nearly 30 years
ago. The hearing, titled ``Brown v. Board of Education at 65: A
Promise Unfulfilled,'' was used to inform the development of
H.R. 2639. The Committee heard testimony on the following
issues: the federal role in fulfilling the promise of Brown,
the importance of the federal government in supporting local
efforts to combat persistent segregation and discrimination in
K-12 education, the rescission of Title VI sub-regulatory
guidance documents by the Trump Administration, and the Trump
Administration's enforcement of civil rights laws. The
Committee heard testimony from: Mr. John C. Brittain, Professor
of Law, University of the District of Columbia Law School,
Washington, DC; Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Ed.D., President and
CEO, Learning Policy Institute, Palo Alto, CA; Ms. Maritza
White, Parent Advocate, Washington DC; Mr. Daniel J. Losen,
M.Ed., J.D., Director, Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the
Civil Rights Project at UCLA, Lexington, MA; Mr. Dion J.
Pierre, Research Associate, National Association of Scholars,
Ridgewood, NY; and Mr. Richard A. Carranza, Chancellor, New
York City Schools, New York, NY.
On May 9, 2019, Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) introduced H.R.
2639, the Strength in Diversity Act of 2019, with Chairman
Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Gregorio Sablan (D-MP), Chairman of
the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary
Education, as original co-sponsors. On May 16, 2019, the
Committee considered H.R. 2639 in a legislative session and
ordered it reported favorably, as amended, to the House of
Representatives by a vote of 26-20. The Committee considered
and adopted the following amendments to H.R. 2639:
Rep. Fudge offered an Amendment in the Nature of a
Substitute (ANS) that made numerous changes to H.R. 2639. The
ANS improved provisions under section 5 of the bill to ensure
outreach to parents and students is produced in commonly
understandable language. It also ensured consultation with
students and families in the district or region targeted for
diversity improvement efforts. Under section 6, the ANS
expanded planning grant activities to include the development
of a robust family, student, and community engagement plan. It
also explicitly stated that funds can be used to support school
districts under a court-ordered school desegregation plan. The
ANS expanded implementation grants activities to include the
development of innovative and equitable school assignment plans
and other innovative activities to increase racial and
socioeconomic diversity. Under section 7, the ANS added
reducing school discipline rates as a measure of a school
integration plan's success. Under section 8, the ANS expanded
the annual reporting requirement to include a description of
the entity's efforts to increase inclusivity in schools.
Finally, the ANS added a new section to specify that GEPA
section 426 does not apply to funds authorized by the bill.
During the legislative session the Committee considered one
amendment to the ANS:
Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) offered an amendment to the ANS that
proposed to strike the authorization of the new federal grant
program created in H.R. 2639 to support voluntary community-
driven efforts to increase diversity in schools. The amendment
instead amended section 4106 of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965\7\ to allow school districts to use funds
authorized by such act to develop or implement strategies to
improve diversity and reduce or eliminate racial or
socioeconomic isolation in schools. The amendment also
permitted LEAs to use funds received under section 4106 to
cover fees associated with accelerated learning examinations
given to low-income students. Lastly, the amendment exempted
funds used pursuant to the authorized uses from the
requirements of GEPA section 426. Because the amendment
proposed to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965, a law not amended by the underlying bill, the amendment
expanded the scope of the bill and was ruled out of order by
the Chairman.
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\7\20 U.S.C. Sec. 7116 (2018).
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On September 15, 2020, pursuant to the provisions of H.
Res. 1107, the House debated H.R. 2639, and on the question of
passage it passed by a recorded vote of 248-167. The Senate did
not take further action on H.R. 2639 in the 116th Congress.
Second Session, Other Legislative Action
The Committee again worked with the Committee on
Appropriations on longstanding anti-integration riders during
the Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) appropriations process. As a
result, Division H of H.R. 133, the Consolidated Appropriations
Act, 2021 (FY21 Omnibus) included a provision striking GEPA
section 426 from law entirely. Division H of H.R. 133 passed
the House December 21, 2020 by a vote of 359-53. H.R. 133
passed the Senate by a vote of 92-6 that same day and was
signed into law by the President December 27, 2020.
117TH CONGRESS
On February 2, 2021, Chairman Scott introduced H.R. 729,
the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021, with Rep. Mondaire Jones
(D-NY) as an original co-sponsor.
On March 25, 2021, the Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary, and Secondary Education held a hearing entitled
``Lessons Learned: Charting the Path to Educational Equity
Post-COVID-19.'' The hearing examined the impact of the COVID-
19 pandemic on public schools and aided in the development of
H.R. 729. Witnesses discussed strategies for safely reopening
classrooms and addressing educational disparities present in
our public education system. The Committee heard testimony from
Mr. Marc H. Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban
League; Mrs. Jennifer Dale, a parent from Lake Oswego, OR; Ms.
Selene A. Almazan, Legal Director for the Council of Parent
Attorneys and Advocates, Inc.; and Mr. Alberto M. Carvalho,
Superintendent of Schools for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
On April 28, 2021, the Committee held a hearing entitled
``Building Back Better: Investing in Improving Schools,
Creating Jobs, and Strengthening Families and Our Economy.''
The hearing included an examination of investments in school
infrastructure to address historical inequity in our nation's
schools and disparities in financing school construction; the
hearing aided in the development of H.R. 729. The Committee
heard testimony from Mr. Rasheed Malik, Senior Policy Analyst
at the Early Childhood Policy Center for American Progress; Dr.
Neal McCluskey, Director of the Center for Educational Freedom
at the Cato Institute; Mr. Mark Mitsui, College President at
Portland Community College; Ms. Mary W. Filardo, Founder and
Executive Director at the 21st Century School Fund; Mr. Bob
Lanter, Executive Director for the California Workforce
Association; and Mr. Brian Riedl, Senior Fellow in Budget, Tax,
and Economics at the Manhattan Institute.
On July 16, 2021, the Committee considered H.R. 729 in a
legislative session and ordered it reported favorably, as
amended, to the House of Representatives by a vote of 27-19.
The Committee considered and adopted the following amendments
to H.R. 729:
Chairman Scott offered an Amendment in the Nature of a
Substitute (ANS) that made numerous changes to H.R. 729. Aside
from technical revisions to the bill, Sections 3 and 4 of the
ANS updated the references to section 10 to align with
authorization provisions under section 9. The ANS also expanded
the application requirements and implementation grant uses to
include activities impacting teacher diversity. The Committee
adopted the ANS by voice vote.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) offered an amendment to the ANS
that explicitly prevented all provisions in the bill from
authorizing any department, agency, officer, or employee of the
United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or
control over the curriculum, program of instruction,
administration, or personnel of any educational institution,
school, or school system. The Committee adopted the Courtney
amendment by voice vote.
During the legislative session, the Committee also
considered the following amendments:
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) offered an amendment to the ANS that
proposed to prohibit the Department of Education (ED) from
conditioning receipt of grant funds on school districts'
adoption of curriculum that violates Title VI, including by
separating students or teachers based on race, color, or
national origin or assigning characteristics or assumptions to
individuals based on race, color, or national origin. The
amendment also expressed a ``Sense of Congress'' that critical
race theory (CRT) will harm efforts to increase diversity in
schools based on the claim CRT separates students or teachers
based on race, color, or national origin, assigns
characteristics or assumptions to individuals based on race,
color, or national origin, or states or implies that the U.S.
is inherently racist. The amendment was defeated on a recorded
vote of 19-26.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) offered an amendment to the ANS
that proposed adding school choice and the availability of
``high-quality charter schools'' in several places throughout
the bill as a means to decrease racial or socioeconomic
isolation, increase racial diversity, and increase the
availability of public-school options for students. The
amendment was defeated on a recorded vote of 19-26.
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) offered a substitute amendment
that would allow school districts receiving funds under the
Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants program (Title
IV, Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act) to use those
funds to develop, implement, and evaluate comprehensive
strategies to increased diversity or reduce racial and
socioeconomic isolation in public schools. The amendment would
also prohibit the Department of Education from conditioning
receipt of grant funds on school districts' adoption of content
or pedagogy that violates Title VI and also includes the Sense
of Congress language regarding CRT included in the amendment
offered by Rep. Good. The amendment was defeated on a recorded
vote of 19-26.
First Session, Other Legislative Action
Building on the repeal of GEPA section 426 in the FY21
Omnibus, the Committee continued to work with the House
Committee on Appropriations to advance policies to increase
school diversity via the FY22 appropriations process. As a
result, H.R. 4502 the Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water
Development, Financial Services and General Government,
Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs,
Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development
Appropriations Act, 2022 (FY22 Minibus) contained several
provisions pertinent to the Committee's work on increasing
school diversity. These include:
An allocation of $100,000,000 for
competitive grants to LEA's and state educational
agencies to reduce racial and socioeconomic segregation
across and within school districts;
A directive to ED to provide technical
assistance to school districts regarding the use of
school improvement funds under ESEA Title I, Part A for
transportation to support voluntary school integration
efforts;
A directive to ED to provide technical
assistance to school districts on how specific funds
appropriated under Title I can be used to support
socioeconomic and racial integration in schools as an
evidence-based strategy to improve schools identified
for improvement under the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA);
A request of ED to use the two percent set-
aside for technical assistance and capacity building
under the Student Support and Academic Enrichment State
Grants Program for capacity-building grants to LEAs and
state educational agencies to reduce racial and
socioeconomic segregation across and within school
districts;
A request of ED to give priority to
applicants to the Charter School Program that plan to
use program funds to operate or manage charter schools
intentionally designed to be racially and
socioeconomically diverse;
A directive to ED to establish a priority
within the Magnet Schools Assistance Program to include
a priority for applicants seeking to establish new
inter-district magnet schools;
A request of ED, in consultation with the
Department of Justice to issue a report describing the
scope of the issue of school district secession and its
impact on school segregation;
A directive to ED to submit a report to the
Committee on Appropriations that examines levels of
racial and economic segregation within the U.S.
education system; and
A request of ED to make a report publicly
available on their website detailing a comprehensive
list of all existing federal desegregation orders in
the U.S., their principle requirements, and the status
of the affected districts' compliance with these
orders.
On July 29, H.R. 4502 passed the House by a vote of 219-
208. As of the filing of this report, the Senate has yet to
take action on H.R. 4502.
COMMITTEE VIEWS
H.R. 729, the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021, authorizes
federal support for school districts seeking to improve racial
and socioeconomic diversity through integration of public
schools. The bill was first introduced in May 2019, the 65th
anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a time of natural
reflection on the legacy of the unanimous decision declaring
racially segregated schooling unconstitutional.
The state of racial segregation and isolation in our
nation's elementary and secondary schools has little changed in
the last two years. Despite meaningful progress in the decades
following the Brown ruling due to robust federal enforcement of
civil rights laws, 67 years later there is a growing prevalence
of racial segregation and, in certain regions of the country,
re-segregation in public schools that undermines the decades of
progress. In 2014, Ranking Member George Miller, House
Committee on the Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers, and
now-Chairman Scott commissioned a Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report on racial isolation in public schools and
the impact of such segregation on educational equity. Released
in 2016, the GAO found high-poverty schools where 75-100
percent of the students were low-income and Black or Latino
increased from 9 percent in 2000-2001 to 16 percent in 2013-
2014.\8\ The report also found that these schools had fewer
resources and disproportionately high rates of exclusionary
school discipline.\9\ Other reports and articles have all
suggested that segregation in many public school settings is
reaching levels unseen since the 1960s.\10\
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\8\GAO-16-345 (2016) at 10.
\9\Id. At 16.
\10\ See, e.g., Alvin Chang, The data proves that school
segregation is getting worse, Vox, Mar. 5, 2018, available at https://
www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-getting-worse-data.
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On its face, the Brown decision is not profound. The
conclusion that the opportunity of an education, ``where the
state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be
made available to all on equal terms,''\11\ is a logical one
based upon the most cursory interpretation of the foundational
documents of the United States.\12\ It receives monumental
status based largely on the 335 years of history and
jurisprudence that precede it: a record of systemic racial
subjugation of African-Americans, first as enslaved people,
later as second-class citizens. The revolutionary impact of
Brown demands regular examination of the federal government's
role in realizing or hindering full integration of public
education. Without recognizing the legally and socially
enforced American racial caste system that existed in the 335
years before Brown, it is hard to understand how revolutionary
the decision truly was. Considering Brown merely as the end of
the effort to integrate schools and not the beginning minimizes
both the decades of local recalcitrance to the decision and the
federal intervention necessary to enforce it. And, perhaps most
importantly for the Committee's consideration of H.R. 729,
ignoring the concerted efforts to dismantle Brown and the
subsequent retrenchment of school segregation over the last 30
years threatens to leave us with a Brown decision that insists
on school integration and a patchwork of state and federal
policies that deftly undermine its mandate. This Committee has
become part of that recent history with our markup of H.R. 729.
Multiple amendments offered at that legislative meeting focused
on hyper-partisan issues that are designed to further drive
communities apart rather than bring them together. This is
especially troubling since when this bill was last considered
in 2019, the minority members expressed in their views that
they supported ```comprehensive strategies to address the
effects of racial isolation or concentrated poverty . . . '''
but then decried the bill that simply provided new funding to
do just that as ``partisan''. The Committee believes H.R. 729
is a small, but meaningful step toward ensuring the promise of
equal educational opportunity for all children, regardless of
race, in fulfillment of Brown 67 years ago.
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\11\ Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954).
\12\ The Declaration of Independence, para. 2 (U.S. 1776); U.S.
Const. amend. XIV Sec. 1.
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African American Education, 1619-1955\13\
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\13\ In the 116th Congress, the Committee views on the Strength in
Diversity Act outlined a less abridged history of African American
Education that this summary is based on. For a fuller version of this
text, see H.R. Rep. No. 166-496, at 11-13 (2020).
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Since their arrival in 1619, enslaved African Americans
were systematically banned from education, and opportunities
for those African Americans who were not enslaved to receive an
education were substandard and sporadic for over 250 years.
Postbellum Constitutional amendments and federal oversight
opened a brief window for educational opportunities to
flourish. This window closed emphatically with the end of
Reconstruction and the entrenchment of Jim Crow's ``separate
but equal'' policies upheld by the Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson in 1896.
Sixty years of incremental social change and legal activism
culminated with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The Brown
decision re-positioned the power of the federal government on
the side of the discriminated, and enshrined public education
as ``a right which must be made available to all on equal
terms''.
Federal Support for Integration after Brown Narrows the Achievement Gap
The Court's historic ruling in Brown was not the end of
school segregation, it was the beginning of a long and
difficult struggle to fulfill the promise of equity in
education. In 1955, in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II),
the Court ordered states to desegregate ``with all deliberate
speed.'' Since the decision did not include a definitive
timeline, many states and localities saw this lack of
specificity as an invitation to drag their feet to integrate
their schools.\14\ Such efforts included the denial of state
funding to integrated schools, the state-mandated closure of
public schools that agreed to integrate, the firing of African
American teachers, and the diversion of public dollars from
public schools to establish private schools for white
children.\15\ Ten years after Brown, the ``Massive Resistance''
to integration across the South left many students stuck in
segregated schools, and in some cases, without access to any
public education.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\Brown v. Bd. of Educ. (Brown II), 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
\15\See generally Irons, supra note 14, at 172-209 (Chapters 10 and
11, `War Against the Constitution' and `Too Much Deliberation, Not
Enough Speed' provide detail on the response to the Brown decision
throughout the South.)
\16\E.g., Charles Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on
the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education Ch. 8 (``In fact,
the southern segregated school system remained almost completely
segregated for a full decade after Brown. By 1964, only one-fiftieth of
all southern Black children attended integrated schools.'').
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Recognizing a constitutional duty to remedy inequality and
inequity, President Lyndon Johnson and Congress crystallized
the federal role in public education as an arbiter of equity,
first with the Civil Rights Act of 1964,\17\ and subsequently
with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
(ESEA).\18\ The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal
government the legal tools to realize the promise of Brown. The
law prohibits racial discrimination in schools, employment, and
places of public accommodation, and expands the authority of
federal agencies to protect the civil rights of all students.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also gave the federal government
the power to enforce desegregation plans in local school
districts under threat of federal sanction and authorized
grants in title IV to support desegregation in communities that
took voluntary action.\19\ Congress appropriated to Southern
and border states $176 million for federal education funding in
1964 and almost $590 million in 1966 under the new ESEA
law.\20\ Pursuant to title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
these states risked losing out on receiving this federal
funding if they continued to drag their feet on integration,
which many historians suggest accelerated States' efforts to
implement desegregation plans.\21\ As evidenced by current data
on racial isolation in public schools, racial segregation
remains a national crisis that demands a comprehensive federal
response like we saw with ESEA. While in and of itself
insufficient, enactment of H.R. 729 is central to such a
response.
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\17\Pub. L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C.
Sec. 2000a et seq.(2018)).
\18\Pub. L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 27 (codified as amended at 20 U.S.C.
Sec. 6301(2018)).
\19\42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000c-4 (2018).
\20\Erica Frankenberg & Kendra Taylor, ESEA and the Civil Rights
Act: An Interbranch Approach to Furthering Desegregation, 1 Russell
Sage Found. J. of the Sci. 3, 37 (2015).
\21\Id. The concept behind title VI was first introduced by the
former Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (D-NY).
In 1946, when ``separate but equal'' was still the law, Rep. Powell
successfully attached an anti-discrimination provision to a school
lunch program bill, stating ``No funds made available pursuant to this
title shall be paid or disbursed to any state or school if, in carrying
out its functions under this title, it makes any discrimination because
of race, creed, color or national origins of children or between types
of schools, or with respect to a state that maintains separate schools
for minority and majority races, it discriminates between such schools
on this account.'' After Brown, Powell modified his amendment--it now
prohibited funds from going to any school district that continued to
segregate schools. The Powell amendment sank efforts to authorize
federal education spending in both the Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations. See Joy Milligan, Subsidizing Segregation, 104 Va. L.
Rev 847, 869-70, 891-94 (2018); Jeffrey Jenkins, Building Toward Major
Policy Change: Congressional Action on Civil Rights, 1941-1950, 31 L. &
Hist. Rev. 139 (2013).
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ESEA sought to close opportunity and achievement gaps in
public education through grants which targeted resources and
services to communities with high concentrations of poverty.
This poverty too often resulted in low-quality schools due to
inequitable public education financing systems,\22\ many of
which persist today. Since most communities fund their public
school systems via property taxes,\23\ wealthier, typically
whiter communities with higher property tax bases invariably
can provide more resources for their educational facilities.
Communities surrounding schools continue to be largely
homogenized by wealth, or the significant lack thereof, due in
large part to the impact of local, state, and federal housing
policies intended to segregate white from nonwhite families.
These policies continue to deny nonwhites access to asset
accumulation and upward mobility and have corresponding effects
on the quality of schools in these communities as well.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\E.g., Jeff Raikes & Linda Darling-Hammond, Money Matters: Why
Our Education Funding systems Are Derailing the American Dream, LPI
Blog (Feb. 18, 2019), https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog/why-our-
education-funding-systems-are-derailing-american-dream.
\23\Andrew Reschovsky, The Future of U.S. Public School Revenue
from the Property Tax 1 (Lincoln Inst. of Land Policy, 2017) available
at https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/future-us-
public-school-revenue-policy-brief_0.pdf.
\24\Angela Hanks, et al., Systematic Inequality: How America's
Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap, Ctr. for
Am. Progress (Feb. 21, 2018, 9:03 am), https://
www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/
systematic-inequality/; see generally Richard Rothstein, The Color of
Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
(2017) (describing the legacy of local, state, and federal policy in
creating segregated neighborhoods throughout the United States,
including the systemic destruction of integrated neighborhoods, and the
subsidization of suburbs which denied land sale to African-Americans
through restrictive covenants).
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In 1966, Congress appropriated $1 billion in education
funding for ESEA title I, part A (ESEA Title I).\25\ This was
monumental because in targeting federal aid to areas of
concentrated poverty, federal supports were improving equity of
educational opportunity in regions of the country where de
facto segregation resulted in racially segregated and
economically inequitable public schools. And again, because
public schools received federal funding under ESEA Title I,
they were now responsible for complying with Title VI and could
not discriminate on the basis of race.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\Rebecca Skinner & Leah Rosenstiel, Con. Research Serv., R44898,
History of the ESEA Title I-A Formulas, 13 (2017).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite ever-present criticism, the federal efforts to
promote integration and enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964
had long-lasting effects. Court-ordered desegregation not only
substantially reduced racial segregation, it also led to a
dramatic increase in per-pupil spending, an average increase of
more than 20 percent per student.\26\ In addition, test scores
for African American students improved and the achievement gap
narrowed. Specifically, at the height of school integration
efforts in 1988, 44 percent of African American students
nationwide attended integrated schools.\27\ The achievement gap
in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress
had fallen from 39 points in 1971 to 18 points\28\ and the
mathematics achievement gap had fallen by 20 points over the
same time period.\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\Rucker C. Johnson, Long-run Impacts of School Desgregation &
School Quality on Adult Attainments 16-17 (Nat'l Bureau of Econ.
Research, Working Paper No. 16664, 2005) available at https://
gsppi.berkeley.edu/ruckerj/johnson_schooldesegregation_NBERw16664.pdf.
\27\Gary Orfield et al., Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long
Retreat and an Uncertain Future 10 UCLA C.R. Project, (2014).
\28\Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute, Education and
the Path to One Nation, Indivisible, Learning Policy Institute, 4
(2018).
\29\Id.
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Simply put, in the two decades the federal government was
most active in supporting and advancing school integration, the
U.S. was able to cut the achievement gap nearly in half.
Notably, a recent report on the achievement gap from the Hoover
Institution, a conservative think tank, found school
integration was the only federal reform that has successfully
narrowed the achievement gap.\30\ Enactment of H.R. 729 would
support participating local educational agencies (LEAs) to not
only integrate their schools, but also narrow racial
achievement gaps, a mandate of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds
Act.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\Press Release, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, No
Change in Student Achievement Gap in Last 50 Years (Apr. 1, 2019)
available at https://www.hoover.org/news/no-change-student-achievement-
gap-last-50-years (``The only program that seems to have had national
impacts over this period has been school desegregation . . . During the
early period of our study, the gap narrowed, but this closing of the
black-white achievement gap stopped a quarter of a century ago when the
desegregation efforts slowed and stopped.'').
\31\20 U.S.C. Sec. 6311(c)(4)(A)(III) (2018) (requiring statewide
accountability systems to include ``ambitious . . . long-term goals''
with ``measurements of interim progress'' for subgroups of students who
are behind on academic achievement and high school graduation rates
toward the goal of the state making ``significant progress in closing
statewide proficiency and graduation rate gaps'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Research has shown that diverse learning environments lead
to numerous academic, cognitive, and social benefits for
students, including improved student academic achievement and
high school graduation rates, and preparation for diverse
collegiate and work environments.\32\ School integration did
not negatively impact white student achievement or educational
attainment,\33\ while the biases of white children increased in
racially homogenous school environments.\34\ In an amicus brief
in support of the respondents in the Parents Involved case, a
group of over 500 researchers concluded the following about
segregated schools:
\32\Brief for American Educational Research Association as Amici
Curiae Supporting Respondents at 11, 27-28, 34, Parents Involved in
Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2006) (No. 05-
908, 05-915), 2006 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 1038.
\33\Id. at 36.
\34\Id. at 15-17.
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. . . [M]ore often than not, segregated minority
schools offer profoundly unequal educational
opportunities. This inequality is manifested in many
ways, including fewer qualified, experienced teachers,
greater instability caused by rapid turnover of
faculty, fewer educational resources, and limited
exposure to peers who can positively influence academic
learning. No doubt as a result of these disparities,
measures of educational outcomes, such as scores on
standardized achievement tests and high school
graduation rates, are lower in schools with high
percentages of nonwhite students.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\35\Brief of 553 Social Scientists as Amici Curiae Supporting
Respondents at 4-5, Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch.
Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2006) (No. 05-908, 05-915), 2006 U.S. S. Ct.
Briefs LEXIS 1024.
The positive effects of school integration also accrue over
a lifetime. One of the most rigorous studies on the effects of
court-ordered integration found a profound long-term impact on
students born between 1945 and 1970 who attended integrated
schools after the Brown decision.\36\ The study found that high
school graduation rates increased by nearly 2 percentage points
every year for African American students who attended
integrated schools,\37\ while over time their wages increased
by 15 percent, annual family income increased by 25 percent,
annual earnings increased by 30 percent, and good health
outcomes increased by 11 percent.\38\ At the same time, their
chances of falling into adult poverty declined by 11 percent,
and the probability of adult incarceration decreased by 22
percent.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\Johnson, supra note 43 at 2.
\37\Id. at 18-19 (``The results indicate that, for blacks, there is
an immediate jump in the likelihood of graduating from high school with
exposure to court-ordered desegregation, and each additional year of
exposure leads to a 1.8 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of
high school graduation with an additional jump for those exposed
throughout their school-age years.'')
\38\Id. at 20-24.
\39\Id. at 21-22.
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H.R. 729 is a remedy for federal policy that has retreated from
integration
Despite the successes of school integration, public
backlash to the Civil Rights Movement never fully abated. While
integration efforts did continue, the 1968 election of Richard
Nixon marked the beginning of a gradual retreat in federal
support for school integration and enforcement of civil rights
law that led to the current state of racial segregation in
America's schools.\40\ In Congress, resistance came both from a
lack of a legislative agenda to build upon the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, and a concentration instead on legislation limiting
federal power to aid integration efforts. At the other end of
Pennsylvania Avenue, successive Presidential administrations
de-prioritized oversight of state and local school
desegregation work, aided localities in evading that oversight
in some cases, and nominated federal judges with ideologies
antithetical to an expansive view of Brown. And over the last
50 years the federal judiciary has, without overturning Brown,
severely limited federal enforcement of its mandate and
provided legal cover for localities to operate increasingly
segregated schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\40\See Janel George & Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy
Institute, The Federal Role and School Integration: Brown's Promise and
Present Challenges 7 (2019) available at https://
learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/
Federal_Role_School_Integration_REPORT.pdf.
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As early as the late 1960s, federal support for
desegregation begins to wane. Congress took many more (and
longer sustained) actions to block how federal funds could be
used to support school desegregation, especially when it came
to the politically volatile subject of busing. This is despite
a Supreme Court decision upholding busing as a remedy to
achieve integration,\41\ and the application of that decision
in both Southern communities with school systems segregated de
jure and Northern communities segregated de facto.\42\ The use
of busing to achieve desegregation and the groundswell of
resistance to it in White neighborhoods across the country led
the Democratically-controlled Congress to pass the Education
Amendments of 1972, which included an amendment limiting the
use of federal funds for busing to local, voluntary
requests.\43\ Northern liberals in both parties, who had seen
desegregation as a problem cabined to the South, now found
themselves voting often with pro-segregation
representatives.\44\ In 1974, Congress first attached riders to
the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare (the agency handling education matters
at the time) that prohibited federal funds from being used for
transportation to support integration.\45\ These riders
continued to appear in Education appropriations bills until
fiscal year 2019.\46\ And as a final backstop to ensure federal
funds would not support busing for desegregation purposes, the
Education Amendments of 1974 included a provision that
prohibits school districts from using federal funds for
transportation to promote racial integration. This provision
was codified as GEPA section 426.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\41\Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1, 30-31
(1971).
\42\Irons, supra note 14, at 225 (``The distinction between de
facto and de jure segregation struck many federal judges as artificial,
and they issue a spate of busing orders in the months after the Swann
decision. When the new school year began in September 1971, more than
half a million students in dozens of cities were assigned to schools
outside their neighborhoods . . .'').
\43\Pub. L. No. 92-318 86 Stat. 235, 371(codified as amended in
scattered section of 20 U.S.C.) (1972); see Jack Jennings, Presidents,
Congress, and the Public Schools: the Politics of Education Reform 126-
27; Irons, supra note 14, at 226-33.
\44\Irons, supra note 14, at 226-33 (describing a liberal Democrat
House Member who went from leading floor action against anti-busing
amendments to assuring his constituents he would ``do whatever is
necessary by way of further legislation or a constitutional amendment
to prevent implementation of [desegregation orders] by cross-district
busing'', after parts of his congressional district were placed under
desegregation orders.).
\45\Pub. L. No. 93-192, Sec. Sec. 208-09, 87 Stat. 746, 761 (1973).
\46\See supra, Part COMMITTEE ACTION, 115th Congress, Second
Session, Other Legislative Action.
\47\20 U.S.C. Sec. 1228 (2018).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The opposition to school integration and efforts to reverse
the promise of Brown legislatively culminated in 1979, when
House members opposed to busing succeeded in bringing an anti-
busing constitutional amendment to the House floor (H.J. Res.
74) via a discharge petition.\48\ The amendment failed to win a
simple majority of the House, much less the two-thirds majority
needed to move the amendment on the Floor.\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\48\``House Rejects Anti-Busing Amendment.'' CQ Almanac 1979, 35th
ed., 482-84. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1980.
\49\96th Cong. Roll Call Vote #374 (227-183), July 24, 1979.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the Democratically-led Congress was undermining
integration efforts legislatively, successive Republican
presidential administrations took steps to limit federal
oversight of school desegregation. Additionally, federal judges
and Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican
administrations also significantly narrowed the application of
remedies to integrate public schools. The retreat began in
Milliken v. Bradley (1974) which held that school districts in
the suburbs of Detroit were not obligated to participate in
intra-district desegregation unless they committed a
constitutional violation, effectively ending state-ordered
regional desegregation across school district lines.\50\ In the
1990s, Supreme Court rulings in three cases reduced judicial
oversight of school desegregation orders, allowing school
districts to escape oversight.\51\ According to research, 45
percent of school districts were released from court ordered
desegregation orders between 1990 2009.\52\ And in 2007, in the
Parents Involved case the Roberts Court found the use of racial
balancing desegregation plans unconstitutional when used to
achieve racial diversity where de jure segregation does not
exist.\53\ Two school systems had developed voluntary school
desegregation plans, where race served as the basis of
assigning students to a particular school, in an effort to
achieve racial diversity.\54\ The Court held that since in one
district the schools were never legally segregated, and in the
other county the court ordered segregation consent decree had
been lifted, neither district had the compelling interest
necessary to implement such a race-based scheme.\55\ As such
the plans failed the strict scrutiny test and the use of race
violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\50\418 U.S. 717, 721 (1974).
\51\Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237
(1991); Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467 (1992); Missouri v. Jenkins, 515
U.S. 79 (1995).
\52\Sean F. Reardon, et al., ``Brown Fades: The End of Court-
Ordered School Desegregation and the Resegregation of American Public
Schools.'' 31 J. of Pol'y Anal. & Mgmt. 876 (2012).
\53\551 U.S. 701 (2007).
\54\Id. at 710.
\55\Id. at 720-21.
\56\Id. at 730-33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But Parents Involved did not completely foreclose on the
use of race. Justice Kennedy broke with the four conservative
judges to clarify in his concurrence, that it is constitutional
for school districts to use race to promote school diversity, a
stance informed by Grutter.\57\ In his concurring opinion,
Justice Kennedy stated that the plurality opinion was
``profoundly mistaken'' to suggest that states and school
districts ``must accept the status quo of racial isolation in
schools.''\58\ Justice Kennedy decreed school integration
strategies such as drawing attendance zones and ``allocating
resources for special programs'' such as magnet schools to
promote diversity.\59\ These are the types of strategies H.R.
729 aims to provide funding to support.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\57\Id. at 788 (Kennedy, J. concurring).
\58\Id.
\59\Id. at 789 (`` . . . recruiting students and faculty in a
targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other
statistics by race. These mechanisms are race conscious but do not lead
to different treatment based on a classification that tells each
student he or she is to be defined by race . . .'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are also the same types of strategies the Obama
administration sought to promote with its ``Opening Doors,
Expanding Opportunities'' program. Introduced in 2016, this $12
million grant program was designed to help school districts
increase diversity in their schools.\60\ All school districts
that received or were eligible for ESEA School Improvement
Grants\61\ were eligible to apply for the grant, which was
designed to help school districts develop plans to improve
socioeconomic diversity and complete pre-implementation
diversity initiatives.\62\ Twenty-six school districts from 22
different states and the District of Columbia applied for the
funds, demonstrating a nationwide desire and commitment to
address segregation in schools.\63\ Under the Trump
Administration, the Department of Education discontinued this
program in 2017.\64\ Sadly although there was an outpouring of
support from school districts to voluntarily take on the work
of promoting integration in their schools, many were not able
to do so without the possibility of federal funding.\65\ The
Committee was heartened to see that President Biden in his
first budget request to Congress proposed $100 million in new
spending targeted at fostering diverse schools.\66\ The FY22
Minibus included this proposed spending, and the Committee
expects that H.R. 729 would provide the structure for a new
federal program to encourage diverse schools. But as of this
report's filing, the Senate has yet to take up the
appropriations proposal and there is no program in place, in
spite of the research we have showing the regrowth of
segregated schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\60\Press Release, Department of Education, U.S. Education
Secretary Announces Grant Competitions to Encourage Diverse Schools,
(Dec. 13, 2016), available at https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/
us-education-secretary-announces-grant-competitions-encourage-diverse-
schools.
\61\Every Student Succeeds Act Sec. 1003(g), 20 U.S.C. Sec. 6303(g)
(2018).
\62\Applications for New Awards; Opening Doors, Expanding
Opportunities 81 Fed. Reg. 90343 (Dec. 14, 2016) available at https://
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-12-14/pdf/2016-29936.pdf.
\63\List of Potential Applicants, Opening Doors, Expanding
Opportunities--Intent to Apply, available at https://www2.ed.gov/
programs/odeo/odeolistofapp2017.pdf.
\64\Emma Brown, ``Trump's Education department nixes Obama-era
grant program for school diversity'', Wash. Post Mar. 2, 2017,
available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/03/
29/trumps-education-department-nixes-obama-era-grant-program-for-
school-diversity/.
\65\Kalyn Belsha, ``Dozens of school districts applied to an Obama-
era integration program before Trump officials axed it. Since then,
many plans have gone nowhere'', Chalkbeat Dec. 2, 2019, available at
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/12/02/what-happened-after-trump-
administration-killed-obama-era-school-integration-program/.
\66\Dept. of Educ., Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Summary 16 (2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Research shows that the gains made on school integration in
the 1960s and 1970s have reversed as schools have become
increasingly segregated.\67\ The share of racially segregated
schools has tripled to nearly 20 percent since the 1980s.\68\
This finding indicates that nearly one in five schools in
America enroll 90-100% non-white students.\69\ 40 percent of
African American students and 41 percent of Latino students
nationwide attend these intensely segregated schools where
students of color makeup 90-100 percent of the student
population.\70\ The report also found that these schools had
fewer resources, less access to math, science, and college
preparatory courses, and disproportionately suspended,
expelled, or held back students.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\67\See Frankenberg, supra note 4, at 21-22.
\68\Id. at 21.
\69\Id.
\70\Id. at 25, 28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A 2019 report by EdBuild found that school district
secessions to create wealthy white school districts are
accelerating.\71\ According to the report, there have been at
least 128 attempts by school districts to secede from their
larger school district since 2000, with a total of 73
successful secessions. Historically, after the Brown decision,
school district secessions were a mechanism for communities
within county-based school districts to resist integration.
Currently, 30 states have laws permitting secession and there
are states considering laws to permit secession. This action is
deeply troubling as it undermines the Brown decision and
exacerbates inequality and segregation, leaving high-poverty
school districts behind with fewer resources since public
education is largely funded using property tax revenue.
Further, school districts cannot be compelled to work with
other school districts to integrate. H.R. 729 addresses the
problem of secession by allowing consortium of LEAs or regional
education entities to be eligible entities for purposes of the
grant. The goal is to ensure that where a secession has
occurred, or one may occur, steps could be taken using funds
from the bill to ensure racial diversity was maintained in
these instances.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\71\EdBuild, Fractured: The Accelerated Breakdown of America's
School Districts, Edbuild, Apr. 2019, available at https://edbuild.org/
content/fractured/fractured-full-report.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EdBuild produced another report that found a $23 billion
racial funding gap between school districts serving students of
color and school districts serving predominantly white
students.\72\ This data indicates that the relationship between
integration and resources is often overlooked but cannot be
overstated. Further, in 2017, the National Center on Education
Statistics issued a report that found that most Black and
Latino students in the 2014-2015 school year attended high-
poverty schools.\73\ Moreover, in 2018, Chairman Scott and
Chairman Nadler released a GAO report that found that African
American students, boys, and students with disabilities are
disproportionately disciplined at high rates and African
American students are subject to harsher discipline than their
white counterparts in schools across the country.\74\ This is
alarming given the dramatic increase in segregation in public
schools by race and poverty, especially as student of color are
more likely to experience harsh discipline.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\72\Edbuild, $23 Billion, (last visited Dec. 6, 2019), http://
edbuild.org/content/23-billion.
\73\Nat'l Ctr. For Educ. Stats., The Condition of Education 2017,
134 available at https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017144.pdf.
\74\U.S. Gov't Accountability Office, GAO-18-258, K-12 Education:
Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with
Disabilities (2018).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sixty-seven years after the landmark Brown v. Board of
Education decision, educational inequity remains pervasive and
persistent in the U.S. Like the Jim Crow education system,
children of color and low-income students are consigned to
learning in segregated schools with crumbling infrastructure
that offer demonstrably worse opportunity for a quality
education. As a result, millions of children are robbed of
their constitutionally guaranteed educational rights. As Dr.
Rucker Johnson recently stated, ``[s]egregation is not only the
isolation of schoolchildren from one another; it is the
hoarding of opportunity. Opportunity for smaller class sizes,
access to high quality teachers supported by higher teacher
salaries, teacher diversity, multicultural and college-
preparatory curricular access all remain elusive for lower-
income and minority children.''\75\ A profound question and
answer exchange during the 2019 Committee hearing on fulfilling
the Brown decision took place between Rep. Mark Takano (CA-41)
and then-New York City Schools Chancellor, Richard Carranza.
Rep. Takano asked Chancellor Carranza, ``[w]hat does it mean
for children of color who suffer the repercussions of widening
achievement and opportunity gaps?'' Mr. Carranza stated, ``[w]e
are robbing the very future of this country of future talent.''
This statement fully encapsulates the cost of school
segregation and the lack of inaction by the federal government.
The Committee believes it is the role of the federal government
and the duty of Congress to address the segregation that exists
in our public education system today to ensure that all
children have access to an equal education regardless of their
race, ethnicity, family wealth, or zip code.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\75\Valerie Strauss, ``Why School Integration Works'', Wash. Post,
May 16 2019, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/
2019/05/16/why-school-integration-works/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposed Amendments to H.R. 729
Using the power of the federal government to root out
entrenched segregation should not be a partisan issue. Minority
members of the Committee have expressed desire to work towards
a more diverse, integrated, school system.\76\ The Committee
takes these statements in the good faith it believes they were
offered. However, this makes it all the more troubling that
when the Committee marked up H.R. 729 this Congress, most of
the consideration of the bill consisted of debate on hyper-
partisan poison pill amendments offered by the minority that
would do nothing to improve the bill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\76\H.R. Rep. No. 116-496, at 30 (2020) (``We know that too many
students attend racially and economically isolated schools and that
better integrated schools have academic benefits for all students.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Multiple amendments offered during the markup included
provisions relating to critical race theory (CRT). For example,
two amendments offered would condition receipt of grant funds
on a review of a school's local curriculum by the Department of
Education, and expressed a Sense of Congress stating in part
``diversity in schools is undermined by the teaching of
critical race theory, which assign characteristics or
assumptions to individuals based on race, color, or national
origin . . .''.\77\ These amendments cannot be separated from
the wave of protests seen at local school boards over the last
year around CRT. In fact, they were referenced during the
debate of these amendments. Unfortunately, these amendments
were flawed and logically inconsistent attempts to score
political points, not good faith efforts to improve the bill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\77\See discussion supra of Good and Burgess amendments in
Committee Activity--117th Congress.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
First, these provisions, regardless of their subject
matter, infringe on academic freedom and local control--two
concepts minority members have long histories of
supporting.\78\ More incredibly, they do so in the name of
protecting student rights under Title VI. This flies in the
face of unanimous minority opposition to the other education
bill marked up in the same legislative hearing as H.R. 729,
H.R. 730, the Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act. The
minority seems to hold local control of educational curricula
as sacrosanct up until the point the local school wants to
teach something they disagree with.\79\ Thankfully, the
Committee adopted the Courtney amendment that re-affirmed state
and local control over curriculum pursuant to section 438 of
the General Education Provisions Act, which prohibits federal
control over curriculum.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\78\See, e.g., 161 Cong. Rec. H1121 (Feb. 25, 2015) (statement of
Rep. Virginia Foxx) (``The week, the House will consider the student
Success Act, which empowers the people closest to students with the
authority to make education choices in their respective States and
communities. Local control always delivers programs and services more
efficiently and effectively. By scaling back Washington's one-size-
fits-all micromanagement of classrooms, this legislation takes positive
steps toward ensuring local educators have the flexibility required to
meet the diverse needs of their students''.).
\79\See also Letter from Reps. Virginia Foxx and Gregory Murphy to
Dr. Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D., Chancellor, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill (May 5, 2021) (expressing concern with the
academic qualifications of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Nikole
Hannah-Jones) (``The appropriate pursuit of free speech on UNC's campus
is of paramount importance to us. Faculty freedom is critical but
crossing the line into political grandstanding--and worse, inaccurate
political grandstanding--is unacceptable.'').
\80\Rebecca R. Skinner & Jody Feder, Cong. Rsch. Serv., R41119,
General Education Provisions Act (GEPA): Overview and Issues 8 (2010).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second, the Committee takes note of the continued,
intentional mischaracterization of critical race theory, a
legal theory commonly discussed in law school classes, not
elementary school classes. Republicans, including Members of
this Committee, continue to lead efforts attacking CRT that
amount to a national disinformation campaign that wrongly
ascribes CRT as an ideology based on hate and division.\81\
According to Manhattan Institute fellow and conservative
activist Christopher F. Rufo, ``[conservatives] have
successfully frozen their brand--`critical race theory'--into
the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative
perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of
the various cultural insanities under that brand
category.''\82\ Accordingly, CRT is being employed seeking to
censor conversations about race, diversity, inclusion, and
equity. For example, at least 27 states have introduced
legislation to prohibit the teaching of CRT or to restrict how
teachers discuss racism.\83\ Republicans have erroneously
asserted that any curricula that seeks to uplift students'
cultural knowledge and experiences, that teaches the truth
about United States history, and that examines systems and
structures of power as divisive, racist, and dangerous.\84\
Further, Republicans have wrongly stated that CRT teaches
children to ``judge a person by the color of their skin, and
not the content of their character.''\85\ As researchers at
Brookings Institution explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\81\E.g., Houston Keene, Reps. Cawthorn, Foxx introduce bill to
prevent federal funds from being used to push critical race theory,
FoxNews (May 11, 2021) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/critical-race-
theory-ban-schools-cawthorn-foxx.
\82\@realchrisrufo, Twitter, (Mar. 15, 2021, 3:14 PM), https://
twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1371540368714428416?lang=en.
\83\Sarah Schwartz, Map: Where Critical Race Theory Is Under
Attack, EdWeek June 11, 2021 (updated Nov. 4, 2021) https://
www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-
attack/2021/06. 128 Stephen Kearse, GOP Lawmakers Intensify Effort to
Ban Critical Race Theory in Schools, PEW Stateline, June 14, 2021
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/
2021/06/14/gop-lawmakers-intensify-effort-to-ban-critical-race-theory-
in-schools.
\84\
\85\@MarshaBlackburn, Twitter, (June 23, 2021, 11:38 AM) https://
twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1407724772973334528.
CRT does not attribute racism to white people as
individuals or even to entire groups of people. Simply
put, critical race theory states that U.S. social
institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system,
education system, labor market, housing market, and
healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in
laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to
differential outcomes by race.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\86\Rashawn Ray and Alexandra Gibbons, Why are states banning
critical race theory? Brookings FixGov (Aug. 13, 2021) https://
www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-states-banning-
critical-race-theory/.
A college professor who teaches CRT described the current
attacks on CRT as a conundrum.\87\ He stated that ``Teachers in
K-12 schools are not actually teaching CRT. But teachers are
trying to respond to students asking them why people are
protesting and why Black people are more likely to be killed by
the police.''\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\87\Id.
\88\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, most insidiously, recent reports suggest that the wave
of CRT hysteria that has plagued school board public meetings
over the last year had more to do with the increased
diversification of student bodies than curriculum or
pedagogy.\89\ School districts that are becoming racially
diverse quicker than the national average are
disproportionately the school districts where discussing
diversity becomes a problem that must be solved either via
protest or federal oversight. NBC News, analyzing Department of
Education data over the last 26 years, found that exposure of
white students to students of color in schools has increased on
average by 11.2% nationally from 1994 to 2020--as the country
gets more diverse, classrooms are as well.\90\ But in two-
thirds of the districts that saw pitched battles over CRT, the
exposure level of white students to students of color increased
at a rate higher than the national average.\91\ Loudoun County,
Virginia, mentioned by name in the markup debate, has
experienced an increase of white student exposure to students
of color nearly three times the national average.\92\ The
honest teaching of history is central to achieving racial
equality in the U.S. Amendments that purport to support
teaching that honest history but mischaracterize what is
actually being taught are unproductive and were rightfully
defeated. The Committee wholly expects to continue to hear
straw man arguments from the minority on CRT in Committee
proceedings, on the House floor, and in public debate over the
next 12 months. As those fallacies continue to be repeated, the
Committee would ask members to heed the words of its Ranking
Member when discussing this issue, ``political grandstanding--
and worse, inaccurate political grandstanding--is
unacceptable''.\93\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\89\Tyler Kingkade and Nigel Chiwaya, Schools facing critical race
theory battles are diversifying rapidly, analysis finds, NBCNews (Sept.
13, 2021, 4:30 AM) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/schools-facing-
critical-race-theory-battles-are-diversifying-rapidly-analysis-
n1278834.
\90\Id.
\91\Id.
\92\Id.
\93\Letter from Reps. Virginia Foxx and Gregory Murphy to Dr. Kevin
M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D., Chancellor, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill (May 5, 2021) (on file with Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another amendment offered by the minority elevated school
choice and charter schools as potential remedies to entrenched
segregation. This amendment wrongly assumes that school choice
is in itself a remedy to segregation in public schools.
Research shows that school choice policies must be carefully
designed and implemented to address school segregation as they
can either create racially and socioeconomically diverse
schools or increase racial segregation and inequality in public
schools.\94\ According to a recent study form the Urban
Institute, charter schools have increased racial segregation in
public schools, albeit modestly.\95\ For example, the report
found that eliminating charter schools in the average school
district would reduce segregation by five percent.\96\ However,
the report found that charter schools had a higher impact of
segregation in urban districts with high percentages of low-
income students and Black and Latino students.\97\ Similarly,
the report found that charter schools increased segregation in
suburban school districts with low percentages of low-income
students and Black and Latino students.\98\ The report also
found that while charter schools reduced between-district
segregation in metropolitan areas, it did not lead to improved
integration.\99\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\94\Frankenberg, et al.. supra note 4, at 10.
\95\Tomas Monarrez, et al., Charter School Effects on School
Segregation 2, Urban Inst.
(July 2019) https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/
100689/charter_school_effects_on_school_segregation_0.pdf.
\96\Id.
\97\Id.
\98\Id.
\99\Id. at 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a recent report on school segregation, the UCLA Civil
Rights Project indicated that ``[s]chool choice plans without
equity policies and strategies often end up with the best-
educated and connected families getting the best choices,
actually increasing inequality. All school choice programs need
voluntary goals, policies, and practices that foster diversity
and integration.''\100\ Research shows that controlled choice
in student assignment policies can reduce racial isolation in
public schools and help achieve diversity goals. For example,
research by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race,
Ethnicity & Diversity at UC-Berkeley Law School and the UCLA
Civil Right Project found that the use of the controlled choice
student assignment plan by Berkeley Unified School District
(BUSD) led to the integration of the district's 11 elementary
schools despite the community's residential segregation.\101\
The goal of BUSD's student assignment plan is to ensure that
the student population reflects the diversity in each
elementary school's attendance zone.\102\ The plan involves
three elementary schools, two middle schools and parental
choice.\103\ BUSD assigns a diversity score to each schools'
attendance zone based on the demographics of the residential
neighborhood--race, household income, and parents' education
levels.\104\ Students receive the same diversity score, which
is used in the student assignment process.\105\ Consequently,
the UCLA Civil Rights Project report found that BUSD was
successful at matching families with their choices.\106\
Further, BUSD's controlled choice policy has withstood legal
challenges and was upheld by the California Supreme Court.\107\
Accordingly, BUSD's longstanding commitment to school
integration using controlled choice can serve as a model for
school districts across the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\100\Frankenberg, et al.. supra note 4, at 37.
\101\See Lisa Chavez & Erika Frankenberg, Integration Defended:
Berkeley Unified's Strategy to Maintain School Diversity 17 (Sept.
2009) (``Thus for the plan to be successful in creative diverse
schools, an important feature of the zones is that the population is
relatively evenly distributed across each of the zones--which was no
small feat in a district like Berkeley's with residential segregation .
. .'') https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/
integration-and-diversity/integration-defended-berkeley-unified2019s-
strategy-to-maintain-school-diversity/Integration-Defended-corrected-9-
16-09.pdf
\102\Id. at 14; Erica Frankenberg, The Promise of choice:
Berkeley's innovative integration plan, in Educational Delusion? Why
Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair 74 (Univ. of
Cal. Press, 2013).
\103\See Frankenberg, The Promise of Choice, supra note 146, at 74.
\104\See Chavez and Frankenberg, supra note 145, at v-vi; Id. at
74.
\105\Chavez and Frankenberg, supra note 145, at 5-7.
\106\Id. at vi.
\107 \Id. at v.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Strength in Diversity Act of 2021 supports controlled
choice policies such as those implemented by BUSD to increase
diversity in public schools. Moreover, the bill would provide
States and LEAs the necessary resources to develop, implement,
or expand school diversity initiatives that work best for each
individual community. But a blanket endorsement of choice and
charters as a solution to this problem is short sighted and
without important guardrails, could do more harm than good.
Conclusion
As of December 27, 2020, GEPA 426 is no longer in federal
law due to the Committee's efforts to successfully repeal the
provision entirely in the FY21 Omnibus. This action sent a
clear message to school districts that the important work of
school desegregation brings us closer to finally fulfilling the
promise of Brown and the federal government should support
these efforts. But, Congress must do more to promote school
integration. Approximately 200 school districts remain under
court-desegregation orders.\108\ But that number is hardly
reflective of how pervasive racial segregation remains in
public education. According to scholars at Pennsylvania State
University, there are more than 100 school districts that have
voluntary integration plans to promote diversity.\109\ Their
research shows that school districts are experiencing multiple
challenges defining diversity and developing diversity and
desegregation initiatives.\110\ H.R. 729, the Strength in
Diversity Act of 2021 would provide much needed support to
these school districts. Under the bill, there are mandatory
application requirements to ensure funding is targeted to
improve school diversity. But the plans funded under the bill
could also include a comprehensive set of strategies to improve
student outcomes, evidence of family and community engagement,
goals to increase school diversity, development of innovative
and equitable school assignment plans, and other strategies.
The Secretary of Education is required to establish performance
measures to assess the progress of outcomes and activities
funded by the grants and may set aside funding for research
development and technical assistance. The bill reinforces the
notion that the federal government is committed to supporting
efforts to desegregate our schools and level the educational
playing field to ensure equal access to education for all
students.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\108\Jeremy Anderson & Erica Frankenberg, ``Voluntary Integration
in Uncertain Times'', Phi Delta Kappan, Jan. 21, 2019, available at
https://www.kappanonline.org/voluntary-integration-in-uncertain-times-
anderson-frankenberg/.
\109\Id.
\110\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accordingly, the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021 would
provide public school districts with the tools to support their
voluntary community-driven strategies for promoting racial and
socioeconomic diversity in schools. During the 2019 hearing,
then-Chancellor Carranza testified about the diversity efforts
in School District 15 in Brooklyn, which is comprised of 50
schools serving over 30,000 students. The community engaged in
a diversity planning process to address racial isolation by
studying data and research, including racial housing
segregation, school enrollment demographics, and student
academic outcomes. This process resulted in a comprehensive
plan to address school segregation that was approved by Mayor
DeBlasio and Chancellor Carranza. The Strength in Diversity Act
of 2021 could provide support to school districts in New York
City and across the country that are working to develop and
implement school integration initiatives.
Congress must act to support communities that are committed
to studying the scope of their challenges and tackling those
challenges with innovative, evidence-based plans to address
racial isolation in schools. The Strength in Diversity Act of
2021 is a small investment in the much larger fight to remedy
decades of purposeful inaction--including inaction by the
federal government--that intentionally segregated communities
and schools to deny people of color equal opportunity. There
was a federal role in the creation of school segregation, and
there is certainly a federal role in eradicating its hold in
public education.
Justice Kennedy provided a powerful goal for our country in
his concurring opinion in the 2007 Parents Involved decision:
Our Nation from the inception has sought to preserve
and expand the promise of liberty and equality on which
it was founded. Today we enjoy a society that is
remarkable in its openness and opportunity. Yet our
tradition is to go beyond present achievements, however
significant, and to recognize and confront the flaws
and injustices that remain. This is especially true
when we seek assurance that opportunity is not denied
on account of race. The enduring hope is that race
should not matter; the reality is that too often it
does.\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\111\Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1,
551 U.S. 701, 787 (2007) (Kennedy, J., concurring).
Congress has the power and authority to challenge history
and help change it. History shows that when Congress accepts
its responsibility to desegregate schools, the closing of the
racial achievement gap is tangible. It is time for Congress to
recommit to investing in school integration to ensure the
constitutionally guaranteed educational rights of children of
color by passing the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021.
SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS
Section 1. Short title
This Act is called the ``The Strength in Diversity Act of
2021.''
Section 2. Purpose
This section provides that the purpose of the Strength in
Diversity Act of 2021 is to support the development,
implementation, and evaluation of strategies to address the
effects of racial isolation or concentrated poverty by
increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity in public
schools.
Section 3. Reservation for national activities
This section allows the Secretary of Education to set aside
no more than 5 percent of funding for national activities. The
national activities include research, development, data
collection, monitoring, technical assistance, evaluation,
dissemination activities, and development and maintenance of
best practices on school diversity.
Section 4. Grant program authorized
This section provides detail on the two types of grants
authorized under the bill (planning and implementation),
criteria for evaluating applications, award priority, and
duration of grants, (one year for a planning grant and up to
three years for an implementation grant). Implementation grants
can be extended for an additional two years. Priority in
awarding is given to eligible entities that address racial
isolation in public schools.
Section 5. Applications
This section provides information for grant application
submissions to the Secretary of Education. Application
requirements include a description of the program, how the
grant will be used, outreach to parents and students in a
language that parents and students can understand, consultation
with students and families in the district or region targeted
for diversity improvement efforts, and how the eligible entity
will identify and define racial isolation, income level, and
socioeconomic status.
Section 6. Uses of funds
This section provides further detail on planning and
implementation grant funds may be spent. Under the act,
planning grants will be used to create a comprehensive
assessment of the geographic area served and to develop a
robust family, student, and community engagement plan.
Implementation grants will apply the high-quality plan, which
will include a comprehensive set of strategies to: improve
student outcomes; evidence of family and community engagement,
goals to increase school diversity, development of innovative
and equitable school assignment plans, collection and analysis
of data, and a rigorous method of evaluation of the
effectiveness of the program. Implementation grant funding can
be used to recruit, hire, and train teachers and other
innovative activities designed to increase racial and
socioeconomic diversity and engagement among students from
different, racial, economic, and cultural backgrounds. Grant
funding also supports school districts under a court-ordered
school desegregation plan.
Section 7. Performance measures
This section provides information on performance measures
for the programs and activities carried out through use of the
grants. These performance measures include but are not limited
to academic performance, school readiness, achievement gaps,
graduation rates, reducing school discipline rates, and post-
secondary career readiness.
Section 8. Annual reports
This section provides that entities that receive a grant
will submit a report to the Secretary of Education with a
description of the efforts to increase inclusivity and
information on the progress of the grant in respect to
performance measures and data to support said progress.
Section 9. Authorization of appropriations
This section provides that the program is to be funded for
fiscal year 2022 and for five succeeding fiscal years.
Section 10. Definitions
Provides definitions found within the bill.
Section 11. Prohibition against Federal control of education
Reaffirms state and local control over school curricula and
the prohibition on federal control over school curricula
pursuant to section 438 of the General Education Provisions
Act.
EXPLANATION OF AMENDMENTS
The ANS is explained in other descriptive portions of this
report.
APPLICATION OF LAW TO THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
H.R. 729 does not apply to terms and conditions of
employment or to access to public services or accommodations
within the legislative branch.
UNFUNDED MANDATE STATEMENT
Pursuant to Section 423 of the Congressional Budget and
Impoundment Control Act (as amended by Section 101(a)(2) of the
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, Pub. L. 104-4), the Committee
adopts as its own the estimate of federal mandates regarding
H.R. 729, as amended, prepared by the Director of the
Congressional Budget Office.
EARMARK STATEMENT
In accordance with clause 9 of rule XXI of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, H.R. 729 does not contain any
congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff
benefits as described in clauses 9(e), 9(f), and 9(g) of rule
XXI.
ROLL CALL VOTES
In compliance with clause 3(b) of rule XIII of the Rules of
the House of Representatives, the Committee advises that the
following roll call votes occurred during the Committee's
consideration of H.R. 729.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STATEMENT OF PERFORMANCE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Pursuant to clause (3)(c) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the goals of H.R. 729 are to support
the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategies
to address the effects of racial isolation or concentrated
poverty by increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity in
public schools.
DUPLICATION OF FEDERAL PROGRAMS
Pursuant to clause 3(c)(5) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives, the Committee states that no
provision of H.R. 729 establishes or reauthorizes a program of
the Federal Government known to be duplicative of another
federal program, a program that was included in any report from
the Government Accountability Office to Congress pursuant to
section 21 of Public Law 111-139, or a program related to a
program identified in the most recent Catalog of Federal
Domestic Assistance.
HEARINGS
For the purposes of Section 2(r) of H. Res. 8 for the 117th
Congress, the legislative hearings titled ``Lessons Learned:
Charting the Path to Educational Equity Post-COVID-19'' held on
March 25, 2021, and ``Building Back Better: Investing in
Improving Schools, Creating Jobs, and Strengthening Families
and Our Economy'' held on April 28, 2021 were used to inform
the development of H.R. 729.
STATEMENT OF OVERSIGHT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE
In compliance with Clause 3(c)(1) of rule XIII and Clause
2(b)(1) of rule X of the Rules of the House of Representatives,
the Committee's oversight findings and recommendations are
reflected in the descriptive portions of this report.
NEW BUDGET AUTHORITY AND CBO COST ESTIMATE
Pursuant to Clause 3(c)(2) of rule XIII of the Rules of the
House of Representatives and Section 308(a) of the
Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and pursuant to clause
3(c)(3) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of
Representatives and Section 402 of the Congressional Budget Act
of 1974, the Committee has received the following estimate for
H.R. 729 from the Director of the Congressional Budget Office:
U.S. Congress,
Congressional Budget Office,
Washington, DC, October 6, 2021.
Hon. Robert C. (Bobby) Scott,
Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor,
House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for H.R. 729, the Strength
in Diversity Act of 2021.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Leah
Koestner.
Sincerely,
Phillip L. Swagel,
Director.
Enclosure.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
H.R. 729 would authorize the appropriation of whatever
amounts are necessary through 2027 for the Department of
Education to operate a grant program for eligible entities to
develop or implement plans to improve diversity, and to reduce
or eliminate racial or socioeconomic isolation in schools. That
authorization would be extended through 2028 under the General
Education Provisions Act.
In 2017, the Congress provided $12 million for a grant
program called Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities. The
program in this bill is similar to that program and CBO used
that previously appropriated amount as the basis for estimating
the authorization level in H.R. 729. After accounting for
anticipated inflation, CBO estimates that the authorization
would increase to $13 million in 2026. Based on historical
spending patterns of similar programs, and assuming
appropriation of the estimated amounts, CBO estimates that
implementing H.R. 729 would cost $48million over the 2022-2026
period.
The costs of the legislation, detailed in Table 1, fall
within budget function 500 (education, training, employment,
and social services).
TABLE 1--ESTIMATED INCREASES IN SPENDING SUBJECT TO APPROPRIATION UNDER H.R. 729
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By fiscal year, millions of dollars--
-------------------------------------------------------
2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2022-2026
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated Authorization................................. 12 12 13 13 13 63
Estimated Outlays....................................... 3 8 11 13 13 48
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Leah Koestner.
The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy
Director of Budget Analysis.
COMMITTEE COST ESTIMATE
Clause 3(d)(1) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of
Representatives requires an estimate and a comparison of the
costs that would be incurred in carrying out H.R. 729. However,
Clause 3(d)(2)(B) of that rule provides that this requirement
does not apply when the committee has included in its report a
timely submitted cost estimate of the bill prepared by the
Director of the Congressional Budget Office under section 402
of the Congressional Budget Act.
CHANGES IN EXISTING LAW MADE BY THE BILL, AS REPORTED
In compliance with Clause 3(e) of rule XIII of the Rules of
the House of Representatives, in H.R. 729, as reported, makes
no changes to existing law.
MINORITY VIEWS
Introduction
In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the unanimous
Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown) that
``[Education], where the state has undertaken to provide it, is
a right which must be made available to all on equal
terms.''\1\ This was a long-overdue and welcomed acknowledgment
that separate is not, and can never be, equal. Discrimination
and segregation are inhumane, illegal, and immoral.
Unfortunately, while segregation is gone from our laws, its
lingering effects are not. We know that too many students
attend racially and economically isolated schools\2\ and that
better integrated schools have academic benefits for all
students.\3\ Unfortunately, Democrats have ignored
opportunities for common ground in favor of a partisan bill
that will do nothing to solve these lingering issues or expand
educational options for students trapped in failing schools.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Page
493.
\2\``Better Use of Information Could Help Agencies Identify
Disparities and Address Racial Discrimination.'' U.S. Government
Accountability Office. May 17, 2016. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-
16-345
\3\Ayscue, Jennifer, et. al. Research Brief: The Complementary
Benefits of Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity in Schools. The National
Coalition on School Diversity. March 2017. https://school-
diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Committee Consideration of H.R. 729--Bipartisan Opportunity Lost
On July 15, 2021, the House Committee on Education and
Labor met to mark up H.R. 729. Because Republicans and
Democrats largely agree on the importance of integrated
schools, this topic afforded the Committee an opportunity to
work across the aisle to find bipartisan compromise.
Unfortunately, the majority took a different approach.
H.R. 729 authorizes a new grant program within the
Department of Education (Department) for ``the development,
implementation, and evaluation of comprehensive strategies to
address the effects of racial isolation or concentrated poverty
. . .''\4\ Committee Republicans support this goal.
Unfortunately, Democrats are pursuing it in a way sure to add
to the federal government's long list of broken promises.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\H.R. 729, the Strength in Diversity Act of 2021. Section 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1975, Congress enacted the predecessor to the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In that
law, Congress promised a maximum grant to every state equal to
40 percent of the national average per-pupil expenditure
(APPE). When Republicans took over the House in 1995 for the
first time in more than 40 years, and nearly 20 years after
IDEA was originally enacted, the federal government was funding
IDEA at 8 percent of the national APPE and Republicans more
than doubled that contribution. When Democrats regained the
majority in 2007, the federal government was funding IDEA at 17
percent of the national APPE. Unfortunately, the federal
government's contribution has steadily declined since then. In
fiscal year (FY) 2021 the federal government is funding IDEA at
about 13 percent of the national APPE.
Funding progress on this core program has stalled because
Democrats have pursued other agendas. For example, in FYs 2012
and 2013, Republicans controlled the House, but Democrats
controlled the Senate and the White House. In FY 2012, IDEA was
funded at $11.578 billion. The Republican House proposal for FY
2013 was $12.078 billion while President Obama proposed flat
funding and Senate Democrats proposed a modest increase to
$11.678 billion. The President's level-funding proposal was
enacted.
Where did funding increases for the Department go? Among
other places, Democrats in Congress and the White House spent
nearly $6 billion on Race to the Top, a program used to coerce
states into sweeping policy changes, but which provided actual
funding to only a lucky few school districts nationwide.
Republicans have consistently prioritized IDEA while Democrats
have shortchanged this core program to fund their own
initiatives.
Now here we are again. The Democrats are advancing H.R.
729, yet another federal program sure to be underfunded while
existing priorities continue to be ignored. Rep. Burgess Owens
(R-UT) offered a better way to address the issue in Committee
Republicans' substitute amendment to the bill. Rep. Owens's
substitute would have expanded the Student Support and Academic
Enrichment Grants (SSAEG) in the Every Student Succeeds Act to
allow school districts to use funds to reduce or eliminate
racial or socioeconomic isolation in schools. The SSAEG were
authorized on a bipartisan basis to give school districts
significant resources to address local needs and received $1.22
billion in FY 2021 appropriated funding.
Committee Republicans offered Democrats an easy bipartisan
victory. The Committee could have adopted Rep. Owens's
substitute amendment to ensure that school districts have
federal funds available for school diversity efforts. Instead,
they opted to pass a partisan bill that will only add to the
federal government's long list of broken promises.
Advancing the Racist Agenda of the Left
During consideration of H.R. 729, Democrats also ignored an
opportunity to stand for students of color and against Critical
Race Theory (CRT) and CRT-inspired curriculum and pedagogy.
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) offered an amendment that would have
prohibited the Department from conditioning receipt of grant
funds on school districts' adoption of content or pedagogy that
violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, including by
separating students or teachers based on race, color, or
national origin or assigning characteristics or assumptions to
individuals based on race, color, or national origin. The
amendment also expressed the Sense of Congress against Critical
Race Theory. While Republican support for the amendment was
unanimous, the amendment was defeated on a party line vote.
CRT has been defined in different ways, but at its essence
it argues that American society is and always has been
fundamentally racist and that an individual's race is
determinative of his or her life outcomes. In seeking to divide
Americans on racial grounds, CRT adherents share common cause
with white supremacists in reducing the content of peoples'
character to the color of their skin.
While debates about CRT can be abstract, a concrete example
of CRT in action occurred earlier this year in Oregon. The
Democrat-controlled legislature passed, and Democrat governor
Kate Brown signed into law, SB 744.\5\ The bill suspends high
school Essential Learning Skills assessments for graduation
through the 2023-2024 school year and requires the Oregon
Department of Education to conduct a review of state high
school graduation requirements. The review must include
recommendations for changes to the state's high school
graduation requirements that will, among other things, ensure
``that the processes and outcomes related to the requirements
for high school diplomas are equitable, accessible and
inclusive.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2021R1/Downloads/
MeasureDocument/SB744/Enrolled
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oregon is rightfully concerned that students of color
graduate high school at lower rates than other students.
However, rather than taking steps to improve its schools and
expand educational freedom for students of color, the state has
set in motion a process with clear intentions. The state plans
to lower its high school graduation requirements so that more
students will meet them. Former President George W. Bush
famously referred to the sentiment among the public education
establishment that schools are powerless to improve the
educational outcomes of disadvantaged students as the soft
bigotry of low expectations. Sadly, that bigotry is now
Democrat Party orthodoxy.
Fulfilling the Promise of Brown--Expanding Opportunity
While there is significant alignment between Committee
Democrats' and Committee Republicans' goals with respect to
H.R. 729, Committee Republicans also believe expanding
opportunities for students should be a priority. School choice
gives families the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty
and enroll their children in challenging environments that
better develop their skills and intellects, encouraging them to
reach higher. Studies show that when students are given the
freedom to attend school in a learning environment best suited
to their abilities, they pursue and complete postsecondary
opportunities at higher rates.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\Chingos, Matthew, et. al. ``The Effects of the Florida Tax
Credit Scholarship Program on College Enrollment and Graduation.''
February 2019. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/effects-
florida-tax-credit-scholarship-program-college-enrollment-and-
graduation?utm_source=
urban_EA&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=florida_school_choice&utm_term=ed
u&utm_ content=r
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In April 2019, the Committee held a hearing examining the
legacy of Brown as its 65th anniversary approached. Virginia
Walden Ford, a parent who advocates for more educational
freedom for families wrote to the Committee and said:
The same schools that we fought hard to get into in
the 1960's after the [Brown] decision have become the
schools we must diligently find a way to get minority
children out of. These schools and programs that our
children are now forced to attend are creating
environments where our kids cannot get the education
they deserve.\7\
\7\Ford, Virginia Walden. Letter to the Committee on Education and
Labor. April 27, 2019.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loisa Maritza White, another parent advocate, testified to
the Committee about her family's use of the DC Opportunity
Scholarship Program and the importance of school choice. She
said:
Each family has the right to decide what education
works best for their individual child(ren) . . . No,
indeed, [the Brown] mandate has NOT been fulfilled in
the last 65 years. But school choice is a step in the
right direction in reaching the mandated outcome.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\White, Loisa Maritza. Testimony Before the Committee on
Education and Labor. April 30, 2019.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) offered an amendment that would
have ensured that the Department and local grantees could
expand public school options, including to attend public
charter schools, as a means of reducing racial and
socioeconomic isolation. As before, Democrats defeated this
opportunity to expand educational freedom to families on a
party-line vote. Committee Republicans stand ready to work with
our colleagues in the majority to expand educational
opportunities to families. Brown prohibited the state from
assigning students to schools based on race. We should take the
next step and eliminate the right of the state to trap children
in low-performing schools with no means of escape.
Conclusion
As outlined in these Minority Views, H.R. 729 is a lost
opportunity. Bipartisan compromise was possible to advance the
shared goals of addressing the effects of racial and
socioeconomic isolation in education. Unfortunately, Committee
Democrats chose a partisan path. Additionally, Democrats
ignored the opportunity to stand up for students of color by
denouncing the racist CRT ideology. Finally, Committee
Republicans believe no effort to erase the evil legacy of
segregation and discrimination can be complete without
eliminating the state's ability to trap students in low-
performing schools. We invite Democrats to listen to parents
desperate for better educational options for their children.
Virginia Foxx,
Ranking Member.
Joe Wilson.
Glenn ``GT'' Thompson.
Tim Walberg.
Glenn Grothman.
Elise M. Stefanik.
Rick W. Allen.
Jim Banks.
James Comer.
Russ Fulcher.
Fred Keller.
Gregory F. Murphy, M.D.
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, M.D.
Burgess Owens.
Bob Good.
Lisa C. McClain.
Scott Fitzgerald.
Madison Cawthorn.
Julia Letlow.
[all]