Gary Orfield

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · Education, Law, Political Science, Urban Planning

Dallas, one of the nation’s largest central cities in its most rapidly growing metropolitan areas, has had a shrinking school district in the midst of major housing development. A surge in housing costs since the Great Recession has led to the return of middle class and white families to a number of communities but that has not been reflected in th...

This report shows that the segregation of Black students has increased in almost every region of the nation, and that Black students in many of nation’s largest school districts have little access to or interaction with White, Asian or middle-class students. The report documents substantial Black enrollment in suburban schools, but high levels of s...

This report shows that the segregation of Black students has increased in almost every region of the nation, and that Black students in many of nation’s largest school districts have little access to or interaction with White, Asian or middle-class students. The report documents substantial Black enrollment in suburban schools, but high levels of s...

The brief first presents new facts on the extraordinary segregation of Black and Latino students in the state’s public schools. Second, it shows that those groups are doubly segregated by race and poverty at the most educationally unsuccessful schools. These children are, on average, from families with far lower income and wealth and with parents w...

en Report Number: ETS RR‐17–40

Educators and policy makers must confront the race and class disparities in learning opportunities across American society. Nowhere are these disparities more acute than in the country’s great metropolitan areas. As the demographic landscape continues to shift, metropolitan areas are fueling the transition to a majority-minority country. This essay...

The Civil Rights Project was hired to identify barriers to equitable access in Buffalo (N.Y.) Public Schools’ criteria schools and propose solutions, which, if accepted by both parties, could resolve the civil rights violations and create more equitable access to those schools. The researchers found that students of color, low-income students, and...

School segregation has serious consequences for educational opportunity and success. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, this study explores the relationship between fragmentation—the degree to which metropolitan areas are split into many separate school districts—and segregation. Three measures of seg...

Purpose: School administrators and policy makers live in a complex, changing policy universe in which there are many competing demands and political pressures. Rarely is there much time to think about sensitive issues of long duration that are not part of the immediate demands they face. This article is about such an issue, a question that will dee...

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti–civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White birthr...

Southern California is facing a demographic transformation that will become characteristic of the nation as a whole in coming decades. In this research, we present a historical review of the region’s attempt to address school inequity, recent enrollment and segregation trends, and an investigation of whether segregation still matters. Our results i...

School segregation has serious consequences for educational opportunity and success. Across the nation, school segregation by race and poverty is deepening and varies by state. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, this study explores the relationship between fragmentation—the degree to which metropolita...

This chapter reconstructs the forgotten history of choice, which was originally adopted as a strategy for maintaining segregation and inequality and was rejected by the courts until civil rights requirements were added. It recounts the way those lessons have been forgotten in a conservative era, with very similar results: increasing inequality and...

The first major battle over school choice came out of struggles over equalizing and integrating schools in the civil rights era, when it became apparent that choice could be either a serious barrier or a significant tool for reaching these goals. The second large and continuing movement for choice was part of the very different anti-government, ind...

Understanding how a community views integration choice policies is particularly important, partly because school choice relies on parents viewing their options as attractive and also because only a district supported by the public can sustain voluntary integration, since a school board can reverse it at any time. This chapter examines parental and...

The first major battle over school choice was part of the struggle to equalize and integrate schools in the civil rights era, when it became apparent that choice could be either a serious barrier or a significant tool for reaching these goals. The second movement for choice has been very different. This large—and continuing—movement is part of an a...

Invited commentary on "When Policy Opportunity is not Enough: College Access and Enrollment Patterns among Texas Percent Plan Eligible Students" by Catherine Horn and Stella Flores.

Background This study grew out of a recent Supreme Court case known as Horne v Flores. The case began in 1992 in Nogales, Arizona when a 4th grade English learner (EL), Miriam Flores, sued the district and the state for failing to provide her (and other EL students) with an appropriate education as guaranteed by the Equal Educational Opportunity Ac...

The United States is home to the largest number of immigrants of any nation (United Nations 2006). In 2005, 38.5 million residents of the U.S. were foreign born. As a result, an increasing number of children in the public schools are either immigrants or the children of immigrants: more than one of every five. Most of these children come from homes...

The hardware and firmware engineers must collaborate together to get their respective components to work together. The most important collaborative tool is documentation. High importance should be placed on timely, accurate, and complete documentation. It is the primary reference for the firmware engineers for developing and debugging device driver...

As a result of tremendous social, legal, and political movements after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the South led the nation in school desegregation from the late 1960s through the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, following a series of court cases in the past two decades—including a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision...

In this article, Maria Ong, Carol Wright, Lorelle Espinosa, and Gary Orfield review nearly forty years of scholarship on the postsecondary educational experiences of women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Their synthesis of 116 works of scholarship provides insight into the factors that influence the retention,...

I have lived a life in which I have often been involved in public debates and controversies, but not as a public intellectual whose ideas were embraced by the White House or celebrated by the New York Review of Books . Mine has been a very different kind of experience that could be characterized more as an against-the-grain persistence in digging i...

The United States is a vast nation of enormous diversity that is undergoing revolutionary demographic changes that are certain to change its society and its institutions in many ways, some predictable, and others deeply dependent upon decisions to come and upon the ability of a creative country with fragmented and complex institutions and enduring...

Confronting a reality that many policy makers would prefer to ignore, contributors to this volume offer the latest information on the trend toward the racial and socioeconomic resegregation of southern schools. In the region that has achieved more widespread public school integration than any other since 1970, resegregation, combined with resource...

In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review two related cases originating from school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington that involved voluntarily adopted racial integration plans. Concerned about the outcome of these cases, 553 social scientists submitted a social science statement to the Supreme Court summarizing...

In recognition of the increased demands facing state education departments in this accountability-focused era, Gail L. Sunderman and Gary Orfield present results from a study on the response of these agencies to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this article, Sunderman and Orfield analyze issues of state capacity, compiling data from intervie...

This chapter discusses the continued need for–and civil rights implications of–research on community colleges and Latino educational opportunity.

Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, every school is subject to the controversial mandates for annual test score gains contained in the federal law. The law represents a profound change in the relationship between the federal government and state and local education agencies regarding who controls education and has direct implications for wha...

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), every school is subject to the controversial mandates for annual test score gains contained in the federal law. The law represents a profound change in the relationship between the federal government and state and local education agencies regarding who controls education and has direct implications for wha...

The nation's institutions of higher education are a source of immense pride for our states and communities and central to the dreams of millions of young people and their families. In a society where knowledge and credentials are essential for success, higher education offers the best chance for a bright future. For students without powerful family...

The dream of public higher education in America is to provide opportunity for many and to offer transformative help to American communities and the economy. Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education explores the massive challenges facing California and the nation in realizing this goal during a time of enormous demographic change. The immediate foc...

This study examines the implications of a shift in accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) from the school level to the district level. Most states are identifying school districts for sanctioning for the first time during the 2004-2005 school year. Large numbers of districts have been labeled under-performing, and these districts...

This chapter examines the role of housing segregation in the structure of racial, income, and economic inequality. It addresses the growing social cleavages in metropolitan areas where resources are separated from those in need and minority communities are battered by economic trends and hostile policies. The sociopolitical structure of cities is e...

What explains the continuing hardship of so many black Americans? In this book, a group of scholars analyzes the long, complex structural and environmental causes of discrimination and their effects on African-Americans. The chapter examines the impact of poverty, poor health, poor schools, poor housing, poor neighborhoods, and few job opportunitie...

Many U.S. medical schools have abandoned affirmative action, limiting the recruitment and reducing the admission of underrepresented minority (URM) students even though research supports the premise that the public benefits from an increase in URM physicians and that URM physicians are likely to serve minority, poor, and Medicaid populations. Facul...

Presents both sides of the debate on whether the neediest students are getting short shrift in the trend toward awarding financial aid to students based on achievement rather than family income. (EV)

Discusses the factors influencing the recent increase in school segregation based on findings of recent study by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Resegregation factors include changes in residential patterns, public-school choice, and Supreme Court decisions such as "Freeman v Pitts" (1992) and "Missouri v Jenkins" (1995) restricting...

Racial inequities pervade special education in U.S. schools today. Minority children-especially African Americans-are far more likely than white children to be designated mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed and therefore in need of special education. Even when appropriately placed in special education classes, minority children often receive...

Racial inequities pervade special education in U.S. schools today. Minority children-especially African Americans-are far more likely than white children to be designated mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed and therefore in need of special education. Even when appropriately placed in special education classes, minority children often receive...

This paper introduces a collection of papers that examines the impact of affirmative action on college admission and the importance of school desegregation. The book addresses whether or not the educational value of diversity is sufficiently compelling to justify the consideration of race when making college admission decisions. This introduction e...

This collection of papers explores research on how increasing minority enrollment changes and enriches the educational process. The papers are: (1) "Student Diversity and Higher Learning" (Neil L. Rudenstine); (2) "A Policy Framework for Reconceptualizing the Legal Debate Concerning Affirmative Action in Higher Education" (Scott R. Palmer); (3) "Di...

In this special section, various authors (in separate articles) discuss the new face of school segregation; socioeconomic integration--a plan to mix poor and middle-class students; and ways to bridge the minority achievement gap, teach linguistically diverse students, and identify and nurture the gifted poor. (MLH)

Nations exercising great political, military or economic power are always looked to in educational discussions, as if their power derives from their school system. German schools and universities had great influence early in the century. The former USSR's technology education was admired after 'Sputnik' in the 1950s. There was intense interest in t...

This collection of papers examines how to gain more from Title I's goal of improving educational opportunity for poor children, offering evidence about educational gains and underscoring the civil rights implications of this legislation. In preparing for the 1999 reauthorization of Title I, the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University commissione...

Documents the largest shift back toward school segregation since Brown v. Board of Education (1954). It explains this trend through Supreme Court rulings and demographic changes due to immigration and the growth of suburbs. Hispanics, seen as the future predominant minority population in the United States, are already reported to be more educationa...