GeDá Jones Herbert is a former public-school teacher, civil rights attorney, and the inaugural director of programming for the Education Rights Institute at the University of Virginia School of Law.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement agreement with a Utah school district after a federal investigation found widespread racial harassment against Black and Asian American students over a 5-year period that violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Just two weeks after this finding, a 10-year-old Black girl in that school district took her own life. Her peers regularly called her the N-word, told her she smelled, and made fun of her disability. Though her school knew their Black and Asian American students faced a hostile learning environment, their response to the persistent discrimination and harassment was wholly inadequate.
A 2021 Centers for Disease Control national study found that over 1/3 of high school students reported that they believed they had been “treated badly or unfairly in school because of their race or ethnicity during their lifetime,” with Asian American, Black, and multiracial students reporting the highest rates.
On July 2, 1964, Title VI became federal law. Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any federally funded program, including public and private schools that receive federal funds. Yet 60 years after its enactment, the number of alleged Title VI violations in K-12 schools reported to the U.S. Department of Education and its partner, the U.S. Department of Justice, continues to surge.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights received a record high number of complaints alleging civil rights violations over the past two years, and this year may surpass those records with a 26% increase in complaints filed by late February compared to the same time period the previous year.
Our nation’s history of enslavement and discrimination drove the need for Title VI’s enactment. After the Civil War’s end in 1865, Black Americans and formerly enslaved people made enormous political and economic gains. Sadly, because many White people were unwilling to share opportunities or resources, communities adopted Jim Crow laws and policies to maintain racial subordination.
Though the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed segregation in schools, many states and school districts resisted offering equal opportunities to non-White students. Under the “Massive Resistance” strategy, state and local governments implemented policies to maintain segregated schools, with some communities resorting to closing public schools rather than integrating them. In response, civil rights advocates expressed growing concern regarding the slow, piecemeal approach to desegregating schools.
In this contentious climate, President John F. Kennedy presented Title VI as a more efficient tool to desegregate America’s schools and other publicly funded programs. “Race discrimination hampers our economic growth by preventing the maximum development and utilization of our manpower,” he told Congress in 1963.
The Civil Rights Act, including Title VI, subsequently passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964.
Unfortunately, many American schools remain segregated and unequal today.
A 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office study found that more than a third of U.S. students attend schools that are 75% or more one race. Students from underprivileged backgrounds, who are disproportionately students of color, are more likely to attend schools that lack the learning opportunities and resources required to prepare them for college.
This matters because those who complete a bachelor’s degree or higher earn approximately $30,000 more annually than those without a degree. Furthermore, Black and Hispanic students are over 70% more likely to attend a school that is inadequately funded.
Teacher shortages, exacerbated by the pandemic, disproportionately affect Black, Latino, and English learner students, as well as students with disabilities. The prevalence of almost all mental health disorders has increased significantly for racial and ethnic minority students, and discrimination — another form of trauma — continues to increase. Though high school graduation rates have improved in recent decades, students’ reading and math scores have declined.
Research consistently makes clear that all students fare better in environments free from discrimination. Instead of banning books and fighting “culture wars” over ideologies and politics, we should all honor our nation’s 60-year commitment to Title VI by focusing on how we can ensure a successful future for our public education system — one where we value our teachers, close opportunity gaps, and ensure our students can attend schools that are safe from violence and discrimination.
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard banning affirmative action in selective colleges, Title VI still requires schools to remedy and prevent race, color or national origin discrimination.
Failing to comply with Title VI can result in an array of adverse consequences for schools, including a lengthy federal investigation, long-term federal monitoring, court litigation and a loss of all federal funding. Learning environments that tolerate racial discrimination impose lasting harms not only on the students who experience discrimination but also the larger student body.
Even if the children in your life attend high-quality, well-funded schools, our communities are stronger when all children have these opportunities. A 2023 McKinsey report confirms: “Eliminating [racial opportunity and achievement] gaps could help reverse downward trends in social mobility while potentially generating up to $700 billion in additional GDP for the nation.”
When we allow discrimination against students, we hurt society as a whole.
So, what can we do?
-
Learn federal, state and local protections for students, and assess whether your local schools are complying. If they are not, contact school or district leaders to remind them that failure to comply violates the law.
-
Notify the U.S. Department of Education about civil rights violations.
-
Let your policymakers know how much you value public education and what you would like to see in the future of your local public schools.
As our nation commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 70th anniversary of Brown, we must ask ourselves why we have yet to achieve their promise of equal educational opportunity. We must work diligently to ensure each and every student receives a high-quality education that is free from discrimination, because it provides a critical step toward making America truly great.
