SELMA, Ala. — Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday the federal government will become more vigilant to ensure students have equal access in everything from college-prep classes to science and engineering programs.
“We are going to reinvigorate civil-rights enforcement,” Duncan said on a historic Selma bridge to commemorate the 45th anniversary of a bloody confrontation between voting-rights demonstrators and state troopers.
Duncan said the department also will issue a series of guidelines to public schools and colleges addressing fairness and equity issues. “The truth is that in the last decade, the Office for Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should be. That is about to change,” he said.
“With a strict adherence to statutory and case law, we are going to make Dr. King’s dream of a colorblind society a reality,” Duncan said.
High school student D’wan Lewis, who is black, said he liked what he heard.
“I don’t think we have the same opportunities as other schools,” said Lewis, 18, a student at Keith High, a small, rural school outside Selma. “We need more materials. Really, we just need a better school.”
The Education Department expects to conduct 38 compliance reviews around 40 issues this year, said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights. Although the investigations have been conducted before, the department’s Office for Civil Rights is looking to do more complicated and broader reviews that will look at the impact district practices have on students of one race or another and whether student needs are being met.
Duncan highlighted inequities that included:
• Black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely to be expelled as white students, and those with disabilities more than twice as likely to be expelled or suspended — numbers which Duncan says testify to racial gaps that are “hard to explain away by reference to the usual suspects.”
• Students from low-income families who graduate from high school scoring in the top testing quartile are no more likely to attend college than the lowest-scoring students from wealthy families.
