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Abstract: Single-sex public elementary and secondary schools are making a comeback. Schools districts are structuring these schools in a variety of ways, including providing a single-sex public school for only one sex in some districts while others are offering similar schools for both sexes. These disparate structures of single-sex schools create distinct potential harms, risks and benefits for students. This Article contends that the constitutional framework applied to single-sex schools should be systematically modified to recognize the different harms, risks and benefits of these structures of single-sex schools in a manner that will create optimal conditions for the creation of single-sex public schools. The proposed modifications address the shortcomings of other scholarly proposals and minimize the current indeterminacy in the constitutional case law that could create unnecessary barriers to the development of single-sex public schools.
single-sex schools, equal protection, education, intermediate scrutiny
Abstract: No Child Left Behind represents the high water mark for federal involvement in education and this enhanced federal role appears unlikely to abate in the coming years, particularly given longstanding educational conundrums, such as the achievement gap and disparities in educational opportunities between disadvantaged students and others. This Article concurs with scholars who have argued that a federal right to education should be recognized, while it eschews the private right of action against state governments advanced by most scholars who support such a right. It proposes a new collaborative enforcement mechanism for enforcing a federal right to education, modeled after the enforcement mechanisms in several international human rights treaties that recognize a right to education. These treaties incorporate a non-punitive enforcement mechanism, which authorizes an oversight committee to monitor compliance and progress, offer recommendations for improvement and guide states to technical assistance. The Article considers the weaknesses and strengths of this approach.
No Child Left Behind, NCLB, federal right to education, right to education, federalism, achievement gap, equity, human rights, treaties, collaborative, collaboration, education, civil rights, schools, race, discrimination, ESEA
Abstract: In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 that the racial classifications used by school districts in Seattle and Louisville to create diverse schools were unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy provided the deciding vote but also noted that school districts could pursue diversity and avoid racial isolation through race-neutral alternatives. He asserted that it was unlikely that race-neutral alternatives would be subject to strict scrutiny but articulated no rationale for this assertion. This Article argues that, after Parents Involved, school districts will focus on race-neutral efforts to create diverse schools because the decision leaves very little room for racial classifications that would survive strict scrutiny. This Article further contends that governments should be given wide latitude to adopt race-neutral efforts to avoid racial isolation and create diverse schools because these efforts will help school districts accomplish the goals of the Equal Protection Clause while avoiding many of the potential harms of racial classifications. In light of how Parents Involved will push districts to focus on race-neutral efforts to achieve diversity and avoid racial isolation, this Article confronts the key issues that will determine the future of efforts to provide diverse elementary and secondary schools.
equal protection, race-neutral, discrimination, diversity, segregation, racial isolation, desegregation, Fourteenth Amendment, magnet schools, socioeconomic integration, student assignment plan, redraw attendance zones, antisubordination, anticlassification, antidiscrimination, racial classification
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