Obama Education Dept. Focuses on Civil Rights in Schools

(March 8) -- In 1965, Alabama state troopers beat civil rights demonstrators on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge as they marched for the right to vote. Today, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is marking the 45th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" march with a vigorous push for civil rights enforcement in the nation's public schools and universities.

"We are back in business," Russlynn Ali, head of the Education Department's civil-rights division, told The Wall Street Journal ahead of today's announcement. "Across all of the statutes under our jurisdiction, we will vigorously enforce civil rights laws."

The department says its Office for Civil Rights is putting the teeth back into civil rights enforcement in schools, from compliance violations to more complex issues like "tracking," where some students are placed in honors and advanced placement courses that make them more attractive to colleges, while others, often poor students and racial minorities, are shut out.

Black and Latino students are disproportionately more likely to drop out of school than their white peers and less likely to go to college, federal statistics show. Duncan has called education the "civil rights issue of our time."

A preview of his speech suggests that the Education Department is gearing up to fight the achievement gap on multiple fronts.

"The truth is that, in the last decade, the Office for Civil Rights has not been as vigilant as it should have been in combating gender and racial discrimination and protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities," according to a copy of the speech, The Washington Post reported. "But that is about to change."

The Education Department says it plans to send letters to schools and universities this week warning that they could lose funding or even risk lawsuits if the department finds them in violation of civil rights laws.

Also, there are plans to open 38 compliance reviews this year, investigate racial differences in school discipline, and study the availability of college-preparatory classes to poor and minority students. But Ali said that "the big difference is not in the number of the reviews we intend to carry out, but in their complexity and depth."

The remarks are a clear slap in the face to the Education Department's civil rights record during the Bush administration. William L. Taylor, chairman of the nonpartisan Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, told The New York Times that civil rights enforcement in schools has been "a dead zone for years."

But Stephanie J. Monroe, Bush's assistant education secretary for civil rights, said that characterization is unfair. "The Bush administration in the educational context had a very good record on civil rights," she told The Washington Post. According to the Times, 23 compliance reviews were pursued in 2007 and nine in 2006.

Mike Petrilli of Flypaper, an education blog from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, was skeptical. "Nobody can be against enforcing civil rights," he wrote Monday morning. "But using civil rights laws to pursue a policy agenda is something else."

The new push also is focusing on enforcement of civil rights laws protecting women. For example, The Wall Street Journal reports there are plans to investigate universities where sexual assault against women is a persistent problem on campus and step up its enforcement of Title IX, which guarantees equal access to women in school athletics.

On Wednesday, the Education Department is expected to begin a major investigation into civil rights violations at one of "the nation's largest urban school districts," the Times reported. Officials would not identify the district.