A Comprehensive and Practical Approach to Policy Guidance: The Office for Civil Rights’ Role in Education During the Obama Administration

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria M. Lewis ◽  
Liliana M. Garces ◽  
Erica Frankenberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Practical Approach ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Equitable Access ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Office For Civil Rights ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Policy Guidance ◽  
Trump Administration

As the federal entity in charge of enforcing civil rights law, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) plays a critical role in addressing the vast inequities that exist in U.S. education. Through an analysis of the policy guidance OCR issued for a number of areas during the Obama administration, we illustrate the agency’s comprehensive and practical approach to helping ensure that young people from different backgrounds have equitable access to education and equitable experiences once enrolled. This review provides the foundation for understanding civil rights enforcement in the current context of inequality; it is particularly timely, as the Trump administration has begun a rollback of existing guidance, which has concerning implications for students’ civil rights.

scholarly journals An examination of the bidirectional relationship between federal civil rights guidance and research

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Maria M. Lewis ◽  
Sarah Kern
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
Admissions Policies ◽  
Office For Civil Rights ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Bidirectional Relationship ◽  
Guidance Documents ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Policy Guidance

As the primary agency responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws in the educational context, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issues policy guidance to help ensure that school districts and universities understand their legal obligations. These policy guidance documents have direct connections to topics studied by educational researchers (e.g., disproportionality in special education, race conscious admissions policies in higher education, transgender student inclusion, etc.). However, we do not have an empirical understanding of how this guidance is used by the research community. Nor do we have a strong grasp on the extent to which this guidance is explicitly informed by research. It is important to acquire an empirical understanding of the bidirectional relationship between research and educational policy in the context of civil rights enforcement in order to determine areas of strength and those in need of improvement. Specifically, this study poses the following research questions: 1) How often and in what ways do scholars explicitly use OCR policy guidance to inform their research? What are the characteristics of this research? 2) Conversely, how often and in what ways does OCR explicitly use research to inform policy guidance? What are the characteristics of research cited in OCR guidance?

Lawyers as Activists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Court Action ◽  
The Government ◽  
Trump Administration

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.

scholarly journals EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS IN ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT REGULATION NO 17 YEAR 2010

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-63
Author(s):  
Mutia Ulfa
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Learning Assessment ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Equitable Access ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Development Level ◽  
Education Personnel ◽  
The Government ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas

Access to education refers to the government regulation No. 17 of 2010 on the expansion and equitable access to education. Pemerintahah able to pursue that whole communities are able to obtain the same rights to education in both urban and rural areas. There are several products that include equity and equal access to education, namely; infrastructure standards, standards development level of achievement, the standard scope of development, lesson planning standards, standardized implementation of learning, learning assessment standards, standards kualisifikasi educators and education personnel, standardized management and financing standards. Further products in the distribution and access to education dianlisis from various perspectives, namely; economic analysis, political analysis, analysis of socio-cultural, and administrative analysis.

Trump Reverses Certain Steps Toward Normalizing Relations with Cuba

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1035
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
White House ◽  
Senior Official ◽  
Roll Back ◽  
Trump Administration

In June 2017, President Donald Trump announced a plan to roll back various steps taken by his predecessor toward normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. A senior official for the administration announced the plan in a White House press briefing:The President vowed to reverse the Obama administration policies toward Cuba that have enriched the Cuban military regime and increased the repression on the island. It is a promise that President Trump made, and it's a promise that President Trump is keeping.With this is a readjustment of the United States policy towards Cuba. And you will see that, going forward, the new policy under the Trump administration, will empower the Cuban people. To reiterate, the new policy going forward does not target the Cuban people, but it does target the repressive members of the Cuban military government.

The Pauper

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-138
Author(s):  
Sylvie Laurent
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
New Class ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor People's Campaign

This chapter questions the implications of King’s new class-based coalition. It casts the Poor People’s Campaign as a crucial hinge in creating a possible link between the civil rights movement, the labor movement, black nationalists who endorsed Marxism, the Chicano movements, the Welfare Rights movements (in which women played a critical role), poor whites organizations and the peace movement.

scholarly journals Climate change denial as far-right politics: How abandonment of scientific method paved the way for Trump

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-60
Author(s):  
Gavin Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The United States ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Climate Change Denial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Democratic Norms ◽  
Trump Administration

In this article I show that the form of argument put forward by the climate change denial movement in the United States (US) closely resembles that used in Nazi Germany with regard to Nazi racial definitions. Each involves a rejection of scientific method. This rejection inherently lends itself to far-right politics, which is a philosophy of prejudice. The prevalence of such a philosophy in contemporary American political culture, exemplified through climate change denial, has arguably opened the door for a president of Trump's type. Nevertheless, the US Constitution is far more difficult to suspend than that of the Weimar Republic. As a result, US institutional safeguards against a philosophy of prejudice are likely to hold against a short-term assault on environmental justice in a way that the Weimar Republic's constitutional order did not against Nazism's assault on civil rights. The greater threat to environmental protection in the contemporary US situation is the slow erosion of democratic norms by the Trump administration.

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