That landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision declared such segregation unconstitutional, but other forces — both formal and informal — have kept that segregation in place. Now, a new research report by ERASE Racism, where I serve as president, dispels key foundational myths that have long reinforced segregation by analyzing how reinforced segregation in New York State continues to negatively impact the education of Black students.

Too often, school segregation is considered a relic of the past, addressed by the Brown decision, and where children go to school is seen as a function of where they live. Yet pervasive school segregation remains held in place by laws and practices that keep people of different socio-economic classes and races apart. New York State law, for instance, grants local control of zoning decisions to individual communities, which often preserve large lot sizes that limit development to expensive homes, preventing more affordable housing and excluding low-income New Yorkers. Nationwide, overtly discriminatory housing practices that have been outlawed, such as racial steering, continue to foster segregation and inequality.

In the 2020-21 school year, more than a third of students in K-12 public schools in the United States — about 18.5 million — attended schools where 75 percent or more students were of a single race or ethnicity. Fourteen percent of students attended schools where 90 percent or more of the students were of a single race or ethnicity. In New York State, the segregation is even greater; according to the ERASE Racism report, one out of three students attend a public school district that is intensely segregated (that is, 90-100 percent students of color).

This pervasive segregation has resulted in school district-level racial disparities in spending and resource allocation that negatively impact the academic performance of students of color, and serve to promulgate myths that guide the development of educational policies. It is such myths that the ERASE Racism report now dispels with data, revealing findings that shatter unfounded, yet pervasive, narratives about race and educational achievement.

The first myth is that the underfunding of school districts predominantly comprised of students of color results from residents not paying enough in taxes. To the contrary, the report finds that New York’s intensely segregated districts of students of color have the lowest taxable property values and the lowest local revenue; yet they have the highest tax rates and tax burden. This finding updates research from 2008 by the Fiscal Policy Institute to demonstrate that New York’s communities of color have long had the greatest school tax burden.

The second myth that the report refutes is that white children have higher academic performance in school because their parents value education more than parents of color. The finding cited above — that intensely segregated districts of students of color have the highest tax rates — shows the importance that their parents place on providing their children with quality education.

The third myth is that under-performance by students in these intensely segregated districts is due to the students’ capacity. Here, the report shows that school expenditures are a deciding factor in student performance. Additionally, districts that are 91-100 percent white are not the highest-performing districts in the state, making race a poor determinant of success.

Essentially, when differences in regional cost of living and student need are taken into consideration, there is a direct correlation between per-pupil expenditures and the percentage of students who are proficient in 3^rd grade English. It is differences in expenditures across the state that are highly correlated with student performance. This critical finding adds to decades of research that have shown a direct correlation between school spending and student outcomes.

Yet school districts with the highest percentages of students of color have historically had the lowest per-pupil expenditures despite bearing the greatest school tax burden. Furthermore, state and federal funding have done little to alleviate the cost burden experienced by communities in these districts. In fact, when differences in regional cost of living and student need are considered, state and federal funding have disproportionately benefited districts that are 91-100 percent white, while doing little to close the revenue gap for districts with the highest proportions of students of color and need.

School segregation persists in America in part because of the acceptance of racially fueled myths. Key myths have now been refuted with data. As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision next year, we can replace these harmful myths with the truth: There is no credible relationship between race and academic success.

Given the right resources, all students can succeed. With these myths dispelled, we can together change the laws and practices that have kept our schools separate and unequal for far too long.

Laura Harding is president of the New-York based civil rights organization ERASE Racism.

The law was signed a month before the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, one of the worst instances of racially motivated violence in U.S. history.

Last week, at an event at the Norman Central Library, sponsored by the Cleveland County Republican Party, Ryan Walters, state superintendent of schools, was asked, “How does the Tulsa Race Massacre not fall under the definition” of critical race theory in the 2021 legislation?

“I’d say you’d be judgmental of the issue of the action, of the content of the character of the individual,” Walters replied, “but let’s not tie it to the skin color and say that the skin color determined that.” To say individuals are inherently something because of the color of their skin, “is where I say, this is critical race theory.”

The next day, following a firestorm of criticism, Walters explained that he was “referring to individuals who carried out the crime … They had evil, racist intentions and murdered people … They didn’t act that way because they were white, they acted that way because they were racist.” Students “should be able to learn that history.”

Walters’s tortured clarification underscores what should be obvious. Oklahoma’s 2021 legislation prevents educators from fully analyzing what virtually all U.S. historians (not just adherents of critical race theory) agree is voluminous and irrefutable evidence that racism is not only the product of individual prejudice, but has been embedded in our nation’s legal, social, economic and political practices.

Along with court-approved Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests to suppress voting, segregated schools and public transportation, zoning laws and redlining, the Tulsa Massacre is a tragic example of the effect systemic racism can have.

When the two-day orgy of violence ended in the late spring of 1921, heavily armed white mobs had destroyed homes, businesses, churches, a school, a hospital and a library on all 35 blocks of the Greenwood neighborhood. Booker T. Washington called neighborhood “Black Wall Street,” an engine of economic opportunity created by and for Black residents of Tulsa.

The violence was precipitated by an alleged altercation between Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoeshine “boy,” and a 17-year-old white female elevator operator. When Tulsa newspapers published incendiary stories about the incident, Rowland was arrested, and a large lynch mob gathered at the courthouse. The police did not disperse them. About 75 Blacks, many of them World War I veterans, arrived to protect Rowland, a scuffle broke out, a shot was fired, and all hell broke loose.

The governor declared martial law and sent National Guard members to restore order. Guardsmen and local police disarmed and arrested Black protestors, who by this time were outnumbered by whites 20-1, deputized many whites, and placed many Blacks in detention camps. Airplanes reportedly dropped turpentine bombs on Greenwood. More than 10,000 Black people were ultimately left homeless. No insurance payments were made, due to riot clauses, and the city did not provide any assistance to them. A grand jury report declared that “armed Negroes precipitated and were the direct cause of the entire affair.”

For decades, Tulsa authorities — and public schools — engaged in a conspiracy of silence about themassacre. In 2001, a report issued by the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission found that deputies did not stem the violence “but added to it”; public officials provided firearms and ammunition to individuals, “all of them white”; some agents of the government “deliberately or otherwise destroyed” houses, businesses and churches in Greenwood; and Black detainees were released only when a white person endorsed their applications. Even though as many as 300 people may have been killed, prosecutions were not pursued at any level of government. The 2001 commission recommended reparations, and the state of Oklahoma eventually provided some compensation to descendants of Greenwood residents.

In the last two years, at least 18 states have, like Oklahoma, restricted how teachers discuss issues of race, gender and identity. States and localities have adopted over 4,000 bans on books, many of them addressing race, racism, and LGBTQ issues. The vague and sweeping language in these measures is chilling speech, diminishing students’ education and costing some teachers their jobs.

In Oklahoma, the Tulsa Massacre is still in the 3rd, 6th and 11th grade curriculum of the city’s public schools. Thanks to the 2019 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, teachers can now draw on survivor interviews and contemporary documents in classroom discussions.

Ironically, however, the state law, aimed at critical race theory, which does not say what critics say it says (and, in any event, is not taught in Oklahoma schools), now prevents educators from teaching American history as it actually happened.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.” David Wippman is the president of Hamilton College.

First, the federal system does too much for too many and not enough for those who truly need support. Too many resources are being used to fund loans to students and families with little need for taxpayer assistance. This practice diverts money that could be used to make grants to students with demonstrated need, and for whom assistance will make a critical difference in their ability to afford higher education.  

Further, by offering some federal student loans in virtually unlimited amounts, without consideration of a borrower’s ability to repay them, the federal program allows, predictably, unsustainable levels of debt. This unlimited lending jeopardizes the financial health of families seeking higher education while denying them the incentive to seek more affordable education options that still meet their needs. The New America Foundation described the unlimited lending of certain federal student loan programs as “predatory.” At a minimum, the system as it currently operates allows too many families to borrow more than they can reasonably afford to repay.

Second, problems with the federal financial aid system have consequences not only for current students but also for future students. These systemic flaws in federal aid contribute to the college cost inflation that confronts students and families of all income levels. In fact, according to U.S. government data, the cost of college has risen 169 percent from 1980 to 2019. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that tuitions rise — for all students — because of federal student loan credit increases. People seem to understand that to address college costs, we need to look at the way the government lends to families. Recent polling shows most Americans believe that addressing the unlimited nature of federal loan programs would be an important step in protecting students and making college more affordable. A recent editorial in the Washington Post agreed.

Third, there is also agreement that borrowing should never be the first option for lower-income and historically marginalized students, yet the federal financial aid system is poorly designed to avoid it. Resources should be redirected to fund, and award, grants that will make a meaningful difference for aspiring students who have real, demonstrated financial need. Larger Pell Grants would increase college retention and enrollment rates for low-income students, but we need to make sure those who qualify for Pell Grants actually apply for them and the process isn’t overly complex. In 2022, $3.6 billion in Pell Grants went unclaimed — billions of dollars that could have put higher education within reach for students with demonstrated financial need. 

In addition, letting students use grant aid on short-term job training programs or apprenticeships, for instance, could help more young people find a long-term path to professional and financial success by matching employees to employers who need them.

If we fail to make significant structural reforms to the federal higher education system, another generation of students and families will inevitably face the same hurdles so many face today. The Supreme Court’s decision is a call for us to come together and work toward meaningful reform.

Jon Witter is the CEO of Sallie Mae.

The group Moms for Liberty was started in 2021 by Tina Descovich, Tiffany Justice and Bridget Ziegler, three current or former school board members in Brevard County, Fla. Initially focused on mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions in schools, the organization is now “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”

In just two-and-a-half years, Moms for Liberty has grown to 285 chapters and well over 100,000 members in 45 states. In 2022, more than half of the 500 candidates endorsed by the organization were elected to school boards. In a nod to Moms for Liberty’s status as a major player in the war against so-called “woke” instruction related to gender identity, sexuality, race and racism, the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination spoke at its annual summit in Philadelphia last week.

In June, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) branded Moms for Liberty an “extremist” organization. The SPLC emphasizes that in contrast to the relatively mild agenda on its website, Moms for Liberty’s social media posts, policies and practices target teachers, school officials and the U.S. Department of Education; advance conspiracy theories; and spread “hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.” The American Historical Association has condemned the group’s advocacy of censorship and legislation “that renders it impossible for historians to teach with professional integrity without risking job loss and other penalties.”

At the Philadelphia summit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis applauded the organization’s efforts to help parents send their kids to school “to watch cartoons, be kids,” and focus on the basics, reading, writing, science and math, “without having some agenda shoved down their throats.”

Former President Trump declared that Moms for Liberty “is no hate group … You’re the best thing that ever happened to America.” Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “When they mentioned this was a terrorist organization, I said ‘Well then, count me as a Mom for Liberty.’”

Despite (or because of) the overheated rhetoric, many Americans appear to have very little substantive knowledge about Moms for Liberty. Even Lucy Reyna, the treasurer of an Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty, told reporters she wants to learn “What I am part of.” If the organization turns out to be too partisan, Reyna added, she will reconsider her participation.

Here are six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization:

1. Featured speakers at the “Joyful Warriors Summit” included Katharine Gorka, an anti-Muslim activist, who has advocated “shutting down radical mosques” in the U.S.; North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who believes teaching children about sexual orientation and gender identity is child abuse, homosexuality is “filth” and the transgender rights movement is “demonic” and “full of the Antichrist spirit”; and KrisAnne Hall, who compared the U.S. Capitol police to Nazi SS troops and claims the government of the United States “has no authority outside the PERMISSION of the sheriff” and “is just as much of a federal power as France or Texas within your state.”

2. Prominent members of Moms for Liberty have close ties to the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, QAnon and white Christian nationalists. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio once boasted that Moms for Liberty is “the gestapo with vaginas.”

3. The front cover of “The Parent Brigade,” the newsletter of the Hamilton County, Ind., chapter of Moms for Liberty, recently carried a quote from Adolf Hitler: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, gains the future.” At a media training session at last week’s summit, Christian Ziegler, chair of Florida’s Republican Party (and Bridget Ziegler’s husband), questioned the decision of chapter leaders to apologize: “The media is not your friend … Never apologize. Apologizing makes you weak.”

4. Tiffany Justice’s confrontations with teachers were “so disruptive and disrespectful,” administrators threatened to bar her from the school. The chair of the Monroe County, Pa., chapter of Moms for Liberty was arrested for harassment; the head of communications for the Lenoke County, Ark., chapter allegedly threatened librarians with gun violence; a restraining order was issued to the chair of the Livingston County, Mich., chapter after she reportedly told school board members, “We’re coming after you. Take it as a threat. Call the FBI. I don’t care.”

5. The chair of the El Paso County, Colo., chapter raised the hypothetical of a teacher telling a tomboy, “it might be time to transition. Let’s go talk to the school therapist. Let’s go talk to a physician. Let’s do this.” She believes “teachers, unions and the president” are engaged in a coordinated effort to make children trans and gay to “break down the family unit, conservative values,” and “slowly erode constitutional rights.” However, she does not know of anyone who transitioned because of social pressure.

6. The Williamson County, Tenn., chapter of Moms for Liberty alleged a book about Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington promotes “anti-American, anti-White, anti-Mexican” instruction, singling out a photo of segregated water fountains and an image of firefighters hosing down Black children. The chapter also demanded the removal of “The Story of Ruby Bridges,” about a six-year old who integrated a school in Louisiana in 1960.

All Americans should welcome more active engagement of parents in their children’s schools. They should also agree that Moms for Liberty extremists are making our schools — and our democracy — worse.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”

And when that policy involves the pressing issue of solving child hunger, you’d think Congress would move expeditiously to prevent further suffering endured by a defenseless segment of the U.S. population. 

Unfortunately, that isn’t happening. 

The fate of a bill that addresses this very problem by making free school meals permanent for eligible U.S. recipients is currently in limbo. Research has shown such programs can have a positive impact on student math and English test scores. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults support it.

Congress has the ability to act, right now, to make it federal law for the upcoming school year. But the bill has stalled, and its future remains in doubt.  

During the pandemic, nearly 30 million students benefited from waivers that guaranteed access to free school lunch across the U.S. Those benefits expired last year. Since then, nearly a third of students who relied on the free lunch program no longer have access to a daily free meal. In fact, the number of students receiving free lunches last fall was lower than it had been prior to the pandemic.    

The expiration of the federal school lunch program has put pressure on the states — the ones that recognize the importance of helping America’s food-insecure children — to keep this worthy initiative going. A handful have governed and reached bipartisan agreement to fund a permanent solution. Some funded programs through the end of the recent school year, while others are drafting or enacting legislation to try and address the long-term problem.  

New legislation in Congress seeks to make free school meals permanent. The Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023 proposes to make meals available without the hurdles, barriers and red tape that have complicated access for many children following the expiration of the pandemic-era lunch relief program. 

One of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), captured why congressional action is needed: “In the richest country on earth, it is unacceptable that millions of kids go hungry each day,” she said. She added that the bill “would make our families and communities healthier and stronger, keep kids in school and work to fight the stigma too often associated with meal programs.”  

Astonishingly, the U.S. trails the rest of the world in recognizing and prioritizing the value and importance of free school lunches for students. Research by the Global Partnership for Education found these initiatives create better learning outcomes and higher school attendance. The group also found investments in these programs support the overall health and development of nations through the creation and enablement of educated populations. 

In fact, governments from over 80 countries around the globe have formed the School Meals Coalition with the stated goal to provide “a healthy meal every day for every child.” Each member nation must sign a pledge committing to working together to “[s]et out a long-term plan to restore access to school meals for children who lost them during the pandemic and reach those previously left behind.”  

The U.S. is included among the list of signatories of that coalition, yet many in Congress have failed to honor the important public health mission that this collective has endeavored to resolve. 

Child hunger exists in every state in the nation. It is a red and blue issue. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture operates a summer program that provides free meals to eligible children in 45 states. But soon, another school year will begin, and many children will be faced with the fear of not knowing when their next meal will arrive unless Congress does something about it. 

Free school lunch permanency would represent great progress toward reducing the daily pain felt by millions of children across the country. It’s also even more important, now that the debt limit agreement has constrained Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program accessibility for food-insecure Americans.   

Starving students need it, and the vast majority of U.S. adults support it. So what’s stopping Congress from taking action to solve it?  

Lyndon Haviland, DrPH, MPH, is a distinguished scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.  

There’s a reason the Biden administration, congressional Democrats and so many of the media leftwing talking class were so upset about the decision in the affirmative action case against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. They're even more upset that the Supreme Court decision is popular, with one poll showing 52 percent supporting it and only 32 percent opposed.

This has to do with their attempt to re-frame the very concept of “diversity” as something that cannot survive a merit-based college admissions system.

There is a not-so-subtle racist assumption in there — that Black students will fail if made to compete on an even playing field. But beyond that, the real question is why people might adopt such an assumption in the first place.

That’s the question Democrats don’t want asked, because they know the answer could cost them their next primary election.

The question people should be asking in places like my hometown of Detroit and my adopted city of Baltimore is why such a large racial achievement gap exists in schools. Yes, liberals claim that it’s just systemic racism. But think about it for a minute. Just who are they saying is the racist? Who is causing the racism in the system? 

Is it the unionized teachers in those cities? Is it the principals? The parents? The mayors, who have been all Democrats in both of those cities since the 1960s? Is it the nearly all-Democratic city council's members? Is it something in the water?

This is where the circular reasoning that blames everything on systemic racism falls apart. 

The actual reason for the disparities in educational outcomes is, of course, a failed education system — a system that is significantly worse wherever Democrats have been in control for a very long time. Note that most of the cities with the worst educational outcomes — Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles — aren’t located in deep red states where Republicans can unilaterally impose their will from a state capitol. 

In fact, maybe that’s just the sort of firm hand that some of those cities could use. In 2012, Republicans took over Mississippi’s state legislature for the first time in 136 years. Ten years and a few new education reform laws later, Magnolia State students have rocketed upward from 49th to 21st place in reading proficiency. Teachers unions broadly oppose the reforms that Mississippi adopted, naturally.

Today, there are 22 schools in Baltimore where not a single student is proficient in math at grade level. The students in those 22 schools are, of course, overwhelmingly Black. 

The education system’s failure to prepare non-white students for college admissions on the merits is not just an accident of Democratic one-party rule. It is a feature of Democratic machine politics. The two major teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — tell Democrats to jump; Democrats lack the spine to do anything but ask, “How high?”

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, is a staple at Democratic campaign rallies. She played an immense role personally in keeping schools closed during COVID-19, using her outsized influence to undermine science-based decisions by President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This act alone has cost Black students, particularly those in already-failing school districts, years of progress that they will likely never make up.

Open Secrets reports that teachers unions spent almost $60 million in hard and soft money on the 2020 election. Going back to 1990, these unions have given about 94 percent of that to help Democrats, but today the number is much closer to 100 percent. And that doesn’t even count the essential role the union staff and members play in getting out the Democratic vote and shaping the outcome of Democratic primaries. 

Do you really think Democratic officeholders are going to stand up to the constituency that comprises their party’s lifeblood by calling for accountability and pointing out its failures? Of course not. Instead, generations of children are being sacrificed to a system designed to avoid accountability.

Democratic officeholders would rather keep “separate, but equal” standards for college admissions than set higher standards for a constituent group they cannot afford to offend. 

If you really want to see more qualified Black students get into Harvard, the answer is not to engage in blatant discrimination and ugly stereotyping against Asian American students, as Harvard and UNC had been doing. It is to fix the big-city education systems that Democratic Party politics has broken.

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).

Interestingly, the decision allows a loophole by which applicants can indicate their race by describing, for example, how they overcame challenges they encountered because of their race.

Allowing for race to contribute to admissions decisions through such imperfect and subjective proxies is a very inefficient means for colleges and universities to achieve their diversity objective. It imposes substantial costs on admissions committees, but it also imposes substantial costs on applicants, as they strive to craft a personal statement to demonstrate race-based adversities. The additional costs to both universities and applicants to achieve an objective that could be met more cheaply is what economists would call a dead-weight loss to society.

This is money and time that could otherwise be devoted to improving educational opportunities for a broad swath of students, including those students without elite institutions on their radar screen. It incentivizes applicants to focus on how their race has specifically impacted their life and diverts time and attention from more valuable educational activities. 

It is well-established that a ban on affirmative action in university admissions will result in a substantial drop in the share of qualified Black and Latino students at elite institutions. But we are still only talking about a very small share of the 2 million college undergraduates a year who would be displaced. The larger societal problem is that these elite schools provide the pipeline to leadership roles in society.

These graduates are overwhelmingly more likely than those from broad-access institutions to earn professional and graduate degrees, and to become the doctors, lawyers, legislators, professors and executives who have leadership roles in society. And, as my research shows, race is not an important determinant of success in advanced degrees programs among those who earned their undergraduate degree from an elite institution, whether or not any individual student may have benefited from affirmative action. A reduction in the number of Black and Latino undergraduates will inevitably result in a reduction in the diversity of professionals in these leadership roles. 

The narrowing of the pipeline provides a further challenge to employers who value diversity in their workforce and leadership. Elite employers recruit and hire graduates of elite educational institutions. Federal contractors — that includes defense firms, pharmaceutical companies and universities — have a legal responsibility to take proactive steps to recruit and advance qualified minorities. But with fewer Black and Latino graduates of elite institutions, firms will find it harder — or, at least, more costly — to meet their diversity goals.

Expanding recruiting to a broader range of colleges and universities is a start, but this does not by any means guarantee that recruiting efforts will successfully create a leadership pipeline. Elite education confers a vast array of professional advantages beyond the greater rigor of the coursework, and includes networks and mentoring. Even the most talented of nonelite graduates, of any race, who is employed by a firm in which they are immediately ranked and compared to their counterparts who have an elite education will find advancement challenging.  

Affirmative action in university admissions served as a relatively low-cost method of advancing societal goals, by offering a pipeline to leadership roles. In our country’s continued efforts to overcome its legacy of racial injustice and inequity, banning affirmative action causes a dead-weight loss for everyone.

Joni Hersch, author of the analysis “Affirmative Action and the Leadership Pipeline,” is an economist who works in the areas of employment discrimination and empirical law and economics. She is the Cornelius Vanderbilt chair professor of law and economics at Vanderbilt University and co-director of the Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics.

U.S. national parks are gearing up for a busy summer, rebounding towards pre-pandemic levels. So-called “revenge travel” is expected as people make up for lost time and splurge on summer trips.

But what about overseas travel? It’s often a good barometer of how citizens feel about their own country and about spending time in faraway nations. With the world in turmoil from war in Europe to rising tensions in Asia, many people might think twice about leaving the country.

Despite global conflict, demand to travel out of the country is skyrocketing. The U.S. State Department is on track to set a record for the highest demand year ever, far surpassing surges in 2007 and 2017 and exceeding official projections. Most popular is transatlantic travel, with three out of five searched destinations showing summer flights to Europe, according to Google Flights data.

But beyond individual travel overseas, there is something bigger that our nation needs to survive and thrive as a great power: study abroad. What we are lacking is the ability of most American families to send their high school and college kids to study outside the United States during their formative years.

The number of American students who go abroad for academic credit beyond short-term travel represents only 2.7 percent of American university students who attend four-year and above colleges and universities.

The Institute of International Education (IIE) has been tracking these numbers for decades. According to its most recent “Open Doors Report,” only 14,549 students went abroad in 2021/2021 — a 91 percent decline compared with the previous year, thanks to the pandemic. Even then, at its highest, the numbers of young Americans traveling overseas is too low; in 2018, just 35,000 U.S. students went abroad for academic credit, and the majority went to Europe.

Another problem for study abroad is a continued lack of representation for minority students. Every graph on this subject confirms that the majority of those studying abroad from American institutions are white and of means, and their primary destination is Europe.

For the United States to compete in a globally connected world, we must be globally connected. The benefits of studying abroad range from personal growth to business acumen. Data show that experience overseas leads to better jobs and higher incomes, as well as cultural understanding, tolerance, independent thinking and international networking. The true measurement of global health is the ability of a nation to expose its young people, on a routine basis, to other cultures.

So, what can be done to boost the numbers of young people studying abroad?

Government and the non-profit sectors are stepping up to create more incentives and opportunities for young people to go overseas. The American Passport Project, administered by the Institute for International Education, seeks to help 10,000 students get a passport by the end of the decade.

Last year, Congress passed the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Act to expand access to federal grants, with a focus on access based on gender, ethnicity and income level. There is also a push to provide opportunities for students with disabilities to find programs overseas.

But we need more concerted efforts by companies, colleges and the U.S. government to provide scholarships, financial aid and federal support to incentivize young people to go abroad to study.

As we celebrate America’s independence, let’s re-commit to do what is in the national interest, to open our hearts and minds to those who live outside our borders and learn from them to enrich our own democracy. We must see and know others to understand ourselves.

Tara D. Sonenshine is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in public diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

The states, said Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, are America’s “laboratories of democracy.” Today’s red-state Republicans see them differently — as staging grounds for cultural revolution.

Despite polls showing that most Americans favor legal abortion, 15 Republican-controlled states have passed laws depriving women of their reproductive rights. They are also targeting the nation’s public schools.

So far this year, 10 red states have enacted laws expanding school vouchers and similar subsidies to private schools. Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Oklahoma and Florida have gone farther, passing “universal voucher” bills that allow even the wealthiest families to collect public dollars for private schooling.

Republican support for vouchers isn’t new, of course. In the past, however, conservatives at least pretended to be concerned about low-income and minority parents whose children are trapped in bad urban schools. Now it’s clear their idea of “school choice” is to give all U.S. families with children financial incentives to exit public schools.

A similar push by a GOP-dominated legislature recently prompted North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, to warn of an impending “state of emergency” in funding public schools. “It’s clear that the Republican legislature is aiming to choke the life out of public education,” he said.

The immediate effect of the GOP push for universal vouchers, education savings accounts and tax credits will be to funnel government subsidies to parents who already have kids in private schools. Universal vouchers will cost taxpayers plenty. In Florida, the bill’s sponsors say a voucher of about $8,000 a year will cost $210 million; critics estimate the true cost at $4 billion. 

What Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and other GOP leaders seem to want is to set up a parallel education system consisting of private – and primarily Christian – schools. (Almost two-thirds of private schools have a religious affiliation.) Here, free from annoying constitutional strictures on religious expression and censorship, conservative verities would hold sway.     

Rightwing privatizers are clearly feeling emboldened by parental indignation over prolonged school closures, steep learning losses and the seeming indifference of school authorities and unions to their concerns. The spate of voucher laws goes hand-in-hand with GOP demands for “parents’ bills of rights,” book bans and an end to “woke” indoctrination of children.

It's also true, though, that Republicans are exploiting a political vacuum left by a Democratic Party that’s gone AWOL on school reform. While red states go all in for privatization, Democrats are fighting rear guard actions to defend a K-12 status quo clearly in need of change.

That’s eroding the big advantage Democrats have long enjoyed on education issues. Where previous Democratic presidents (especially Bill Clinton) led the charge to modernize America’s outdated, factory-style public school model, the Biden administration has essentially outsourced its K-12 policy to politically mighty teachers’ unions.

Apparently, it’s forgotten that visionary Democrats in Minnesota, California and Colorado and other states and cities pioneered public school choice to help disadvantaged kids ill served by traditional district schools.

Although Republicans rhetorically lump charter schools and vouchers together under the “school choice” banner, they are quite different. With charters, accountability flows in two directions: upward to a public oversight board and downward to parents who can vote with their feet if they think schools aren’t meeting their kids’ needs.   

Vouchers have zero public accountability. Universalizing them inevitably would create a private marketplace for education that, like all markets, would stratify by income and wealth. The result would be separate and unequal schools reinforcing America’s deep class and racial disparities.

By turning their back on poor and minority parents languishing on long charter school waiting lists, Democrats have opened the doors to the version of choice Republicans clearly prefer, which aims not at improving public schools but helping conservative parents escape them.  

There’s a tragic irony here: The Democrats’ punt on K-12 reform comes amid stunning new evidence that public charter schools are outperforming traditional district public schools.  

A third comprehensive study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (Credo) finds that compared with traditional district schools, charters “produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population.”

In general, charter students showed significant advantages in math and reading proficiency, with Black and Hispanic students showing especially large gains compared to their counterparts in district schools.

The Credo study also blows away the persistent myth that charters “cream” the most motivated students. “In fact, we find the opposite is true: charter schools enroll students who are disproportionately lower achieving than the students in their former (traditional public schools.)”

Most encouragingly, the study concludes that autonomous public charter schools, which operate independently of central districts and union contracts, are closing the nation’s stubborn achievement gaps:

“The real surprise of the study is the number of charter schools that have achieve educational equity for their students: we call them ‘gap-busting’ schools.”

So much for the habitual excuse-making by district bureaucrats and unions that it’s unfair to expect them to overcome the impact of ingrained poverty and racism on their students.  

Public school choice is a Democratic success story. It’s also the progressive alternative to the red-state campaign to eviscerate public schools and pour taxpayer dollars into private and religious schools.

By abandoning K-12 modernization and reform, Democrats have foolishly ceded the initiative to GOP culture warriors. Fortunately, they can take it back by putting kids first again.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

As Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” So, as we celebrate Juneteenth this year, let us first take some time to remember that we are still in a fight for complete freedom — freedom of the mind and the body. 

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 13 out of 100 Black students are proficient or above level in math, and only 15 out of 100 in reading. For comparison, 43 out of 100 white students are proficient or above level in math, and 41 out of 100 in reading.  

This means that our Black students across the country are struggling in school at disproportionate rates. And struggling in school can lead to many adverse outcomes for children, including higher dropout rates, higher poverty rates, and higher rates of negative interactions with the criminal justice system. 

We cannot be content with simply being free from slavery. True freedom comes when you are afforded a quality education and knowledge that can never be taken away from you. There is a reason slave owners forbade enslaved people from learning to read and write. They knew that knowledge was a powerful tool and tried their hardest to keep Black people from gaining it.

Part of the reason they fought so hard to keep Black people ignorant was to continue building wealth off of their backs. Money has always been the reason to keep people oppressed. 

While we are no longer enslaved in the United States in 2023, many opponents of school choice are trying to keep Black students oppressed by forcing them to stay in schools that are failing them. True freedom would be to empower families with the tools and resources to choose the best education for their children. More states continue to pass school choice legislation, but the fight is never over. 

Opponents are constantly working to overturn programs and strip freedom and choice away from parents. When thinking about the reasons why, we should take time to remember why slave owners in the 1800s did not want enslaved people to read. Put simply, it is all about money.

We see that echoed today, as a system that fails us sees our students only for the dollars they bring it. If you are rich enough to afford a quality education, then you receive it, but if you are less fortunate, you are not afforded this same opportunity. School choice policies such as tax credit scholarships, charter schools, vouchers, ESAs, homeschooling, and so much more are working to bridge this gap.

The reason school choice is so powerful is that it empowers Black students and other less fortunate students to have the power of knowledge to control their own destinies. 

It is all of our responsibility to fight for our students, and I hope that next Juneteenth, every Black child across the country will have the freedom to attend the best possible school, without limitations.

Denisha Allen is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, school choice beneficiary, and founder of Black Minds Matter. 

If you’re a driven high school senior, getting into college might feel like a competition where schools measure all applicants against the same standard. Justice Samuel Alito adopts this perspective when he compares the process to a 100-yard dash. In a fair race, the fastest get in. Give one a head start, you disadvantage the others.

But this race analogy is distracting. It encourages applicants to measure themselves against some phantom “fastest” person. As a result, many amazing young people agonize over how they fall short instead of celebrating what they’re good at. Others may come to resent a process that fails to recognize their clearly superior speed.

College admission isn’t like a head-to-head race. It’s not about who’s fastest, because each applicant is proposing to follow a different route. Among the students in my last class (at Davidson College) were a physics major defensive lineman who will be an engineer, a musical theater actor headed to law school and maybe politics, and an amateur triathlete studying economics and computer science before going into business.

No single standard — no race — could do justice to the achievements and potential of these three individuals. The admissions committee likely considered different accomplishments when evaluating each of them. They likely also asked whether the path each student wanted to take was possible at Davidson and how each student would contribute to a learning community committed to cultivating “humane instincts and disciplined and creative minds for lives of leadership and service” (Davidson’s primary purpose).

A learning community is a distinctive thing. It isn’t a team — members don’t all share the same goal. It isn’t an orchestra, because students won’t play from a single score. Students will chart a path through a range of curated educational opportunities. Each will bring a distinctive perspective, shaped by experiences, and set of questions to these shared activities. The more heterogeneous the questions, the surer the insights. A community of students with a wide range of backgrounds, aspirations and experiences is best equipped to facilitate one another’s intellectual and personal growth and more generally to seek truth together. Building such a community requires seeing applicants as individuals, each on their own terms.

Because criteria can vary with each applicant’s aspirations, and because many more talented people want in than there is room, mistrust comes very easily. The college admissions process can be maddeningly opaque. It’s demonstrably vulnerable to corruption and can perpetuate inherited privilege. Going forward, institutions can offer more detailed, less jargony explanations for how an entering class is selected. We can describe the distinctive community we each strive to build and make clearer how our educational programs and campus cultures differ, so applicants can make informed choices. We can be open to criticism and even radical change.

The process of college admissions is not like running a race. And while it’s on us in higher education to earn the public’s trust, it’s also important to acknowledge the value that our heterogenous truth-seeking communities provide to students and to the country.

Carol Quillen is professor of history and president emerita of Davidson College, and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute.

If the court rules that race-conscious admissions are no longer necessary because it is allegedly racist toward White and Asian people, the outcome will have far-reaching impacts and will result in continued decreases in diversity in secondary education. It will be devastating for minorities, and will further exacerbate the cultural divisions and increase the racial wealth gap that exists in our country.

A Supreme Court decision to dismantle affirmative action would arrive in the midst of an escalating attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from the far right: Republican lawmakers in 19 states have taken up legislation to limit or block university DEI programs; Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a campaign to dismantle and defund DEI initiatives; and the Texas legislature is approving a new $300 billion state budget prohibiting university spending on DEI. I myself experienced a painfully personal connection to this attack on DEI in higher education, after my attempt to de-escalate a verbal skirmish between a conservative federal judge and student protestors at Stanford Law School went viral in right-wing media.

Donna Brazille wrote, “Diversity means having people of different genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and other demographic categories in jobs and schools. Equity refers to opening up opportunities for different types of people to succeed and get their fair share of the American Dream. Inclusion requires creating conditions at work and school where all types of people feel welcomed, valued and able to make their voices heard.” As much as DEI efforts serve to promote a fair society, there is much effort, resources and political capital being spent trying to dismantle DEI programs and destroy DEI policies and positions.

Dismantling these programs and policies will not end the political and cultural wars, nor heal the wounds those battles have left upon the body politic. The vehement and vitriolic fight to destroy DEI is itself fueled by fear and flamed by hostility to change. Now more than ever, those who believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, and who believe that these values are actually fundamental to our country’s founding and future, must vigorously and vocally defend DEI programs.

There are legitimate criticisms of DEI programs and policies, and like all programs aimed at supporting greater equality, fairness and access for all people, there should be honest evaluation to align the intentions to the impacts, through clarity, transparency and regular evaluation. However, destroying DEI programs, policies and positions will do nothing but keep people divided, physically and ideologically, and maintain a culture of distrust between people of different backgrounds who, when given a chance to connect, to talk to each other, and to learn each other’s stories, would find far more in common than different about our shared hopes and dreams. 

Educational leaders can and must better define their DEI programs, policies, practices and positions, to better describe the purposes, goals and processes, including assessment and course corrections. Education leaders can and should recognize the value DEI programs provide for all students in their institutions. That includes unapologetically supporting programs that explicitly reduce barriers and provide support for students from groups that have been explicitly excluded from participation because of their cultural identity. Making amends and accountability for past mistakes are also fundamental components of American ethos and values.  

Tirien Steinbach is an attorney who has served as associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion at Stanford Law School as chief program officer at the ACLU of Northern California; in 2017, she launched the Coalition for Equity and Inclusion in Law.

Resource guides for children’s books on transgender people instruct the teacher to tell students that people only “guess” gender based on body parts. What’s more, religious parents with opposing beliefs about gender are no longer permitted to opt their child out of the elementary curriculum.

Now, there is a pending lawsuit by Muslim and Christian parents against MCPS. And at a recent Board of Education meeting, Muslim families testified about their concerns, only to be told by one council member, Kristin Mink, that (the entirely brown or Black) Muslim families were on the “same side” as “white supremacists.” She has since understandably expressed regret for saying such a thing.

Evidently preposterous on its face, Mink’s statement also got to the core of the conflict: a clash of victimhood and a stark inability to value the religious vulnerabilities at the core of the dispute. 

Mink went on to say, “[T]o allow Muslim families to opt their children out of those books … harm[s] the LGBTQIA+ community.” Meanwhile, Muslim students also shared stories of harm. For example, one student spoke of religious students “being bullied when they say this is against my religion.”

Each side feels deeply wronged, as if the other’s position inherently legitimizes harm to their children and to their community. Such competing victimhood is a common dynamic that functions across multiple chasms — between American Muslims and white conservative Christians and between gay rights activists and religious Americans who have traditional views about marriage and sexuality. In each scenario, the parties devolve into warring factions, incapable and unwilling to speak across vulnerabilities because of entrenched divides. 

The MCPS context is, however, importantly different. The protesting Muslim families have consistently acknowledged the importance of inclusivity and fellowship with students and families potentially marginalized due to sexual identity. As MCPS middle school student Saad Baig testified June 6, “I’m not here to take away the right of anyone being recognized in the community.” Similarly, community member Hamza Ewing emphasized that: “Our stance, as stated clearly, is not to remove LGBTQ material from the MCPS curriculum. ... We are not spreading hatred ... and, in fact, we firmly stand against hate speech or the degradation of any human being.” 

In contrast, there has been scant consideration of the deep relevance of religion — including religious beliefs about gender and sexuality — to the lives of Muslim, Christian and other religious families at MCPS. Religious parents seeking to opt their children out of the sex curriculum have been portrayed as “brainwashed” and “hateful.” One member of the Board of Education said religious families are seeking a “dehumanizing form of erasure.” The rhetoric consistently reflects a dismissive attitude, a sense that the harm to religious families is unimportant — or worse yet, not even real.  

The myopia is startling. Multiple aspects of the curriculum are deeply impactful to religious families with traditional views of not just gender and sexuality but also on the appropriate role of parents (and schoolteachers) in their children’s lives. Three-year-olds are being taught vocabulary such as “cis-gender” and “pansexual.” The fourth grade curriculum instructs the teacher to explore their students’ romantic attractions, including same-sex attractions. With a book about two girls finding love on a playground, the teacher is to invite students to “acknowledg[e] how uncomfortable we might [be]… when we feel our heart beating ‘thumpity thump’ & how hard it can be [to] talk about our feelings with someone that we don’t just ‘like’ but we ‘like like.’”  

Fifth graders are to read a book about a young girl who believes she’s transgender and is encouraged on this path by parents who don’t ask questions and instead embrace a “child-knows-best approach," which is complemented by a “school-knows-best-approach.” The curriculum prioritizes the teachers’ role in these intimate aspects of young children’s lives and deprioritizes parents. In fact, if parents are not fully affirming of children's self-diagnosis, this curriculum directly makes them the objects of opposition. 

The tension inherent in religious dissent to this sexual curriculum is not a black-and-white issue. The approach to it as such makes it even more difficult to find workable solutions. And to even begin to understand the nuances, the other side must be seen as worthy of engagement.

It should never be acceptable to dismiss sincere religious concerns as akin to “white supremacism,” and to selectively focus on the harm to only one side of a dispute. Both sides stand to be harmed, and neither can nor should claim “harm” completely. To survive these ongoing political contests, we must have the capacity to listen to others’ stories on their terms, not on our own.  

Asma T. Uddin is an attorney and author of "The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America."

But lost in much of this debate has been the enduring themes and lessons that enrich and advance our common values, which have stood the test of time. These ideals have been protected and defended by our colleges and universities for hundreds of years

For example, is there a richer example of lasting values than Lincoln’s Gettysburg address?

His reminder that we are a nation with a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” is an enduring example of the fundamental values that have defined us through the years and serves as the underpinning of the American government.

Our founding fathers understood that in the construction of a new nation, these values were crucial, and not to be taken for granted. Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson were not inclined to flimsy mottos — they took action to ensure public service was promoted throughout the young republic.

George Washington, in his first address to Congress, proposed the creation of a national university that would help to build up the young republic and champion its ideals of democracy and citizenship. Thomas Jefferson established the United States Military Academy at West Point, so that at least the Army had a pool of skilled young graduates prepared and willing to dedicate years of service to our nation.

But the idea stalled after that. No service academy was ever established for the government’s civilian workforce. And our universities are not promoting public service sufficiently to today’s young people.

There is one program operating now that has potential, one we were both involved in starting: the Next Generation Service Corps. It was inspired by a proposal Tom made during campus speaking tours and first piloted by Michael at Arizona State University. It offers undergraduate students training in collaboration and leadership. It encourages students to explore the different ways they can put their talents and education to work for public service, advancing American ideals both at home and overseas — not just in government, but in business or professional careers as well.

The response to this program shows the level of demand that exists for this kind of public service education, with hundreds of students participating at ASU in just a few years. The nonprofit Volcker Alliance has been expanding the program nationally, fostering a network of service-minded students eager to work for a better world. Students majoring in economics are learning about how governments work and how they can be effective partners both from and with the private sector. Students who are passionate about racial justice are learning first-hand from county officials just what it takes to run a free and fair election.

Many of these students told instructors that they’d never heard the concept of “public service” before. They knew they wanted to make a difference — but they needed help understanding how to do it.

“It gave me a mission; it gave me a purpose,” one 2022 graduate from the program, Brianna Stinsman, told us. She went on to attend Johns Hopkins University for her masters in international relations and has an internship with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “For my family, to be a public servant, you were a cop, you were a firefighter, or you joined the military. [This program has taught me] you don’t have to be an incident responder to be a public servant. We’re expanding the breadth of what it means to be a public servant.”

We’re excited to see what the Next Generation Service Corps can become, but alone it’s not enough. Our nation’s colleges and universities need to do more to explicitly train today’s young people for public service.

We were both raised in the shadow of a great war, one that tested anew the commitment of this precious nation to these fundamental values. It is time once again to overcome destructive feuds, and work together in defense of democracy and participatory government. It will not be easy. It never has been. But no nation in history has been better prepared to meet this unending challenge.

Tom Brokaw is a journalist and author and was the anchor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004.

Michael Crow is the president of Arizona State University.

This poses significant short and long-term economic and national security implications for all Americans, from every walk of life and across every corner of our nation.

AI has already begun to alter the global landscape, if not the balance of technological, economic, political, and military balance of power. Indeed, according to McKinsey and the Stanford University AI Index, China ranks second in the world in global AI vibrancy and has “accounted for nearly one-fifth of global private investment funding in 2021, attracting $17 billion for AI start-ups.”

This is not to say America is absent from the AI race. In fact, the Stanford University AI Index reveals that the U.S. leads the world in private investment funding for AI, which was 3.5 times larger than the amount invested in China. The U.S. leads the world in newly funded AI companies, which is more than the European Union, the United Kingdom, and China combined. The U.S. continues to lead the world in AI innovation, as evidenced by the total number of scientific publications about AI. But this lead is eroding due to increased competition from other countries such as China.

The United States’ ability to maintain its AI leadership position and compete in numerous other STEM-related fields is predicated on the country’s commitment to preparing the workforce of today and young people who will comprise the workforce of tomorrow with sufficient data literacy skills.

To be clear, America has a data literacy crisis that threatens our shared security and prosperity. This requires a new national commitment to data literacy education that demands the attention, action, and commitment of policymakers and leaders in Washington and beyond.

In recent years, the government sector, particularly in national security, has been plagued by staffing shortages. This is particularly true when positions require advanced degrees, such as Master’s and Ph.D. degrees, along with stringent citizenship requirements. The private sector attracts the majority of qualified STEM graduates with advanced degrees.

A commitment to data literacy is needed to create a pipeline of students who can fill crucial shortages in anticipated jobs related to national security and AI and meet our need for this type of employment in the future. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that STEM jobs will increase by 15 percent by 2029, with millions more jobs in other sectors requiring higher levels of data literacy than in the past. The need for a data-literate workforce is only going to become more pressing in the coming years.

Data literacy is the ability to read, understand, interpret, engage with, and communicate data. The data-literate can evaluate the quality and reliability of data, ask informed questions about data, and effectively communicate data-driven findings to others. These will be essential skills needed by the workforce of tomorrow that will no longer just be needed in the data sector.

We need a data-literate work force. We need data-literate policymakers. We need a data-literate populous. To get there, it starts in the schools and on campuses.

In recent years, many universities have added or expanded programs around data science, analytics, computer science and similar disciplines. But that’s not enough. Meaningful education that can shape the trajectory of future generations requires centering data literacy into our educational systems at the start of a child’s education. It means increasing the access to data science education, decreasing equity gaps in data literacy, and centering data skills with the timeless educational ideal of the “three Rs.”

Affecting such a systemic educational change will not be easy. We are all aware of the breadth and depth of the issues facing schools and children everywhere. But without preparing today’s children for meaningful career opportunities and societal imperatives that await them, America is at risk of falling behind in AI innovation to China and other global actors.

That’s why the bipartisan congressional sponsors of the act — Reps. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), Jim Baird (R-Ind.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), and Young Kim (R-Calif.) — should be applauded for helping to lead the way in Congress with their recent bipartisan introduction of the Data Science and Literacy Act (H.R.  1050).

Their bill would authorize $10 million annually for schools (pre-K-12 and two- and four-year colleges) to increase access to data science and literacy education in pre-K-12 and two- and four- year colleges.  It would leverage data science literacy as a primary strategy to increase representation and diversity in emerging technology.

Although this $10 million won’t change the world, it will make a difference. It sets forth a path for a national commitment that we will become a data literate society.

More can and should be done, but let us embrace this starting point that protects our vital and vibrant national interests by supporting this legislation and the underlying imperative of data literacy for all Americans.

Laura Albert is a professor and Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is president of INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences.