Mass Incarceration and Children's Outcomes: Criminal Justice Policy is Education Policy

Parental incarceration leads to an array of cognitive and noncognitive outcomes known to affect children's performance in school. Therefore, the discriminatory incarceration of African American parents makes an important contribution to the racial achievement gap. Educators hoping to narrow the achievement gap should make criminal justice reform a policy priority

What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance?

Evidence-based policy has been a goal of American education policymakers for at least two decades. School reformers seek data about student knowledge and skills, hoping to use this information to improve schools. One category of such evidence, international test results, has seemingly permitted comparisons of student performance in the United States with that in other countries. Such comparisons have frequently been interpreted to show that American students perform poorly when compared to students internationally. From this, reformers conclude that U.S. public education is failing and that its failure imperils America's ability to compete with other nations economically.This report, however, shows that such inferences are too glib. Comparative student performance on international tests should be interpreted with much greater care than policymakers typically give it

From Ferguson to Baltimore: the fruits of government-sponsored segregation

Following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody last week, this week has seen rioting in Baltimore and protests across the country decrying police brutality towards the black population. Richard Rothstein argues that while improvements in police quality are needed, the roots of the unrest go deeper, having been shaped by the history of intentional segregation in Baltimore and other cities like it. He writes that without suburban integration to address ghetto conditions, Baltimore’s riots are unlikely to be the last

What Ben Carson needs to know about the long history of housing segregation in America

This week, president-elect Donald Trump announced that he would pick retired neurosurgeon, Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development in his administration. Carson has expressed his opposition towards policies which would work to end segregation, dismissing them as ‘social engineering’. But, writes Richard Rothstein, much of America’s urban racial segregation results from decades of social engineering at the local and federal level. If Carson is opposed to social engineering, he writes, then he should take steps to reverse this segregation such as increasing housing voucher subsidies, advocating for greater spending on transit infrastructure, and reversing the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing policies

The racial academic achievement gap cannot be closed insegregated schools

In the first of two posts, Richard Rothstein unpacks the reasons behind the gap in achievement between African American school students and white students. While many have suggested that this gap can be addressed solely through improving schools, he argues that school reforms will have only limited effect as long as the concentrated social and economic disadvantages facing black children and their families remain unaddressed. He writes that school and neighborhood segregation are a major contributor towards the achievement gap: in Detroit for example, the typical black student attends a school where 3 percent of students are white, and 84 percent are low income. Only by undoing the racial isolation of disadvantaged black children’s’ schools, can the achievement gap be substantially narrowed

If the achievement gap is to be closed, policymakers must firstre-learn the history of state sponsored racial segregation in U.S.metropolitan areas

In the second of two posts investigating racial segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, Richard Rothstein looks at the history of residential segregation in the 20 th century. He writes that in the mid-twentieth century federal housing policy was suffused with segregationist intent, and the effects of these policies still endure. He argues that the vast present-day disparity between black and white household wealth is almost entirely attributable to 20th century government policies which excluded African-Americans from suburban homeownership, and that with this in mind, policymakers should understand that they have a constitutional obligation to pursue aggressive policies to desegregate metropolitan areas

Woodrow Wilson’s legacy of racial segregation can be condemned even by the standards of his own time

After months of debate and protests, the trustees of Princeton University this month rejected demands to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s facilities but agreed that the university should do more to present Wilson’s contributions to segregating US society. Richard Rothstein writes, however, that the trustees blundered by accepting the claim that Wilson’s actions were reprehensible by the values of “our times.” We do not have to judge Wilson’s actions by the standards of today, Rothstein says; the standards of many of Wilson’s early 20th century contemporaries are more than enough to condemn his views and actions on segregation

High rates of parental incarceration among African-Americans means that criminal justice reform is now education reform

African-American schoolchildren have a one in four chance of having a parent who is in jail, or who has been previously incarcerated. In new report Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein argue that incarceration of African Americans – which has been on the rise due to increasingly punitive sentencing policies as well as the ramping up of the “War on Drugs” – has made a significant contribution to the racial achievement gap in education. They write that criminal justice reform is now education reform, and that it should be high on educators’ lists of concerns

Netbank: The Conservative Internet Entrepreneurs

NetBank is a successful Internet startup. In late 2001 it was the only Internet Bank that really succeeded in the U.S. By the end of 2001, NetBank operated nation wide with nearly a quarter of a million customers. The number of accounts grew at 275 percent per annum compounded since incorporation. This case describes the development of NetBank and addresses the issues it faced in handling rapid growth as it implemented Internet banking