# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose to write about is California’s proposition 227 in 1998. This proposition included several different things such as a mandate that made it so public school must be taught primarily in English.  It also limited the amount of time LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students could stay in special classes. This meant that students who would have normally taken multi-year English proficiency classes were limited to just one year.

This proposition was very controversial as it was closely related to sensitive topics such as race and immigration. It was passed 61% to 29% and was not overturned until 2016. The original proposition was overturned by proposition 58 which finally allowed public schools to provide students with a bilingual education.

This is important to the history of education because the initial proposition was a huge step back for California. By passing this proposition, California caused further dislike of immigrants and limited students' opportunity to learn. LEP students lost opportunities to better learn English and therefore limited the other classes they could learn from. It is shocking that it took until 2016 for the 1998 proposition to be overturned. However, since the proposition has finally been overturned, bilingual classes have been allowed and there are now many opportunities for non-native English speakers.

Proposition 227, 1998: English Language in Public Schools. (2020). Ca.gov. https://lao.ca.gov/ballot/1998/227_06_1998.htm

‌

Hailee Dworaczyk

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose is the passing of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Initially, what we now know as Title IX started as proposed amendments to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sex discrimination. Later, guided by the first Asian-American woman elected to the house of Representatives and first woman of color in Congress, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Title IX was signed into law on June 23, 1972 under President Richard Nixon. It prohibits the discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program that receives federal financial assistance. Though Title IX covers discrimination across all aspects of education, we see it primarily comes up with regard to school athletics. There are three ways that Title IX covers athletic programs, accommodation to students' athletic interest and abilities, the awarding of financial scholarships, and the benefits, treatment, and opportunities given to men's and women's teams. All institutions are also required to have a Title IX Coordinator, and if a student does experience something that violates Title IX, they can file a complaint with the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. However, even with all of these things in place it is still estimated that 80 to 90 percent of schools are not compliant with Title IX with regard to school athletics. So, as is the case with many other aspects of culture and diversity within American education, there is still work to be done.

Alexandra Wimberly

A Partial Timeline of Educational Oppression in the U.S. (n.d.). https://theequitycollaborative.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Education-Timeline-Handout.pdf

Alexander, K. L. (2019). Patsy Mink. National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/patsy-mink

Bell, D. (2022, June 23). Patsy Takemoto Mink’s Title IX Legacy | Teaching with the Library of Congress. Blogs.loc.gov. https://blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2022/06/patsy-takemoto-minks-title-ix-legacy/

The 14th Amendment and the Evolution of Title IX. (n.d.). United States Courts. https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/14th-amendment-and-evolution-title-ix#:~:text=Title%20IX%20of%20the%20Civil

Women's Sports Foundation. (2019, September 10). What is Title IX? - Women’s Sports Foundation. Women’s Sports Foundation. https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/

# data[].attributes.body
The case I chose was Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). This case is over school-sponsored prayer in public schools being unconstitutional. This case came about because a New York State law required public schools to open each day saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They also required public schools to say a nondenominational prayer that professes their dependence to God. Students who have objectifiable excuses not to participate in this were excused. Several parties found this to be unfair and invalid. One parent in particular found this to be a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which is made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Black held that school-sponsored prayer violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The majority stated the point that allowing certain students to excuse themselves from this prayer does not make the law constitutional because the First Amendment's purpose is to prevent the government from interfering with religious aspects. The majority stated that religion is important to a lot of American people but there is a wide variety of beliefs so it isn't applicable to make students adhere to one specific belief system.

Justice Douglas took an even broader view of the Establishment Clause stating that any form of public promotion of religion violates the Establishment Clause. In his dissent, Justice Stewart stated that the Establishment Clause was specifically meant to prohibit the establishment of state-sponsored churches but not prohibit the involvement of government with religion. He argued that because the prayer was nondenominational and there was an allowance of exemption, it removed all constitutional challenges.

This relates to culture and diversity in education because everyone has different beliefs. People come from different backgrounds therefore, requiring them to say a prayer that doesn't revolve around their beliefs is not appropriate. I can understand the Pledge of Allegiance because we all live in the United States but even so, you cannot force students to stand up and recite things that don't line up with their beliefs or what their parents have personally taught them in their household. Being forced to do school work, projects, etc. in school is valid but prayer is not a part of school lessons. Most individuals that are raised to be engaged in prayer and religious activities are put in religious schools because of the importance of religion in their household. In conclusion, due to the differing backgrounds and cultures of each individual, forcing them to recite beliefs that do not apply to them is unlawful but apparently not to Justice Stewart to the non-denomination of the prayer.

citation:

Facts and case summary - Engel v. Vitale. United States Courts. (n.d.).

https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-

activities/facts-and-case-summary-engel-v-vitale

# data[].attributes.body
The event that I chose to write about is the nation's oldest public school, Boston Latin School. The town of Boston built the school in 1635. The school first started with a curriculum that centered around humanities then later The school adopted a four-year course of study in 1789. Most of the beliefs like many cultures were influenced by the ancestors. The ancestors believed that " which is good and comes from the soul". Just like schools in today's society, The Boston Latin School school was funded by the public. Many people played a role in shaping the school, Master Phiemond Port holding the first classes, Ezekia Cheever influenced their accepted Latin grammar. Over the many years leading up to the 1900s' there were multiple additions to the school ending with both the renovation of the main building and the construction of a new physical education. In 1998, the admission department implemented change and the requirements were solely based on grades and scores from the assessment as opposed to other factors. The first woman who was appointed headmaster was Cornelia A Kelly in the year of 1998 making it possible for many other women to be appointed after her. Fortunately, like many other schools, they were able to adjust during the pandemic and sustain themselves as an institution.

MarQuisha Brantley

BLS history. BLS. (n.d.). https://www.bls.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=206116&type=d

# data[].attributes.body
I choose to write abut school desegregation. The supreme court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision finally mandated equal access to education. Even though the Brown v. Board of Education, some school still was segregated. White teachers separated black children and labeled them as educationally impaired. Teachers wasn’t made to learn about every culture, but they should be sensitive to all children and be positive to them. A recent ethnographic study of a junior high school showed that although students came to the school with hopeful visions of the future, the school, in actuality, did not show them how to handle life experiences. Multicultural education means educating everyone in a way that promotes equality, unity, acceptance, and understanding so that each individual can develop a positive self-image to help him or her have an equal opportunity for success. Multicultural includes everyone, whether Black, White, rich, poor, handicapped, male, female, Alabamian, Californian—everyone is multicultural in the fact that we all have differences. Because students are so diverse, it is the job of the educators to provide each with an equal opportunity for a good education. The teacher has the greatest opportunity to help in achieving this. I wrote about this to show how much things from back in the 1900s up until today.

Shayna McNair

Banks, J.A., & Banks, C.A. (1989). Multicultural education issues and perspectives.

# data[].attributes.body
Ruby Bridges is the picture for change in the Education system in Louisiana. At the tender age of 6y/o, Bridges passed the test assigned to all African-American students to generate a list of those "smart enough" to join all white schools. Bridges passed with flying colors and in November 1960, she was put in the middle of a cultural diversity movement.

Adrianna Lewis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ruby Bridges (born September 8, 1954, Tylertown, Mississippi, U.S.) American activist who became a symbol of the civil rights movement and who was, at age six, the youngest of a group of African American students to integrate schools in the American South.

Bridges was the eldest of eight children, born into poverty in the state of Mississippi. When she was four years old, her family moved to New Orleans. Two years later a test was given to the city's African American schoolchildren to determine which students could enter all-white schools. Bridges passed the test and was selected for enrollment at the city's William Frantz Elementary School. Her father was initially opposed to her attending an all-white school, but Bridges's mother convinced him to let Bridges enroll.

Of the six African American students designated to integrate the school, Bridges was the only one to enroll. On November 14, 1960, her first day, she was escorted to school by four federal marshals. Bridges spent the entire day in the principal's office as irate parents marched into the school to remove their children. On Bridges's second day, Barbara Henry, a young teacher from Boston, began to teach her. The two worked together in an otherwise vacant classroom for an entire year. Every day as the marshals escorted Bridges to school, they urged her to keep her eyes forward so that-though she could hear the insults and threats of the angry crowd- she would not have to see the racist remarks scrawled across signs or the livid faces of the protesters. Bridges's main confidants during this period were her teacher and Robert Coles, a renowned child psychologist who studied the reaction of young children toward extreme stress or crisis. Toward the end of the year, the crowds began to thin, and by the following year the school had enrolled several more Black students.

Bridges's bravery inspired the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With (1963), which depicts the young Bridges walking to school between two sets of marshals, a racial epithet marking the wall behind them. Her story was also recounted in Coles's children's book The Story of Ruby Bridges (1995), which has his conversations with her as its foundation. In 1993 she began working as a parent liaison at Frantz, which had by that time become an all-Black school. Bridges also spoke about her youthful experiences to a variety of groups around the country. Her memoir, Through My Eyes, was released in 1999, the same year that she established the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which used educational initiatives to promote tolerance and unity among schoolchildren. In 2009 she published the children's book Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ruby Bridges | Biography, Books, Accomplishments, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ruby Bridges, American activist who became a symbol of the civil rights movement and who was, at age six, the youngest of a group of African American students to integrate schools in the American South. Learn more about Bridges's life and accomplishments in this article.

# data[].attributes.body
In 2017, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights settled an investigation of racial disparities in Milwaukee that resulted in the promotion of equity and report progress(Lewis, 2023). From this teachers began discussing difficult, but relevant, topics in the classrooms, clubs, and meetings in regards to racial discrimination, aggression, prejudice, and many other topics Principle Torres, a BLM and diversity activist, thought would bring awareness to such issues. What ignited her drive to push for racial awareness and inclusivity was the poor treatment towards Black students versus the favoritism to the other students. In the article Torres states “You could see the difference in how teachers treated Hmong kids and how they treated our African American students" and “That hurt my heart to see. Why is this happening? It’s all the biases" (Lewis, 2023). Since this settlement, there are monthly council meetings between students and teachers for students to give input on their classroom and education experience, school climate, food choices etc. There has also been an implementation of more culturally diverse topics and lessons in the school assignments. For example, in one of the Literature classes, there was a lesson on the "Fences" by August Wilson. The "Fences" theme revolves around the protection of Black identity, but how 'fences' have to be built as protection from white discrimination(Lewis, 2023).

-Hannah Krecskay

Lewis, K. R. (2023a, October 5). Schools spend billions on training so every student can succeed. they don’t know if it works. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/09/14/flawed-equity-efforts-us-schools-teachers/70679911007/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
​​Schools spend billions on training so every student can succeed. They don’t know if it works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few districts measure whether training intended to help urban educators narrow the gap between Black and white students’ performance actually works.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was the establishment of public schools in America. In the beginning schools started out as faith based or run by churches, but in the 1830's a man by the name of Horace Mann, who was a Massachusetts's legislator and secretary of the state's board of education began a journey to install public schools in America. The idea of public schools was that they would be available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state government. This idea was known as "common school." "The common school movement encouraged the creation of public schools for multiple purposes." These common schools advocated for the pursuit of knowledge, civic benefit, and economic benefit. The common school is most like what you see today as public school, they teach reading, writing, mathematics, science, and history. This event was significant because it gave all children, such as poor middle class and opportunity to prepare for jobs and increase the states economic standing. The idea of public school started here and with a little refining throughout the years it created the public school system we know today.

Katie Bruce

Pangle, T. L., & Pangle, L. S. (1993). The Learning of liberty: The educational ideas of the American founders. University Press of Kansas. Tyack, D., & Lowe, R. (1986, February). The Constitutional moment: Reconstruction and black education in the South. American Journal of Education, 94(2), 236-256. Vinovskis, M. A. (1992, January 1). Schooling and poor children in 19th-century America. American Behavioral Scientist, 35(3), 313-331.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose is the evolution of the diversity of cultures. Culture is the way throughout history, wars, and revolutions have led to the mixing and blending of different cultures. These events often result in the exchange of ideas, languages, traditions, and beliefs, contributing to the diversity of cultures in different regions. Boyd and Richerson define culture as a species-specific trait in which the human brain produces mental states that process, transmit, and receive information capable of affecting individuals. Humans across the nation have different backgrounds and different living environments. These interactions can lead to cultural borrowing, adaptation, and innovation as people incorporate elements of other cultures into their own practices and identities. Humans have been migrating for thousands of years, whether due to environmental factors, economic opportunities, or conflicts. Migration brings together people from different cultural backgrounds, leading to the formation of multicultural societies and the enrichment of cultural diversity. Humans are now associated with MSA/mode 3 technology, meaning they are associated with the middle stone age and are exemplified by the Levallois technique.

Laneishia Holmes

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049104/

https://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/CultDivers.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

The abundant evidence that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa within the past 200 000 years, and dispersed across the world only within the past 100 000 years, provides us with a strong framework in which to consider the evolution of human diversity. While there is evidence that the human capacity for culture has a deeper history, going beyond the origin of the hominin clade, the tendency for humans to form cultures as part of being distinct communities and populations changed markedly with the evolution of H. sapiens. In this paper, we investigate 'cultures' as opposed to 'culture', and the question of how and why, compared to biological diversity, human communities and populations are so culturally diverse. We consider the way in which the diversity of human cultures has developed since 100 000 years ago, and how its rate was subject to environmental factors. We argue that the causes of this diversity lie in the distribution of resources and the way in which human communities reproduce over several generations, leading to fissioning of kin groups. We discuss the consequences of boundary formation through culture in their broader ecological and evolutionary contexts.

Keywords: culture, human evolution, human diversity, cultural evolution

1. Introduction

In evolutionary terms, if culture is the way in which humans deploy their behaviour through socially learned means, then it could be said that there is only one culture. As other papers in this volume show, the capacity to be at least a limited culture-bearing animal has deep roots in the hominoid clade, probably evolved convergently in other mammalian species, and evolved during the course of hominin evolution over a period of several million years [ 1]. The concept of culture has become increasingly part of the evolutionary toolbox [ 2], but the use of 'culture' by evolutionary biologists remains only a fragment of the anthropological range. While 'culture' is the cognitive system which enables us to generate much of our behaviour, and presumably ultimately involves a set of biologically based cognitive processes, the product is something else entirely. The human capacity for culture has resulted in enormous diversity at the population level, so that we can recognize that the way in which humans form cultures is as important, in evolutionary terms, as the capacity for culture itself. So, while at the species level there may have been the 'evolution of culture', once in place we need to consider an entirely different question-why are there so many different 'cultures'? The answer we will propose is that cultures were and are the outcome of the way in which kin-based human communities reproduce themselves over generations, and in doing so fission; that the rate of fissioning is strongly influenced by ecological and geographical factors; and that humans have a unique cognitive capacity to generate socially transmissable behaviours which structure the outcome of the fissioning. The result is the formation of boundaries between human communities; cultures are the consequence of these group boundaries, and boundary formation is perhaps the central and most important element of the evolutionary ecology of culture. The diversity of cultures derives from the intersection of species-specific cognitive capacities with demographic and ecological conditions over the past 100 000 years. In particular-in contrast to biological processes-it is the way in which that capacity for culture generates behaviours with low within-group variation and high between-group variation that has underpinned the success of the species.

2. Culture and cultures

We consider, following Boyd and Richerson [ 3], the capacity for culture to be a species-specific trait, in which the human brain produces mental states which process, transmit and receive information 'capable of affecting individuals' behaviour that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission'. One of the primary outcomes of the capacity for culture is particular sets of behaviour, mostly homogeneous within populations, and different between them. Culture, therefore, produces 'cultures'. Individuals in close social proximity adopt behaviours which are similar to each other and different from others. Cultures, for the purpose of this paper, therefore, are communities with shared behaviours, and we would argue that although other types of cultures can and do occur, they have in evolutionary terms been isomorphic with kin-based reproductive communities, and thus populations in the biological sense [ 4]. In contrast to other discussions about cultural diversity [ 5- 7], we are interested in the diversity of these communities, as ethno-linguistic groups in all probability, rather than the cultural traits which define them and are propagated by them. We therefore distinguish between cultural diversity (which refers to the way in which socially learned traits diversify and spread), and the diversity of cultures, which refers to the populations or communities which are the reproductive vehicles for cultural traits, and which are the evolutionary beneficiaries (or, conversely, losers) of their adaptive values. In this context, this paper is more concerned with the communities as social and biological units (diversity of cultures), than the specifics of their cultural attributes (cultural diversity).

Communities are, of course, notoriously difficult to define, and have few fixed boundaries. For many reasons, individuals move from community to community during their lifetime, and may belong to more than one. Communities may also be nested one within another. We may consider Kenya to be a community as a nation, but it is also a series of communities defined ethno-linguistically-Kikuyu, Turkana, etc.-and even within those, further kin-based clans and groups occur. Fissioning and subdividing seems to be an integral part of the process of culture formation, and so cultures must also be defined as multiscalar.

Cultural communities form the bedrock of human organization and diversity [ 8], and it is our argument here that the process of the diversification of human communities involving cultural behaviours is an essential part of the human evolutionary story. Structured, comparatively invariant, human cultures provide many of the great strengths of human adaptation-the products of the processes of conformity; they also often lie at the heart of human conflict. In summary, an aim of this paper is to ask why are there so many human cultures and how did they come to develop?

3. Human diversity: a biological and cultural paradox

One obvious answer to the question about the scale of the diversity of human cultures is to posit that it reflects the scale of biological diversity. Humans are a vast population, spread across the whole globe, and living in many different environments. It could therefore be expected that large numbers of human cultures would reflect high levels of biological-or more specifically, genetic-diversity. However, this is not the case. The human species is a young one, descended from a small population that lived in Africa between 150 and 200 kyr ago. As a result, the human species is genetically not very diverse. Measuring genetic diversity can be done in a number of ways, but a simple one is to compare sequence diversity in mitochondrial DNA across species. shows for species and subspecies of great apes and humans that the latter have the lowest level of diversity, reflecting the short time-depth of human populational origins [ 9].

Any attempt to compare cultures across species in a similar way is doomed, as the scale of difference is too vast. Humans are genuinely unique in the rate at which they can generate differences between communities, even if there are primate homologues for the capacity. The Ethnologue records some 6909 extant languages [ 10]. Price's Atlas of Ethnographic Societies [ 11] records over 3814 distinct cultures having been described by anthropologists, certainly a major underestimate. In practice, given definitional problems and a state of constant flux, a precise number cannot be calculated. However, another way of considering the problem is to calculate that if all the world's languages were evenly distributed across the habitable world, then, on average, a journey of only 78 km would bring a traveller from the centre of their language territory to a language boundary. A journey of 1000 km would, on average, pass through over six language territories. The traveller across the same distance would be less able to distinguish major phenotypic differences, and would see few marked boundaries. Languages are more widespread than cultures, in most cases, so the rate of changing culture would be even faster. These areas and distances are well below the resolution for geographical ancestry estimates based on genetics.

These are gross generalizations, and exceptions can be found where biological boundaries are abrupt and clear-cut, and cases where cultural boundaries are diffuse. Also, the areas occupied by cultures vary environmentally [ 12- 15], and so the distances may well be smaller or larger. Nonetheless, this broad generalization is sufficiently true to allow us to explore the paradox of low biological diversity and high numbers of cultures, in terms of the processes of cultural diversification.

The relationship between biological and cultural diversity can be examined through its structure. According to Lewontin [ 16], approximately 85 per cent of the genetic variation observed in human populations occurs within, rather than between populations [ 16]. Although out of date, Lewontin's analysis of variance remains a relevant observation about genetic variance. His analysis was pre-genomic, and based on single loci considered independently. Molecular data and multiple loci have greatly modified Lewontin's observation [ 17, 18], but it remains the case that there is considerable variation within all human populations and communities, certainly at larger geographical scales.

What happens when we turn to cultural diversity and ask the same question about intra- and inter-population variation? It is obvious that cultural variation should be partitioned very differently, for what constitutes a culture is the sharing of behavioural, social and material traits, and these are different between cultures [ 19]. Cultural diversity can virtually be defined as between populational behavioural variation (). Of course, it is not the case that every member of a culture is behaviourally identical, and in practice a culture is made up of individuals each of whom has a different combination of behaviours, in the same way as each individual in a population has a unique combination of genes. One of the main differences between genes and cultural traits is the within-populational frequency of variants, with cultural variants being mostly more homogeneous within than between groups in their expression. It is this difference that allows us to draw cultural maps as territories far more easily than we could with biological markers.

The key point is that both biological and cultural traits reside in individuals, but take on a population-level character which is both shaped by and shapes evolution. Both types of trait vary within and between populations, and can be described in frequency terms, but their structure is very different, and so acts differently in adaptive terms. Selection for generating and/or maintaining different cultures is nothing more, in a way, than strong pressure for fixation of behaviour within groups. The remainder of this paper will consider how this diversity of cultures has developed-the pattern-and the processes by which it is structured.

4. Prehistory of the diversity of human cultures

(a) Evolution of Homo sapiens: constraining cultural evolution

The paradox of low biological diversity and high cultural diversity among humans can be used to provide us with a basis for considering the origins of community-based cultural diversity. A variety of genomic markers place the demographic origin of H. sapiens towards the end of the Middle Pleistocene, somewhere between 200 and 150 kyr ago [ 20]. Different genetic markers provide slightly different estimates, but this is a broadly robust conclusion [ 21]. For mitochondrial DNA, the older genetic lineages (i.e. haplogroups such as L in the current terminology) have an origin (i.e. coalesce) at around 100 kyr ago [ 20], and there is a suggestion that the genetic diversification of the major geographical groupings of the human population known today occurred between then and 60 kyr ago [ 22]. This does not exclude other and earlier populational lineages, none of which have persisted through to the present day. These results indicate an African origin for the species, with most current human diversity developing after 100 kyr ago.

This information is broadly consistent with the fossil record, although the latter is despairingly sparse for much of the period [ 23]. Omo Kibbish, in Ethiopia, shows a 'modern' if very robust morphology at 190 kyr ago [ 24]; Herto, also in Ethiopia, at 160 kyr ago [ 25], is also 'modern' in certain key anatomical attributes, although does not fit obviously within extant variation. Apart from these early specimens, the African fossil record is scant; Klasies River Mouth (South Africa), Skhul and Qafzeh (Israel, but biogeographically African) occur around 100 kyr ago; and until the end of the Pleistocene the only African specimens of note are Aduma (Ethiopia) and Hoffmeier (South Africa); these are either not very informative, or else do not relate strongly to extant regional populations. Outside Africa, modern human fossils are present from at least 40 kyr ago in Australia, 45 kyr ago in South-East Asia, and at roughly similar times in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe (see [ 26] for summary of later Pleistocene record). Overall, the fossil record indicates a much earlier presence of modern humans in Africa than elsewhere, weak links with local recent populations, and a much later appearance outside Africa.

In terms of evolutionary population history and the diversity of cultures, the genetic and fossil evidence allows us to say that the clock essentially starts no more than 200 kyr ago, and most probably at a much younger date (less than 100 kyr ago).

(b) Phases in the evolution of the diversity of cultures

From this starting point towards the end of the Middle Pleistocene a number of informal phases can be identified, which provide some insights onto the way in which human populations diversified culturally.

(c) Pattern of cultural evolution

What does this brief review of the history of the diversification of cultures show? It can certainly be argued that there is, in the human phenotype, an inherent capacity for communities to diversify and to mark this culturally. There is no reason to suppose that non-modern communities may not also have shared this capacity. However, we would be hard pressed to identify this in the earliest phase of H. sapiens. From very approximately 120 kyr ago, we see much greater evidence for the process of the diversification of cultures, first in Africa, and then elsewhere. The rate, however, is not constant, neither through time, nor in relation to climate, environment and demography. Furthermore, we would argue that this early process of diversification is intimately related to the diversification of biological populations, and so language and culture do map broadly on to genetic diversity, but that later dispersals and extinctions have blurred this correlation. However, as discussed above, the structure of this diversity is very different, and this allows us to consider in more detail the processes through which the evolution of the diversity of cultures takes place.

5. Determinants and outcomes of the diversity of cultures

Having briefly considered the history of patterns of cultural differentiation, two broad issues emerge: the first is the question of what the underlying causes of community differentiation based on cultural traits are, and the second, the consequences for human populational structure.

(a) What leads to the diversification of culturally defined communities?

Determining causality in evolution, especially where humans are concerned, is never simple or uncontroversial, partly because one has to be precise about the nature of the causality proposed (proximate versus ultimate mechanisms, for example), and partly because of a reluctance among anthropologists to accept causal relationships of large issues such as culture. We are concerned here with two very precise elements. One of these is the way in which ecology and the environment more broadly affect the rate of community differentiation-in effect, closely related to Tinbergen's functional question; the second is that cultural diversification arises, almost inevitably, from the reproductive life history of communities. We do not address here, although inevitably assume, that there are underlying proximate cognitive mechanisms which interact with these broader demographic and ecological factors.

(b) What are the outcomes of a tendency to form cultures?

Given three key elements of the process of cultural differentiation-(i) that human communities have a tendency to diverge as a product of how biological and social reproduction develops over several generations, (ii) that the species as a whole exploits this tendency through cognitive systems which mark differences between communities, and (iii) that the rate of such fissioning is ecologically and demographically sensitive-we can ask a further question, namely how these processes, operating together, have structured the diversity of culture on regional and global scales.

6. Conclusions

(a) Individual strategies, group norms, biology and culture

The evidence summarized here suggests that the diversity of human cultures is a specific outcome of the way in which human populations have expanded and dispersed since the origin of the species. Lineage-based communities will fission over time, and the result will be divergence and the formation of boundaries. The rate of fissioning and boundary formation will be ecologically and environmentally sensitive, and local demography will play a major role. While this process is likely to occur in many species, humans bring to it a particular cognitive ability, namely a very high rate of socially transmitted behaviours across a whole realm of activities. The adaptive nature of many of these is one element, but both adaptive and neutral components will have consequential effects on diversification of populations. In particular, it is the capacity of socially transmitted behaviours to retain within group homogeneity-and between group differences-that underlies the links between biological and cultural differentiation.

Two points might seem to emerge from this discussion-one, that culture is simply tracking biological diversity, and the second, that while genes belong to individuals, cultures belong to groups. While there is an element of truth in both these points, it is the differences from them which are more interesting. First, while there is a regional co-variation between culture and biology, phylogenetically, ecologically and demographically, it is more probable that patterns of genetic diversification are following cultural packages, rather than the other way around. Culture, in this sense, constrains biological diversity. Language, beliefs and other customs strongly influence mate choice, and so the transmission of genes. Second, while it can clearly be demonstrated that genes belong to individuals, the converse-that cultural traits belong to groups-does not necessarily follow. In practice, each individual carries around a suite of cultural traits, usually in the context of many other individuals who will share them. However, an individual can deploy his or her suite of such traits in many different ways, including abandoning them completely in favour of others. As such, individuals can further their genetic interest by manipulating their cultural traits-hence confusing further the relationships between biology and culture. Individuals exploit 'cultures' for Darwinian purposes.

(b) What advice should we give the culturally ambitious chimpanzee?

Finally, this paper has focused entirely on humans, and more specifically modern humans, with no references to a broader hominin or hominoid comparative context. Given the presence of many aspects of 'culture' in pre-human hominins, and among some of the anthropoid apes, it might be asked why do these species not diversify at the same rates, and create the same rich patchwork of culturally diverse communities? The odd variation in chimpanzee handshakes does not compete with more than 6000 different ways of saying hello [ 51]. To answer that question would be to specify the conditions under which human evolution took on its unique trajectory.

On the basis of the argument developed in this paper, there are three avenues to be explored. One could be that chimpanzees and early hominins simply lack the cognitive capacity to generate sufficient behavioural variation which can be transmitted, retained and observed. Without that cognitive skill, the persistence of cultural traits, their maintenance within lineages, might not be possible and so 'cultures' die out at a faster rate than they are generated.

A second possibility is that diversity of cultures requires certain environmental and ecological conditions. A high rate of boundary formation required a high gradient of environmental difference, and also a potential for isolation by distance. It is possible that chimpanzees and early hominins inhabit environments lacking the conditions necessary for such diversification, or, as Shennan has suggested, habitats which do not support sufficiently high population densities.

The third proposition lies in the way in which communities developed and fissioned. In practice, human communities will make contacts and alliances even after divergence, often through marriage, and often to maintain sufficient military strength. There is increasing evidence that chimpanzee males are unremittingly hostile to members of other communities [ 52], and this lack of ability to moderate conditionally inter-group encounters may, ironically, be what inhibits high levels of chimpanzee cultural diversity.

Whichever is the case, the similarities and the contrasts between humans and chimpanzees are essential for understanding the conditions under which humans have proved to be capable of generating diversity of community behaviours on an unprecedented rate.

Acknowledgements

The research reported here was partially supported through many research grants from NERC, UKIERI, Eurocores, the Isaac Newton Trust, the King's College Human Diversity Project, and the Leverhulme Trust. We thank Federica Crivellaro for discussions.

References

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The evolution of the diversity of cultures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The abundant evidence that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa within the past 200 000 years, and dispersed across the world only within the past 100 000 years, provides us with a strong framework in which to consider the evolution of human diversity. While ...

# data[].attributes.body
In Massachusetts, the General Court of the decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school. But every town of 100 families should have a Latin school. This was to ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about their Calvinist religion.

This law was called the Law of 1647, or the Old Deluder Satan Act. It was born out of parental negligence. This was a point in the nation's educational history that formal schooling became more desirable.

Education became more of a social responsibility as teachers were formally hired for the purpose of teaching the nation's younger people. School was becoming more of a priority. Another institution made an appearance on the educational stage was a "Dame" school. These schools were set up in the homes, most often the kitchens, of women within the community who had both the time and inclination to teach students in a tutoring manner. In exchange for their services, women received some meager allowance.

There were traveling schoolmasters who made their way to numerous towns to teach children, contributing to the dream of social harmony, religion and literacy.

University of Notre Dame. (n.d.). https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html

Bria Hardeman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1647
The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school. The goal is to ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about their Calvinist religion.

1779
Thomas Jefferson proposes a two-track educational system, with different tracks in his words for "the laboring and the learned." Scholarship would allow a very few of the laboring class to advance, Jefferson says, by "raking a few geniuses from the rubbish."

1785
The Continental Congress (before the U.S. Constitution was ratified) passes a law calling for a survey of the "Northwest Territory" which included what was to become the state of Ohio. The law created "townships," reserving a portion of each township for a local school. From these "land grants" eventually came the U.S. system of "land grant universities," the state public universities that exist today. Of course in order to create these townships, the Continental Congress assumes it has the right to give away or sell land that is already occupied by Native people.

1790
Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education but only for poor children. It is expected that rich people will pay for their children's schooling.

1805
New York Public School Society formed by wealthy businessmen to provide education for poor children. Schools are run on the "Lancasterian" model, in which one "master" can teach hundreds of students in a single room. The master gives a rote lesson to the older students, who then pass it down to the younger students. These schools emphasize discipline and obedience qualities that factory owners want in their workers.

1817
A petition presented in the Boston Town Meeting calls for establishing of a system of free public primary schools. Main support comes from local merchants, businessmen and wealthier artisans. Many wage earners oppose it, because they don't want to pay the taxes.

1820
First public high school in the U.S., Boston English, opens.

1827
Massachusetts passes a law making all grades of public school open to all pupils free of charge.

1830s
By this time, most southern states have laws forbidding teaching people in slavery to read. Even so, around 5 percent become literate at great personal risk.

1820-1860
The percentage of people working in agriculture plummets as family farms are gobbled up by larger agricultural businesses and people are forced to look for work in towns and cities. At the same time, cities grow tremendously, fueled by new manufacturing industries, the influx of people from rural areas and many immigrants from Europe. During the 10 years from 1846 to 1856, 3.1 million immigrants arrive a number equal to one eighth of the entire U.S. population. Owners of industry needed a docile, obedient workforce and look to public schools to provide it.

1836
Slave-owner James Bowie and Indian-killer Davy Crockett are among those killed in the Battle of the Alamo in Texas, in their attempt to take Texas by force from Mexico.

1837
Horace Mann becomes head of the newly formed Massachusetts State Board of Education. Edmund Dwight, a major industrialist, thinks a state board of education was so important to factory owners that he offered to supplement the state salary with extra money of his own.

1840s
Over a million Irish immigrants arrive in the United States, driven out of their homes in Ireland by the potato famine. Irish Catholics in New York City struggle for local neighborhood control of schools as a way of preventing their children from being force-fed a Protestant curriculum.

1845
The United States annexes Texas.

1846
President James Polk orders the invasion of Mexico.
1848
Massachusetts Reform School at Westboro opens, where children who have refused to attend public schools are sent. This begins a long tradition of "reform schools," which combine the education and juvenile justice systems.

1848
The war against Mexico ends with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which gives the United States almost half of what was then Mexico. This includes all of what is now the U.S. Southwest, plus parts of Utah, Nevada and Wyoming and most of California.The treaty guarantees citizenship rights to everyone living in these areas mostly Mexicans and Native people. It also guarantees the continued use of the Spanish language, including in education. One hundred fifty years later, in 1998, California breaks that treaty, by passing Proposition 227, which would make it illegal for teachers to speak Spanish in public schools.

1851
State of Massachusetts passes first its compulsory education law. The goal is to make sure that the children of poor immigrants get "civilized" and learn obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don't contribute to social upheaval.

1864
Congress makes it illegal for Native Americans to be taught in their native languages. Native children as young as four years old are taken from their parents and sent to Bureau of Indian Affairs off-reservation boarding schools, whose goal, as one BIA official put it, is to "kill the Indian to save the man."

1865-1877
African Americans mobilize to bring public education to the South for the first time. After the Civil War, and with the legal end of slavery, African Americans in the South make alliances with white Republicans to push for many political changes, including for the first time rewriting state constitutions to guarantee free public education. In practice, white children benefit more than Black children.

1877-1900
Reconstruction ends in 1877 when federal troops, which had occupied the South since the end of the Civil War are withdrawn. Whites regain political control of the South and lay the foundations of legal segregation.

1893-1913
Size of school boards in the country's 28 biggest cities is cut in half. Most local district (or "ward") based positions are eliminated, in favor of city-wide elections. This means that local immigrant communities lose control of their local schools. Makeup of school boards changes from small local businessmen and some wage earners to professionals (like doctors and lawyers), big businessmen and other members of the richest classes.

1896
Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the state of Louisiana has the right to require "separate but equal" railroad cars for Blacks and whites. This decision means that the federal government officially recognizes segregation as legal. One result is that southern states pass laws requiring racial segregation in public schools.

1905
The U.S. Supreme Court requires California to extend public education to the children of Chinese immigrants.

1917
Smith-Hughes Act passes, providing federal funding for vocational education. Big manufacturing corporations push this, because they want to remove job skill training from the apprenticeship programs of trade unions and bring it under their own control.

1924
An act of Congress makes Native Americans U.S. citizens for the first time.

1930-1950
The NAACP brings a series of suits over unequal teachers' pay for Blacks and whites in southern states. At the same time, southern states realize they are losing African American labor to the northern cities. These two sources of pressure resulted in some increase of spending on Black schools in the South.

1932
A survey of 150 school districts reveals that three quarters of them are using so-called intelligence testing to place students in different academic tracks.

1945
At the end of World War 2, the G.I. Bill of Rights gives thousands of working class men college scholarships for the first time in U.S. history.

1948
Educational Testing Service is formed, merging the College Entrance Examination Board, the Cooperative Test Service, the Graduate Records Office, the National Committee on Teachers Examinations and others, with huge grants from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. These testing services continued the work of eugenicists like Carl Brigham (originator of the SAT) who did research "proving" that immigrants were feeble-minded.

1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and must be abolished. Almost 45 years later in 1998, schools, especially in the north, are as segregated as ever.

1957
A federal court orders integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools. Governor Orval Faubus sends his National Guard to physically prevent nine African American students from enrolling at all-white Central High School. Reluctantly, President Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce the court order not because he supports desegregation, but because he can't let a state governor use military power to defy the U.S. federal government.

1968
African American parents and white teachers clash in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of New York City, over the issue of community control of the schools. Teachers go on strike, and the community organizes freedom schools while the public schools are closed.

1974
Milliken v. Bradley. A Supreme Court made up of Richard Nixon's appointees rules that schools may not be desegregated across school districts. This effectively legally segregates students of color in inner-city districts from white students in wealthier white suburban districts.

Late 1970s
The so-called "taxpayers' revolt" leads to the passage of Proposition 13 in California, and copy-cat measures like Proposition 2-1/2 in Massachusetts. These propositions freeze property taxes, which are a major source of funding for public schools. As a result, in twenty years California drops from first in the nation in per-student spending in 1978 to number 43 in 1998.

1980s
The federal Tribal Colleges Act establishes a community college on every Indian reservation, which allows young people to go to college without leaving their families.

1994
Proposition 187 passes in California, making it illegal for children of undocumented immigrants to attend public school. Federal courts hold Proposition 187 unconstitutional, but anti-immigrant feeling spreads across the country.

1996
Leading the way backwards again, California passes Proposition 209, which outlaws affirmative action in public employment, public contracting and public education. Other states jump on the bandwagon with their own initiatives and right wing elements hope to pass similar legislation on a federal level.

1998
California again! This time a multi-millionaire named Ron Unz manages to put a measure on the June 1998 ballot outlawing bilingual education in California.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Historical Timeline of Public Education in the US

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1647 The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school. The goal is to ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about their Calvinist religion.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose is the establishment of common schools. Horace Mann began advocating for the introduction and creation of public schools. He pushed for theses schools to be free of charge and available to all children no matter what their situation. The point of the schools would be to introduce the different subjects in school such as reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, etc.. He also wanted to "instill civic virtues." Education was also seen as a source of happiness and fulfillment for some people. Some Americans were not in support of this idea. They thought they would be paying for other students education who did not deserve it. This is not the case at all. Some also though a "universal education" was not fair to children of all races and ethnicities. Again, this is untrue. Advocates saw public schools as a way to decrease poverty, crime, etc.. In order for the idea to work, a significant amount of children would need to be enrolled into school. There were enough people who decided to give it a shot and now today we have our version of the public school system. The introduction of public schools has greatly impacted society as a whole. Students are able to have free access to unlimited amounts of knowledge.

Madyson Tankersley

Kober, Nancy (2020). History and Evolution of Public Education in the US.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose to write about is the opening of the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut. Being founded by Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc, both had the intention of bringing a strong education program to the deaf population in America. The school aimed to teach students literacy, salvation (biblical), and the means on which to earn a living. Students at the time of opening were only open to deaf boys, with the establishment of deaf girls joining the school in 1864. This event is a crucial event in the diversity and inclusion of American education because it was the first time there was a school opened for the deaf in the states. Both Gallaudet and Clerc had been studied deaf education in Europe. Gallaudet studied under Abbé de l’Épée, the founder of the first school for the deaf in France. Clerc has studied at that school. Within the first half a century of the university, ASD served as a model for how other schools can become more inclusive, as with all instruction being held in sign language, it allowed for other universities to see how they too can educate a wider demographic. In addition to this, many of the students became educators for deaf schools across the country, expanding the inclusivity and diversity of American education.

Dennis Marchesi

A Brief History Of The American School For The Deaf – ICPHS. (n.d.). https://www.icphs2019.org/a-brief-history-of-the-american-school-for-the-deaf

‌American School for the Deaf. (2013). American School for the Deaf. Asd-1817.org. https://www.asd-1817.org/about/history--cogswell-heritage-house

‌

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States and one important thing he did was implementing this act. He believed "full educational opportunity should be our first nation goal." This act provided funding and opportunities for students in low-income situations. New grants and federal funding helped make this possible. This also helps students with disabilities, and other things that could affect their schooling. This will be able to provide more of an equal opportunity for education among different students with different situations.Another important aspect this act incorporates, is being able to provide resources for students who do not speak english as their first language. Many people in the United States have their first language as things like spanish. Now they will be given the ability to learn english,so they have more potential to be successful with their education. The goal was to shorten achievement gaps among students. This act goes along with the idea of no child left behind. These students are the future of the nation, and we want to give them as many resources as we possibly can to create a positive future.

Delaney Vanover

Every student succeeds act (ESSA). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) | U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn

History and evolution of public education in the US. (n.d.). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
The Little Rock Nine event is a landmark event in the history of education in the United States stepping towards equal access and equal quality of education for all. This event is due to a supreme court case, Brown vs Board of Education (1954), that ultimately declared segregation, which had been legal for the previous 60 years, to be illegal in public schools. The reason this is important to equal access and quality of education is because it showed that the federal government was not only willing to put it on paper that everyone should have equal access to education, but it also showed that the government was willing to take serious measures to ensure this happened. According to George Washington University, “When Brown v. Board of Education declared state-sponsored segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional, public schools were placed in the vanguard of ensuring equity, at times amid enormous backlash.” The Little Rock Arkansas in the “Little Rock 9” event in which President Eisenhower called upon the Army to escort nine black students into class against the will of the Arkansas governor who had been actively preventing the nine students from entering Little Rock Central High School using the Arkansas national guard.

Kober, Nancy (2020). History and Evolution of Public Education in the US.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf

Ethan Curry

# data[].attributes.body
The event I have chosen is the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) of 1975. It is a federal law that requires public schools to provide reasonable and appropriate accommodations for all children with disabilities ages 3-21. Over the years, EAHCA has been expanded upon and has been renamed to the Individual with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA). States that comply with this law are granted federal funds. Note that the guidelines presented in the law are only minimum standards that states must comply with, and many states have additional guidelines for their programs. Some of the guidelines in IDEA are the duration of services (i.e. a child getting care beyond the traditional school year, like summer and winter breaks), free education, individualized education programs (IEP's), identification of the specific disability of the child, and limitation of isolation of the child from traditional schooling (the goal of this is to assimilate the child with "normal" society as much as possible.) I think this is a wonderful program and allows children with disabilities to have access to better opportunities in their adult lives.

Shelby Little

Educational Rights for Children With Disabilities. www.mottchildren.org. (2023, February 28). https://www.mottchildren.org/health-library/ue4929

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Educational Rights for Children With Disabilities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Top of the page Educational Rights for Children With Disabilities Topic OverviewThe Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) of 1975 is a federal law. It is also known as Public Law 94-142. It requires public schools to provide appropriate educational services for all children with disabilities between ages 3 and 21.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I have chosen is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This law was put into place during George W. Bush's presidency. The law was supposed to improve the number of children being held back in grade school as well as closing the learning gap between disadvantaged students and advantaged students. The idea was to achieve this goal, standardized testing had to be implemented to see where kids were struggling in school. Hence every state was required to bring the students in their school system to a skilled level, although it was up to the states to determine what they wanted for their students and what level was appropriate for the students. This law is supposed to keep schools accountable for keeping their student on track and also for making their "adequate yearly progress" known as AYP. If a school doesn't meet these standards they have to let parents choose other schools in the county, they have to start tutoring programs and in some cases might be shut down due to the state having to take over because of the school's poor progress. This law urges schools to find teachers who are qualified and fit for teaching, These teachers had to be implemented in schools that are in areas of poverty and wealthier areas as well. Overall this was supposed to help the public education system, but this has become a very controversial topic among educators and parents. Some people don't believe that it's very effective because it puts too much focus on certain subjects in the classroom which takes away from others. Schools were given a deadline to meet standards that the government put into place and half of them were failing. This was supposed to uplift the schools, but sadly schools were performing worse than before the law was even put into place. The timeline the schools were given to have their students at an adequate level was from 2002 to 2014, at the end of the timeline, President Barack Obama was in office. Obama's administration decided to rewrite the act to hopefully better serve the American public school education system.

Sarah Picklesimer

Klein, A. (2023, November 9). No child left behind: An overview. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
UPDATE: NCLB has been replaced. For information about the latest education law, read our explainer on ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The No Child Left Behind law-the 2002 update of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act-effectively scaled up the federal role in holding schools accountable for student outcomes.

In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act to replace NCLB. ESSA moved in the opposite direction-it seeks to pare back the federal role in K-12 education. For more information on ESSA, read this explainer. See also our full coverage of ESSA and what it means for states and school districts.

NCLB was the product of a collaboration between civil rights and business groups, as well as both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Bush administration, which sought to advance American competitiveness and close the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their more advantaged peers. Since 2002, it's had an outsized impact on teaching, learning, and school improvement-and become increasingly controversial with educators and the general public.

Here are a few frequently asked questions about the law, its history, and its policy implications.

What is ESEA?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program. Passed in 1965, it created a clear role for the federal government in K-12 policy, offering more than $1 billion a year in aid under its first statutory section, known as Title I, to districts to help cover the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The law has been reauthorized and changed more than half a dozen times since that initial legislation. And, for the most part, each new iteration has sought to expand the federal role in education.

What is NCLB?

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the most recent update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The NCLB law-which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive-significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students. And it put a special focus on ensuring that states and schools boost the performance of certain groups of students, such as English-language learners, students in special education, and poor and minority children, whose achievement, on average, trails their peers. States did not have to comply with the new requirements, but if they didn't, they risked losing federal Title I money.

What do states and schools actually have to do under the law?

Under the NCLB law, states must test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. And they must report the results, for both the student population as a whole and for particular "subgroups" of students, including English-learners and students in special education, racial minorities, and children from low-income families.

A school that misses AYP two years in a row has to allow students to transfer to a better-performing public school in the same district.

If a school misses AYP for three years in a row, it must offer free tutoring.

Schools that continue to miss achievement targets could face state intervention. States can choose to shut these schools down, turn them into charter schools, take them over, or use another, significant turnaround strategy.

States were required to bring all students to the "proficient level" on state tests by the 2013-14 school year, although each state got to decide, individually, just what "proficiency" should look like, and which tests to use. (In early 2015, the deadline had passed, but no states had gotten all 100 percent of its students over the proficiency bar.)

Under the law, schools are kept on track toward their goals through a mechanism known as "adequate yearly progress" or AYP. If a school misses its state's annual achievement targets for two years or more, either for all students or for a particular subgroup, it is identified as not "making AYP" and is subject to a cascade of increasingly serious sanctions:

The law also requires states to ensure their teachers are "highly qualified," which generally means that they have a bachelor's degree in the subject they are teaching and state certification. Beginning with the 2002-03 school year, all new teachers hired with federal Title I money had to be highly qualified. By the end of the 2005-06 school year, all school paraprofessionals hired with Title I money must have completed at least two years of college, obtained an associate's degree or higher, or passed an evaluation to demonstrate knowledge and teaching ability. States are also supposed to ensure that "highly qualified' teachers are evenly distributed among schools with high concentrations of poverty and wealthier schools.

What are some of the main criticisms of the current law?

Major portions of the NCLB law have proven problematic, particularly as the law has matured without any congressional update or reauthorization. For instance, it's unclear that the two main remedies for low-performing schools did much to improve student achievement. In many cases, students did not take advantage of the opportunity to transfer to another school, or get free tutoring. States and districts also had difficulty screening tutors for quality. Some districts, including Chicago, successfully petitioned to offer their own tutoring services. States also generally shied away from employing dramatic school turnaround strategies for perennially failing schools.

The NCLB law has also been criticized for growing the federal footprint in K-12 education, and for relying too heavily on standardized tests. And others say its emphasis on math and reading tests has narrowed the curriculum, forcing schools to spend less time on subjects that aren't explicitly tested, like social studies, foreign language, and the arts.

Education advocates also claim the law has been underfunded. The original legislation called for major increases in education spending to offset the cost of reaching NCLB's ambitious goals for student achievement, but federal spending never reached the lofty levels outlined in the law. By fiscal year 2007, for example, annual funding for the main NCLB program, Title I, was supposed to rise to $25 billion. It never got there. In fiscal year 2015, for example, Title I receives about $14.5 billion.

What's more, many states and districts have ignored parts of the law, including the requirement to ensure that highly qualified teachers are evenly distributed between poor and wealthier schools.

In order to improve implementation of the NCLB law, President George W. Bush's second secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, allowed states to apply to participate in pilot projects to try out changes to the law, including a growth-model pilot that let states consider student progress in rating schools instead of comparing different cohorts of students to one another.

What happened to the 2013-14 school-year deadline for all students to be "proficient"?

By 2010, it was clear that many schools were not going to meet NCLB's achievement targets. As of that year, 38 percent of schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress, up from 29 percent in 2006. In 2011, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as part of his campaign to get Congress to rewrite the law, issued dire warnings that 82 percent of schools would be labeled "failing" that year. The numbers didn't turn out to be quite that high, but several states did see failure rates of more than 50 percent. In Congress, meanwhile, lawmakers saw the need for a rewrite, but were unable to bring a bill across the finish line. So that year, the Obama administration offered states a reprieve from many of the law's mandates through a series of waivers.

What do the Obama administration's NCLB waivers do?

What's more, schools that don't make AYP have to set aside a portion of their federal Title I dollars for tutoring and school choice. Schools at the point of having to offer school choice must hold back 10 percent of their Title I money.
The waivers, which are now in place in 42 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, allow states to get out from under many of the mandates of the NCLB law in exchange for embracing certain education redesign priorities. For instance, waiver states no longer have to aim toward the (now past) 2013-14 deadline for getting all students to proficiency, or offer public school choice or tutoring for schools that miss achievement targets.

In exchange, states had to agree to set standards aimed at preparing students for higher education and the workforce. Waiver states could either choose the Common Core State Standards, or get their higher education institutions to certify that their standards are rigorous enough. They also must put in place assessments aligned to those standards. And they have to institute teacher-evaluation systems that take into account student progress on state standardized tests, as well as single out 15 percent of schools for turnaround efforts or more targeted interventions.

The Obama administration has made a number of adjustments to its initial waiver requirements, especially in the area of teacher evaluation, which has been the biggest struggle for states. If the NCLB law has not been reauthorized by the time President Barack Obama leaves office, it's not clear if a new administration will continue with the waivers or put its own accountability plan in place.

NCLB Terms to Know

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): The yardstick at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act. Under the NCLB law, states must test students in math and reading in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school. Schools must report on the performance of different groups of students, such as racial minorities, as well as the student population as a whole. Students are expected to reach annual achievement targets, known as adequate yearly progress, or AYP.

Title I: The section of the law providing federal funding to school districts to educate disadvantaged children. The Title I program was initially created under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and is now part of the No Child Left Behind Act, the most recent reauthorization of that law.
Highly Qualified Teacher: Under the NCLB law, every teacher in a core content area working in a public school had to be "highly qualified" in each subject taught, by the 2005-06 school year. Under the law, highly qualified generally means that a teacher is certified and demonstrated proficiency in his or her subject matter.

Choice: Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (meet achievement targets) for two years in a row must allow their students to transfer to a better-performing school in the district.

Waiver: Comprehensive flexibility that the U.S. Department of Education has granted to more than 40 states and the District of Columbia from key requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) in exchange for embracing certain Obama administration education-redesign priorities on teachers, testing, standards, and school turnarounds.

Supplemental Education Services (SES): This is the No Child Left Behind Act's legal term for "free tutoring." Schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (meet achievement targets) for three consecutive years, even if it's just for a particular subgroup of students, must offer free tutoring to all students. And schools must set aside 10 percent of their Title I funding to pay for the tutoring services. States with waivers don't have to abide by this requirement.

Subgroups: Different groups of traditionally overlooked students, including racial minorities, students in special education, English-language learners, and low-income children. Under the NCLB law, schools must break out results on annual tests by both the student population as a whole, and these "subgroup" students. Schools that don't meet achievement targets for subgroup students are subject to increasingly serious sanctions.

Supersubgroups: Under the Obama administration's NCLB waivers, some states choose to combine several "subgroups" for accountability purposes, resulting in what's known as "supersubgroups." Some civil rights organizations say lumping together different types of students, such as English-language learners and students in special education, makes it much tougher to see how individual groups are progressing relative to other groups of students and the student population as a whole.
NCLB Research and Resources

The text of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, including shortcuts to various parts of the bill dealing with accountability, teacher quality, and more.

All of the information from the U.S. Department of Education about waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act, including which states have them, and what their waiver plans look like.

"It's All Relative: How NCLB Waivers Did, and Not Transform School Accountability," by Anne Hyslop, who at the time was a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, but has since gone to work for the Education Department. An examination of which schools have been identified as underperforming through the Obama administration's NCLB waivers and how accountability looks different than it did under the original NCLB law. (View an Education Week summary.)

"The Impact of No Child Left Behind's Accountability Sanctions on School Performance: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from North Carolina," by researchers Thomas Ahn and Jacob Vigdor. A look at how schools fared under NCLB's original interventions, including public school choice and free tutoring. (View an Education Week summary.)

"States' Perspectives on Waivers: Relief from NCLB, Concern about Long-term Solutions," by Jennifer McMurrer and Nanami Yoshioka for the Center on Education Policy. An examination of state attitudes toward waivers. Highlights state's concerns about how the waivers might effect a potential reauthorization. (View an Education Week summary.)

"Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales: Variation and Change in State Standards for Reading and Mathematics, 2005-2009." A look at how the standards and expectations set under the No Child Left Behind Act compare to those of the nation's report card, the National Assessment for Educational Progress. (View an Education Week summary.)

Focus School: A term that came about as part of the Obama administration's No Child Left Behind Act waivers, not the original 2002 law. It refers to schools with stubborn achievement gaps or weak performance among "subgroup" students, such as English-language learners or students in special education. States must identify 10 percent of their schools as "focus" schools.

Priority School: A term that came about as part of the Obama administration's No Child Left Behind Act waivers, not the original 2002 law. It refers to schools identified as one of the lowest performers in the state and subject to dramatic interventions, including potential leadership changes. States must identify at least 5 percent of their schools as "priority schools."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A primer on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, replaced NCLB in Dec. 2015.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was Milliken vs. Bradley. This event was a major setback for both American culture and American Education. This was all done essentially through the hands of U.S. President Richard Nixon. He had appointed judges in the Supreme Court to resegregate United States schools. This ruling was able to work around the ruling of Brown Vs. The Board of Education. (1) It was said that desegregation could not be applied to the white suburban areas, which effectively kept those areas white. Now many years later we see many inner-city schools as predominately black. This is due to the hands of Richard Nixon. U.S. Presidents used to have much more power with appointing Supreme Court officials. Once he had a majority power in the Supreme court all decisions which he could want to be made, simply could be. This ruling had a profound effect in urban areas, with a very small change in rural areas. Most black people at the time lived in inner-city areas, and many of which residing in ghettos. Nixon, of course, wanted it to stay this way. This decision has lowered the rates of black education through the years and very little people currently know of it. The white and suburban schools continued to produce thriving students while inner city ghetto schools had to make due of lesser funding, and in turn produced a poorer education for students of color.

Wyatt Perron

Baugh, J. A. (2011). The Detroit School Busing Case. Landmark Law Cases & American.

‌

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
University of Pittsburgh School of Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lori Delale-O’Connor - University of Pittsburgh School of Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lori Delale-O’Connor, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban Education and Associate Chair of the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy. She currently teaches courses in qualitative methods, urban education, and the social contexts of education. Dr. Delale-O’Connor’s research focuses on examining the connections between families, communities, and education across spaces with a particular focus on fostering equity and justice for children and youth in urbanized educational systems.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was Griffin v. County School Board of Prince County. This case started back in 1951 when a group of African American students filed a complaint saying that the Virginia laws requiring segregated schools denied them their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. After Brown v BOE, this case was remanded to the lower courts and schools were to desegregate. Later on, in 1964, the Supreme Court held that the Prince Edward County School Board could not close its schools to avoid desegregation mandates. The Court held that the school board's attempt to close public schools and reappropriate public funds to open private segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court said that the students in Prince County were treated differently than other students in Virginia counties. There was no justification for denying all of these students their constitutional rights. The court concluded that a decree should be issued guaranteeing students in Prince Edward County the kind of education that was available in all state public schools. The segregation in this county was completely abolished. Not only within this one county but this case helped spread the word and change school systems all around America.

Noah Storey

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Griffin-v-County-School-Board-of-Prince-Edward-County

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 25, 1964, ruled (9-0) that a Virginia county, in an attempt to avoid desegregation, could not close its public schools and use public funds to support private segregated schools. The court held that the policy broke the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.

In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Supreme Court held that in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. According to the court, segregated educational facilities are inherently unequal. However, during the years immediately after Brown, many governments and school boards experimented with various devices to avoid desegregation. In Virginia, officials undertook a policy called "Massive Resistance," which resulted in a series of antidesegregation efforts that were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. The state legislature then passed a freedom-of-choice program, in which students could choose the school they wished to attend; the policy largely resulted in segregated schools. At that time the state also repealed its compulsory attendance laws, making school attendance optional. Against that background Prince Edward county did not levy school taxes for the 1959-60 school term, which led to the closure of all its public schools in 1959; public schools in all other counties of Virginia remained open. Families were directed to send their children to private schools that were segregated, and state and local funding was provided to those private schools. A private group formed to operate the schools for white children in the county, while local African Americans, including L. Francis Griffin on behalf of his children, engaged in a legal battle to desegregate the public schools.

A federal district court ruled that the closing of the county's public schools was a violation of the equal protection clause, which guarantees that no person or group will be denied the protection under the law that is enjoyed by similar persons or groups. However, an appellate court reversed the ruling, finding that the district court should have abstained until the state court had rendered its decision. The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia subsequently ruled in favour of Prince Edward county. It held that the county had the right to close its public schools and that state funds could be used at the segregated private schools.

On March 30, 1964, the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. In a unanimous opinion it held that the schoolchildren of Prince Edward county were treated differently from the schoolchildren of other Virginia counties. The Supreme Court also reasoned that the closing of the Prince Edward public schools weighed more heavily on black children, since the white children could attend accredited private schools, whereas black children had to either attend temporary schools or not attend school at all. Further, the court pointed out that all the private schools were racially segregated but received state and county financial support. The Supreme Court maintained that though Virginia had wide discretion in deciding whether or when laws operate statewide, the record in Prince Edward county demonstrated that public schools were closed and private schools were operated in their place-with state and county funding-solely to keep white and black children from attending the same schools. The court therefore held that the closing of the Prince Edward county schools denied black students equal protection of the law.

The court then added that the time for desegregating "with all deliberate speed" had run out and that there was no justification for "denying these Prince Edward County school children their constitutional rights to an education equal to that afforded by the public schools in other parts of Virginia." The court concluded that a decree should be issued guaranteeing students in Prince Edward county the kind of education that was available in all state public schools. The federal appellate court's decision was reversed, and the district court's ruling was affirmed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
griffin v. county school board of prince edward county

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County | Desegregation Case, Supreme Court Ruling

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 25, 1964, ruled (9-0) that a Virginia county, in an attempt to avoid desegregation, could not close its public schools and use public funds to support private segregated schools.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which occurred in 1954. The case originated when a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools. Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment (History.com, n.d.).
It overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which had authorized racial segregation in public facilities, including schools. This decision laid the groundwork for the desegregation of schools across the United States and set a legal precedent for challenging segregation in other areas of society (History.com, n.d.).This decision helped start the civil rights movement and made people realize that separating kids in schools based on race was wrong. It changed the law and made schools desegregate, which means they had to let kids of all races go to the same schools. This was a big step towards ending segregation in other parts of society too.

Abigahile Bruny

History.com (n.d.). Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, ruling & impact. History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

# data[].attributes.body
This article gives us information as to why Cultural Diversity in American Schools is important and analyzes the educational implications of the cultural diversity of American Schools. It states, "The success of schools and educators depends on the understanding that embraces racial, gender, cultural, and attitudinal differences."

(Page 1, Johnson A. Afolayan Moorehead State University)

I found the statistics interesting. They showed different migrant backgrounds and the differences in educational opportunities as they changed throughout the years and how different factors changed education and the testing results by being educated. By giving the statistics of the different ethnic backgrounds and understanding to research and understand each child who walks into my classroom, I was able to learn more about how/what I can do, to better teach my students and give them the best education possible.

Stephany Spencer

Johnson A. Afolayan

Moorehead State University

Volume 13, 1994

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tia/17063888.0013.012/--implication-of-cultural-diversity-in-american-schools?rgn=main;view=fulltext

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Johnson A. Afolayan Moorhead State University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Implication of Cultural Diversity in American Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The purpose of this article is to analyze the major factors responsible for the cultural diversity in America and their implications for professional educators. These factors include immigration, communication, linguistic diversity, cultural values, and desegregation. While some educators look to the demographics of the new student population, others consider historical clues as a method of understanding American diversity. Statistics about school achievement and dropout and graduation rates show the disparity among the ethnic groups. The new immigrants and ethnic groups may experience conflict as a result of cultural attitudes of teachers and peers. Individuals cannot be understood unless they are seen against the cultural history from which they have come and in terms of the situation in which they currently live. Because of the diversity in the American population, educators need to be sensitive to the cultural elements that may affect students’ performance and self-esteem.

# data[].attributes.body
The event I have chosen is The Migrant Education Program. This program was established in 1966. I chose this program because it would represent culture and diversity well. The Migrant Education program is for children with parents who work as harvesters. When the children's parents harvest in 6 weeks, they can get some kind of education. Some families soon realized that it was better to stay and then a 12-month program came along. This widened the community and helped them learn more about there the migrant culture because most of them were Hispanic. This also helped the Hispanics with this program because it was hard for them to learn in some places because of the language they spoke. The children were able to learn better and live a better life maybe learning some about their communities culture and inheriting some of them. At the end of the article, it says "Migrant workers contribute many personal and cultural strengths to our community. These include their strong work ethic, their love of family, and their interest in the education of their children." I believe this is an amazing program.

Camlyn Arrington

https://www.k12albemarle.org/our-departments/instruction/migrant/history-of-migrant-education#:~:text=In%201966%20Congress%20responded%20to,Washington%20D.C.%20and%20Puerto%20Rico.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History Of Migrant Education - Albemarle County School District

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
History Of Migrant Education - Albemarle County School District

# data[].attributes.body
The event I chose was Plessy v Ferguson which was a court ruling in 1896 that would fundamentally change the way African Americans were able to receive an education. This ruling established the “separate but equal doctrine” though the Supreme Court failing to define what constituted as separate and equal which would allow racism to affect what constituted as equal and reasonable. Plessy v Ferguson’s ruling from the Supreme Court would force the U.S. legal system to construct a concept of what race was. The south defined it as the “one drop of blood rule” which was that no matter how distant an African Ancestor was if one was present in their family tree then they were in fact African American.

This ruling would affect education for almost 60 years, this ruling would perpetuate horrible stereotypes and treatment of African Americans by purposely underfunding their programs and issuing old material. This ruling affected so many over the course of 60 years and its affect is still prevalent to this day through still underfunded schools in rural communities and out of date school materials.

Zach Hadden

Spring, J. (2022). Chapter 5. In American Education (20th ed.). essay, McGraw. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/reader/books/9781000385045/epubcfi/6/26[%3Bvnd.vst.idref%3DCh05]!/4.