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Friday, April 15, 2011

LDF Joins Civil Rights Coalition in Issuing ESEA Accountability Principles | The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog

LDF Joins Civil Rights Coalition in Issuing ESEA Accountability Principles | The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog

LDF Joins Civil Rights Coalition in Issuing ESEA Accountability Principles

Last week, LDF joined more than a dozen civil rights organizations in authoring a letter (PDF) urging Congress to incorporate key accountability provisions as it reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act(ESEA). The letter offers a number of recommendations to ensure that principles of educational equity won in Brown v. The Board of Education are fulfilled in the ESEA reauthorization. Specifically, the coalition supports the introduction of measures to set high academic standards; improve student achievement and graduation rates; close gaps between student subgroups along race, class, disability and other lines; improve school climate; reduce barriers to educational opportunity; and provide schools with equitable and adequate resources.

For decades, LDF has been a leader in efforts to monitor the federal role in ensuring equal access to quality education. In 1969, just four years after the