The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, along with a broad coalition of civil rights groups, education advocates, public rights groups, and others, sent a letter urging federal involvement in accountability through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
This letter marks the first time that such as broad assemblage of organizations has spoken in one voice on the need for a strong federal role in educational accountability, particularly for students of color.  The stand these groups have taken will set the tone for when Congress resumes the ESEA reauthorization debate after the August congressional recess.

Source: The Root
While some of the gridlock among policymakers today can be chalked up to principled differences in political philosophy, some political stalemates are the result of policies that defy common sense. This most often happens when politicians ignore basic realities in order to further their own ideologies. This behavior is frustrating in any instance but is particularly galling when the needs of kids are involved.

By The Editors
A federal jury in New Orleans Friday convicted five current and former New Orleans polices officers of charges stemming from their unprovoked shooting of two groups of unarmed civilians on a city bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

By LDF
The American Bar Association has announced that Elaine R. Jones, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), will receive the organization’s 2011 Thurgood Marshall Award Saturday.

By Lee A. Daniels
The first thing I noticed yesterday when I went searching on amazon.com for the books written by Frank Borzellieri, who has gained a certain notoriety in New York City in the last week, is that all three of them have a photograph of him on the cover.

By Lee A. Daniels
The debt-ceiling crisis that threatened America’s economic foundation has abated for now.
But the jobs crisis and the foreclosure crisis which continue to threaten the present and future of millions of ordinary Americans have not.

Playing in his first game for Iowa State University in October, 1923, Jack Trice was trampled by several opposing players. Some witnesses said it was just part of the game. Others called it murder.

By The Editors
A study released last month by the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative shows that Alabama is unique even among the other 33 states which have capital punishment laws. It is the only state whose statute enables judges to easily overrule jury decisions in capital cases imposing a sentence of death or life without the possibility of parole. As a result, Alabama judges have overwhelmingly chosen to discard jurors’ sentences of life and impose a death sentence.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
This June Denver, with a population that is 10 percent black, elected its second African American mayor – one more than its more populous brethren, New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, have produced.