By The Editors
Some educational and political observers readily ascribe President Obama’s proposals unveiled Friday to restrain the increasing costs of college-going for students and their families while compelling colleges to improve the “value” of their curricular offerings as more symbolic than substantive – as political theater meant for the campaign trail.

On December 28, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit affirmed key aspects of the lower court’s decision in Little Rock School District v. Lorene Joshua. This long-standing school desegregation case involves key educational equity issues, including: racial disparities in school discipline, student achievement, access to advanced placement and honors curriculum and inequities in school facilities within three Arkansas school districts, the Little Rock School District, the North Little Rock School District and the Pulaski County School District.

Today the United States Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued policy guidance that provides greater clarity and encouragement to school districts and higher education institutions as they seek to explore available options for promoting and maintaining meaningful diversity.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
Eighty percent of fourth-graders, 83 percent of eighth-graders, and a truly astonishing 86 percent of high school seniors failed to show a “proficient” knowledge and understanding of the nation’s history – or rather, that they knew and understood the subject matter.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Studies show that only a small percentage of high school seniors from poor African-American or Hispanic families even apply to the country’s best colleges. Most of these students incorrectly assume they would never get into top schools or couldn’t possibly afford to attend them.

By Lee A. Daniels
Their paths crossed for only a few moments that September day in 1957: Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan, two teenagers in Little Rock, Arkansas who were supposed to be on their way to school.

LDF joined more than eighty civil rights, disability, parent, student, grassroots and education organizations from across the country to urge Congress not to turn back the clock on teacher quality gains for poor and minority students, English Learners, and students with disabilities as it considers reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB).

Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”) joined other civil rights and education groups in supporting introduction of the Positive Behavior for Safe and Effective Schools Act (PBSESA) – a bill to fund positive, preventative approaches to discipline in U.S. schools.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Tennessee State University, a historically black school in Nashville, has devised a program to improve math instruction in the state’s K-8 schools that could help narrow gaps in student achievement and college completion rates.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Emerson went on a spree of hirings and promotions of minorities, capped by the installation in July of its first African-American president, M. Lee Pelton, former president of Willamette University in Oregon.