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BACKGROUND
New Jersey has more than 600 school districts, and yet only a small number of them are significantly diverse. According to Paul Tractenberg, New Jersey is a curiosity due to having strong states laws banning segregation in schools, and yet being one of the most segregated states in practice. A majority of white students are enrolled in suburban schools in central and northern New Jersey, and the typical Latino or black student attends schools with a share of low-income students three times higher than the share of low-income students in the school of a typical white student. Due to its immense number of school districts, true school integration has proven difficult.
MEDIA
- Morristown, NJ – As Other Districts Grapple With Segregation, This One Makes Integration Work (The New York Times, December 12, 2016)
- Red Bank, NJ – Segregation in Red Bank Schools: How It Happened and What Can be Done (The Two River Times, February 10, 2016)
- South Orange-Maplewood, NJ – Modern-Day Segregation in Public Schools (The Atlantic, November 18, 2014)
- New Jersey – Six decades after Brown vs. Board of Education, NJ’s schools are still segregated: Opinion (NJ.com: True Jersey, April 18, 2014)
- New Jersey – Bringing N.J. schools’ racial segregation into open (NJ.com: True Jersey, May 19, 2011)
- Montclair, NJ – Freedom of Choice: Are Montclair Schools Truly Integrated and Diverse? (Montclair Patch, March 24, 2011)
ADVOCACY
- Will NJ ‘apartheid’ schools desegregate? (Asbury Park Press, March 10, 2016)
- A Tale of Two Deeply Divided in NJ Public School Systems (NJ Spotlight, December 31, 2013)
OTHER RESOURCES
- New Jersey’s Apartheid and Intensely Segregated Urban Schools: Powerful Evidence of an Inefficient and Unconstitutional State Education System (Institute on Education Law and Policy, with assistance from the UCLA Civil Rights Project, October, 2013)
- A Status Quo of Segregation: Racial and Economic Imbalance in New Jersey Schools, 1989-2010 (UCLA Civil Rights Project, with assistance from the Institute on Education Law and Policy October, 2013)
- Persistent Racial Segregation in Schools: Policy Issues and Opportunities to Address Unequal Education Across New Jersey’s Public Schools (The Fund for New Jersey, 2016)
ACTIVE NSCD MEMBERS
- Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School
RESEARCH ADVISORY PANEL MEMBERS
- Jamie Lew