Civil Rights Project: Education Initiative

About this grant

In 2002, Harvard University began efforts to examine education reform efforts and their impact on poor and minority youth at the state and regional level through its Civil Rights Project: Education Initiative. Thus far, the project has provided decisionmakers, community groups and education reform advocates with research and policy and legal analyses on these issues and their impact.Multiyear funding will support the project in the next phase of research, policy and legal analyses of three targeted education policy challenges — the impact of No Child Left Behind, the dropout/graduation crisis and redirecting the school-to-prison pipeline — toward helping state- and community-level advocates and legislators better understand how and what policy recommendations might produce more equitable outcomes for poor and minority youth. In each area, studies, reports and manuals will be produced to promote research-based policy solutions and strategies among advocates and legislators working at the state and community levels. Funding includes a grant increase enabling the project to convene a southern regional meeting on the drop-out/graduation crisis; organize a series of events to support the release of a new book on dropouts entitled “Dropouts in America”; and focus public attention on No Child Left Behind provisions and amendments that address the graduation rate crisis in schools.