UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State will help to lead the fight against discrimination and inequality in education through research with the Center for Civil Rights and Education. The new center, housed in the College of Education, will promote the study of inequality in education and facilitate action to advance racial equity in education by reinvigorating the civil rights movement in this field.
Erica Frankenberg, associate professor of education and demography, and Liliana Garces, assistant professor of higher education and a research associate for the Center for the Study of Higher Education, are the co-directors responsible for creating the new center.
“Many states and school districts no longer are subject to school desegregation orders, the courts have limited what districts can voluntarily do to try to create diverse schools and the rights of English language learners are widely ignored,” said Frankenberg, whose research focuses on how suburban racial change and school choice affect K-12 school segregation and inequality. “Because of this, students, especially those from historically marginalized groups in urban and suburban areas, do not have access to a high-quality education. Moreover, white students are also less prepared for living and working in our multiracial society.”
The Center for Civil Rights and Education will focus on addressing these educational inequities through research and research-based action, Garces said. It will support a network of researchers from multiple disciplines as well as civil rights advocates whose work brings light to the increasingly complex and widespread issues of racial inequality in education.
“Although many approaches to education have been heralded as improving opportunities for students of color, research continues to show vast disparities in educational outcomes and opportunities by race alongside deepening segregation and stratification,” Garces said. “We want to address the changing nature of racial and ethnic inequities in education by building connections among the civil rights and education communities, and serving as a hub for the generation of knowledge in this area.”
The center will complement the work produced by other centers and institutes across the University, including the Population Research Institute, Justice Center for Research, George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Center for Immigrant Rights and Center for the Study of Higher Education. As co-directors of the center, Frankenberg and Garces also will seek to collaborate with faculty and students within Penn State Law and the College of the Liberal Arts.
The center also will have official affiliations with external research centers that also focus on education and civil rights, Garces said, including The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The creation of the Center for Civil Rights and Education began with the Education and Civil Rights Conference hosted by Penn State in June 2014. The conference commissioned 30 new papers and brought together emerging and established scholars from a variety of disciplines. Revised papers from the conference were later published in the Penn State Law Review and in an edited book by Frankenberg, Garces and Megan Hopkins, assistant professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This past fall, the center hosted a talk by Professor John Diamond, who discussed findings from his new book about how racial inequality persists even in good schools. His lecture attracted more than 100 people and is the first of a series that will be hosted by the center.
For more information about the Center for Civil Rights and Education, contact Erica Frankenberg at euf10@psu.edu and Liliana Garces at lmg340@psu.edu.