Prime Highlights

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has launched a Title VI investigation of Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
The investigation is into the charges that CPS’s Black Student Success Plan is racially discriminatory.

Key Facts

Parents Defending Education filed the complaint, claiming the plan violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VI.
The strategy has the objective of driving the progress of the Black students with race-sensitive approaches and support mechanisms.

Key Background

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is probing whether Chicago Public Schools’ Black Student Success Plan discriminates against students based on national origin, color, or race and thereby denies the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VI. Parents Defending Education, a conservative group that also complains about school equity policies it finds exclusionary or racially motivated, filed the complaint.

Chicago Public Schools launched the Black Student Success Plan to address historically uneven academic achievement and discipline policy differences targeting Black students. The plan’s provisions are boosting the proportion of Black male educators, overhauled disciplinary procedures, and instructionally utilizing curriculum materials responsive to Black history and identity. CPS has presented the plan as vital to the remediation of system-wide education asymmetries long disadvantageous to Black communities.

Critics say, though, that by prioritizing resources and advantages to students of one racial group, CPS would be prejudicing others. The complaint holds that race-targeted programs would in practice effectively bar equal access to resources for students of other racial groups. This is legally flawed under Title VI, as recent federal policy established that educational programs must be race-neutral and inclusive in practice.

Chicago Public Schools claims that the plan is legal and warranted, citing extensive community input in its construction and referencing data that underscored Black students’ academic struggles. The district has pledged to fully cooperate with the investigation and remains committed to the initiative as a way of advancing educational equity and closing achievement gaps. The findings of this study could have broader ramifications for school districts throughout the country implementing race-conscious school reform.