The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (the New York City public schools) is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools. The department covers all five boroughs of New York City, and has an annual budget of nearly 25 billion dollars.

The department is run by the Panel for Educational Policy and New York City Schools Chancellor. The current chancellor is Carmen Fariña.

All of the city is assigned to the NYCDOE school district except for a small section of the Bronx, which is instead assigned to the Pelham Public Schools (with tuition supported by the city government).

Curriculum

Beginning in 2003, New York City public schools citywide implemented a mathematics "core curriculum" based on New York State standards for grades K-12. To graduate high school, students must earn at least six credits in mathematics. In order to receive a Regents diploma, students must score at least 65 on a Regents math exam.

Health and nutrition

The city has made an effort to reduce childhood obesity among students by promoting exercise and improving nutrition in school cafeterias.

During Mayor Bloomberg's first term, white bread was entirely replaced with whole wheat bread, hot dog buns, and hamburger buns in cafeterias. In 2006, the city set out to eliminate whole milk from cafeteria lunch menus and took the further step of banning low-fat flavored milks, allowing only skim milk (white and chocolate). The New York City school system purchases more milk than any other in the United States; although the dairy industry aggressively lobbied against the new plan they ultimately failed to prevent its implementation.

In October 2009, the DOE banned bake sales, though some schools continue to have them with frequency. The DOE cited the high sugar content of baked sale goods and that 40% of NYC students are obese. Meanwhile, vending machines in the schools operated by Frito Lay and Snapple continue to sell high processed empty calorie foods such as Doritos and Juices. Contracts for the vending machines were awarded in no-bid deals through Mayor Bloomberg's office. As part of the DOE's ambition to create healthy diets among students, as of October, Frito Lay will have to put Reduced Fat Doritos in machines. The DOE considers Reduced Fat Doritos, which contain corn dextrin, corn maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium phosphate, artificial flavor, dextrose, artificial color, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, a healthy snack based on its June 2009 request for healthy snack vending machine proposals. The NYC school lunch menu contains numerous highly processed foods and high suga r content foods including chicken nuggets, French fries, French toast and syrup. NYC also continues to fail to meet the mandatory physical education requirements of NY State, and NYC DOE has failed to maintain or improve playgrounds instead turning them into ad-hoc additional classroom space or parking lots.

In January 2011, more than 1,100 New York City students from 13 schools were offered morning-after pill and other birth control pill (Reclipsen). The pilot program is called Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Health and is facing criticism.

Teachers

Beginning in 2000, after experiments with hiring uncertified teachers to fulfill a massive teacher shortage failed to produce acceptable results, and responding to pressure from the New York State Board of Regents and the No Child Left Behind Act, the DOE instituted a number of innovative programs for teacher recruitment, including the New York City Teaching Fellows, the TOP Scholars Program, and initiatives to bring foreign teachers (primarily from Eastern Europe) to teach in the city's schools. Housing subsidies are in place for experienced teachers who relocate to the city to teach.

In the course of school reorganizations, some veteran teachers have lost their positions. They then enter a pool of substitutes, called the Absent Teacher Reserve. On November 19, 2008, the Department and the city's teacher union (the United Federation of Teachers), reached an agreement to create financial incentives for principals of new schools to hire ATR teachers and guidance counselors.

Budget

The Department of Education has an annual budget of nearly $25 billion for its 1.1 million students. According to Census Data, New York spends $19,076 each year per student, more than any other state compared to the national average of $10,560.

3 billion dollars of the budget goes to Non City schools. This includes $1.09 billion to pre-school special education services and $725.3 million for School-Age non DOE contract special education. Another $71 million goes to non public schools such as yeshivas and parochial schools and $1.04 billion is paid for the 70 thousand students attending charter schools.

4.6 billion of the budget pays for pensions and interest on Capital Plan debt.

Demographics

About 1.1 million students attend New York City public schools.

About 40% of students in the city's public school system live in households where a language other than English is spoken, and one-third of all New Yorkers were born in another country. The city's Department of Education translates report cards, registration forms, system-wide alerts, and documents on health and policy initiatives for parents into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, and Haitian Creole.

In the 2010-2011, Hispanics and Latino students made up 39.9% of the student population. African Americans made up 30.3% of the student population, Non-Hispanic Whites made up 14.3% and Asian American students made up 15.0% of the student populace. Native Americans made up the remaining 0.5% of the student body.

The specialized high schools tend to be disproportionately Asian. New York's Specialized High School Institute is an after-school program for students in late middle school. It was designed to enlarge the pool of African American and Hispanic candidates eligible for admission to the selective schools by giving them extra lessons and teaching test-taking skills. Unlike other urban school districts (such as San Francisco Unified School District), New York does not use racial preferences (affirmative action) in public school admissions.

In a May 11, 2012 report, The New York Times reported that New York City has the third most segregated large city school system, after Chicago and Dallas. Hispanic students are concentrated in Washington Heights and Corona. Asian students dominate in Chinatown. The Times reported that the greatest segregation is in black neighborhoods. It further noted that black isolation in schools has persisted even as residential segregation has declined.

School buildings

Many school buildings are architecturally noteworthy, in part due to the efforts of C. B. J. Snyder.

The Department has closed many failing elementary, middle (intermediate) and high schools. The buildings of some of the larger schools have been turned into "Campuses" or "Complexes" in which a number of smaller school entities, educationally independent of each other, co-exist within the building.

Radio and television stations

The Board operated radio station WNYE beginning in 1938, from studios located within the campus of Brooklyn Technical High School. Television station WNYE-TV went on the air in 1967, with its studios adjacent to George Westinghouse High School in Downtown Brooklyn. The broadcast licenses of both stations were transferred to the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications in 2004.

Organization

Although the 2002 reform legislation made no specific reference to a "Department of Education", the bylaws subsequently adopted by the New York City Board of Education provided that the board "shall be known as the Panel for Educational Policy", which together with the Chancellor and other school employees was designated as the "Department of Education of the City of New York".

Panel for Educational Policy

The Panel for Educational Policy has authority to approve school closings. A majority of its membership is appointed by the Mayor.

Community Education Councils

There are 32 councils, with 11 members on each, 2 appointed by Borough Presidents and 9 selected by PTA leaders who are advised by parents who live in the council districts, the local parents acting through an election process conducted online and overseen by the Department of Education. The 2009 election cost $650,000 to conduct and another election was held in 2011.

According to Beth Fertig, Community Education Councils are "supposed to provide an avenue for parent engagement." According to Tim Kremer, head of the New York State School Boards Association, "although education councils don't have a lot of power they can play a vital role in vetting budgets and giving feedback on instructional policies." Councils have some veto power. The councils were created in 2002 and their authority was increased "a little" in 2009, but, according to Fertig, "many parents still claim the councils don't matter because decisions are ultimately controlled by the mayor." According to Soni Sangha, the councils are mainly obscure and unknown to many parents, their forums are not well-attended, and they meet with the citywide schools chancellor.

Analysis and criticism

New York is one of ten major U.S. cities in which the educational system is under the control of the mayor rather than an elected school board.

More recently, Mayor Bill DiBlasio has received major criticism over his decision to accept proposals by charter schools to co-locate with public schools, specifically Seth Low IS and Cavallaro IS. Many people expressed shock and disappointment at the decision, claiming that co-location leads to congestion of school streets, overcrowded classrooms, strained resources, and a negative impact on children’s education.

History

Beginning in the late 1960s, schools were grouped into districts. Elementary schools and middle schools were grouped into 32 community school districts, and high schools were grouped into five geographically larger districts: One each for Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, one for most of Brooklyn, and one, BASIS, for the rest of Brooklyn and all of Staten Island. In addition there were several special districts for alternative schools and schools serving severely disabled students. While the districts no longer exist, the former district of a school is often used as an identifier.

In 1969, on the heels of a series of strikes and demands for community control, New York City Mayor John Lindsay relinquished mayoral control of schools, and organized the city school system into the Board of Education (made up of seven members appointed by borough presidents and the mayor) and 32 community school boards (whose members were elected). Elementary and middle schools were controlled by the community boards, while high schools were controlled by the Board of Education.

In 2002, the city's school system was reorganized by chapter 91 of the Laws of 2002. Control of the school system was given to the mayor, who began reorganization and reform efforts. The community school boards were abolished and the Board of Education was renamed the Panel for Educational Policy, a twelve-member body of which seven members are appointed by the mayor and five by Borough Presidents. Although that legislation itself made no specific reference to a "Department of Education of the City of New York", the bylaws subsequently adopted by the Board provided that the 13-member body "shall be known as the Panel for Educational Policy", which together with the Chancellor and other school employees was designated as the "Department of Education of the City of New York". The education headquarters were moved from 110 Livingston Street in downtown Brooklyn to the Tweed Courthouse building adjacent to New York City Hall in Manhattan.

In 2003, the districts were grouped into ten regions, each encompassing several elementary and middle school districts, and part of a high school district. In 2005, several schools joined the Autonomous Zone (later Empowerment Zone) and were allowed to use part of their budgets to directly purchase support services. These schools were released from their regions. In 2007, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced the dissolution of the regions effective June 2007, and schools became organized into one of the following School Support Organizations:

Due to an ongoing power struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties, state senators failed to renew mayoral control of the city's school system by 12:00 a.m. EDT on July 1, 2009, immediately ceding control back to the pre-2002 Board of Education system. Mayor Bloomberg announced summer school sessions would be held without interruption while city attorneys oversaw the transition of power. On August 6, 2009, the state senate ratified the bill returning control of the schools back to the mayor for another six years with few changes from the 2002-2009 mayoral control structure.

Mayoral control status

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio retains control over the New York City Public Schools, due to state lawmakers granting two one year extensions, currently valid through the end of June 2017. "While one-year extensions are no way to treat our children, families, families or educators," said De Blasio, “this action is a crucial acknowledgment by State lawmakers that the education progress we have made in New York City could not have happened without our accountable control of the school system.” The deal includes provisions which require release of more detailed budget information about the New York City schools, according to information sent out by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. Lawmakers also agreed to give districts until the end of the year to negotiate details of new evaluation systems for teachers and principals.The deal also will allow charter schools to more easily switch between authorizers. That could mean the city’s education department, which oversees a number of charter schools (but which no longer accepts oversight of new schools) could see some of these schools depart in the future for oversight by State University of New York or the New York State Education Department.

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A state education agency (SEA), or state department of education, is a formal governmental label for the state-level government agencies within each U.S. state responsible for providing information, resources, and technical assistance on educational matters to schools and residents.

The chief state school officer, either a Secretary of Education, State Superintendent of Education, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Commissioner of Education or Director of Education, is a constitutional or a statutory officer in several states of the United States. The position is the chief executive official for the state's state education agency (or equivalent), chief administrative officer for the state's Board of Education, State Board of Education President, State School Board Administrator, State School Business Administrator, (or equivalent), or both. In some states, such as Washington, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction serves as the SEA. Wyoming has a popularly elected superintendent of education, but responsibility for the state department of education lies with a director appointed by the governor.

State education agencies (SEAs)

The following are state education agencies as identified by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

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Distance education or distance learning is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school. Courses that are conducted (51 percent or more) are either hybrid, blended or 100% whole instruction. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent developments in distance education. A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, online learning, etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education.

History

One of the earliest attempts was advertised in 1728 in the Boston Gazette for "Caleb Philipps, Teacher of the new method of Short Hand," who sought students who wanted to learn through weekly mailed lessons.

The first distance education course in the modern sense was provided by Sir Isaac Pitman in the 1840s, who taught a system of shorthand by mailing texts transcribed into shorthand on postcards and receiving transcriptions from his students in return for correction. The element of student feedback was a crucial innovation of Pitman's system. This scheme was made possible by the introduction of uniform postage rates across England in 1840.

This early beginning proved extremely successful, and the Phonographic Correspondence Society was founded three years later to establish these courses on a more formal basis. The Society paved the way for the later formation of Sir Isaac Pitman Colleges across the country.

The first correspondence school in the United States was the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, founded in 1873.

University correspondence courses

The University of London was the first university to offer distance learning degrees, establishing its External Programme in 1828. The background to this innovation lay in the fact that the institution (later known as University College London) was non-denominational and, given the intense religious rivalries at the time, there was an outcry against the "godless" university. The issue soon boiled down to which institutions had degree-granting powers and which institutions did not.

The compromise solution that emerged in 1836 was that the sole authority to conduct the examinations leading to degrees would be given to a new officially recognized entity called the "University of London", which would act as examining body for the University of London colleges, originally University College London and King's College London, and award their students University of London degrees. As Sheldon Rothblatt states, "thus arose in nearly archetypal form the famous English distinction between teaching and examining, here embodied in separate institutions." With the state giving examining powers to a separate entity, the groundwork was laid for the creation of a programme within the new university that would both administer examinations and award qualifications to students taking instruction at another institution or pursuing a course of self-directed study.

Referred to as "People's University" by Charles Dickens because it provided access to higher education to students from less affluent backgrounds, the External Programme was chartered by Queen Victoria in 1858, making the University of London the first university to offer distance learning degrees to students. Enrollment increased steadily during the late 19th century, and its example was widely copied elsewhere. This program is now known as the University of London International Programme and includes Postgraduate, Undergraduate and Diploma degrees created by colleges such as the London School of Economics, Royal Holloway and Goldsmiths.

In the United States, William Rainey Harper, first president of the University of Chicago, developed the concept of extended education, whereby the research university had satellite colleges of education in the wider community. In 1892 he also encouraged the concept of correspondence school courses to further promote education, an idea that was put into practice by Columbia University. Enrollment in the largest private for-profit school based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the International Correspondence Schools grew explosively in the 1890s. Founded in 1888 to provide training for immigrant coal miners aiming to become state mine inspectors or foremen, it enrolled 2500 new students in 1894 and matriculated 72,000 new students in 1895. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The growth was due to sending out complete textbooks instead of single lessons, and the use of 1200 aggressive in-person salesmen. There was a stark contrast in pedagogy:

The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line. The college demands that a student shall have certain educational qualifications to enter it, and that all students study for approximately the same length of time, and when they have finished their courses they are supposed to be qualified to enter any one of a number of branches in some particular profession. We, on the contrary, are aiming to make our courses fit the particular needs of the student who takes them.

Education was a high priority in the Progressive Era, as American high schools and colleges expanded greatly. For men who were older or were too busy with family responsibilities, night schools were opened, such as the YMCA school in Boston that became Northeastern University. Outside the big cities, private correspondence schools offered a flexible, narrowly focused solution. Large corporations systematized their training programs for new employees. The National Association of Corporation Schools grew from 37 in 1913 to 146 in 1920. Starting in the 1880s, private schools opened across the country which offered specialized technical training to anyone who enrolled, not just the employees of one company. Starting in Milwaukee in 1907, public schools began opening free vocational programs.

Only a third of the American population lived in cities of 100,000 or more population In 1920; to reach the rest, correspondence techniques had to be adopted. Australia with its vast distances was especially active; the University of Queensland established its Department of Correspondence Studies in 1911. In South Africa, the University of South Africa, formerly an examining and certification body, started to present distance education tuition in 1946. The International Conference for Correspondence Education held its first meeting in 1938. The goal was to provide individualized education for students, at low cost, by using a pedagogy of testing, recording, classification, and differentiation.

Open universities

The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded by the then serving Labour Party government under the prime minister, Harold Wilson, based on the vision of Michael Young. Planning commenced in 1965 under the Minister of State for Education, Jennie Lee, who established a model for the OU as one of widening access to the highest standards of scholarship in higher education, and set up a planning committee consisting of university vice-chancellors, educationalists and television broadcasters, chaired by Sir Peter Venables. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Assistant Director of Engineering at the time, James Redmond, had obtained most of his qualifications at night school, and his natural enthusiasm for the project did much to overcome the technical difficulties of using television to broadcast teaching programmes.

The Open University revolutionized the scope of the correspondence program and helped to create a respectable learning alternative to the traditional form of education. It has been at the forefront of developing new technologies to improve the distance learning service as well as undertaking research in other disciplines. Walter Perry was appointed the OU's first vice-chancellor in January 1969, and its foundation secretary was Anastasios Christodoulou. The election of the new Conservative Party government under the prime minister, Edward Heath, in 1970 led to budget cuts under Chancellor of the Exchequer Iain Macleod (who had earlier called the idea of an Open University "blithering nonsense"). However, the OU accepted its first 25,000 students in 1971, adopting a radical open admissions policy. At the time, the total student population of conventional universities in the United Kingdom was around 130,000.

Athabasca University, Canada's Open University, was created in 1970 and followed a similar, though independently developed, pattern. The Open University inspired the creation of Spain's National University of Distance Education (1972) and Germany's FernUniversität in Hagen (1974). There are now many similar institutions around the world, often with the name "Open University" (in English or in the local language).

Most open universities use distance education technologies as delivery methods, though some require attendance at local study centres or at regional "summer schools". Some open universities have grown to become mega-universities, a term coined to denote institutions with more than 100,000 students.

Technologies

Although the expansion of the Internet blurs the boundaries, distance education technologies are divided into two modes of delivery: synchronous learning and asynchronous learning.

In synchronous learning, all participants are "present" at the same time. In this regard, it resembles traditional classroom teaching methods despite the participants being located remotely. It requires a timetable to be organized. Web conferencing, videoconferencing, educational television, instructional television are examples of synchronous technology, as are direct-broadcast satellite (DBS), internet radio, live streaming, telephone, and web-based VoIP. Web conferencing software helps to facilitate meetings in distance learning courses and usually contain additional interaction tools such as text chat, polls, hand raising, emoticons etc. These tools also support asynchronous participation by students being able to listen to recordings of synchronous sessions. Immersive environments (notably SecondLife) have also been used to enhance participant presence in distance education courses. Another form of synchronous learning that has been entering the classroom over the last couple of years is the use of robot proxies including those that allow sick students to attend classes.

Some universities have been starting to use robot proxies to enable more engaging synchronous hybrid classes where both remote and in person students can be present and interact using telerobotics devices such as the Kubi Telepresence robot stand that looks around and the Double Robot that roams around. With these telepresence robots, the remote students have a seat at the table or desk instead of being on a screen on the wall.

In asynchronous learning, participants access course materials flexibly on their own schedules. Students are not required to be together at the same time. Mail correspondence, which is the oldest form of distance education, is an asynchronous delivery technology, as are message board forums, e-mail, video and audio recordings, print materials, voicemail, and fax.

The two methods can be combined. Many courses offered by both open universities and an increasing number of campus based institutions use periodic sessions of residential or day teaching to supplement the sessions delivered at a distance. This type of mixed distance and campus based education has recently come to be called "blended learning" or less often "hybrid learning". Many open universities uses a blend of technologies and a blend of learning modalities (face-to-face, distance, and hybrid) all under the rubric of "distance learning."

Distance learning can also use interactive radio instruction (IRI), interactive audio instruction (IAI), online virtual worlds, digital games, webinars, and webcasts, all of which are referred to as e-Learning.

Radio and television

The rapid spread of film in the 1920s and radio in the 1930s led to proposals to use it for distance education. By 1938, at least 200 city school systems, 25 state boards of education, and many colleges and universities broadcast educational programs for the public schools. One line of thought was to use radio as a master teacher.

Experts in given fields broadcast lessons for pupils within the many schoolrooms of the public school system, asking questions, suggesting readings, making assignments, and conducting tests. This mechanizes education and leaves the local teacher only the tasks of preparing for the broadcast and keeping order in the classroom.

A typical setup came in Kentucky in 1948 when John Wilkinson Taylor, president of the University of Louisville, teamed up with NBC to use radio as a medium for distance education, The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission endorsed the project and predicted that the “college-by-radio” would put “American education 25 years ahead.” The University was owned by the city, and local residents would pay the low tuition rates, receive their study materials in the mail, and listen by radio to live classroom discussions that were held on campus.

Charles Wedemeyer of the University of Wisconsinâ€"Madison also promoted new methods. From 1964 to 1968, the Carnegie Foundation funded Wedemeyer’s Articulated Instructional Media Project (AIM) which brought in a variety of communications technologies aimed at providing learning to an off-campus population. The radio courses faded away in the 1950s. Many efforts to use television along the same lines proved unsuccessful, despite heavy funding by the Ford Foundation.

From 1970 to 1972 the Coordinating Commission for Higher Education in California funded Project Outreach to study the potential of telecourses. The study included the University of California, California State University and the community colleges. This study led to coordinated instructional systems legislation allowing the use of public funds for non-classroom instruction and paved the way for the emergence of telecourses as the precursor to the online courses and programs of today. The Coast Community Colleges, The Dallas County Community College District, and Miami Dade Community College led the way. The Adult Learning Service of PBS came into being and the “wrapped” series, and individually produced telecourse for credit became a significant part of the history of distance education and online learning.

Internet

The widespread use of computers and the internet have made distance learning easier and faster, and today virtual schools and virtual universities deliver full curricula online. The capacity of Internet to support voice, video, text and immersion teaching methods made earlier distinct forms of telephone, videoconferencing, radio, television, and text based education somewhat redundant. However, many of the techniques developed and lessons learned with earlier media are used in Internet delivery.

The first new and fully online university was founded in 1994 as the Open University of Catalonia, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain. in 1999 Jones International University was launched as the first fully online university accredited by a regional accrediting association in the US.

Between 2000 and 2008, enrollment in distance education courses increased rapidly in almost every country in both developed and developing countries. Many private, public, non-profit and for-profit institutions worldwide now offer distance education courses from the most basic instruction through to the highest levels of degree and doctoral programs. New York University, for example, offers online degrees in engineering and management-related fields through NYU Tandon Online. Levels of accreditation vary: widely respected universities such as Stanford University and Harvard now deliver online coursesâ€"but other online schools receive little outside oversight, and some are actually fraudulent, i.e., diploma mills. In the US, the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) specializes in the accreditation of distance education institutions.

In the United States in 2011, it was found that a third of all the students enrolled in postsecondary education had taken an accredited online course in a postsecondary institution. Even though growth rates are slowing, enrollment for online courses has been seen to increase with the advance in technology. The majority of public and private colleges now offer full academic programs online. These include, but are not limited to, training programs in the mental health, occupational therapy, family therapy, art therapy, physical therapy, and rehabilitation counseling fields. Even engineering courses that require the manipulation and control of machines and robots that are technically more challenging to learn remotely are subject to distance learning through the internet.

Distance education has a long history, but its popularity and use has grown exponentially as more advanced technology has become available. By 2008, online learning programs were available in the United States in 44 states at the K-12 level.

Internet forums, online discussion group and online learning community can contribute to an efficacious distance education experience. Research shows that socialization plays an important role in some forms of distance education.

E-courses are also a viable option for distance learning. There are many available that cover a broad range of topics.

Paced and self paced models

Distance education can be delivered in a paced format similar to traditional campus based models in which learners commence and complete a course at the same time. Paced delivery is currently the most common mode of distance education delivery. Alternatively, some institutions offer self-paced programs that allow for continuous enrollment and the length of time to complete the course is set by the learner's time, skill and commitment levels. Paced courses may be offered in either synchronus mode, but self-paced courses are almost always offered asynchronously. Each delivery model offers both advantages and disadvantages for students, teachers and institutions.

Kaplan and Haenlein classify distance education into four groups along the dimensions Time dependency and Number of participants: 1) MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): Open-access online course (i.e., without specific participation restrictions) that allows for unlimited (massive) participation; 2) SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses): Online course that only offers a limited number of places and therefore requires some form of formal enrollment; 3) SMOCs (Synchronous Massive Online Courses): Open-access online course that allows for unlimited participation but requires students to be "present" at the same time (synchronously); 4) SSOCs (Synchronous Private Online Courses): Online course that only offers a limited number of places and requires students to be "present" at the same time (synchronously).

Paced models are a familiar mode as they are used almost exclusively in campus based schools. Institutes that offer both distance and campus programs usually use paced models as teacher workload, student semester planning, tuition deadlines, exam schedules and other administrative details can be synchronized with campus delivery. Student familiarity and the pressure of deadlines encourages students to readily adapt to and usually succeed in paced models. However, student freedom is sacrificed as a common pace is often too fast for some students and too slow for others. In addition life events, professional or family responsibilities can interfere with a students capability to complete tasks to an external schedule. Finally, paced models allows students to readily form communities of inquiry and to engage in collaborative work.

Self-paced courses maximize student freedom, as not only can students commence studies on any date, but they can complete a course in as little time as a few weeks or up to a year or longer. Students often enroll in self-paced study when they are under pressure to complete programs, have not been able to complete a scheduled course, need additional courses or have pressure which precludes regular study for any length of time. The self-paced nature of the programming, though is an unfamiliar model for many students and can lead to excessive procrastination resulting in course incompletion. Assessment of learning can also be challenging as exams can be written on any day, making it possible for students to share examination questions with resulting loss of academic integrity. Finally, it is extremely challenging to organize collaborative work activities, though some schools are developing cooperative models based upon networked and connectivist pedagogies, for use in self-paced prog rams.

Benefits

Distance learning can expand access to education and training for both general populace and businesses since its flexible scheduling structure lessens the effects of the many time-constraints imposed by personal responsibilities and commitments. Devolving some activities off-site alleviates institutional capacity constraints arising from the traditional demand on institutional buildings and infrastructure. Furthermore, there is the potential for increased access to more experts in the field and to other students from diverse geographical, social, cultural, economic, and experiential backgrounds. As the population at large becomes more involved in lifelong learning beyond the normal schooling age, institutions can benefit financially, and adult learning business courses may be particularly lucrative. Distance education programs can act as a catalyst for institutional innovation and are at least as effective as face-to-face learning programs, especially if the instructor is knowledg eable and skilled.

Distance education can also provide a broader method of communication within the realm of education. With the many tools and programs that technological advancements have to offer, communication appears to increase in distance education amongst students and their professors, as well as students and their classmates. The distance educational increase in communication, particularly communication amongst students and their classmates, is an improvement that has been made to provide distance education students with as many of the opportunities as possible as they would receive in in-person education. The improvement being made in distance education is growing in tandem with the constant technological advancements. Present-day online communication allows students to associate with accredited schools and programs throughout the world that are out of reach for in-person learning. By having the opportunity to be involved in global institutions via distance education, a diverse array of th ought is presented to students through communication with their classmates. This is beneficial because students have the opportunity to "combine new opinions with their own, and develop a solid foundation for learning." It has been shown through research that "as learners become aware of the variations in interpretation and construction of meaning among a range of people [they] construct an individual meaning," which can help students become knowledgeable of a wide array of viewpoints in education. To increase the likelihood that students will build effective ties with one another during the course, instructors should use similar assignments for students across different locations to overcome the influence of co-location on relationship building.

The high cost of education affects students in higher education, to which distance education may be an alternative in order to provide some relief. Distance education has been a more cost-effective form of learning, and can sometimes save students a significant amount of money as opposed to traditional education. Distance education may be able to help to save students a considerable amount financially by removing the cost of transportation. In addition, distance education may be able to save students from the economic burden of high-priced course textbooks. Many textbooks are now available as electronic textbooks, known as e-textbooks, which can offer digital textbooks for a reduced price in comparison to traditional textbooks. Also, the increasing improvements in technology have resulted in many school libraries having a partnership with digital publishers that offer course materials for free, which can help students significantly with educational costs.

Within the class, students are able to learn in ways that traditional classrooms would not be able to provide. It is able to promote good learning experiences and therefore, allow students to obtain higher satisfaction with their online learning. For example, students can review their lessons more than once according to their need. Students can then manipulate the coursework to fit their learning by focusing more on their weaker topics while breezing through concepts that they already have or can easily grasp. When course design and the learning environment are at their optimal conditions, distance education can lead students to higher satisfaction with their learning experiences. Studies have shown that high satisfaction correlates to increased learning. For those in a healthcare or mental health distance learning program, online-based interactions have the potential to foster deeper reflections and discussions of client issues as well as a quicker response to client issues, sinc e supervision happens on a regular basis and is not limited to a weekly supervision meeting. This also may contribute to the students feeling a greater sense of support, since they have ongoing and regular access to their instructors and other students.

Distance learning may enable students who are unable to attend a traditional school setting, due to disability or illness such as decreased mobility and immune system suppression, to get a good education. Children who are sick or are unable to attend classes are able to attend them in “person” through the use of robot proxies. This helps the students have experiences of the classroom and social interaction that they are unable to receive at home or the hospital, while still keeping them in a safe learning environment. Over the last few years more students are entering safely back into the classroom thanks to the help of robots. An article from the New York Times, "A Swiveling Proxy Will Even Wear a Tutu", explains the positive impact of virtual learning in the classroom. and another Robot brings classroom to sick students that explains how even a simple, stationary telepresence robot can help. Distance education may provide equal access regardless of socioeconomic statu s or income, area of residence, gender, race, age, or cost per student. Applying universal design strategies to distance learning courses as they are being developed (rather than instituting accommodations for specific students on an as-needed basis) can increase the accessibility of such courses to students with a range of abilities, disabilities, learning styles, and native languages. Distance education graduates, who would never have been associated with the school under a traditional system, may donate money to the school.

Distance learning may also offer a final opportunity for adolescents that are no longer permitted in the general education population due to behavior disorders. Instead of these students having no other academic opportunities, they may continue their education from their homes and earn their diplomas, offering them another chance to be an integral part of society.

Criticism

Barriers to effective distance education include obstacles such as domestic distractions and unreliable technology, as well as students' program costs, adequate contact with teachers and support services, and a need for more experience.

Some students attempt to participate in distance education without proper training with the tools needed to be successful in the program. Students must be provided with training opportunities (if needed) on each tool that is used throughout the program. The lack of advanced technology skills can lead to an unsuccessful experience. Schools have a responsibility to adopt a proactive policy for managing technology barriers.

The results of a study of Washington state community college students showed that distance learning students tended to drop out more often than their traditional counterparts due to difficulties in language, time management, and study skills.

Distance learning benefits may outweigh the disadvantages for students in such a technology-driven society; however before indulging into use of educational technology a few more disadvantages should be considered. However, through the years, all of the obstacles have been overcome and the world environment for distance education continues to improve.

Some say a negative to distance education is the lack of direct face-to-face social interaction, however as more people become used to personal and social interaction online (for example dating, chat rooms, shopping, or blogging). it is becoming easier for learners to both project themselves and socialize with others. This is an obstacle that has dissipated.

Not all courses required to complete a degree may be offered online. Health care profession programs in particular, require some sort of patient interaction through field work before a student may graduate. Studies have also shown that students pursuing a medical professional graduate degree who are participating in distance education courses, favor face to face communication over professor-mediated chat rooms and/or independent studies. However, this is little correlation between student performance when comparing the previous different distance learning strategies.

There is a theoretical problem about the application of traditional teaching methods to online courses because online courses may have no upper size limit. Daniel Barwick noted that there is no evidence that large class size is always worse or that small class size is always better, although a negative link has been established between certain types of instruction in large classes and learning outcomes; he argued that higher education has not made a sufficient effort to experiment with a variety of instructional methods to determine whether large class size is always negatively correlated with a reduction in learning outcomes. Early proponents of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)s saw them as just the type of experiment that Barwick had pointed out was lacking in higher education, although Barwick himself has never advocated for MOOCs.

There may also be institutional challenges. Distance learning is new enough that it may be a challenge to gain support for these programs in a traditional brick-and-mortar academic learning environment. Furthermore, it may be more difficult for the instructor to organize and plan a distance learning program, especially since many are new programs and their organizational needs are different from a traditional learning program.

Another benefit of distance education is one for developing countries. Judith Adler Hellman states, "In the face of the pressure on these countries to join the global information economy, distance education appears to provide the opportunity to train more people better and at lower cost."

Even though there are advantages in advancing industrial countries, there are still negative sides to distance education. Hellman states, "These include its cost and capital intensiveness, time constraints and other pressures on instructors, the isolation of students from instructors and their peers, instructors’ enormous difficulty in adequately evaluating students they never meet face-to-face, and drop-out rates far higher than in classroom-based courses."

A more complex challenge of distance education relates to cultural differences between student and teachers and among students. Distance programmes tend to be more diverse as they could go beyond the geographical borders of regions, countries, and continents, and cross the cultural borders that may exist with respect to race, gender, and religion. That requires a proper understanding and awareness of the norms, differences, preconceptions and potential conflicting issues.

Educational technology

The modern use of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning) facilitates distance learning and independent learning by the extensive use of information and communications technology (ICT), replacing traditional content delivery by postal correspondence. Instruction can be synchronous and asynchronous online communication in an interactive learning environment or virtual communities, in lieu of a physical classroom. "The focus is shifted to the education transaction in the form of virtual community of learners sustainable across time."

One of the most significant issues encountered in the mainstream correspondence model of distance education is transactional distance, which results from the lack of appropriate communication between learner and teacher. This gap has been observed to become wider if there is no communication between the learner and teacher and has direct implications over the learning process and future endeavors in distance education. Distance education providers began to introduce various strategies, techniques, and procedures to increase the amount of interaction between learner and teacher. These measures e.g. more frequent face-to-face tutorials, increased use of information and communication technologies including teleconferencing and the Internet, were designed to close the gap in transactional distance.

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Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), commonly called Jefferson Lab or JLab, is a U.S. national laboratory located in Newport News, Virginia. Since June 1, 2006, it has been operated by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, a limited liability company created by Southeastern Universities Research Association and PAE Applied Technologies. Until 1996 it was known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF); commonly, this name is still used for the main accelerator.

Founded in 1984, Jefferson Lab employs more than 675 people, and more than 2,000 scientists from around the world have conducted research using the facility. Its stated mission is "to provide forefront scientific facilities, opportunities and leadership essential for discovering the fundamental structure of nuclear matter; to partner in industry to apply its advanced technology; and to serve the nation and its communities through education and public outreach."

Accelerator

The laboratory's main research facility is the CEBAF accelerator, which consists of a polarized electron source and injector and a pair of superconducting RF linear accelerators that are 7/8-mile (1400 m) in length and connected to each other by two arc sections that contain steering magnets. As the electron beam makes up to five successive orbits, its energy is increased up to a maximum of 6 GeV. This leads to a design that appears similar to a racetrack when compared to the classical ring-shaped accelerators found at sites such as CERN or Fermilab. Effectively, CEBAF is a linear accelerator, similar to SLAC at Stanford, that has been folded up to a tenth of its normal length.

The design of CEBAF allows the electron beam to be continuous rather than the pulsed beam typical of ring shaped accelerators. (There is some beam structure, but the pulses are very much shorter and closer together.) The electron beam is directed onto three potential targets (see below). One of the distinguishing features of Jefferson Lab is the continuous nature of the electron beam, with a bunch length of less than 1 picosecond. Another is Jefferson Lab's use of superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF) technology, which uses liquid helium to cool niobium to approximately 4 K (âˆ'452.5 °F), removing electrical resistance and allowing the most efficient transfer of energy to an electron. To achieve this, Jefferson Lab houses the world's largest liquid helium refrigerator, and it was one of the first large-scale implementations of SRF technology. The accelerator is built 8 meters below the Earth's surface, or approximately 25 feet, and the walls of the accelerator tunnels are 2 feet thick.

The beam ends in four experimental halls, labelled Hall A, Hall B, Hall C, and Hall D. Each hall contains specialized spectrometers to record the products of collisions between the electron beam or with real photons and a stationary target. This allows physicists to study the structure of the atomic nucleus, specifically the interaction of the quarks that make up protons and neutrons of the nucleus.

With each revolution around the accelerator, the beam passes through each of the two LINAC accelerators, but through a different set of bending magnets in semi-circular arcs at the ends of the linacs. The electrons make up to five passes through the linear accelerators.

When a nucleus in the target is hit by an electron from the beam, an "interaction", or "event", occurs, scattering particles into the hall. Each hall contains an array of particle detectors that track the physical properties of the particles produced by the event. The detectors generate electrical pulses that are converted into digital values by analog to digital converters (ADCs), time to digital converters (TDCs) and pulse counters (scalers).

This digital data is gathered and stored so that the physicist can later analyze the data and reconstruct the physics that occurred. The system of electronics and computers that perform this task is called a data acquisition system.

12 GeV upgrade

As of June 2010, construction began on a $338 million upgrade to add an end station, Hall D, on the opposite end of the accelerator from the other three halls, as well as to double beam energy to 12 GeV. Concurrently, an addition to the Test Lab, (where the SRF cavities used in CEBAF and other accelerators used worldwide are manufactured) was constructed.

As of May 2014, the upgrade achieved a new record for beam energy, at 10.5 GeV, delivering beam to Hall D.

Physics program

Jefferson Lab conducts a broad program of research using the electromagnetic interaction to probe the structure of the nucleon (protons and neutrons), the production and decay of light mesons, and aspects of the interactions of nucleons in the atomic nucleus. The main tools are the scattering of electrons and the creation and utilization of high energy real photons. In addition, both electron and photon beams can be made highly polarized, allowing exploration of so-called spin degrees of freedom in investigations.

The four experimental halls have distinct but overlapping research goals, but with instrumentation unique to each.

Hall A

Matching high resolution spectrometers (HRS) have been used to study deep-inelastic electron scattering. Using very well controlled polarized electron beams, parity violation in electron scattering has been studied.

Hall B

The CLAS detector was the mainstay of the Hall B experimental program from 1998 to 2012. Physics Working Groups in the areas of Deep-Inelastic Interactions, Hadron Spectroscopy, and Nuclear Interactions exist. See the article related to the spectrometer itself and physics program at the link CLAS. Polarized real photons and electron beams were used. Physics targets included liquid hydrogen and deuterium, as well as massive nuclear materials.

In the era of 12 GeV beams at Jefferson Lab, the Hall B program has been restructured to include a new detector called CLAS12, as well as several other experiments using more specialized hardware.

Hall C

Multiple spectrometers and specialized equipment has been used to study, for example, parity-violating electron scattering to measure the weak charge of the proton and hypernuclear production with the electromagnetic interaction.

Hall D

This experimental hall was built for the beginning of the 12 GeV beam-energy program starting in 2014. This hall houses the GlueX experiment, which is designed to map out the light unflavored meson spectrum in detail in the search for explicit gluonic excitations in mesons.

Free electron laser

JLab houses the world's most powerful tunable free electron laser, with an output of over 14 kilowatts.

CODA

Since CEBAF has three complementary experiments running simultaneously, it was decided that the three data acquisition systems should be as similar as possible, so that physicists moving from one experiment to another would find a familiar environment. To that end, a group of specialist physicists was hired to form a data acquisition development group to develop a common system for all three halls. CODA, the CEBAF Online Data Acquisition system, was the result.

CODA is a set of software tools and recommended hardware that facilitates a data acquisition system for nuclear physics experiments. In nuclear and particle physics experiments, the particle tracks are digitized by the data acquisition system, but the detectors are capable of generating a large number of possible measurements, or "data channels".

Typically, the ADC, TDC, and other digital electronics are large circuit boards with connectors at the front edge that provide input and output for digital signals, and a connector at the back that plugs into a backplane. A group of boards is plugged into a chassis, or "crate", that provides physical support, power, and cooling for the boards and backplane. This arrangement allows electronics capable of digitizing many hundreds of channels to be compressed into a single chassis.

In the CODA system, each chassis contains a board that is an intelligent controller for the rest of the chassis. This board, called a ReadOut Controller (ROC), configures each of the digitizing boards upon first receiving data, reads the data from the digitizers, and formats the data for later analysis.

References

External links

• Official website
• Physics Division at Jefferson Lab (includes links to each of the experimental halls)
• Free-Electron Laser Program
• 12 GeV Upgrade
• K-12 Science Education

Learn more »

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), commonly called Jefferson Lab or JLab, is a U.S. national laboratory located in Newport News, Virginia. Since June 1, 2006, it has been operated by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, a limited liability company created by Southeastern Universities Research Association and PAE Applied Technologies. Until 1996 it was known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF); commonly, this name is still used for the main accelerator.

Founded in 1984, Jefferson Lab employs more than 675 people, and more than 2,000 scientists from around the world have conducted research using the facility. Its stated mission is "to provide forefront scientific facilities, opportunities and leadership essential for discovering the fundamental structure of nuclear matter; to partner in industry to apply its advanced technology; and to serve the nation and its communities through education and public outreach."

Accelerator

The laboratory's main research facility is the CEBAF accelerator, which consists of a polarized electron source and injector and a pair of superconducting RF linear accelerators that are 7/8-mile (1400 m) in length and connected to each other by two arc sections that contain steering magnets. As the electron beam makes up to five successive orbits, its energy is increased up to a maximum of 6 GeV. This leads to a design that appears similar to a racetrack when compared to the classical ring-shaped accelerators found at sites such as CERN or Fermilab. Effectively, CEBAF is a linear accelerator, similar to SLAC at Stanford, that has been folded up to a tenth of its normal length.

The design of CEBAF allows the electron beam to be continuous rather than the pulsed beam typical of ring shaped accelerators. (There is some beam structure, but the pulses are very much shorter and closer together.) The electron beam is directed onto three potential targets (see below). One of the distinguishing features of Jefferson Lab is the continuous nature of the electron beam, with a bunch length of less than 1 picosecond. Another is Jefferson Lab's use of superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF) technology, which uses liquid helium to cool niobium to approximately 4 K (âˆ'452.5 °F), removing electrical resistance and allowing the most efficient transfer of energy to an electron. To achieve this, Jefferson Lab houses the world's largest liquid helium refrigerator, and it was one of the first large-scale implementations of SRF technology. The accelerator is built 8 meters below the Earth's surface, or approximately 25 feet, and the walls of the accelerator tunnels are 2 feet thick.

The beam ends in four experimental halls, labelled Hall A, Hall B, Hall C, and Hall D. Each hall contains specialized spectrometers to record the products of collisions between the electron beam or with real photons and a stationary target. This allows physicists to study the structure of the atomic nucleus, specifically the interaction of the quarks that make up protons and neutrons of the nucleus.

With each revolution around the accelerator, the beam passes through each of the two LINAC accelerators, but through a different set of bending magnets in semi-circular arcs at the ends of the linacs. The electrons make up to five passes through the linear accelerators.

When a nucleus in the target is hit by an electron from the beam, an "interaction", or "event", occurs, scattering particles into the hall. Each hall contains an array of particle detectors that track the physical properties of the particles produced by the event. The detectors generate electrical pulses that are converted into digital values by analog to digital converters (ADCs), time to digital converters (TDCs) and pulse counters (scalers).

This digital data is gathered and stored so that the physicist can later analyze the data and reconstruct the physics that occurred. The system of electronics and computers that perform this task is called a data acquisition system.

12 GeV upgrade

As of June 2010, construction began on a $338 million upgrade to add an end station, Hall D, on the opposite end of the accelerator from the other three halls, as well as to double beam energy to 12 GeV. Concurrently, an addition to the Test Lab, (where the SRF cavities used in CEBAF and other accelerators used worldwide are manufactured) was constructed.

As of May 2014, the upgrade achieved a new record for beam energy, at 10.5 GeV, delivering beam to Hall D.

Physics program

Jefferson Lab conducts a broad program of research using the electromagnetic interaction to probe the structure of the nucleon (protons and neutrons), the production and decay of light mesons, and aspects of the interactions of nucleons in the atomic nucleus. The main tools are the scattering of electrons and the creation and utilization of high energy real photons. In addition, both electron and photon beams can be made highly polarized, allowing exploration of so-called spin degrees of freedom in investigations.

The four experimental halls have distinct but overlapping research goals, but with instrumentation unique to each.

Hall A

Matching high resolution spectrometers (HRS) have been used to study deep-inelastic electron scattering. Using very well controlled polarized electron beams, parity violation in electron scattering has been studied.

Hall B

The CLAS detector was the mainstay of the Hall B experimental program from 1998 to 2012. Physics Working Groups in the areas of Deep-Inelastic Interactions, Hadron Spectroscopy, and Nuclear Interactions exist. See the article related to the spectrometer itself and physics program at the link CLAS. Polarized real photons and electron beams were used. Physics targets included liquid hydrogen and deuterium, as well as massive nuclear materials.

In the era of 12 GeV beams at Jefferson Lab, the Hall B program has been restructured to include a new detector called CLAS12, as well as several other experiments using more specialized hardware.

Hall C

Multiple spectrometers and specialized equipment has been used to study, for example, parity-violating electron scattering to measure the weak charge of the proton and hypernuclear production with the electromagnetic interaction.

Hall D

This experimental hall was built for the beginning of the 12 GeV beam-energy program starting in 2014. This hall houses the GlueX experiment, which is designed to map out the light unflavored meson spectrum in detail in the search for explicit gluonic excitations in mesons.

Free electron laser

JLab houses the world's most powerful tunable free electron laser, with an output of over 14 kilowatts.

CODA

Since CEBAF has three complementary experiments running simultaneously, it was decided that the three data acquisition systems should be as similar as possible, so that physicists moving from one experiment to another would find a familiar environment. To that end, a group of specialist physicists was hired to form a data acquisition development group to develop a common system for all three halls. CODA, the CEBAF Online Data Acquisition system, was the result.

CODA is a set of software tools and recommended hardware that facilitates a data acquisition system for nuclear physics experiments. In nuclear and particle physics experiments, the particle tracks are digitized by the data acquisition system, but the detectors are capable of generating a large number of possible measurements, or "data channels".

Typically, the ADC, TDC, and other digital electronics are large circuit boards with connectors at the front edge that provide input and output for digital signals, and a connector at the back that plugs into a backplane. A group of boards is plugged into a chassis, or "crate", that provides physical support, power, and cooling for the boards and backplane. This arrangement allows electronics capable of digitizing many hundreds of channels to be compressed into a single chassis.

In the CODA system, each chassis contains a board that is an intelligent controller for the rest of the chassis. This board, called a ReadOut Controller (ROC), configures each of the digitizing boards upon first receiving data, reads the data from the digitizers, and formats the data for later analysis.

References

External links

• Official website
• Physics Division at Jefferson Lab (includes links to each of the experimental halls)
• Free-Electron Laser Program
• 12 GeV Upgrade
• K-12 Science Education

Learn more »

Continuing legal education (CLE), also known as mandatory or minimum continuing legal education (MCLE) or, in some jurisdictions outside the United States, as continuing professional development, consists of professional education for attorneys that takes place after their initial admission to the bar. Within the United States, U.S. attorneys in many states and territories must complete certain required CLE in order to maintain their U.S. licenses to practice law. Outside the United States, lawyers in various jurisdictions, such as British Columbia in Canada, must also complete certain required CLE. However, some jurisdictions, such as the District of Columbia and I srael, recommend, but do not require, that attorneys complete CLE.

United States

No nationwide rules exist within the United States for CLE requirements or accreditation. Instead, each individual jurisdiction (i.e., each state, the District of Columbia, and each territory) exercises discretion on how to regulate U.S. attorneys, which includes establishing rules for CLE requirements and accreditation. This authority is typically vested in each jurisdiction's supreme court and delegated to special CLE commissions or boards.

Nonetheless, various efforts have been made to promote uniformity of CLE programs across U.S. jurisdictions. For example, the American Bar Association (ABA) promulgated a model CLE rule for individual jurisdictions to adopt. Similarly, the Continuing Legal Education Regulators Association (CLEreg) created a uniform CLE application, a uniform CLE attendance certification, and a CLE distance learning glossary. CLEreg also created a CLE guide to assist its members in managing CLE programs.

In U.S. jurisdictions with mandatory CLE requirements, attorneys must typically earn a minimum number of CLE credits (measured in hours) over a set period of years. Also, some of these jurisdictions require a minimum number of CLE credits for specific topics (e.g., ethics, diversity training, elimination of bias, professional responsibility, basic skills, substance abuse, prevention of malpractice, and attorney-client disputes).

U.S. attorneys typically earn CLE credits by completing legal training presented by experienced attorneys. The training may cover both legal theory and practical experiences in legal practice. Competency testing is not usually required in order for attorneys to earn CLE credits through legal training. Classroom training materials can be extensive and may represent the most current and advanced thinking available on a particular legal subject. Oftentimes, a portion of CLE credits may be earned through reading and other self-study. In recent years, many jurisdictions now allow attorneys to earn CLE credits as part of distance education courses taken on-line or by listening to audio downloads.

Alternatively, experienced attorneys in some jurisdictions, such as New York, may also earn CLE credits for speaking or teaching at accredited CLE programs; for moderating or participating in panel presentations at accredited CLE activities; for teaching law courses at ABA-accredited law schools; for preparing students for and judging law competitions, mock trials and moot court arguments, including those at the high school or college level; for published legal research-based writing; and for providing pro bono legal services.

Legal training or other activities often meet the rules for CLE requirements and accreditation in multiple jurisdictions. In these instances, nothing prohibits attorneys licensed in one or more of these jurisdictions from counting the training or other activities towards fulfillment of their CLE credit requirements for each of these jurisdictions.

Opportunities for CLE are offered throughout the year by state bar associations, national legal organizations such as the American Bar Association, Federal Bar Association, law schools, and many other legal associations and groups such as non-profit CLE providers Practicing Law Institute (PLI), American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education (ALI CLE; formerly American Law Institute-American Bar Association ALI-ABA), The Center for American and International Law (CAIL), and The Institute of American & Talmudic Law (IAT Law), as well as other private, for-profit enterprises. Activities are usually open to all lawyers (and sometimes non-lawyers), but organizations often offer discounts to their own members. A recent trend is toward the provision and promotion of free CLE programs.

Uniquely, Kentucky allows all licensed attorneys in the state to complete their annual CLE requirement without a registration fee through a two-day program known as Kentucky Law Update, offered annually in at least seven locations throughout the state.

Some attorneys, particularly those who have spent many years in active practice, have resisted CLE requirements as unconstitutional. However, in 1999, the Supreme Court of California upheld that state's CLE program against an Equal Protection Clause constitutional challenge.

Canada

In Canada, rules vary by jurisdiction (i.e., provinces and territories). For example, Alberta has a mandatory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program, requiring preparation of annual CPD plans. Lawyers develop their plans and declare to the Law Society of Alberta on an annual basis that these are complete. The Legal Education Society of Alberta provides tools to facilitate compliance with these requirements.

In Ontario the Law Society of Upper Canada, beginning in 2010, instituted mandatory CPD hours for all lawyers in the province.

In British Columbia, CPD is mandatory and lawyers are required to annually report their continuing legal education activities to the Law Society of British Columbia. The Continuing Legal Education Society of BC provides tools to facilitate compliance with these requirements. Practicing lawyers must complete a minimum of 12 hours of coursework and 50 hours of self study annually.

The Philippines

Continuing legal education required of members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to ensure that throughout their career, they keep abreast with law and jurisprudence, maintain the ethics of the profession and enhance the standards of the practice of law (Rule 1, Bar Matter No. 850 â€" Supreme Court of the Philippines)

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9â€"0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United S tates Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases. However, the decision's fourteen pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".

Background

For much of the sixty years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation. This policy had been endorsed in 1896 by the United States Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that as long as the separate facilities for the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment ("no State shall ... deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws").

The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that this system of racial separation, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans. Racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Brown was influenced by UNESCO's 1950 Statement, signed by a wide variety of internationally renowned scholars, titled The Race Question. This declaration denounced previous attempts at scientifically justifying racism as well as morally condemning racism. Another work that the Supreme Court cited was Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Myrdal had been a signatory of the UNESCO declaration. The research performed by the educational psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark also influenced the Court's decisio n. The Clarks' "doll test" studies presented substantial arguments to the Supreme Court about how segregation affected black schoolchildren's mental status.

The United States and the Soviet Union were both at the height of the Cold War during this time, and U.S. officials, including Supreme Court Justices, were highly aware of the harm that segregation and racism played on America's international image. When Justice William O. Douglas traveled to India in 1950, the first question he was asked was, "Why does America tolerate the lynching of Negroes?" Douglas later wrote that he had learned from his travels that "the attitude of the United States toward its colored minorities is a powerful factor in our relations with India." Chief Justice Earl Warren, nominated to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, echoed Douglas's concerns in a 1954 speech to the American Bar Association, proclaiming that "Our American system like all others is on trial both at home and abroad, ... the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of ad ulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile."

Case

Filing and arguments

In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children.

The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The Topeka Board of Education operated separate elementary schools under an 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The plaintiffs had been recruited by the leadership of the Topeka NAACP. Notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett; Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd.

The named plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant pastor at his local church, and an African American. He was convinced to join the lawsuit by Scott, a childhood friend. Brown's daughter Linda, a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house.

As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in the closest neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and directed to the segregated schools. Linda Brown Thompson later recalled the experience in a 2004 PBS documentary:

... well. like I say, we lived in an integrated neighborhood and I had all of these playmates of different nationalities. And so when I found out that day that I might be able to go to their school, I was just thrilled, you know. And I remember walking over to Sumner school with my dad that day and going up the steps of the school and the school looked so big to a smaller child. And I remember going inside and my dad spoke with someone and then he went into the inner office with the principal and they left me out ... to sit outside with the secretary. And while he was in the inner office, I could hear voices and hear his voice raised, you know, as the conversation went on. And then he immediately came out of the office, took me by the hand and we walked home from the school. I just couldn't understand what was happening because I was so sure that I was going to go to school with Mona and Guinevere, Wanda, and all of my playmates.

The case "Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" was named after Oliver Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. The lawyers, and the National Chapter of the NAACP, also felt that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by the U.S. Supreme Court Justices. The 13 plaintiffs were: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, and Lucinda Todd. The last surviving plaintiff, Zelma Henderson, died in Topeka, on May 20, 2008, at age 88.

The District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing the U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which had upheld a state law requiring "separate but equal" segregated facilities for blacks and whites in railway cars. The three-judge District Court panel found that segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on negro children, but denied relief on the ground that the negro and white schools in Topeka were substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers.

Supreme Court review

The case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs v. Elliott (filed in South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington D.C.).

All were NAACP-sponsored cases. The Davis case, the only case of the five originating from a student protest, began when 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns organized and led a 450-student walkout of Moton High School. The Gebhart case was the only one where a trial court, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court, found that discrimination was unlawful; in all the other cases the plaintiffs had lost as the original courts had found discrimination to be lawful.

The Kansas case was unique among the group in that there was no contention of gross inferiority of the segregated schools' physical plant, curriculum, or staff. The district court found substantial equality as to all such factors. The lower court, in its opinion, noted that, in Topeka, "the physical facilities, the curricula, courses of study, qualification and quality of teachers, as well as other educational facilities in the two sets of schools [were] comparable." The lower court observed that "colored children in many instances are required to travel much greater distances than they would be required to travel could they attend a white school" but also noted that the school district "transports colored children to and from school free of charge" and that "[n]o such service [was] provided to white children."

In the Delaware case the district court judge in Gebhart ordered that the black students be admitted to the white high school due to the substantial harm of segregation and the differences that made the separate schools unequal.

The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshallâ€"who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967â€"argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. Assistant attorney general Paul Wilsonâ€"later distinguished emeritus professor of law at the University of Kansasâ€"conducted the state's ambivalent defense in his first appellate argument.

In December 1952, the Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief in the case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that

The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.

The brief also quoted a letter by Secretary of State Dean Acheson lamenting that

The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country.

British barrister and parliamentarian Anthony Lester has written that "Although the Court's opinion in Brown made no reference to these considerations of foreign policy, there is no doubt that they significantly influenced the decision."

Unanimous opinion and consensus building

In spring 1953, the Court heard the case but was unable to decide the issue and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953, with special attention to whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause prohibited the operation of separate public schools for whites and blacks.

The Court reargued the case at the behest of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, who used reargument as a stalling tactic, to allow the Court to gather a consensus around a Brown opinion that would outlaw segregation. The justices in support of desegregation spent much effort convincing those who initially intended to dissent to join a unanimous opinion. Although the legal effect would be same for a majority rather than unanimous decision, it was felt that dissent could be used by segregation supporters as a legitimizing counter-argument.

Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued. Justices Douglas, Black, Burton, and Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy. Fred M. Vinson noted that Congress had not issued desegregation legislation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and states' rights and was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out." Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to judicial activism and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability. Chief Justice Vinson had been a key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school sy stems following Mendez v. Westminster. However, Eisenhower invited Earl Warren to a White House dinner, where the president told him: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes." Nevertheless, the Justice Department sided with the African American plaintiffs.

In his reading of the unanimous decision, Justice Warren noted the adverse psychological effects that segregated schools had on African American children.

While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the Court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment, held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment.

Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that the Court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion.

Although most justices were immediately convinced, Warren spent some time after this famous speech convincing everyone to sign onto the opinion. Justices Jackson and Reed finally decided to drop their dissent. The final decision was unanimous. Warren drafted the basic opinion and kept circulating and revising it until he had an opinion endorsed by all the members of the Court.

Holding

Reporters who observed the court holding were surprised by two facts. First, the court made a unanimous decision. Prior to the ruling, there were reports that the court members were sharply divided and might not be able to agree. Second, the attendance of Justice Robert H. Jackson who had suffered a mild heart attack and was not expected to return to the bench until early June 1954. "Perhaps to emphasize the unanimity of the court, perhaps from a desire to be present when the history-making verdict was announced, Justice Jackson was in his accustomed seat when the court convened." Reporters also noted that Dean Acheson, former secretary of state, who had related the case to foreign policy considerations, and Herbert Brownell, the current attorney general, were in the courtroom.

The key holding of the Court was that, even if segregated black and white schools were of equal quality in facilities and teachers, segregation by itself was harmful to black students and unconstitutional. They found that a significant psychological and social disadvantage was given to black children from the nature of segregation itself, drawing on research conducted by Kenneth Clark assisted by June Shagaloff. This aspect was vital because the question was not whether the schools were "equal", which under Plessy they nominally should have been, but whether the doctrine of separate was constitutional. The justices answered with a strong "no":

[D]oes segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. ...

"Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The effect is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system." ...

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Local outcomes

The Topeka junior high schools had been integrated since 1941. Topeka High School was integrated from its inception in 1871 and its sports teams from 1949 on. The Kansas law permitting segregated schools allowed them only "below the high school level".

Soon after the district court decision, election outcomes and the political climate in Topeka changed. The Board of Education of Topeka began to end segregation in the Topeka elementary schools in August 1953, integrating two attendance districts. All the Topeka elementary schools were changed to neighborhood attendance centers in January 1956, although existing students were allowed to continue attending their prior assigned schools at their option. Plaintiff Zelma Henderson, in a 2004 interview, recalled that no demonstrations or tumult accompanied desegregation in Topeka's schools:

"They accepted it," she said. "It wasn't too long until they integrated the teachers and principals."

The Topeka Public Schools administration building is named in honor of McKinley Burnett, NAACP chapter president who organized the case.

Monroe Elementary was designated a U.S. National Historic Site unit of the National Park Service on October 26, 1992.

Social implications

Not everyone accepted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. organized the Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. See, for example, The Southern Manifesto. For more implications of the Brown decision, see Desegregation.

Deep South

Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd organized a campaign to generate legal obstacles to implementation of desegregation.

In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out his state's National Guard to block black students' entry to Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by deploying elements of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Arkansas and by federalizing Arkansas's National Guard.

Also in 1957, Florida's response was mixed. Its legislature passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. But Florida Governor LeRoy Collins, though joining in the protest against the court decision, refused to sign it, arguing that the attempt to overturn the ruling must be done by legal methods.

In Mississippi fear of violence prevented any plaintiff from bringing a school desegregation suit for the next nine years. When Medgar Evers sued to desegregate Jackson, Mississippi schools in 1963 White Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith murdered him. Two subsequent trials resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not convicted of the murder until 1994.

In 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace personally blocked the door to Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to prevent the enrollment of two black students. This became the infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door where Wallace personally backed his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" policy that he had stated in his 1963 inaugural address. He moved aside only when confronted by General Henry Graham of the Alabama National Guard, who was ordered by President John F. Kennedy to intervene.

Upland South

In North Carolina, there was often a strategy of nominally accepting Brown, but tacitly resisting it. On May 18, 1954 the Greensboro, North Carolina school board declared that it would abide by the Brown ruling. This was the result of the initiative of D.E. Hudgins Jr, a former Rhodes Scholar and prominent attorney, who chaired the school board. This made Greensboro the first, and for years the only, city in the South, to announce its intent to comply. However, others in the city resisted integration, putting up legal obstacles to the actual implementation of school desegregation for years afterward, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971, after numerous local lawsuits and both nonviolent and violent demonstrations. Historians have noted the irony that Greensboro, which had heralded itself as such a progressive city, was one of the last holdouts for school desegregation.

The North

Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In Harlem, New York, for example, not a single new school had been built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist, even as the Second Great Migration caused overcrowding of existing schools. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. Northern officials were in denial of the segregation, but Brown helped stimulate activism among African-American parents like Mae Mallory who, with support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and State of New York on Brown's principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first freedom schools of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight, however.)

The intellectual roots of Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation in 1896 under the doctrine of "separate but equal" were, in part, tied to the scientific racism of the era. However, the popular support for the decision was more likely a result of the racist beliefs held by many whites at the time. In deciding Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rejected the ideas of scientific racists about the need for segregation, especially in schools. The Court buttressed its holding by citing (in footnote 11) social science research about the harms to black children caused by segregated schools.

Both scholarly and popular ideas of hereditarianism played an important role in the attack and backlash that followed the Brown decision. The Mankind Quarterly was founded in 1960, in part in response to the Brown decision.

Legal criticism and praise

William Rehnquist wrote a memo titled "A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases" when he was a law clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1952, during early deliberations that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In his memo, Rehnquist argued: "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed." Rehnquist continued, "To the argument . . . that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minorities are." Rehnquist also argued for Plessy with other law clerks.

However, during his 1971 confirmation hearings, Rehnquist said, "I believe that the memorandum was prepared by me as a statement of Justice Jackson's tentative views for his own use." Justice Jackson had initially planned to join a dissent in Brown. Later, at his 1986 hearings for the slot of Chief Justice, Rehnquist put further distance between himself and the 1952 memo: "The bald statement that Plessy was right and should be reaffirmed, was not an accurate reflection of my own views at the time." In any event, while serving on the Supreme Court, Rehnquist made no effort to reverse or undermine the Brown decision, and frequently relied upon it as precedent.

Chief Justice Warren's reasoning was broadly criticized by contemporary legal academics with Judge Learned Hand decrying that the Supreme Court had "assumed the role of a third legislative chamber" and Herbert Wechsler finding Brown impossible to justify based on neutral principles.

Some aspects of the Brown decision are still debated. Notably, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, himself an African American, wrote in Missouri v. Jenkins (1995) that at the very least, Brown I has been misunderstood by the courts.

Brown I did not say that "racially isolated" schools were inherently inferior; the harm that it identified was tied purely to de jure segregation, not de facto segregation. Indeed, Brown I itself did not need to rely upon any psychological or social-science research in order to announce the simple, yet fundamental truth that the Government cannot discriminate among its citizens on the basis of race. …

Segregation was not unconstitutional because it might have caused psychological feelings of inferiority. Public school systems that separated blacks and provided them with superior educational resources making blacks "feel" superior to whites sent to lesser schoolsâ€"would violate the Fourteenth Amendment, whether or not the white students felt stigmatized, just as do school systems in which the positions of the races are reversed. Psychological injury or benefit is irrelevant …

Given that desegregation has not produced the predicted leaps forward in black educational achievement, there is no reason to think that black students cannot learn as well when surrounded by members of their own race as when they are in an integrated environment. (…) Because of their "distinctive histories and traditions," black schools can function as the center and symbol of black communities, and provide examples of independent black leadership, success, and achievement.

Some Constitutional originalists, notably Raoul Berger in his influential 1977 book "Government by Judiciary," make the case that Brown cannot be defended by reference to the original understanding of the 14th Amendment. They support this reading of the 14th amendment by noting that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 did not ban segregated schools and that the same Congress that passed the 14th Amendment also voted to segregate schools in the District of Columbia. Other originalists, including Michael W. McConnell, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in his article "Originalism and the Desegregation Decisions," argue that the Radical Reconstructionists who spearheaded the 14th Amendment were in favor of desegregated southern schools. Evidence supporting this interpretation of the 14th amendment has come from archived Congressional records showing that proposals for federal legislation which would enforce school integration were debated in Congress a few years following the amendment's ratification.

The case also has attracted some criticism from more liberal authors, including some who say that Chief Justice Warren's reliance on psychological criteria to find a harm against segregated blacks was unnecessary. For example, Drew S. Days has written: "we have developed criteria for evaluating the constitutionality of racial classifications that do not depend upon findings of psychic harm or social science evidence. They are based rather on the principle that 'distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,' Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943). . . ."

In his book The Tempting of America (page 82), Robert Bork endorsed the Brown decision as follows:

By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases … The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was writt en into the law.

In June 1987, Philip Elman, a civil rights attorney who served as an associate in the Solicitor General's office during Harry Truman's term, claimed he and Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter were mostly responsible for the Supreme Court's decision, and stated that the NAACP's arguments did not present strong evidence. Elman has been criticized for offering a self-aggrandizing history of the case, omitting important facts, and denigrating the work of civil rights attorneys who had laid the groundwork for the decision over many decades. However, Frankfurter was also known for being one of court's most outspoken advocates of the judicial restraint philosophy of basing court rulings on existing law rather than personal or political considerations. Public officials in the United States today are nearly unanimous in lauding the ruling. In May 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the ruling, President George W. Bush spoke at the opening of the Brown v. Board of Education National Hi storic Site, calling Brown "a decision that changed America for the better, and forever." Most Senators and Representatives issued press releases hailing the ruling.

In an article in Townhall, Thomas Sowell argued that When Chief Justice Earl Warren declared in the landmark 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education that racially separate schools were "inherently unequal," Dunbar High School was a living refutation of that assumption. And it was within walking distance of the Supreme Court."

Brown II

In 1955, the Supreme Court considered arguments by the schools requesting relief concerning the task of desegregation. In their decision, which became known as "Brown II" the court delegated the task of carrying out school desegregation to district courts with orders that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed," a phrase traceable to Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven.

Supporters of the earlier decision were displeased with this decision. The language "all deliberate speed" was seen by critics as too ambiguous to ensure reasonable haste for compliance with the court's instruction. Many Southern states and school districts interpreted "Brown II" as legal justification for resisting, delaying, and avoiding significant integration for yearsâ€"and in some cases for a decade or moreâ€"using such tactics as closing down school systems, using state money to finance segregated "private" schools, and "token" integration where a few carefully selected black children were admitted to former white-only schools but the vast majority remained in underfunded, unequal black schools.

For example, based on "Brown II," the U.S. District Court ruled that Prince Edward County, Virginia did not have to desegregate immediately. When faced with a court order to finally begin desegregation in 1959 the county board of supervisors stopped appropriating money for public schools, which remained closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964.

White students in the county were given assistance to attend white-only "private academies" that were taught by teachers formerly employed by the public school system, while black students had no education at all unless they moved out of the county. But the public schools reopened after the Supreme Court overturned "Brown II" in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, declaring that "...the time for mere 'deliberate speed' has run out," and that the county must provide a public school system for all children regardless of race.

Brown III

In 1978, Topeka attorneys Richard Jones, Joseph Johnson and Charles Scott, Jr. (son of the original Brown team member), with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, persuaded Linda Brown Smithâ€"who now had her own children in Topeka schoolsâ€"to be a plaintiff in reopening Brown. They were concerned that the Topeka Public Schools' policy of "open enrollment" had led to and would lead to further segregation. They also believed that with a choice of open enrollment, white parents would shift their children to "preferred" schools that would create both predominantly African American and predominantly European American schools within the district. The district court reopened the Brown case after a 25-year hiatus, but denied the plaintiffs' request finding the schools "unitary". In 1989, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit on 2â€"1 vote found that the vestiges of segregation remained with respect to student and staff assignment. In 1993, the Supre me Court denied the appellant School District's request for certiorari and returned the case to District Court Judge Richard Rodgers for implementation of the Tenth Circuit's mandate.

After a 1994 plan was approved and a bond issue passed, additional elementary magnet schools were opened and district attendance plans redrawn, which resulted in the Topeka schools meeting court standards of racial balance by 1998. Unified status was eventually granted to Topeka Unified School District No. 501 on July 27, 1999. One of the new magnet schools is named after the Scott family attorneys for their role in the Brown case and civil rights.

Related cases

• Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)â€"separate but equal for public facilities
• Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education 175 U.S. 528 (1899)â€"sanctioned de jure segregation of races
• Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927)â€"separate schools for Chinese pupils from white schoolchildren
• Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932)â€"access to counsel
• Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)-states that provide a school to white students must provide in-state education to blacks
• Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944)â€"non-white voters in primary schools
• Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education (1944)-prohibited racial segregation in New Jersey schools.
• Mendez v. Westminster, 64 F. Supp. 544 (1946)â€"prohibits segregating Mexican American children in California
• Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 332 U.S. 631 (1948)â€"access to taxpayer state funded law schools
• Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)â€"restrictive covenants
• Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950)â€"segregated law schools in Texas
• McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950)â€"prohibits segregation in a public institution of higher learning
• Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475 (1954)â€"the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or Negro.
• Briggs v. Elliott, 347 U.S. 483 (1952) Brown Case #1â€"Summerton, South Carolina.
• Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952) Brown Case #2â€"Prince Edward County, Virginia.
• Gebhart v. Belton, 33 Del. Ch. 144 (1952) Brown Case #3â€"Claymont, Delaware
• Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954) Brown companion caseâ€"dealt with the constitutionality of segregation in the District of Columbia, whichâ€"as a federal district, not a stateâ€"is not subject to the Fourteenth Amendment.
• NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958)â€"privacy of NAACP membership lists, and free association of members
• Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958) â€" Federal court enforcement of desegregation
• Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960) â€" outlawed racial segregation in public transportation
• Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964)â€"held constitutional the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial discrimination in public places, particularly in public accommodations even in private property.
• Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) â€" banned anti-miscegenation laws (race-based restrictions on marriage).
• Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 1218 (1969) â€" changed Brown's requirement of desegregation "with all deliberate speed" to one of "desegregation now"
• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971) â€" established bussing as a solution
• Guey Heung Lee v. Johnson, 404 U.S 1215 (1971) â€" "Brown v. Board of Education was not written for blacks alone", desegregation of Asian schools in opposition to parents of Asian students
• Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974) â€" rejected bussing across school district lines.
• Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (2007)â€"rejected using race as the sole determining factor for assigning students to schools.
• List of United States Supreme Court Cases

* See Case citation for an explanation of these numbers.

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