The discussion on how to discuss discrimination the classroom the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the classroom. We hear from assistant education secretary for civil rights, catholic the center for American Progress. I am delighted to be in conversation with the assistant secretary and welcome. Thank you. Tell us what this does. Is the justice and thank you all. The mission is equal access to equal opportunity for our prayers no shortage of needs in school created by congress for an Civil Rights Act was passed to enforce that promise that no person shall experience race and accommodation includingna school and congress and six, termination, big topics and we have 12 offices and 600 staff dedicated to enforcing these laws and are charges to investigate whatever and information it was violated. [laughter] we take seriously the need to fulfill that promise that no person will experience discrimination so we try to use the tools we have and guidance to share information and word to be enforced. This is a new muscle for us so thats our brought mission. A lot of justice. As much as we can. This is not your first time in this role. Why did this begin . First, i didnt want to leave. This gave me repeated reminders but it was the last date and i was devastated to leave and it was incredibly hard to be away from that of the time but i will just out myself, spent 17 years before coming to government and when it became government, i saw how much change we could make and how quickly and theres no placese else that i can do this much good. Im really hoping but the spin in the work we see and ability to make change for millions of people and six decades of what it should mean, theres really no other way to make that kind ofe difference. We are happy you did. Theres a lot of conversation around the words diversity, equity and inclusion and what does this mean to you . I will say what the president means, issued executive order and for us as a country, each of us is respected for who we are and we dont experience characteristics that are protected so my job is to ensure schools, students are able to focus on reading and writing and arithmetic and not harm and discrimination based on stereotype or actuality and it is important. We tryve to live that in our own practice but i dont have internal enforcement responsibility. What does mean you as a parent . T i have two kids, one in college and the other is and making sure my kids have every opportunity we sing every kid should have but i also feel 49 Million Students in the country, each of them deserves the promise i made to my own children. So want to talk children bit about their admission. Recent Supreme Court opinions. That opinion drastically altered come up in it for years of precedent for how colleges and universities consider race as one ofvee many factors in the admissions process. What does that decision mean for you . Also what does meet me for Educational Opportunity in america . I am for that decision and i enforce the law that decision ascribes a meansch of reaching practice for me in the office for civil rights. We have already received complaints responsive to the courts decision challenging University Admission practices and asking us to examine those practices in light of the decision so it will be a new day for us and how we enforce and what we will do. You mentioned, it up and 45 years of practice in schools. I mentioned roughly success in college and university, some 200 of of them have been engaging in someme form of use of race in their admission practices and that number among others will likely need to reconsider. How they consider race come if they consider race when engaging their admission practices. What i think it means for us as a country, to see that kind of seachange in the law and seachange in our shared understanding of what is an available tool is an opportunity, welcome not, is an opportunity to reconsider what and how we do the work to admit, retain, support and graduate diverse classes, nothing in the Supreme Court decisions challenges the ability to engage in those practices. My hope is that colleges and universities that were interested to ensure that they educate richly diverse classes persist in a commitment to educate richly diverse classes. Some colleges that were not committed maybe could start to be committed. I would welcome that. It is time for us to be thinking about how to do that work as well. And what new opportunities are available to us now that may be was a . That we have been using is a longer available. So what will be there instead. I will just say case anybody doesnt know, the president promised that we delivered at the department of education, department of justice to within 45 days of the courts decision issue in a set of resources that describe what the law is and what is still available. We are very clear the court did not take away the ability to seek at the first class, to educate a diverse class. The court did not speak to more than it did in the harvard and universal collided admissions practices. So it didnt address other issues, and that leaves a very wide variety of available options still to make sure that were educating the first class of students and that we not only bring them but we keep them and we graduate them and we prayer them, and that they are our future. We were concrete about some type of tools that are still available. They include reviewing data. They include recruitment strategies. They include work on belonging, work on making sure that students feel like their campuses are for them and offer a pretty wide open field for the coalition of the willing and hope that coalition is white. I thought was interesting you will did focus on belonging and a sense of belonging. Why is that important in the educational context and for colleges and universities that only focus on admissions and bring in a diverse campus but also retaining one . Ways that so important, important for education in america . First of all we want people to be educated. If we dont retain people then, at the very core that is an mechanistic important element for us. But separate and apart from that in my work to enforce congresses promise that no personal experience this commission on the basis ofha race, sex in particular what i i said all o often are the ugly effects of harassment, the ugly effects of the ugly and unlawful effects of a hostile environment that prevents a student from being able tont the benefit from education come from being able to focus in class on math or physics or whatever the subject is at hand. If students are denigrated from who they are, if students are subject to stereotypes about who they are and made if you like you are not part of the class, theyre not welcome, cannot part of the full committee, then our law is violated. I mean, that is a core component of nondiscrimination. Why is it important for School Communities to focus on belonging . The law demands it. Congress said so. But also we will not keep our kids in school. We will not educate and support the next time she brown jackson. We were not be developing the leaders who will do the things that we need done in our society if we dont welcome them in the community, nurtured them and make sure they can complete their educational journey. So you mentioned something about complaints and like specific instances of discrimination, you know, your Office Reviews of them and goes through come just tell us i think sometimes we talk about some rights, violations in the abstract but what areol you seeing . I guess ill say several things. The last fiscal year, our fiscal year goes october 1 to septembet fiscal year we saw the highest number of complaints that weve ever seen inve history of the office for civil rights. It was close to 19,000 complaints that came into us. Thats not good news i think it. On the one hand, i think, i am pleased that people believe government will be there for them. Im pleased people are coming to us with her deepest hurts and expecting progress because thatsg our job and im pleased to deliver. On the other hand, the volume complexity range of kinds of harms that we see in this time, certainly delegations that come into complaints, are astonishing. Some of them are the oldstyle discrimination, you know, you know its going to happen and you thought it was coming, and some of them are new and astonishing things you did know somebody could do to a person that we hear about. The covid context has created a new and different overlay for kinds of harms that might get visited on children, on students, and so thats hard and painful to see. My staff are terrific. I think we are equal to the task challenging to deliver just as quickly with that degree of complaint coming in. We had 18 fewer staff investigating than the last time we had the next highest complaint volume, which is also the last timead i was here. Maybe its me. But at the end of fy 16 went about 16,000 complaints and 18 more staff. Its a hard time to be doing the work. Let me taste some of the kinds of cases that we resolved, the kinds of justice that we see. I talked about harassment, i talked about a hostile and private. Let me make that not abstract. Last winter we resolved the case in a School District in iowa where where a black student was subjected over and over and over again to racially hostile environment at his school did respond to appropriate andt jut to recontextualize it come 6 of the kids in the school were black so already an isolated experience for the student. In this School District shortly after the george floyd murder, white student knelt on on a gatorade bottle looked at this laxton and said i cant breathe, as a way of addressing the student. Ga the principal didnt do that as racial harassment. Which it was. Let me just say. The principal did recognize that as rising to the love of race harassment even though it was also in the context of the student in called a Cotton Picker, called a monkey, had students saying the kkk is the Cool Kids Club at the school. Over and over and over, really ugly harassment. He was reduced to tears in class. That is not common among middle school boys, and he was reduced it to tears because he was watching a documentary about thinking about his own experience in school and receiving inconsistent and insufficient response from the schoole district. Thats not how a child should have to learn. We expect. What when we send her kids to school, by the way just as reminder school is compulsory in k12. This job was required to be in School Every Day and the learning environment for this student was so ugly about who he is, and he and his mom were complaining to thet School District, and the administrators whose job it is to support him were turning away and say its not thatt bad. Its not bad. It doesnt matter. It does matter, the federal government says it matters. Dennis subject to federal marketing at that kid is okay now and they are paying for counseling so i i feel good abot what we doing for him but appalled that it took that intervention it took a little White Knuckle negotiating to get this district to realize that they actually needed to change their practices. Thats very far from isolated. Another recent resolution was, this was an arizona School District where a black mother came to us and complained that a black daughter repeatedly had white teachers touching her hair and should ask not to touch her and they kept doing it. When we look in the files we found the teacher saying oh, e need somebody to sell her that shes beautiful song doing this and she should be grateful. Theres more to the story than i expected when we first got that in the complaint. That was the locus of the complaint and we can from that happen and you do to change but also in the course of the investigation found out about rampant race harassment across racial identities, you know, ugly antisemitic slant, slurs and People Holding up the eyes to mock asian students and just rampant race harassment that was taking place in the district without district response. Im grateful we found out that it wasnt worth his mom happened to tell us about it so we get a much more systemic resolution that we mightve thoughtatt gog in to try to ensure the district could make sure students would be safe. Again are subject to federal monitoring. We are there to make sure kids are okay and im glad we could do it, but when we think about school, i know yesterday was the first day of school in area School Districts here, and within us and our kids to school, they have new backpack, to lunchbox him i hope you like a teacher, sit up straight in class prep we are not thinking a sisterly that we have to say i want to steal you against the things some of you might call you, the thing someone might say to you in school. Its not, thats not the image of what school should be and is not what Congress Promises your school wont be. Im very grateful that we can be there when that happens, and im enormously distressed by the routine now with which we are saying that kind of harassment in school and insufficient school response. I will say more, you didnt ask us but i will say more, in this time theres a lot of polarization about schools in particular and a lot of polarization in our Public Discourse about how thick skin people should be or what we should be expecting in school. In those conversations we dont talk enough to we dont think enough about what werere asking our babies to hold, and the toll it takes on them to have to navigate that while trying to write an essay, while trying to learn history. It makes me sick as a mom. It makes me sick as the chief civil rights enforcer in the nations schools and it makes me worry about our democracy. So the conversation hits close to home for me because my son just started first grade as today. I do worry about some of those things. So how do we address that . How do we fix that, ensure that my son, of the kids when theyre going back to school dont have to shoulder so much in the classroom and kenaf environments that they are forced to be in . You mention their compulsory but also respectful, safe, inclusive environments as well. 19,000 of us have come toht e office of civil rights so thank you for that. Thats one path. We are issuing a lot of resources to try to share what the law is and those are things people can use themselves when advocating with the teacher come with a School District, with the school board, with the university of those are materials people can have at the ready. I will say in the badgers when he couldnt get the office of civil rights, my kids were in school and i did some things take a Dear Colleague and say i cited, make sure you want sure he saw come just make sure that my kids schools among of the kids schools beautifully comply. I h also hope that we are active participant in our kids schooling. I see our kids schooling meaning that very broadly. If you dont have given school hope youre volunteering in a school. If you do have kids in school i hope youre volunteering. That we can be active participant in our School Communities and work to ensure you are the committees they will be. And often when i come in my office, see discrimination its not because an educator wanted to hurt a child that was because somebody did know what the law was and did know how it was supposed response so lets help them to know. And to make sure were fully responsive to our whole School Communities. What you think is the biggest threat to civil rights in education right now . Well, im not going to pick one. The reality that Thomas Jefferson is same as having said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The reality is we always have to be vigilant about civil rights anywhere in civil rights and schools in particular. Every school year is a new opportunity to discriminate. We are always remind, always having to start again and to work on the class in front of us today to s make sure that it isa safe and appropriate and lawful nondiscriminatory space. One challenge is it still a challenge, that we have now six decadespr of promises about whoe will be as the country, and what the federal backstop against harm will be here and weve never achieved that. So that we are always working toward it is an ongoing and i think very big challenge. The other very big challenges are no child has a minute to waste of learning. So nobody can withstand another day where thea rights are not mt at school and is no time. So the urgency is intense. And the new a varieties of ways that we find challenge. We are in a pandemic still. We are coming through a change that was unimaginable to us before five years ago. We are living through that time, all of us, struggling through that and her kids are shaped by it. Their educators are shaped by it. The communities are shaped by it. It. So that is an ongoing challenge. The ways that we show up, the different needs that kids bring. They are very different. Each of us is an individual. Its among the Amazing Things of the human condition and it is also hard every day to make sure that every minute of every instructional day we are satisfying all the needs of the kids in front of us. Thats an enormous challenge. Said he talked about how were fighting for something we havent achieved yet. I actually want to read something from the guidance that i thought was well said where you say we seen that there are no simple answers from winding entrenchments in sprawling branches of segregation and discrimination. I guess my question is, why should we noten give into temptation . That there are never any fixes what comes to discrimination. Why should colleges and universities and schools and all of the still remain committed and vigilant as yazidi fixing something that we have fixed yet and may never fix . Were going to fix it. Okay. Forgive me. The alternative is worse, that if were not vigilant, it are not protective, then i mean, i think were at the abyss, right . So the alternative is worse. Let me just say ive out myself again, keep outing myself but i am a silverlight lawyer which means im an eternal optimist. You dont keep pushing the rock up the hill and lest you think you might actually get it up there sometime. You take what i i say with a n of salt. But my mother was ten years old