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National experts on educational equity and education policy will join 2020 IU McKinney Program on Law and State Government (PLSG) fellows Adam Steel and Alexis Weaver on September 25 for a virtual symposium, “Taxes, Teachers and Tests: State Responses to Failing Schools.”

The symposium will include two webinars (CLE credit available):

• “Public Education Funding and Values in a Time of Uncertainty” with Derek W. Black, Professor of Law and the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law at University of South Carolina.

Professor Black’s area of expertise lies in the areas of education law and policy, constitutional law and civil rights. The focus of his current scholarship is the intersection of constitutional law and public education, particularly as it pertains to educational equality and fairness for disadvantaged students. His work has also been cited in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and by several briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to teaching, Professor Black litigated issues relating to school desegregation, diversity, school finance equity, student discipline, and special education at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He left the Lawyers’ Committee to teach at Howard University School of Law, where he also founded and directed the Education Rights Center.

• “Why Our Segregated Landscape is a Constitutional Affront and What We Can Do About It” with Richard Rothstein, Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Professor Rothstein is the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which examines how American segregation was a function of explicit federal, state, and local policy. He has authored many other books and articles on race and education, including Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black–White Achievement Gap and Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. He has also served as the national education columnist for the New York Times and lectures widely on issues of equity, race, and education.

PLSG fellow Adam Steel (J.D. anticipated May 2021), will present his research topic “The Cost of Success: How States Target Funds Toward Districts that Need It,” and PLSG fellow Alexis Weaver (J.D. anticipated May 2021), will present “Measuring Students through Teacher Focused Metrics:  State Intervention, Evaluation, and Regulation” in pre-recorded videos.

Both fellows cite their own experiences in education as sources for their interest in the topics. Steel is a former middle school teacher from Evansville, Indiana, while Weaver worked for a pre-school program for low-income children in Massachusetts prior to attending law school.

“As a former teacher, this is a topic that is very important to me,” Steel said. “Public education is the backbone of our society and it is important to bring to light some of the issues our school systems are currently facing.”

This year, both fellows faced both the challenges of law school, clerkships and the COVID-19 pandemic, all while planning a symposium that will, for the first time in its 20-year history, be presented entirely online.

“When Adam and I selected this topic with the guidance of Professor Cynthia Baker, none of us had any idea that Covid-19 was looming just around the corner,” Weaver said. “This topic is now more timely than ever. One of the biggest challenges we are facing, aside from the spread of the disease itself, is how to navigate school for K-12 students. How do we mitigate growing achievement gaps, make remote learning equitable, and keep kids succeeding? How do we even measure success in this novel time? It's all new territory.”

Learn more about this free event and register here.