By Julianne Hing | ColorLines. Schools & Youth. 
Tuesday, May 27 2014, 7:20 AM EST
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, schools are still both separate and unequal. Community and civil rights groups say they’ve identified a key force that’s aggravated the inequity: school closures. On May 14, on the same week the nation recognized the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation ruling, the civil rights group Advancement Project and the national community group network Journey for Justice Alliance filed three federal complaints with the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice alleging that school closures in Newark, Chicago and New Orleans discriminate against African-American students.
“We’re in a new era of separate and unequal,” says Jadine Johnson, a staff attorney at the Advancement Project. “Inequity and discrimination still occurs in many schools across the country.” In Chicago, Johnson says, black students make up 40 percent of the district enrollment but were 88 percent of those affected by the 111 school closures the city has undertaken since 2001. In Newark, African-American students comprise 52.8 percent of the district enrollment, and 73.4 percent of those whose schools were closed. In New Orleans, African-American students are 82 percent of the district’s schoolchildren, but 96.6 percent of those whose schools closed. “When you look at who’s impacted, you realize this is more than just reform. This is discrimination and this is abuse,” Johnson says.

'When you pull back the data, even using (school districts’) own metrics and standards, school closures' are selectively used against students of color.'
~ Jadine Johnson, a staff attorney at the Advancement Project

School closures are one of four turnaround options outlined by the federal government for transforming schools deemed failing based on their test scores. The other options include firing a school’s principal and staff and rehiring no more than half the school’s staff, and restarting a school and handing it over to a charter school. School closure is typically seen as a measure of last resort only for those school sites beyond repair. But it’s all too frequently used in communities of color, says Jitu Brown, director of the Journey for Justice Alliance.

What’s more, says Johnson, “When you pull back the data, even using [school districts’] own metrics and standards, school closures” are selectively used against students of color.

New Orleans, set to become the nation’s first charter-only school district this fall, has been ground zero for school closure-driven reforms. In the city’s post-Katrina reform frenzy, New Orleans has shut down all but five of its traditional public schools, kicked out tenured teachers, and replaced schools empathyeducates – New Civil Rights Suit Calls School Closures Discriminatory: