UPDATE: On September 19, 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed this complaint. See the letter here.
On May 16, 2022, Parents Defending Education filed a complaint against Jackson Public Schools in Jackson, Michigan, with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint asked OCR to look into possible violations of Title VI, a law that bans race discrimination in programs that receive federal funds, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which bars government bodies, including public schools, from treating people differently because of their race except in rare cases.
In 2019, the district hired Ajusted Equity Solutions to conduct an “equity audit.” The audit concluded that the district had “institutionalized inequities” and that minority students “are not treated equally within the school system.” It reported that “[m]any White students” believed “teachers discriminated against minoritized students in their classes,” and that the findings “strongly align[] with other district data that suggests the presence of discriminatory practices, such as academic and disciplinary disparities.”
If the district’s own audit is right, students may be facing discrimination that breaks federal law. The complaint asked the Department to investigate.
Read the full complaint and see its evidence below:
