School districts and states under federal investigation from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) may soon see their cases narrowed or dropped as a result of the USDE’s recent announcement that it was formally walking back some systemic race-based discrimination investigations. The types of cases most likely to be affected were investigated by the Biden and Obama administrations under the disparate impact legal theory, which targets policies or practices that are neutral on their face but harm Black or other historically marginalized student groups in practice. The most common issue that has been targeted for investigation is how and whether schools equitably allocate their limited resources. Often, in those cases, school districts are often unintentionally acting in ways that result in disparate impact.
Disparate impact is a legal theory often used to reform policies and practices that unintentionally and disproportionately prevented students of color from accessing education, including issues involving discipline, access to advanced coursework and gifted programs, ability grouping and tracking, and school assignment and attendance boundaries
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