GAO OMB Decision On Withholding Ukraine Security Assistance

This is interesting.

A legal arm of Congress comes out with an opinion to support Congress in support of its congressional Articles of Impeachment.

Very interesting considering the fact that the GAO does not have the greatest history, particularly when we are dealing with children, but, hey, what do I know?

I know I have been on the GAO for more than a hot minute.

I also know that this is quite interesting that the GAO came up with this opinion, without examining any documents or questioning any humans.

This sounds like a CPS recommendation to terminate parental rights case.

You just cannot make this stuff up.

GAO finds Trump administration broke law by withholding Ukraine aid

The Trump administration’s decision to freeze the release of security assistance to Ukraine violated the law, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report.

The independent watchdog said in an opinion issued Thursday that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld the appropriated funds last summer not as a programmatic delay but in order to advance the president’s own agenda.

By doing so, the watchdog concluded, the White House violated what’s known as the Impoundment Control Act (ICA).

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the report said. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA)...Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

The GAO opinion touched on a matter at the center of impeachment proceedings against President Trump: The decision by the White House to withhold nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Kyiv as it fights off pro-Russian separatists.

Democrats allege Trump dangled the promise of aid and a White House meeting as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open investigations into a 2020 political rival. They argue the White House then sought to obstruct their impeachment inquiry by blocking the testimony of current and former White House officials, while asserting absolute immunity over their testimony.

The OMB, however, pushed back against the GAO opinion, arguing that the White House office used the “apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the President's priorities and with the law."

Acting OMB Director Russ Vought tweeted that the GAO report "comes from the same people who said we couldn’t keep National Parks open during the shutdown."

Administration officials have argued they were seeking to ensure Ukraine was properly fighting widespread corruption, despite the Pentagon already certifying at the time of the delay that Ukraine had met the requirements set by Congress and after notifying Congress of its intent to release the funds.

A senior administration official on Thursday characterized the GAO report as an “overreach” and blasted the independent watchdog for getting involved “in the media's controversy of the day.”

“In their rush to insert themselves in the impeachment narrative, maybe they'll have to reverse their opinion again," the senior administration official said, pointing to changes to earlier GAO opinions.

Still, the timing of the report’s release could not be more inconvenient for Republicans.

The GOP-controlled Senate on Thursday is expected to set a time for the House impeachment managers — who will be arguing the case on the Senate floor to remove Trump from office — to exhibit the articles of impeachment charging Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors.

The Senate procedure comes one day after the Democratic managers silently marched the two charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — over to the upper chamber, setting the stage for the impeachment trial over Trump’s contacts with Ukraine.

Democrats, who have pushed Senate Republicans to allow new witnesses and testimony, are seizing on the GAO report as reinforcing their argument that the president abused his authority for politically motivated purposes.

“This bombshell legal opinion from the independent Government Accountability Office demonstrates, without a doubt, that the Trump Administration illegally withheld security assistance from Ukraine,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who requested the GAO to review the hold, said in a statement. “The GAO’s independent findings reinforce the need for the Senate to obtain all relevant documents and hear from key fact witnesses in order to have a fair trial.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in a statement said the GAO opinion “demonstrates once again that the President violated his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed as he put his personal and political interests above the interests of the nation and its security.”

Pointing to the GAO opinion that federal employees and officials take oaths to protect the law of the land, Schiff said: “Now, the Senate will have the opportunity to act on its oath.”

The GAO report said Trump overstepped his authority. Congress has the power of the purse, the watchdog said, while the president has the power to accept or veto legislation passed by both chambers. But the president does not have the authority to then bend or ignore a law once it is enacted, the report said.

“The President is not vested with the power to ignore or amend any such duly enacted law,” the GAO said. “The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation... Instead, Congress has vested the President with strictly circumscribed authority to impound, or withhold, budget authority only in limited circumstances as expressly provided in the ICA.”

The GAO noted that the White House could have provided a detailed and specific reasoning to justify the withholding under the Impoundment Control Act at the time, but the OMB did not do so.

“Not only did OMB not submit a special message with such a proposal, the footnotes in the apportionment schedules, by their very terms, established dates for the release of amounts withheld,” the GAO wrote.

The only other authority to put a freeze on the aid, the GAO said, is to withhold the funds through a deferral, a decision that would be justified if the administration had recognized “savings or efficiencies that would result from a withholding, or any law specifically authorizing the withholding.”

“In its response to us, OMB described the withholding as necessary to ensure that the funds were not spent ‘in a manner that could conflict with the President’s foreign policy,’” the report said. “The ICA does not permit deferrals for policy reasons...OMB’s justification for the withholding falls squarely within the scope of an impermissible policy deferral.”

Mark Sandy, a senior OMB official, told House investigators during a closed-door deposition in late November that Trump's delay rankled agency staffers, leading two employees to resign in part because of their frustration.

“This person expressed to me concerns about actions vis-à-vis the Impoundment Control Act,” Sandy testified, referring to an OMB lawyer who had resigned.

The GAO report comes shortly after the House acquired new evidence from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has claimed the president was aware of a scheme to seek the removal of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and to create conditions to push Zelensky to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in order to help Trump’s 2020 reelection chances.

The White House has denied the claims of wrongdoing, attacking the credibility of Parnas, who is under indictment.

Democrats also received ammunition from former national security adviser John Bolton after he said in a statement earlier this month that he would be willing to testify if the GOP-controlled Senate chose to subpoena him for testimony.

It is unclear whether witnesses will be allowed in the trial.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been cold to the idea of calling any witnesses, but Democrats won a near-term victory on Wednesday when the GOP leader agreed to a rules package that leaves open the potential for new witnesses to appear.

Anything less, Democrats have charged, would be a dereliction of the Senate’s duty.

GAO Office of Management and Budget—Withholding of Ukraine Security Assistance File: B-331564 January 16,... by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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U.S. Government Fails to Oversee Treatment of Foster Children With Mind-Altering Drugs

I told you so.  Just wait, there is more.

U.S. Government Fails to Oversee Treatment of Foster Children With Mind-Altering Drugs

ABC NEWS
U.S. Government Fails to Oversee Treatment of Foster Children With Mind-Altering Drugs
By DR. MARK ABDELMALEK, BRINDA ADHIKARI, SARAH KOCH, JOSEPH DIAZ and CLAIRE WEINRAUB
Nov. 30, 2011

The federal government has not done enough to oversee the treatment of America’s foster children with powerful mind-altering drugs, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to be released Thursday.

ABC News was given exclusive access to the GAO report, which capped off a nationwide yearlong investigation by ABC News on the overuse of the most powerful mind-altering drugs on many of the country’s nearly 425,000 foster children.

The GAO’s report, based on a two-year-long investigation, looked at five states — Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas. Thousands of foster children were being prescribed psychiatric medications at doses higher than the maximum levels approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in these five states alone. And hundreds of foster children received five or more psychiatric drugs at the same time despite absolutely no evidence supporting the simultaneous use or safety of this number of psychiatric drugs taken together.

GAO Key Findings:

Overall, the GAO looked at nearly 100,000 foster children in the five states and found that nearly one-third of foster children were prescribed at least one psychiatric drug.

The GAO found foster children were prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates up to nearly five times higher than non-foster children, with foster children in Texas being the most likely to receive the medications compared to foster children in the other four states.

Although the actual percentages of children who received five or more psychiatric drugs at the same time were low in the five states included in the GAO report, the chances of a foster child compared to a non-foster child being given five or more psychiatric drugs at the same time were alarming.

In Texas, foster children were 53 times more likely to be prescribed five or more psychiatric medications at the same time than non-foster children. In Massachusetts, they were 19 times more likely. In Michigan, the number was 15 times. It was 13 times in Oregon. And in Florida, foster children were nearly four times as likely to be given five or more psychotropic medications at the same time compared to non-foster children.

Initially part of GAO’s investigation, Maryland was later excluded from GAO’s analysis “due to the unreliability of their foster care data” according to the report, a problem ABC News learned many states face.

Foster children were also more than nine times more likely than non-foster children to be prescribed drugs for which there was no FDA-recommended dose for their age.

For the most vulnerable foster children, those less than 1 year old, foster children were nearly twice as likely to be prescribed a psychiatric drug compared to non-foster children.

When Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., lead requestor of the GAO report, first learned of the report’s findings, he said, “I was almost despondent to believe that the kids under the age of one, babies under the age of one were receiving this kind of medication.”

ABC News has reviewed dozens of medical studies published in recent years that echo GAO’s findings — research showing foster children receive psychiatric medications up to 13 times more often than kids in the general population.

In some parts of the country, as many as half of foster kids are on one or more psychiatric medications. This, compared to just 4 percent of kids in the general population.

Dr. George Fouras, a child psychiatrist and co-chairman of the Adoption and Foster Care Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), said, “There is an incredible push to use medications to solve these problems as if it is a magic wand.”

Meet Ke’onte
The stories include kids like 11-year-old Ke’onte from Texas, whose journey was documented by ABC News over the past year and who will be testifying before Congress on Thursday about the overuse of psychiatric medications in foster children.

Neglected and often left home alone with his 1-year old sister, Ke’onte became a ward of the state at the tender age of four. Ke’onte was placed with a relative who, he said, beat him with belts, switches, and extension cords — which not only left him with the physical scars on his body he showed ABC News, but, understandably, with anger and despair.

Simply too much for the relative, the state of Texas bounced Ke’onte between six foster homes and hospitals over just four years.

Along the way, Ke’onte’s trauma was treated with an onslaught of psychotropic drugs — powerful mind-altering medicines like the mood-stabilizer Depakote, the stimulant Vyvanse, the antidepressant Lexapro, clonidine for ADHD and the antipsychotic Seroquel.

“I was put on bipolar meds. I am not bipolar at all,” Ke’onte told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer.

Ke’onte was on at least 12 psychiatric medications while in foster care, up to four of them at the same time. “I was on a whole lot of medicines that I should have not been on,” Ke’onte told ABC News.

But Ke’onte is lucky — a member of a select group of foster kids, about one in 10, who leave state custody to enjoy the security and stability of being adopted by a loving family according to the latest data from the Administration for Children and Families.

And his new family, Carol and Scott Cook, were on a mission to get Ke’onte off drugs; he is now in therapy beginning to heal. Additionally, his doctor now says Ke’onte doesn’t have ADHD and he’s not bipolar.

Meds Aren’t Always the Answer:

While almost all experts acknowledge children in foster care have more emotional and behavioral issues, experts ABC News spoke to do not believe this alone justifies the magnitude of the overuse of psychiatric medications in this vulnerable population.

“The general consensus is that when you’re treating young children, you always try behavioral intervention before you go to medication,” said Dr. Charles Zeenah, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Tulane University.

Experts are also beginning to question the accuracy of diagnoses like bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses in children, especially in foster children who may not always have access to comprehensive mental health services.

Stephen Crystal, Phd, Director of the Center for Education and Research on Mental Health Therapeutics at Rutgers University, said while foster kids may be three times as likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, “the validity of these diagnoses is uncertain, and the fact of being in foster care may itself increase the likelihood of psychiatric conditions being diagnosed.”

And while the National Institute of Mental Health reports schizophrenia affects just 1percent of the population and bipolar disorder less than 3 percent of the population, antipsychotics have become one of the top-selling class of medications in the United States with 2010 prescription sales of $16.2 billion according to IMS Health.

Concerned about numerous reports of waste and the abuse of psychiatric medications in foster children, Republican and Democratic United States Senators, led by Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE), requested an independent GAO investigation on the growing problem nearly two years ago.

In the five states included in this week’s GAO report, over $375 million dollars were spent on psychiatric drugs in 2008, $200 million of which was spent in Texas alone.

Medicaid spends at least $6 billion a year, nearly 30 percent of its entire drug budget, on psychiatric drugs, more than double what was spent in 1999 according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.

GAO Holds HHS Accountable:

The GAO report is an indictment on HHS’s oversight of the nation’s foster care children and asks that “HHS consider endorsing guidance for states on best practices for overseeing psychotropic prescriptions for foster children.”

Several factors may be contributing to the increasing number of psychotropic prescriptions for foster children — greater exposure to trauma before entering the foster care system, frequent changes in foster placements, and lax oversight policies on the part of states.

“You know, there are a lot of people you need to talk to- to find out as much as you can about what the child’s behavior is like in a variety of different situations before you make a determination that you’re going to use something like a very powerful medication to treat them,” Zeanah said.

GAO found that Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, and Florida each “falls short of providing comprehensive oversight as defined by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry” with regards to prescribing and overseeing the use of psychotropic drugs.

Currently HHS simply provides “informational resources for states to consider for their programs” when it comes to psychotropic drugs provided to children in state custody according to GAO.

States are not obligated to follow consent and oversight best principle guidelines set by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for medicating foster children.

However, many states are also not following oversight provisions required by law according to the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act passed in September 2011 and the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008.

In addition to providing guidance, HHS also has the authority to withhold federal funds from states who do not comply with strengthened oversight measures.

Senator Carper said Congress has a responsibility too, “to try to get to the bottom of this, and armed with that information, to make sure that behavior is changed, that’s going to be beneficial to children.”

HHS sends letter to states the day before Thanksgiving in anticipation of GAO report claims:

HHS was given an early look at the GAO report and issued a letter to states the day before Thanksgiving regarding the effective use of psychotropic medications among children in foster.

Senator Carper said, “too many states, I’m afraid, just don’t know what best practices are.” But states have been asking for help for years.

One state official told researchers at Tufts, “[We] need guidelines to determine whether medications are needed, and if so, for how long.”

HHS says it will “offer expanded opportunities to states and territories to strengthen their systems of prescribing and monitoring psychotropic medication use among children in foster care.”

Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist and author of a 2010 Tufts study which showed nearly 50percent of states either didn’t have or were still in the process of developing policies regarding foster care psychotropic drug use, thinks HHS guidance for states on best practices while good, are not enough.

Bellonci told ABC News we need the states to have to report pharmacy claims of actual psychotropic drugs given to foster children. “We need to be able to benchmark states around one another, then at least it is all public record,” Bellonci said.

Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers are some of the so-called psychotropic drugs- psychiatric medicines that alter chemical levels in the brain which impact mood and behavior.

Of the psychotropics, antipsychotics, like Ke’onte’s Seroquel and others like Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon, Invega, Latuda, Fanapt, Clozaril, Saphris, and Solian are among the most powerful.

And of all the psychiatric medications, antipsychotics are by far the most prescribed, especially for foster children. Foster children are given antipsychotics at a rate 9 times higher than children not in foster care according to a 2010 sixteen-state analysis from Rutgers of nearly 300,000 foster children.

While doctors aren’t exactly sure how or even why antipsychotics work, most experts believe antipsychotics block specific receptors in the brain, which are thought to be overactive in patients with symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations and delusions.

Antipsychotics were initially designed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And only Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal, and Zyprexa have very limited FDA-approval for use in children.

However, antipsychotics are being widely prescribed off-label, for conditions the FDA has not approved them for- for things like agitation, anxiety, acting-out, irritability, behavior issues, and even as sleeping aids.

Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, Chief Medical Officer for Medicaid in the State of Washington said, “Nobody gets up in the morning to overdose kids. It just happens that it’s a momentum in the system. Kids get aggressively diagnosed and sometimes we look for the easy solution- which is a pill over psychotherapy or better parenting.”

Critics charge that because of their sedating properties, antipsychotics are actually being used in foster care treatment facilities as chemical restraints.

Dr. Fouras is particularly concerned about the use of these drugs as chemical restraints.

“We are trying to put a nice shiny term that sounds- ‘oh we’re just restraining the kid,’ really what you are doing is just knocking them out to make them less of a problem for you,” Fouras said.

This widespread and frequently unchecked use of antipsychotics is concerning considering the serious side effects of these medications. Antipsychotics change a person’s metabolism, frequently cause significant weight gain and can increase the risk of diabetes.

In addition to tremors, muscle spasms, and restlessness, antipsychotics can cause tardive dyskinesia, a permanent and irreversible condition where a person has involuntary movements of the tongue, lip, mouth, and arms and legs.

While less common with newer antipsychotics, each year 5 percent of people on antipsychotics will develop tardive dyskinesia according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Many experts are also concerned about the prolonged use of antipsychotics in children given there are absolutely no long-term safety studies for their use in children.

Fouras said, “Some of these medications have only been out for 10-15 years so that is not enough time to know what is going to happen over the long term.”

JUDICIARY: Scott, Nadler Release New GAO Report that Proves Students of Color Suffer Harsher Discipline for Lesser Offenses

Although I respect the investigative staff of the this GAO report on another segment of the child welfare system, I must also respectively point out that the report is flawed for the following reasons:

1. It does not say a word about Child Protective Services, which was specifically designed to for discipline disparities for black students, boys, and student with disabilities;
2. There is no mention of what is considered as "Black" or "More than two races" are, meaning, data collection is extremely biased as it did not properly apply the "one-drop rule" when it comes to federal funding of programs specifically designed to target these populations.
3. The variable classifications used can be seen as a violation of federal law.
4. There was no mention for data inclusion for children in Foster Care programs or the fact that these foster youth in many situations have no educational records.
5. There is no mention of the data obstacle that Foster Care information is considered a "privacy" issue and many of the cases are sealed in State courts.
6. There is no mention that the GAO tried to do a study on Foster Care but previously was shuttered.
7. There is no mention of fraud.
8. There is no mention on the drugging of children.
9. There is no mention of residential institutions.
10. The report lightly glosses over the concept of poverty and the impact in cognitive and developmental challenges due to things like environmental or sardonic policies slashing educational services for youth
11. There is no stratified geographic data to further analyze, what I am just going to say, issues with these NGO programs training educators to function in such a disparaging capacity.
12. There is no mention of States asset forfeiture social welfare programs where language is being transformed to include the terms "youth, aged, mental health, poverty" which are being lumped into the term "disabled".
13. This is what is called "Targeted Populations" of Medicaid Fraud in Child Welfare.
14. The report omits anything regarding the trafficking of tiny humans.
15. The pdf of the report https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/690828.pdf  is locked, and tagged as "assets", which leads me to believe there is fraud and someone other than the children are going to benefit from the outcomes of this report in some private contracts and campaign finance.

This report sucks because it is based up the same exact report it did that sucked which I have embedded below, because the pdf was not locked, unlike this report.

The report also sucks because I see that crappy predictive modeling for those darn Social Impact Bonds.

WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03), ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled, “Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities.” The ranking members requested that the GAO investigate disparities in discipline policies and practices applied to students of color, boys, and students with disabilities.

“The Government Accountability Office has conducted first-of-its-kind analysis of national data which dispels claims that racially disproportionate rates of discipline are based solely on income. The analysis shows that students of color suffer harsher discipline for lesser offenses than their white peers and that racial bias is a driver of discipline disparities,” said Ranking Member Bobby Scott (VA-03). “This report underscores the need to combat these gross disparities by strengthening, not rescinding, the 2014 Discipline Guidance Package, which recommends specific strategies to reduce the disparities without jeopardizing school safety.”

Black students, boys, and students with disabilities are disproportionately disciplined in K-12 public schools. This pattern of disproportionate discipline persists regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school students attend.

“After an extensive analysis by the Government Accountability Office, there can be no ignoring the facts of racial biases – facts that the Trump Administration must face head-on and cannot refute,” said Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (NY-10) of the House Judiciary Committee. “The GAO report shows that race plays a significant role in discipline disparities, with students of color suffering harsher punishment in school compared with their peers. To suggest otherwise would require ignoring the major factor in these disparities, and ignorance of the facts can be no excuse for failing these students. Ignoring the impact of race on school discipline would be unconscionable and fail to address a critical issue impacting school performance by students of color. I thank Ranking Member Scott for his dedication to this important issue, and hope the Administration will finally come to grips with the realities faced by students of color. Secretary DeVos and the Department of Education must ensure that the necessary resources and guidelines are in place to address these disturbing racial disparities in our schools, and I hope this report will provide the necessary urgency for quick action on this matter.”

In 2014, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued a School Discipline Guidance Package, to remind schools of their legal obligations to administer school discipline without discriminating on the base of race, color, or national origin. Based on the empirical evidence provided in this GAO report, it is critically important the guidance be strengthened, and not rescinded, as some have suggested.  If the Department moves to turn a blind eye to the evidence-based research in this report, it will rob our nation’s students of full civil rights protections and informed decision-making.

GAO Report Missing Monetization Incentives To Segregate Kids

GAO Report on Disparities and Racial Segregation in K-12 Education by Beverly Tran on Scribd

Boy, oh boy! I cannot wait until they come out with the third addition on research of the research of the research.

Someone got paid.  Just look into the footnotes.

Always look at the footnotes.

To finally bring my point home that these reports suck, Michigan does the same thing on this issue, appropriating money to study and report the same thing about these children, and nothing gets done, except people make money to fund campaigns to make sure they will get a private contract to do more research.

Equity: Moving Toward Better Outcomes for All of Michigan's Children 2006 by Beverly Tran on Scribd

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CONYERS, Scott Unveil New GAO Report on Segregation in Public Schools

Washington, D.C. – Committee on the Judiciary Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (MI-13) and  Committee on Education and the Workforce Ranking Member Bobby Scott (VA-03) unveiled the findings of a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on actions needed to reduce racial and socioeconomic segregation, and address disparities in K-12 public schools. Ranking Members Conyers and Scott, along with retired Congressman and former Ranking Member George Miller, first requested this report in May 2014.

Sixty-two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down lawful school segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, stating that “it is doubtful that any child may reasonable be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education” The decision also affirmed that education was a right that “must be made available to all on equal terms.” GAO gathered data for this report from the Department of Education and confirmed that increasing segregation along the lines of race and poverty continue to be a driver for inequities in education. Despite Brown’s affirmation that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” our system of public education remains largely separate and largely unequal.

Dean of the U.S. House
of Represetatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“This GAO report confirms what has long been feared and proves that current barriers against educational equality are eerily similar to those fought during the civil rights movement,” said Rep. John Conyers.“There simply can be no excuse for allowing educational apartheid in the 21st century. Congress and the federal government, as well as state and local agencies, must ensure all children receive access to equal education at all publicly funded schools.”

“Sixty-two years later, here we are in 2016 facing an overwhelming failure to fulfil the promise of Brown in realizing equality in educational opportunity for all students,” said Rep. Bobby Scott. “In May of 2014, I, along with Ranking Member Conyers and former Education and the Workforce Committee Ranking Member George Miller, requested that the GAO examine racial and socioeconomic isolation in K-12 public schools, and the resulting impact on educational equity. The report resulting from this inquiry confirms a growing and persistent body of research. The GAO report confirms that our nation’s schools are, in fact, largely segregated by race and class. What’s more troubling, is that segregation in public K12 schools isn’t getting better; it's getting worse, and getting worse quickly, with more than 20 million students of color now attending racially and socioeconomically isolated public schools. This report is a national call to action, and I intend to ensure Congress is part of the solution.”

“Equal educational opportunity is too critical to our nation’s future to allow persistent disparities adversely affecting minority groups to continue,” stated Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund).  “Unjustified and significant educational disparities must be challengeable by private individuals; the Department of Education simply cannot provide the consistent and broad enforcement necessary for such a pivotal concern.”

Nearly a half-century of research shows that segregation negatively impacts student outcomes and exacerbates unequal opportunity experienced later in life. GAO data from the Department of Education confirmed that race and poverty continue to be driver for inequities in education and that housing segregation patterns contribute to school segregation.

“This report shines a light on worsening educational inequities that cannot be divorced from our nation's legacy of racial discrimination that has perpetuated racial and socioeconomic isolation,” said NAACP President and Director Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill. “It is our imperative on the 62^nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education to ask, ‘How will we act to address current disparities like resource inequities and discriminatory discipline practices?’ We must ensure that interventions address the intersectional nature of racial discrimination in areas like housing and economics that impact educational opportunities and outcomes.”

“The findings of GAO confirm what we know to be true: that the promise of Brown remains a promise that has gone largely unfulfilled,” said National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial. “In too many communities, students of color are now more segregated with less access to equitable educational opportunities than in decades prior. Collectively, we can and must do better. This is why the National Urban League and our network of local leaders remains dedicated to partnering with state and school district leaders to seize on the opportunity presented by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); to turn the ship and reverse the trend of racial and socioeconomic isolation in public K-12 education. I look forward to continued collaboration with Congress to ensure that government at all levels is acting to right this egregious wrong and bring us closer to fulfilling Brown’s promise.”

Reps. Conyers and Scott introduced the Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act, legislation to empower parents and communities to address – through robust enforcement – racial inequities in public education.

GAO Report on Disparities and Racial Segregation in K-12 Education by Beverly Tran

The Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act (EIEA): Restoring Private Right of Action to Disparate Impact Clai... by Beverly Tran

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