ABSTRACT
In 1964 the Civil Rights Act passed by Congress declared that discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or sex was prohibited. As a result, schools across the nation were forced to desegregate. Within the following decade federal education legislation established race desegregation centers to help schools in this process and provided support for compensatory education for poor students. Congress soon extended its concern with civil rights in education to include students whose first language was not English with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act. Legislation to support sex equity in schools further extended the application of civil rights to another oppressed group. The Ethnic Heritage Act, passed in 1972, supported the development of curriculum materials on different ethnic groups. By the end of the seventies, separate desegregation centers had been established for race, sex, and language groups. However, by 1990 much of the federal support for the extension of civil rights in education had been eroded. Support for ethnic heritage studies was withdrawn in the early 1980s and legislation related to race, sex, and language equity has been revised so that it is no longer as proactive.
