Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students

Lara S. Kaufmann is Senior Counsel and Director for Education Policy for At-Risk Students.  She works on the advancement of women and girls at school and in the workplace. Lara engages in litigation, advocacy, and public education, with a particular focus on improving educational outcomes for at-risk girls, including pregnant and parenting students. Lara co-authored the Center’s 2012 report, A Pregnancy Test for Schools: The Impact of Education Laws on Pregnant and Parenting Students, as well as its 2009 report, Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation. Before joining the Center, Lara was a Staff Attorney with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, and prior to that she was an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. Lara also worked with the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery, and was law clerk to then-Chief Judge Marvin Aspen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Lara is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University School of Law.

Expert in: Pregnant & Parenting Students, School Reform & Dropout Prevention, Sexual Harassment & Bullying, Education & Title IX
  • Printer-friendly version
  • Send by email

My Take

White House Calls on Congress to Pass Paycheck Fairness Act

Posted by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students | Posted on: July 20, 2010 at 04:30 pm

This morning, Vice President Biden hosted a White House event on solutions for families balancing the dual demands of work and caring for family.  At that event – attended not only by many top Administration officials, but also by everyone’s favorite fair pay spokesperson, Lilly Ledbetter – the Vice President and members of the White House Middle Class Task Force and Council on Women and Girls announced the recommendations of the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.

 Read more...
Tags: Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Employment | Add new comment

Pssst . . . Pass it on!

Posted by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students | Posted on: June 23, 2010 at 08:05 pm

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Today is the 38th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in education. Unfortunately, far too many schools, administrators, teachers, counselors, students, and parents still are not aware of what Title IX encompasses and what they can do to help ensure that all students get equal educational opportunities, regardless of their sex.

Read more...
Tags: Education & Title IX | Add new comment

Feeling Blue (Not Pink!) About Gender Stereotypes in Education

Posted by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students | Posted on: June 11, 2010 at 01:55 pm

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Last Friday, we filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in the appeal of an ACLU case challenging the legality of single-sex classes in a public school in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. Hopefully the brief—submitted on behalf of NWLC and 38 other organizations and individuals who signed on in support—will help to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to reverse the harmful decision handed down by the district court.

The Supreme Court has made it very clear, for decades, that the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause safeguards the rights of all children to equal educational opportunities and a public education free of gender stereotypes. Because state actions that classify students by sex are so often based on overbroad generalizations about the different abilities and interests of males and females—thus limiting the opportunities available to members of both sexes—the Court reviews such classifications with heightened, "skeptical" scrutiny. 

To survive heightened scrutiny, schools must show that they have an "exceedingly persuasive justification" for separating students by sex. And the Supreme Court has explicitly said that the justification must be "genuine," not "hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation," and that it cannot be based on stereotypes about males and females. It is a tough standard to meet, and the state has the burden of proving the justification for its program. 

Read more...
Tags: Education & Title IX, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

What the Pill Means for Educational Success

Posted by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students | Posted on: May 18, 2010 at 06:00 pm

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Every year in the United States, there are approximately 750,000 teen pregnancies and 400,000 teen births. Overall, nearly 3 in 10 girls in the United States become pregnant at least once by age 20, and the rates are even higher for girls of color. Our teen pregnancy and birth rates are higher than those of any other Western industrialized country. 

This is not just a public health issue and an economic issue; it is also an education issue. Pregnant and parenting students often face major barriers to enrolling, attending, and succeeding in school, including, for example: outright discrimination and stigmatization by their schools (in violation of their civil rights); the difficulty of keeping up while out of school leading up to or following the birth of a child, especially without any school support; the challenge of juggling school work with parenting responsibilities; and the lack of access to affordable quality child care and  transportation  to and from the child care arrangement and school. 

Read more...
Tags: Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | Add new comment

What’s Different About This Year’s National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Posted by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students | Posted on: May 05, 2010 at 02:30 pm

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

When I blogged about the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy last year, I talked about the significant link between teen pregnancy rates and dropout rates. In one sentence, it goes like this: 

Teen pregnancy prevention can help improve graduation rates, because girls who get pregnant as teenagers are less likely to graduate from high school, and dropout prevention is a form of teen pregnancy prevention, because girls who stay engaged in school and believe in their ability to achieve their educational and career goals are less likely to get pregnant as teenagers.

That is still true. But this year, two things are different.

Read more...
Tags: Education & Title IX, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | Add new comment