The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018 may be viewed as a watershed moment in our history, similar to Columbine in April 1999. Following both tragedies, the nation was at odds about how to prevent such shootings from happening again in the future. How do we solve America’s gun problem in schools? Despite a surge...
Equity Matters: In Learning, for Life.
Equity Alliance Blog
I was asked to write this blog post on the “new racism” of color-blind curricula in higher education. “New racism,” means the way that overt expressions of racial animus have frequently been driven underground even though the underlying structure of White supremacy remains (Cabrera, 2019). I agreed to write this post, but I also slightly...
The basis for gifted and talented programs is the somewhat innocuous notion that a subset of children are capable of high levels of performance and may benefit from educational services outside a traditional classroom setting. A critical first step in meeting the educational needs of such children is screening, followed by the formal...
The #MeToo movement has brought attention to the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual assault in workplaces like the entertainment industry, government and health care, as well as our schools (White, 2017). Yet, sexual harassment doesn’t just suddenly happen. Rather, these negative behaviors are modeled throughout today’s society. Sexual...
Last month, I encouraged an administrator to hire an unqualified, ill-prepared candidate for a position as a special educator for students with severe learning and behavioral needs. As a teacher educator in special education, I had written numerous letters of recommendations and fielded calls from many of the local schools several months before...
The United States Census Bureau (2015) estimates that about 79% of the U.S. population over the age of five speaks only English at home. The second and third generations of immigrants in the U.S.
Let’s create a cacophony of sound to represent our intention. To hold these women up. To bring them into the light.
– Kimberlé Crenshaw, The Urgency of Intersectionality
In the wake of the 2016 election of a U.S. president who has stoked the fires of Islamophobia and xenophobia, democratic schools face a critical, moral imperative to proactively educate against this pernicious and dangerous political climate. Unfortunately, this racist and hostile political climate is not a new development for youth from Muslim...
At first, it was alluring: children walking silently in straight lines, homework retention rooms, strict uniform policies, the promises of accessing a college education, and small student-teacher ratios. And it was all free, publicly funded, and in the same neighborhood where so many other schools have failed to provide them with a safe...
I began fifteen years ago to work on safe schools issues by founding a local GLSEN chapter to create inclusive schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students.[i] In the beginning, I spent...
We heard a knock at the door. “Come in!” we exclaimed. James, our first interviewee, walked, opened the door, and peered his head into the conference room. “Hi, Dr. Muñoz and Gaye, am I too early?” James asked. “No, not at all!” James placed his forest green backpack by the door, grabbed a black conference chair...
For decades, scholars and practitioners have tried to untangle language acquisition processes from common educational disabilities (e.g., Artiles & Trent, 1994). The ramifications of misinterpreting or ignoring the relations of language learning and academic development can be...
My grandmothers’ teachings ground much of my worldview and actions as a scholar educator. A common thread in these teachings is the intimate interdependence with the cycles of Mother Earth.
This blog identifies rumors in the discourse used in educational research and spaces that have been accepted as truths and explanations for the conditions under which many students’ lives are determined, counted, or explained. Our use of rumors was influenced by our reading of McDermott, Goldman and Varenne’s (2006) proposal that as...
For many years I have been writing about the lies told about the poor performance of our students and the failure of our schools and teachers. Journalists and politicians are often our nations’ most irritating commentators about the state of American education because they have access to the same facts that I have. They all can easily learn...
In special education, comprehensible information about the overrepresentation of minority students has, for decades, been available and accessible to researchers and practitioners, courtesy of the Office for Civil Rights and, in more recent years, the Office for Special Education Programs. This information has consistently shown a pattern of...
A few weeks ago, a Black student in one of my graduate seminars came to meet with me for office hours. He had a lot on his mind as a special education teacher in a local urban middle school, not the least of which was something that had happened that day. One of his Latino students with a dis/ability label had said, “I just wish I could blow up...
- ‹ previous
- 2 of 10
- next ›