Equity Alliance Blog

The Black Lives Matter movement has galvanized people throughout the US to speak up about systemic racism and the devastating impact of mass incarceration on communities of color. Civil disobedience and mass protest since Ferguson have generated needed media attention to the persistence of American racism. What the national media often...

It will come as no surprise to most educators that improving underperforming schools is complex work, yet state and federal policymakers are only beginning to recognize this reality. As a result of the limited success under recent accountability policies, some scholars, including the two of us, have shifted our attention to the broader system...

Imagine learning to read or doing a science project with otitis media or asthma. Picture taking a major exam while experiencing the symptoms of a crippling anxiety disorder. Many students miss classes, experience increased difficulties with illness, and go untreated because they lack the resources to secure a health care provider. Too many...

President Obama’s 2012 executive action, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), has provided temporary legal residence and work-permits to about 750,000 young adults that have applied for DACA as of March 2015....

Last September, when I was invited to contribute to the Equity Alliance blog by engaging the topic, Transcending College Access: Retention and Promotion of Students of Color, I could not anticipate the brave, thoughtful, and inspiring student led protests that emerged in the last five months and continues to sweep college and...

Did you hear the news? The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is going to be reauthorized! Or is it? In July of 2015, the Senate and House both passed separate bills to reauthorize the du jour version of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. A Senate version, the “Every Child Achieves Act” (ECAA), is believed to be...

In the 2010-2011 academic year and for the first time in the nation’s history more than 80% of students who entered 9th grade graduated from high school, according to The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, as reported in The Condition of Education, 2015). However, a growing concern for education stakeholders is the...

“18 loafers you’ll love!”

“8 ways to end a toxic marriage!” 

Is your daughter going to be multilingual? Are you speaking to her in Spanish only? Is she also learning Hungarian? These are the kinds of questions I get asked after giving birth to a beautiful daughter. The answer I give is the same: I hope my daughter becomes fluent in multiple languages. However, the reality is that my daughter is...

What does it mean to be bilingual? Most people would answer this question with some variant of the ability to use two languages. However, if you step foot into the typical American public school you might think it means lack of ability in any language. In my many years of work with schools I have come across a plethora of terms that are used to...

We need to locate, nurture, and guide the budding intellect of adolescents in urban schools. This requires learning activity that makes the present challenging and engaging, with larger purposes that link to futures of continued learning and action. Challenging curriculum benefits from what Cole (1996) calls prolepsis, linking future...

Educational achievement is not only critical to later workforce success; but education contributes to adults’ physical, mental, and social health as well.  Unfortunately, educational success is not assured, especially for children from families and communities that are economically and socially distressed.  These students tend to have numerous...

The Equity Alliance’s recently published blog post by Dr. Stuart Rhoden calls attention to the growing number of families who are choosing to opt their children out of taking mandatory state standardized...

In the past three or four years, there has been a grassroots movement across the country created by some progressive educational groups surrounding students “Opting out” of mandatory high-stakes state test.  My opinion of this is that it is a copout. Until we change the system at broader systemic levels, we are not adequately preparing our...

Youth from nondominant cultural and linguistic backgrounds are disproportionately exposed to exclusionary and punitive school disciplinary actions (e.g., detention, suspension, and expulsion) and placed in special education for emotional disturbance (Donovan & Cross, 2002; Losen & Gillespie, 2012). The racialization of school discipline...

“The claim we found is that students don’t have access to culturally relevant textbooks. I feel that if textbooks will have stories about my culture, I’ll feel more engaged with the class.” — Alma, Latina high school student

Test scores. Accountability. Global economic competitiveness. Grit. These words dominate the current discourse of educational reform. They embody cultural assumptions and values about children’s needs and capacities, about what teaching and learning should look like, and about what they are for. The rigidities they impose on the everyday lives...

We obtained permission to reprint in our blog series a letter written by Rae Paris. The letter was originally published in blackspaceblog.com. Rae Paris addresses the historic and recent events of police brutality. It has been signed by over 1,000 Black professors around the world.

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