Equity Alliance Blog

As any educator will tell you, the pendulum of reform rarely stays in one place very long. There is always something new: new ideas, new theories, and new paradigms. Certainly my own field of special education has been at the epicenter of many educational reforms (i.e. inclusion, positive behavior support, phonemic-awareness). Yet, given this...

The Road to Intolerance is Paved with Good Intentions

As a parent, a long-time teacher in K-12 schools, and now as a teacher educator, I have taught about diversity, acceptance, and tolerance. I have supported the messages of our civil rights leaders, and highlighted the laws that provide equal access to education and constitutional...

What is teacher collaboration really?

In my view, the challenge of educational inequity is not, as many assume, that too few people care about creating learning environments that work for all students. The challenge, despite an overwhelming desire among most teachers and administrators to serve the needs of all students, is that we generally have very little understanding of the...

You might be wondering who thought it would be a good idea to hold an Equity Forum in Arizona in 2011? We’ve asked ourselves that same question.

In working with educators through our various projects, I hear a lot of different viewpoints on Response to Intervention (RTI). Many states are encouraging districts to focus on RTI approaches in an effort to improve state assessment outcomes for groups that have historically not scored well on these tests (e.g., students with disabilities,...

Since the late 1980s, education has witnessed the creation of a new subfield of study called “Whiteness Studies.”  Since the arrival of Peggy McIntosh’s (1989) essay on white privilege, David Roediger’s (1991) documentation of the history of the white working class in the U.S., and Ruth Frankenberg’s (1993) interviews showcasing white women’s...

This week I meet my first classes of the semester, one of which is a seminar for prospective teachers. These students are reaching the halfway mark in their teacher education programs and one of my most important goals is to create a sense of energy and motivation as they—for the first time—take on the responsibility of working with small...

Who are Standard English Language Learners?

“What is going on with Cathy and Javier today? I thought they would LIKE working together.” “Bill’s head has been down for most of the second half of the class, but I know he loves this class.”

Good teachers constantly negotiate a balance between the tools at their disposal, their pedagogy, and their knowledge of content in ever-changing...

Each summer from the time I was 3 until I was 12 I spent two weeks alone with my maternal grandparents at their home in Carle Place, Long Island. For a girl growing up in western Massachusetts, Long Island was exciting. It was, after all, an island, and my grandparents lived in a close-knit Irish and Italian neighborhood where sharing talk,...

The disproportionate representation of Black and Latino students in special education is not new. Disproportionality in special education since 1968, is a critical federal concern. In 2004, the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education was founded with funding support from New York State Education Department – VESID the Technical Assistance...