COVID-19:

Ensuring FAPE for Students with Disabilities During COVID-19: A Resource for Educators

Author: The Center for Learner Equity

Summary: Despite the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, the right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE) for students with disabilities remains in place. As schools shift to more distance learning, teams of educators are left to redesign what FAPE looks like when they cannot be physically present with their students. That’s why the Center, in partnership with the Diverse Learners Cooperative, has created a guide that offers a decision-making model that aims to balance individual student needs within a virtual learning context, as well as a range of exemplars showing how this model can be applied.

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Equity in Pandemic Schooling: An Action Guide for Families, Educators, & Communities

Author: Equity in Action Committee of the Lapham-Marquette Parent Teacher Group

Summary: This action guide was compiled and written by Erica O. Turner, parent, and professor of educational policy studies, with Sara Christopherson, Annalee Good, Jynelle Gracia, Erika Hagen, Amy Hilgendorf, Maxine McKinney de Royston, and Jami Wood, all members of the Equity in Action Committee of the Lapham-Marquette Parent Teacher Group in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Schooling in America: COVID-19 & K–12 Education

Author: EdChoice – Paul DiPerna, Drew Catt, Michael Shaw

Summary: Unlike previous years of the Schooling in America survey project, researchers are releasing multiple sets of results in a new, chart-focused format. This report is focused on questions asked about how comfortable parents are returning their children to K–12 school buildings during the pandemic, which schooling options parents prefer at this time, and how parents grade their schools’ handling of COVID-19. Also included are breakouts to show differences in Black, Latinx and white parents’ experiences and opinions.

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Equity At the Core: 9 Challenge Questions to Explore and Ensure Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in the Reopening and Recovery Planning Process

Author: Educating All Learners Alliance

Summary: To support school leaders, teachers, students, and their families in coping with the changes brought by COVID-19, Educating All Learners Alliance has worked with national experts and their 50 plus alliance partners to develop a design process around 9 critical questions to consider in reopening and recovery planning for Fall 2020. The microsite shares resources from partner organizations, hosts a discussion forum, and outlines a design process to ensure that students with disabilities aren’t just a paragraph in planning but are at the center of the discussion about
educating all learners to prioritize equity and inclusion.

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Essential Questions for 2020-2021 Reopening: A Planning Workbook for Education Leaders

Author: Bellwether Education Partners

Summary: This new resource, “Essential Questions for 2020-2021 Reopening: A Planning Workbook for Education Leaders,” zeroes in on the three most strategically and operationally distinct scenarios: all in-person learning, all distance learning, or a hybrid. We define “hybrid” as when a subset of students is learning in person and a subset is learning remotely simultaneously due to local policies, staggered schedules, and/or parents choosing to keep students home for health or safety reasons.

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Reopening Schools After COVID-19 Closures: Considerations for States

Author: ExcelinEd

Summary: To support state policymakers and education leaders, ExcelinEd has developed Reopening Schools After COVID-19 Closures: Considerations for States, which was created with input and feedback from national, state and local leaders. This resource outlines a variety of approaches and considerations for reopening based on the following questions:

  • When and how should schools reopen? (After it is safe from a health perspective to do so)
  • What could options for school schedules, student placement and educator staffing “look like” when we reopen?
  • How should we provide supports to students, particularly those who are most in need, when schools reopen?

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A blueprint for back to school

Author: American Enterprise Institute

Summary: Families and communities need schools to be ready to reopen as soon as public health officials signal that it is safe. Together with a task force of accomplished educa­tional leaders this report sketches a framework that can help state policymakers, education and com­munity leaders, and federal officials plan appropri­ately for reopening. As communities and public officials start to think about the problems ahead, states, districts, and schools should consider at least six different buck­ets of work: school operations, whole child supports, school personnel, academics, distance learning, and other general considerations.

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in the classroom:

Critical Race Theory Fightback Toolkit

Authors: The Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at the NYU Metro Center and the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) K-12 Working Group

Summary: “Winning Racial Justice in Our Schools” is a new resource for communities resisting attacks against CRT and continuing to organize for anti-racist, culturally responsive schools. This toolkit is a one-stop shop to understand the context of the right-wing attacks, use effective talking points, get a messaging into the media, take action through local organizing, advocate for anti-racist education policies, and run for school board. If you have questions or additions or would like support with your effort, please contact nyu-ejroc@nyu.edu.

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Teaching Juneteenth

Author: Teaching Tolerance

Summary: Each year around June 19, Black communities across the country unite for a family reunion of sorts. These lessons about Juneteenth need to recognize the challenges those who fight injustice have always faced, but they shouldn’t be marked only by the tragedy of enslavement. Students, particularly Black students, can find empowerment in the jubilant celebrations of culture, activism, and the humanity of a people.

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benefits of diversity:

Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement

Author: David Griffith of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Summary: This first-of-its-kind study looks at the relationship between “charter market share” and the academic achievement of all students in a given community, including those in traditional public schools. To accomplish this, the report uses data from a new source, which allows researchers to compare English language arts and math scores from thousands of school districts and dozens of different tests.

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Portrait of a Culturally Responsive School System

Author: The Leadership Academy

Summary: In Portrait of a Culturally Responsive School System, The Leadership Academy offers a roadmap for intentionally building school systems that ensure children of every race, ethnicity, language or other characteristics of their identity, have what they need to achieve academic, social, and emotional success. Supported by research showing that equity-focused leadership promotes more equitable outcomes for students, the Portrait offers a broadened definition of school in these times and can be used as a baseline to create aspirational goals, an accountability tool to assess progress against goals, and a celebration to show quick wins.

This tool is comprised of more than 150 reflection questions and sample indicators and is designed to consciously disrupt systemic racism and decenter dominant culture. The Portrait encourages leaders to envision a culturally responsive school system by thinking beyond physical school walls and standardized exams, creating an educational system in which learners think critically and challenge inequitable structures to bring about lasting change.

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10 tips for teaching and talking to kids about race

Author: EmbraceRace with MomsRising

Summary: EmbraceRace is a multiracial community dedicated to sharing and developing best practices for raising and caring for kids, all kids, in the context of race. It has partnered with MomsRising – a transformative multicultural organization of more than a million members working to increase family economic security and end discrimination against women and mothers – to create these tips for our communities. They are designed to help parents of all backgrounds talk to and guide their children about race early and often by lifting up age-appropriate activities that can be incorporated easily into your daily life. These tips can provide support for families committed to building tolerance, racial equity, and a social culture where all kids and families can thrive!

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Profiles of Leaders of Color: Engaging Families

Author: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Summary: While the impact school leaders have on student performance has been well documented, there has been little attention to how leaders’ experiences and racial identities inform and influence their practice. While many practices of good leadership are universal, an individual’s identity shapes how they approach situations and can inspire new and innovative practices. This report includes the profiles of three leaders of color—Maquita Alexander of Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., Freddy Delgado is superintendent/principal at Amigos Por Vida Charter School in Houston, TX, and Kriste Dragon of Citizens of the World Charter Schools, a network of public charter schools with locations in Los Angeles, CA, and Kansas City, MO. Each of these leaders shared the belief that their school should engage families as genuine and active partners in their children’s education and the report identifies the concrete steps they took to put that belief into practice.

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WATCH: Inside America’s Most Radical School Integration Strategy, Built to Address Poverty, Trauma & Parental Choice

Author: The 74

Summary: With the gap of economic inequality widening in San Antonio, the city’s educational opportunity gap is also exacerbated for its students. Beth Hawkins, Senior Writer for The 74 Million, reports on the efforts that the San Antonio Independent School District is taking under new superintendent, Pedro Martinez. Recognizing the negative impact that economic inequality has on education, the school district is restructuring its schools to fit a diverse-by-design model. Led by Mohammed Choudhury, the Chief Innovation Officer of the San Antonio Independent School District, this video highlights the work being done in San Antonio to take into account economic inequality when thinking about the diversity of its student population and the effect this has on educational outcomes and opportunities.

WATCH: Inside America’s Most Radical School Integration Strategy, Built to Address Poverty, Trauma & Parental Choice

Challenging the Myths We Believe About Our Children’s Education

Author: Courtney E. Martin

Summary: This essay speaks to the ever-present segregation still found in today’s public schools. This segregation is often driven by misconceptions that influence many well-intentioned white parents to remove their children from racially diverse schools. There are, however, many benefits that both white and non-white students can have in a racially diverse school setting. Integrated Schools is one organization that is bringing passionate parents together to make the conversation of school integration all the more urgent in today’s educational climate.

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Diverse Charter Schools: Can Racial and Socioeconomic Integration Promote Better Outcomes for Students?

Author: Richard D. Kahlenberg And Halley Potter

Summary: To date, the education policy and philanthropy communities have placed a premium on funding charter schools that have high concentrations of poverty and large numbers of minority students. While it makes sense that charter schools have focused on high-needs students, thus far this focus has resulted in prioritizing high-poverty charter schools over other models, which research suggests may not be the most effective way of serving at-risk students. There is a large body of evidence suggesting that socioeconomic and racial integration provide educational benefits for all students, especially at-risk students. Today, some innovative charter schools are pursuing efforts to integrate students from different racial and economic backgrounds in their classrooms.

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How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students

Author: Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, And Diana Cordova-cobo

Summary: This report argues that, as our K–12 student population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, the time is right for our political leaders to pay more attention to the evidence, intuition, and common sense that supports the importance of racially and ethnically diverse educational settings to prepare the next generation. It highlights, in particular, the large body of research that demonstrates the important educational benefits—cognitive, social, and emotional—for all students who interact with classmates from different backgrounds, cultures, and orientations to the world. This research legitimizes the intuition of millions of Americans who recognize that, as the nation becomes more racially and ethnically complex, our schools should reflect that diversity and tap into the benefits of these more diverse schools to better educate all our students for the twenty-first century.

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The Role of School and Neighbourhood Ethnic Composition

Author: Simon Burgess and Lucinda Platt

Summary: The paper presents an empirical analysis of inter-ethnic relations among adolescents in England’s schools, the first national study of schools throughout England to relate inter-ethnic attitudes to both school and area ethnic composition. We combine survey data on ‘warmth’ of feeling for specific ethnic groups, friendships, and attitudes with administrative data on the shares of those groups at school and area level. We confirm that the pupils have warmer feelings for their own ethnic group than for others. Second, we show that in schools with more pupils from another ethnic group the gap between a pupil’s views of those from her own group and from another ethnic group is smaller. This is true for attitudes of the majority and of minority ethnic groups. Third, we show that school composition (interpreted as contact) mitigates area composition (interpreted as exposure).

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When and How Do Students Benefit From Ethnic Diversity in Middle School?

Author: Jaana Juvonen, Kara Kogachi, and Sandra Graham

Summary: A study by University of California Los Angeles researchers published in the journal Child Development finds that students who attend more racially- and ethnically-diverse schools report less vulnerability, loneliness, insecurity and bullying.

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3 Ways White Kids Benefit Most From Racially Diverse Schools

Author: Kristina Rizga

Summary: The academic and social advantages white kids gain in integrated schools have been consistently documented by a rich body of peer-reviewed research over the last 15 years. And as strange as it may sound, many social scientists—and, increasingly, leaders in the business world—argue that diverse schools actually benefit white kids the most. Here’s a summary of some of the most convincing evidence these experts have used to date.

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'School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?'

Author: John Charles Boger and Gary Orfield

Summary: In thirteen essays, leading thinkers in the field of race and public education present not only the latest data and statistics on the trend toward resegregation but also legal and policy analysis of why these trends are accelerating, how they are harmful, and what can be done to counter them. What’s at stake is the quality of education available to both white and non-white students, they argue. This volume will help educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens begin a much-needed dialogue about how America can best educate its increasingly multiethnic student population in the twenty-first century.

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Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive K-12 Schools: A New Call for Philanthropic Support

Author: Susan Eaton and Suchi Saxena

Summary: This report makes the case for philanthropic investment in racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse K-12 public schools. We offer an overview of work in this field, its evolution, its growing popularity, supportive research base, and hopeful contemporary examples. We provide a variety of paths for funders to support this work in ways that align with common philanthropic strategies and priorities. This report was informed by interviews with educators and other practitioners working towards diverse, equitable, and inclusive schools and by numerous convenings and conferences, by research, and by the authors’ experience in this field. We wish to thank our project collaborators and sponsors, The Ford Foundation and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust.

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Unrealized Impact The Case for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Author: Xiomara Padamsee And Becky Crowe

Summary: The purpose of the study is to enhance knowledge in the field about the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in education organizations. This study includes data from more than 200 organizations on organizational demographics, policies, and structures and nearly 5,000 individual perspectives on lived staff experiences in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion with an intentional focus on race and ethnicity.

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Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap

Author: Sean Thomas-Breitfeld and Frances Kunreuther

Summary:  Studies show the percentage of people of color in the executive director/CEO role has remained under 20% for the last 15 years even as the country becomes more diverse. To understand the causes of this disparity, the Building Movement Project conducted the Nonprofits, Leadership, and Race survey with over 4,000 respondents. The study found few differences between white and people of color respondents in their aspirations or preparation for leadership roles. The findings point to a new narrative — that the nonprofit sector needs to address the practices and biases of those governing nonprofit organizations.

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High Hopes and Harsh Realities: The Real Challenges to Building a Diverse Teacher Workforce

Author: Hannah Putman, Michael Hansen, Kate Walsh, and Diana Quintero

Summary:  What will it take to achieve a national teacher workforce that is as diverse as the student body it serves, and how long will it take to reach that goal? This paper seeks to answer both of these essential questions. Authors examine four key moments along the teacher pipeline: college attendance and completion, majoring in education or pursuing another teacher preparation pathway, hiring into a teaching position, and staying in teaching year after year. They find that current and potential minority teachers disproportionately exit from the teaching pipeline at each of those four points.

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'Repairing the Breach” with Heather McGhee and Matt Kibbe'

Author: On Being Studios

Summary: It’s hard to imagine honest, revelatory, even enjoyable conversation between people on distant points of American life right now. But in this public conversation with Krista at the Citizen University annual conference, Matt Kibbe and Heather McGhee show us how. He’s a libertarian who helped activate the Tea Party. She’s a millennial progressive leader. They are bridge people for this moment — holding passion and conviction together with an enthusiasm for engaging difference and carrying questions as vigorously as they carry answers.

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Equity and Excellence for All: Diversity in New York City Public Schools

Author:  New York City Department of Education

Summary: This diversity plan defines diversity as a priority for the DOE and part of our Equity and Excellence for All agenda, lays out a vision for working together with schools and communities towards meaningful and sustainable progress, and includes several policy changes that we can and must make now.

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case studies & toolkits:

Promise54: 54Hub - Onboarding - A Learning Library for Talent Leaders and Changemakers

Authors: Promise54

Summary:Welcome to the 54Hub — where organizational leaders working to create the conditions for staff members to thrive can leverage a range of resources designed to support their work. The 54Hub offers resources across a series of interconnected stages and processes, spanning a wide range of talent-related structures and experiences, all with a deeply-infused focus on diversity, inclusion, equity, and antiracism.

The process of supporting new hires in acclimating to organizational culture and transition into their roles. Effective onboarding should provide new staff with the necessary knowledge, relationships, tools, and skills to enable success while facilitating an understanding of the organization’s values and commitments and fostering a sense of connection, belonging, and engagement.

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Promise54: 54Hub - Performance Management - A Learning Library for Talent Leaders and Changemakers

Authors: Promise54

Summary:Welcome to the 54Hub — where organizational leaders working to create the conditions for staff members to thrive can leverage a range of resources designed to support their work. The 54Hub offers resources across a series of interconnected stages and processes, spanning a wide range of talent-related structures and experiences, all with a deeply-infused focus on diversity, inclusion, equity, and antiracism.

The full spectrum of organizational practices that support staff members’ ongoing growth and development. These can include goal setting, formal and informal feedback practices, coaching, mentoring, internal and external professional development opportunities, and formal evaluation processes.

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Promise54: 54Hub - Organizational Culture - A Learning Library for Talent Leaders and Changemakers

Authors: Promise54

Summary:Welcome to the 54Hub — where organizational leaders working to create the conditions for staff members to thrive can leverage a range of resources designed to support their work. The 54Hub offers resources across a series of interconnected stages and processes, spanning a wide range of talent-related structures and experiences, all with a deeply-infused focus on diversity, inclusion, equity, and antiracism.

This encompasses the full range of formal and informal practices that shape the work environment and staff members’ experiences within it. Organizational culture often includes communication patterns, collaboration practices, core values, decision-making approaches, leadership practices, stakeholder engagement, change management, and work-life mix. It supports and influences all phases of the Talent Lifecycle.

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Promise54: 54Hub -Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Antiracism - A Learning Library for Talent Leaders and Changemakers

Authors: Promise54

Summary:Welcome to the 54Hub — where organizational leaders working to create the conditions for staff members to thrive can leverage a range of resources designed to support their work. The 54Hub offers resources across a series of interconnected stages and processes, spanning a wide range of talent-related structures and experiences, all with a deeply-infused focus on diversity, inclusion, equity, and antiracism.

In a diverse, inclusive, equitable, and antiracist organization, the culture conveys that all people are valued, identity markers no longer predict staff outcomes, teams understand, represent, and center the communities they serve, and staff consistently experience the conditions necessary to thrive. While we have collected resources here to support specific organizational efforts to consistently live out DEI and antiracism beliefs, DEI and antiracism must be infused throughout all aspects of the Talent Lifecycle.

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Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools: A School Leader and Board Member Master Class

Authors: National Charter School Resource Center

Summary: When charter school leaders identify the early signs of school distress, they can intervene before the issues become too deep, systemic, or extensive for schools to recover. Thanks to new research from the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC), the charter sector has the opportunity and the imperative to identify schools in distress while improvement is still feasible.

NCSRC has released tools, publications, and virtual learning opportunities to help school leaders engage in its indicators of distress research. Now we’ve compiled these resources in easy-to-use virtual Master Classes.

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How Charter Schools Can Leverage Community Assets through Partnerships

Authors: National Charter School Resource Center

Summary: Community partnerships empower charter schools by strengthening their capacity to serve the needs of students, families, and staff through deliberate partnerships with community-based entities. Schools can collaborate with community organizations to gain access to educational or physical resources, and the school community can give back through service-learning opportunities and resource-sharing with local organizations. And thanks to their relative autonomy, charter organizations are uniquely equipped to engage partners and even design schools where partnerships are a key design element.

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Charting a Path to Equitable Education for Students with Disabilities: The Role of Charter School Leadership Pipelines

Authors: The Center for Learning Equity (CLE)

Summary: Students with disabilities across the united states are not achieving at the same rate as their non-disabled peers. With their flexibility and capacity for innovation, charter schools offer an opportunity to improve these outcomes. However, data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), parent focus groups and surveys, and research on schools’ responses to inquiries from parents of students with disabilities all tell us that not all students feel welcome in charter schools or are succeeding in them. To improve access and outcomes for students with disabilities, we propose that the charter sector must first build foundational leadership capacity and then make a firm commitment to high expectations for students with disabilities.

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The State of the Charter Sector: What You Need to Know About the Charter Sector Today

Authors: Bellwether Education Partners – Ashley LiBetti, Phillip Burgoyne-Allen,
Brandon Lewis, Kirsten Schmitz

Summary: The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the charter sector, including changes in the sector over time and current challenges. This document provides the latest available information on the charter sector, including updated data on growth, performance, and geographic trends. It also includes analyses of the challenges that charter schools face and how the sector is trying to address them.

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You Belong Here Toolkit

Authors: Dr. Nicole Evans, Sara Cotner, and DCSC member participants from 2019-2020 Community of Practice

Summary: DCSC’s Communities of Practice kicked off its pilot year with one group building and developing this resource to foster sense of belonging. A sense of belonging supports academic achievement, social and emotional growth, psychological well-being, and—ultimately—world peace. Yet building welcoming and inclusive schools is no easy task. The You Belong Here Toolkit was intentionally designed to be a streamlined and sustainable resource by educators, for educators because we know what it’s like working in schools. We are all juggling a million things, such as worrying about attendance and tardies, coaching our teachers, responding to families’ needs, and making sure the buses run on time—just to name a few things. This work is deep, repetitive, cyclical, ongoing, and extensive. It never ends, and yet we must all start. Regardless of where you are on your journey, the You Belong Here Toolkit is for you.

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Transforming the Social Sector: The Opportunity and the Need for Action

Authors: New Profit

Summary: New Profit has commissioned an independent analysis of the philanthropic capital market in order to better understand the dynamics at play in the social sector around racial/ethnic diversity, particularly from the standpoint of leadership representation for Black and Latino/a/x people. The research, compiled in partnership with the mission-driven advisory firm Next Street, shows stark leadership and funding inequities in the social sector. This concept paper explores this research and New Profit’s Inclusive Impact initiative, which was launched to address the capital gap for Black, Indigenous, and Latino/a/x leaders in the social sector.

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Equity at Work: Key system leader moves for improving schools for every student

Authors: NYC Leadership Academy

Summary: District leaders and their teams can use the exemplary leadership practices outlined in this guide as part of their formal school system-level equity-focused strategic planning work. These exemplars grew out of a review of the research literature and interviews with several current and former school system leaders from systems across the country who have succeeded in effectively addressing some disparities in student learning and school culture. Leaders were asked what they attributed their success to and what action steps they believe had the greatest impact on their ability to make real sustained change. In the guide are lists of leadership practices found in the research, and stories from school district superintendents detailing their innovative approaches and how they put some of those practices into action.

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Alliance for Resource Equity

Authors: Education Resource Strategies and the Education Trust

Summary: The Alliance for Resource Equity is a collaboration between Education Resource Strategies and the Education Trust that unites advocates and practitioners around the shared goal of achieving education resource equity for every student in every community. ERS and Ed Trust have come together to advance education resource equity through a website, toolkit, and set of supports for district leaders and their community partners.

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Key Trends in Special Education in Charter Schools: A Secondary Analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection 2015–2016

Author: National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools

Summary: The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools released its third analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) in five years and found that while charter schools are enrolling more students with disabilities than in the past and providing more inclusive learning environments, the sector continues to suspend those students at higher rates than traditional public schools and continues to enroll proportionally fewer students with disabilities compared to traditional public schools. The report offers a longitudinal comparison documenting trends in the areas of enrollment, placement, and discipline while introducing new analyses on enrollment variance by gender and race, the impact of a charter’s legal status on enrollment and educational environment, and the growth of specialized charter schools.

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DEI in Action: A Radically Human Approach to Case Studies

Author: Promise54

Summary: Promise54 has released its DEI Case Studies. Unlike case studies you may have read — the ones that tend to gloss over thorny, multidimensional challenges and deeply human imperfections for the sake of a neat narrative or sales pitch — this series of in-depth qualitative studies goes deeper. Promise54 is embracing the messy, undeniably human reality of the work that they do to create thriving environments for adults, so they can do their best work on behalf of students, families, and communities. In short, these case studies take a radically human approach embracing imperfection as part of being human and knowing that qualitative life experience is valid and real data.

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Demographics and Equity of Dual Language Immersion Programs in Washington, DC

Author: DC Language Immersion Project

Summary: The DC Language Immersion Project has released its analysis of the demographics of kindergarteners in DC public dual language immersion (DLI) schools as compared with non-DLI schools. The report is meant to move beyond anecdotal evidence, and inform the debate on equity of access to and enrollment in DLI programs. The report highlights areas of concern and identifies policies and further research needed to allow the District’s most vulnerable students equitable access to these opportunity-boosting programs.

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Georgia's Charter School Pipeline: Insights into Proposed and Approved Charter Schools

Author: National Association of Charter School Authorizers

Summary: Charter school authorizers play a crucial role in shaping the quality and availability of charter schools throughout Georgia. In partnership with the State Board of Education, state law allows local school districts and the State Charter Schools Commission to approve and oversee charter schools. Currently, there are 111 charter schools in the state: local school districts authorize 78 schools and the Commission oversees 33 charter schools.

While much is known about existing charter schools in the state, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) recently conducted a first-ever analysis of the state’s charter school pipeline—what schools are being proposed and by whom. The data highlights the state’s varied sector, focused on innovation and a diversity of models and operator types. It also reveals the significant impact the Commission is playing in shaping the state’s public education landscape.

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Developing the Whole Teacher to Educate the Whole Child: Fostering a Social, Emotional, and Cultural Lens through the CRTWC Teacher Educator Institute

Author: The Center for Reaching & Teaching the Whole Child

Summary: CRTWC has released a report documenting the impact of teacher preparation programs. This initiative is building new knowledge about what factors support and inhibit pre-service teacher programs to the integration of the social, emotional, and cultural dimensions of teaching and learning.

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MNPS 2018-19 Annual Diversity Report

Authors: Metro Nashville Public Schools

Summary: Knowing that segregation is a real problem, Metro Nashville Public Schools has created a Diversity Management Plan that schools can use to prioritize diversity and equity for their students. The plan gives an overview on topics such as school options, school performance, staff diversity, and resource investments to drive equitable outcomes for the success of students.

View the diversity report

Public Support Grows for Higher Teacher Pay and Expanded School Choice: 2019 Education Next Poll

Authors: Michael B. Henderson, David Houston, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West

Summary: Education Next goes over their 13th annual survey of public opinion, administered in May 2019. The poll’s nationally representative sample of 3,046 adults includes an oversampling of teachers, African Americans, and those who identify themselves as Hispanic. This year, for the first time, 415 high-school students and their parents were also surveyed. Education Next’s analysis teases out nuances in public opinion by asking variations of questions to randomly selected segments of survey participants and provides an interpretation of the poll’s major findings.

View the results

Neighborhoods Primed for Charter School Growth: Four Communities in the Bronx and Queens Are in Need of High Quality School Options

Author: New York City Charter School Center

Summary: Even as the New York City Department of Education has committed resources toward turning around failing schools, sharing best practices to improve achievement across all schools, and testing innovative approaches – Renewal, Showcase, and PROSE schools, respectively – the fact of the matter is that this long-term approach is unproven and, at best, takes time. Given the critical needs of many NYC students, particularly those in underserved communities, the Charter Center analyzed district school performance, charter demand, and Census data that identified four neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens that would particularly benefit from the immediate growth of high-quality charter schools.

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Preparing Teachers to Support Social and Emotional Learning: A Case Study of San Jose State University and Lakewood Elementary School

Author: Hanna Melnick and Lorea Martinez

Summary: This two-part study provides a picture of what SEL looks like when integrated into the school day. The first part describes how one preservice program prepares teachers for the social and emotional dimensions of teaching and learning in San Jose State University (SJSU)’s elementary teacher preparation program. The second part provides a glimpse into the SEL professional development at Lakewood Elementary School in Sunnyvale, CA. This report intends to inform policymakers, practitioners, and teacher educators about the components of strong, SEL-focused teacher preparation and development programs.

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Addressing Charter School Facility Needs: Actions for States

Author: ExcelinEd

Summary: For a small cost, states can save public charter schools billions of dollars and enable these schools to build long-term roots in their communities. A new policy brief by ExcelinEd, Addressing Charter School Facility Needs: Actions for States, identifies actions state policymakers can take to accomplish this.

View the policy brief

Scoring States on Charter School Integration - State Charter Policy Report

Author: The Century Foundation

Summary: This report, co-authored by DCSC board member, Halley Potter and Miriam Nunberg of The Century Foundation, argues that if charter schools are to become more integrated, states need to offer the right supports and guardrails in charter school policies to make this happen. The report finds that, across the board, more could be done at a state level in both policies and in practice to support integration in charter schools. An interactive map is also accompanied with the study in order to see in-depth profiles and analyses for each state, including key findings, additional details on the state’s charter school policies and enrollment data, and specific recommendations for state policymakers and charter school authorizers.

View the report

View the interactive map

Three Toolkits for Leaders and Teachers in Diverse Schools

Author: The Century Foundation

Summary: The Century Foundation has published three new reports outlining a range of strategies and best practices to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in K-12 public schools. The reports are designed as toolkits for school leaders across the country and aim to give educators the tools and resources they need to realize the many benefits of school diversity in their classrooms. As an additional resource, TCF has established an email address for school leaders who want to learn more about integrating their own schools and/or connect with schools featured in the toolkits: integratingclasrooms@tcf.org. Each toolkit combines concrete policy recommendations with specific examples of schools that have pursued integration with success. They are written to provide tools for a wide range of schools—with different sizes, location, or student demographics—and focus on three different yet equally important areas of diversity efforts:

View Toolkit 1: Recruiting and Enrolling

View Toolkit 2: Integrating Classrooms and Reducing Academic Tracking

View Toolkit 3: Fostering Intergroup Contact in Diverse Classrooms

Our Nation's English Learners: What are their characteristics?

Author: U.S. Department of Education

Summary: English learners (ELs) are a growing part of the K–12 student population. Between the 2009–10 and 2014–15 school years, the percentage of EL students increased in more than half of the states, with increases of over 40 percent in five states. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states must annually assess the English language proficiency of ELs, provide reasonable accommodations for them on state assessments, and develop new accountability systems that include long-term goals and measures of progress for ELs. While Spanish was the most common language spoken by ELs at home in 2014–15, in some states there was more variation in the home language. The need to support less commonly spoken languages could also be different across school districts. The U.S. Department of Education has created a story map giving information on the characteristics and location of ELs in the U.S. to help inform decisions about the provision of instructional supports and services for these students.

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The gift of school-level diversity data, KCPS boundaries

Author: Rebecca Haessig

Summary: Set the Schools Free has developed a tool that allows demographic data on student diversity to be sorted at the school level for Kansas City’s charter schools as well as the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) district. All data for the tool was taken from publicly available data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This tool allows all schools to be looked at together, and also to be compared to one another. As conversations about race, equity, and diversity across school districts increase, leaders, teachers, and parents can only benefit from more access to accurate school-level information.

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2018 Schooling in America Survey

Authors: Paul DiPerna, Michael Shaw

Summary: This annual survey—developed and reported by EdChoice and interviews conducted by their partner, Braun Research, Inc.—measures public opinion and awareness on a range of K–12 education topics, including parents’ schooling preferences, educational choice policies, the federal government’s role in education and more. The report records response levels, differences (“margins”), and intensities for the country and a range of demographic groups. And this year, the survey includes an additional sample of current public school teachers to gauge whom they trust and how they feel about their profession, accountability, standardized testing, and more.

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Who Is Here to Help Me? The Work-Related Social Networks of Staff of Color in Two Mid-Sized Districts

Authors: Travis J. Bristol, Matthew Shirrell

Summary: Despite the benefits of educators of color to various outcomes for students of color, large-scale research has not explored these educators’ on-the-job interactions with colleagues outside of large urban districts. Using social network analysis, this study examined the work-related social interactions of staff (teachers and administrators) of color in two mid-sized school districts. Where staff of color were likely the only faculty members of color—and where math professional development and curricular change were district-wide foci—staff of color were less likely to seek out colleagues for math advice. Staff of color were generally not sought for advice any more or less than White colleagues. Implications for policy and practice related to staff of color are discussed.

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Diverse-by-Design Charter Schools

Authors: Halle Potter and Kimberly Quick

Summary: This report represents the first systematic effort to identify diverse-by-design charter schools and characterize the role of student diversity in school mission and design across the charter sector more generally. Based on an analysis using three different factors—racial and socioeconomic demographics of schools, school leader responses on a survey, and analysis of charter schools’ websites—this report identifies 125 intentionally diverse charter schools. Although they represent a small slice of the charter school sector, data suggests that the number of diverse-by-design charter schools is growing. These schools offer important insights into how the charter school model can help promote school integration.

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Citizens of the World Charter Schools: Balancing Network and Community

Authors: Halle Potter

Summary: When CWC Kansas City opened in fall 2016, several characteristics set it apart. For one thing, it was one of the relatively few elementary schools left in Midtown; in recent years, Kansas City Public Schools, in response to declining enrollment, had closed and consolidated a number of schools. For another, the school offered a progressive learning model, including project-based learning, a focus on social-emotional development, and a robust arts program. But perhaps most surprising within the local context was the school’s demographics.

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Denver School of Science and Technology: Students of All Backgrounds Preparing for One Bright Future

Authors: Kimberly Quick

Summary: DSST, which serves an intentionally diverse yet generally low-income student population, prides itself on more than just its performance on state assessments. Its teachers and leaders emphasize that the network’s six core values—respect, responsibility, integrity, courage, curiosity, and doing your best—impact the choices of students and staff alike. From every high school in the network committing to scheduling and completing home visits for each incoming child, to students establishing peer-tutoring to help one another, DSST’s balancing of challenging academics and caring philosophy is worth the attention of researchers and educators.

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Blackstone Valley Prep: Intentionally Diverse Network with Strong College Prep Focus

Authors: Amy Zimmer

Summary: Blackstone Valley Prep, a K–12 charter school network, admits students from across four racially and socioeconomically diverse communities in the northeast corner of Rhode Island. The network integrates students within classrooms, regardless of performance level. Its culturally responsive curriculum aims to reflect and incorporate the range of experiences and backgrounds of its students. The network prides itself on being among the state’s highest performers when it comes to standardized test scores, and its low-income students outperform their peers from the four Blackstone Valley communities.

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Morris Jeff Community School: Elevating Diversity and Teacher Voice

Authors: Kimberly Quick

Summary: In a city where the educational landscape is dominated by other charter schools, Morris Jeff Community School stands out for its International Baccalaureate curriculum, dedication to ability inclusion and diversity, commitment to teacher voice, and academic consistency. The school articulated these principles at its founding, committing to being an institution that not only serves the surrounding community, but also involves and reflects it. At Morris Jeff, this looks like a student body that reflects the racial and economic demographics of New Orleans, and a teacher’s collective bargaining contract that recognizes that the voices of teachers, parents, and administrators are all necessary to maximize success.

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Valor Collegiate Academies: Charter Schools Intentionally Designed to Serve Diverse Students and Families

Author: Safal Partners

Summary: This case study features Valor Collegiate Academies, an intentionally diverse charter management organization (CMO) that operates two high-performing charter schools in Nashville, Tennessee. Valor opened its first school in 2014-15 with a mission to serve a diverse student body and has made many decisions through its founding and operation to achieve that mission. Valor Flagship Academy, the first Valor school, produced outstanding academic results, including the highest standardized test scores in the city, in its first year of operation. This case study presents voices of many participants in Valor’s work.

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How Personalized Learning Models Can Meet the Needs of Students with Disabilities: Thrive Public Schools Case Study

Author: Lauren Morando Rhim and Stephanie Lancet

Summary: CRPE contracted with the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (NCSECS) to conduct case studies on school models and practices that effectively serve students with special needs. This brief highlights how a San Diego charter school network is using personalized learning to meet the needs of its students with disabilities.

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Denver School of Science and Technology's Cole High School: Center of Excellence, Shining a Spotlight on Promising Practices for Students with Disabilities in the Charter Sector

Author: National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools

Summary: The National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools identified four charter schools from across the country as “Centers of Excellence” to showcase and share examples of charter schools that leverage their autonomy particularly well to benefit students with disabilities. Each Center of Excellence enrolls a proportionate or higher number of students with disabilities relative to the district where the school is located, demonstrates an explicit commitment to developing exemplary programs with a focus on inclusion, and achieves higher-than-average outcomes for students with disabilities. Each Center of Excellence profile is designed to share the story of an outstanding school that provides particular insight into how charter schools – and all public schools – can provide exemplary services to students with disabilities.

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Stamford Public Schools: From Desegregated Schools to Integrated Classrooms

Author: Halley Potter

Summary: In contrast with many northeastern cities, Stamford has shown remarkable success maintaining racially and socioeconomically desegregated schools thanks to strong district policies and state laws that date back to the 1960s and 1970s. Over the past decade, the district has also committed to integrating classrooms through de-tracking and successfully reduced achievement gaps while increasing overall test scores. This report looks at the history of school integration efforts in Stamford, the district’s robust policy to desegregate schools, and the impact these efforts have had on integration and student outcomes

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Champaign Schools: Fighting the Opportunity Gap

Author: Halley Potter

Summary: Champaign has implemented a successful plan to desegregate schools, first instituted in response to litigation and now continued voluntarily. However, persistent struggles to address disparities in academic offerings, school discipline, and perceptions of school climate for students of color have resulted in large academic achievement gaps across both race and socioeconomic status. Perhaps the lesson of Champaign’s progress and continued challenges is that desegregating schools is only the beginning of work on equity. In order to improve student outcomes across the district, Champaign must address the opportunity gap that currently prevents all students in the district from having access to the educational resources they need.

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A New Wave of School Integration: Districts and Charters Pursuing Socioeconomic Diversity

Author:  Halley Potter, Kimberly Quick And Elizabeth Davies

Summary: In this report, TCF highlights the work that school districts and charter schools across the country are doing to promote socioeconomic and racial integration by considering socioeconomic factors in student assignment policies. The efforts of the districts and charters we identified provide hope in the continuing push for integration, demonstrating a variety of pathways for policymakers, education leaders, and community members to advance equity.

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Remedying School Segregation: How New Jersey’s Morris School District Chose to Make Diversity Work

Author:  Paul Tractenberg, Allison Roda And Ryan Coughlan

Summary: The Morris School District has been a remarkable, if incomplete, success story. It has achieved and maintained diversity at the school district and school building levels, but, in common with other diverse districts around the country, it is still confronting the challenge of extending that diversity to the classroom, course, and program level.

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segregation in America:

K-12 Education: Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, but Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines

Authors: U.S. Government Accountability Office

Summary: 

Schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines throughout the U.S.—even as the K-12 public school student population grows more diverse.

During the 2020-21 school year, more than a third of students (about 18.5 million) attended schools where 75% or more students were of a single race or ethnicity. Because district boundaries often determine which school a student can attend, school district boundaries can contribute to continued division along racial/ethnic lines.

We also found that new school districts that seceded from existing districts usually had higher percentages of white and Asian students than districts they left.

 

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Here Is What School Integration in America Looks Like Today

Authors: Halley Potter and Michelle Burris

Summary: This study provides the most comprehensive inventory to date of school integration efforts across the country and offers a snapshot of where progress on integration has, and has not, occurred in recent years. The study identifies 907 school districts and charter schools with some form of commitment to racial and socioeconomic integration: 185 have active integration policies and an additional 722 are subject to a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement. The report includes an interactive map and a full dataset available to download.

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Do Charter Schools Increase Segregation?

Authors: Tomas Monarrez, Brian Kisida and Matthew M. Chingos

Summary: A recent study uses detailed annual records on school enrollment by race spanning a period of 17 years, from 1998 to 2015, and a research design that isolates the causal effect of the charter share of enrollment on the segregation of American school systems. While it is found that, on average, an increase in the percentage of students going to charter schools leads to a small increase in the segregation of black and Hispanic students within the school districts in which charters open, there is considerable variation in the size of this effect, particularly depending on how a school system is defined.

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Segregation by School Zones

Author: Alvin Chang

Summary: Using data from Tomas Monarrez, a UC Berkeley economics Ph.D. candidate, Vox has published an article that explores the exacerbation of school segregation by the creation of school attendance zones. The article also comes with an interactive map that shows school segregation by school district for all 50 states.

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Boston’s schools are becoming resegregated

Author: James Vaznis

Summary: An alarming pattern of racial segregation has re-emerged in the Boston Public School system over the last two decades, according to a Globe analysis, largely the consequence of steps taken by city and school officials to allow more students to attend schools in their neighborhoods as they did prior to court-ordered busing. Nearly 60 percent of the city’s schools meet the definition of being intensely segregated — meaning students of color occupy at least 90 percent of the seats.

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The Cost of Segregation

Author: The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) in partnership with
the Urban Institute

Summary: The Metropolitan Planning Council, together with Urban Institute and a team of regional policy advisors, analyzed segregation patterns in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country. We examined three types of segregation: economic segregation, African American-white segregation and Latino-white segregation. We then examined what impacts we would see if the Chicago region reduced its levels of segregation to the median levels of segregation of the nation’s 100 biggest metros. The core of this report is a summary of our findings. The findings for African American-white segregation were the most pronounced in our study, yet they are not the only indicator of how segregation is experienced by race in this region. We share additional data about the impact of segregation on Latinos at other points in this report.

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A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America

Author: Fresh Air

Summary: In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a “state-sponsored system of segregation.”

The government’s efforts were “primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families,” he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

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562: The Problem We All Live With

Author: This American Life

Summary: Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there’s one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. In part one, Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program. In part two,  a city going all out to integrate its schools. Plus, a girl who comes up with her own one-woman integration plan.

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How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By 'Individual Choices'

Author: Fresh Air (NPR)

Summary: Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that when it comes to school segregation, separate is never truly equal.”There’s never been a moment in the history of this country where black people who have been isolated from white people have gotten the same resources,” Hannah-Jones says…Still, when it was time for Hannah-Jones’ daughter, Najya, to attend kindergarten, the journalist chose the public school near their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, even though its students were almost all poor and black or Latino. Hannah-Jones later wrote about that decision in The New York Times Magazine.

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What White Parents Can Do to Help Desegregate Schools. And how to avoid acting like saviors in the process

Author: Patrick Wall

Summary: In 2014, Mykytyn founded Integrated Schools, a grassroots organization that encourages white families to “deliberately and joyfully” take the first step toward making their local schools more racially and socioeconomically diverse. While organizations such as the Century Foundation and the National Coalition on School Diversity promote integration on the national level, Mykytyn’s group is focused on recruiting middle-class white parents—the very people who have historically resisted sending their kids to integrated schools. “We’re the ones who kind of made it all fail,” says Mykytyn, who has a doctorate in anthropology. “Really fixing it has to be on us.”

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Southern Schools: More Than a Half-Century After the Civil Rights Revolution

Author:  Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel Hawley, Jongyeon Ee, and Gary Orfield

Summary: This report by Civil Rights Project at UCLA and the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State finds intense segregation of Black and Latino students in the South with charter schools more segregated for Black and Latino Students. Segregation in the South is double segregation for blacks and Latinos, meaning that they are in schools segregated both by race and by poverty in a region where the share of students poor enough to receive free or subsidized lunches has soared to nearly 60% of all students. Both segregation by race and poverty, research shows, are systematically linked to weaker opportunities and student outcomes.

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The Mismeasure of Schools: Data, Real Estate and Segregation

Author: Have You Heard

Summary: In this episode, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss how test scores and other current metrics distort our picture of school quality, often fostering segregation in the process. What would a better set of measures include? Our intrepid hosts venture inside an urban elementary school to find out.

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The bacon fat theory of school segregation, and some White House chaos

Author: Vox’s The Weeds

Summary:  This episode discusses the reemergence of school segregation and the policies that have supported it.

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Miss Buchanan’s period of adjustment

Author: Revisionist History

Summary:  While the integration of schools was a major milestone for civil rights, it unexpectedly lead to the firing of Black teachers around the country due to protests from White parents who did not want their children being taught by Black teachers. This forgotten period lead to our country’s current state where the percentage of Black teachers is less than that of Black students. This episode examines this forgotten impact of the Brown vs. Board decision.

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other:

Facts about “Earmarks” + Considerations for Your Organization

Authors: Penn Hill Group

Summary: An earmark is any congressionally directed spending, tax or tariff benefit that goes to a specific entity or state, locality, or congressional district other than through a statutory or administrative formula or competitive award process. Congress has not provided earmarks in over a decade. Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee have decided earmarks will be permitted in FY2022, with slightly different rules.

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Courageous Conversations About Race

Summary: Founded by Glenn E. Singleton in 1992, Pacific Educational Group is committed to achieving racial equity in education. We engage in sustained partnerships with educational organizations to transform beliefs, behaviors, and results so people of all races can achieve at their highest levels and live their most empowered and powerful lives.

COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION™ is our award-winning protocol for effectively engaging, sustaining, and deepening interracial dialogue. Through our Framework for Systemic Racial Equity Transformation, PEG is dedicated to helping educators address persistent racial disparities intentionally, explicitly, and comprehensively.

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When color blindness renders me invisible to you

Author: Michele Norris, Jeff Raikes

Summary: Color blindness is often seen as the ultimate form of equality and non-bias; however, in this podcast, Michele Norris of The Aspen Institute and Jeff Raikes, former Gates Foundation CEO, discuss the true consequences of colorblindness and how it hurts progress. They also share examples of how they are trying to shift this prevailing attitude of color blindness by turning directly toward race and equity.

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'Radical Hope Is Our Best Weapon” with Junot Diaz'

Author: On Being Studios

Summary: Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz is interviewed in this episode. He discusses the importance of “radical hope” in the aftermath of the 2016 election and as a tool towards equality.

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'Is America Possible?” with Vincent Harding'

Author: On Being Studios

Summary:  In this episode Vincent Harding, a great civil rights elder, examines how aspects of the civil rights vision may be applied to today’s realities. He also investigates the answer to an important question that many have posed: Is America possible?

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We need to keep talking about Charlottesville

Author: Brené Brown

Summary:  In this video Brené Brown discusses the need to continue the discussion of Charlottesville and the importance of owning our stories in order to control their outcome.

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