Climate change's health effects are most strongly felt in Environmental Justice (EJ) communities which are predominantly people of color. This results in a disproportionate burden of climate change health effects on EJ communities. Climate change is a public health crisis, and more importantly to pediatricians -- it is a pediatric public health…

Operating from intersecting theories of validation, marginality, and mattering, this phenomenological study investigated undocumented student support services from the perspective of 49 Undocumented Student Resource Center (USRC) practitioners. In-depth interviews highlighted the ways that USRC practitioners served as validating agents, directly…

Hiring and retaining teachers of color is one approach that policymakers can use to support improved academic achievement and opportunities for racially and ethnically diverse students. National data show that while the student population is becoming more diverse, the teacher workforce remains largely white and female. While teachers from all…

School districts throughout the country have faced increasing challenges with recruiting and retaining beginning STEM teachers. In 2017, turnover rates for mathematics and science teachers were 90% greater in the top quartile of schools serving students of color than in the bottom quartile. A RAND Corporation 2021 survey found nearly one in four…

The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) "Communities of Practice" project builds upon SHEEO's ongoing efforts to measure the capacity and effective use of state postsecondary data systems and provides states with opportunities to develop solutions to common issues with those systems. The sixth Community of…

Emerging practices in both K-12 and higher education hold great promise in the establishment of equity frameworks. The use of finely disaggregated data, the effort to track additional student groups, and related work, all help to establish policies and tools to monitor the impact of reform efforts to address inequities. State programs and…

In this descriptive and comparative study, we present results highlighting the complexity and scope of the challenges facing rural districts as they navigate the changing demographics of the students and families they serve. Rapid increases in the number and concentration of racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse students in rural areas…

This article explores the many ways in which states can and are addressing racial equity in problem solving and policymaking. The authors explore national data that make the case for addressing bias and advancing equity in state policy; share strategies and best practices for engaging families and communities; and provide examples of policies that…

When schools closed their doors in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a scramble to adjust to remote learning. Over the summer and into the fall, the debate over reopening took center stage, as school leaders struggled to answer how and when it would be safe to return to the classroom. The Center for American Progress (CAP)…

Minority students and students with disabilities are disciplined disproportionately from their peers. Discipline has led to many negative consequences in the lives of youth in the United States, including the school-to-prison pipeline. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance encouraging school districts to develop policies that…

Every adolescent faces challenges as they navigate their teenage years, but for some these challenges imperil their ability to complete their education. While these four students' experiences are dramatically different, they have one thing in common: high school didn't work for them, meaning that each faced long odds of ever attaining a diploma,…

This report provides a new resource for understanding the state of urban public schools in the U.S. Geared specifically toward city leaders who want to evaluate how well traditional district and charter schools are serving all their city's children and how their schools compare to those in other cities, the report measures outcomes for all public…

American public higher education is in trouble. Besieged by declining state and Federal support for more than 30 years, public colleges and universities are facing a "game-changing" set of challenges that threaten to alter the very nature of the institutions. As two recessions withered state budgets in the first decade of the 21st…

Making Connections was the Annie E. Casey Foundation's signature place-based, community-change initiative of the 2000s. It sought to build on previous work and launch an effort focused firmly on the framework of family strengthening. The Foundation started Making Connections in 22 places, focusing eventually on first 10, then seven sites. It…

Most recently, many higher education institutions have continued to struggle to answer the question of whether they should promote diversity as a central value of the university or protect themselves from legal challenge by avoiding the inclusion of diversity initiatives. In this article, the authors first provide several examples documenting how…