The rights of approximately seven million students with disabilities in the United States are secured via the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Despite these protections, consequential inequities still need to be addressed. Racialized inequities in special education outcomes persist across classifications, placements, and…

Amid debates about CRT in education, this paper critically analyses laws that have reportedly sought to expand 'education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics' with the hypothesis that there would be little evidence of anti-racist ideology in policies pertaining to curriculum.…

We outline a multidimensional ecological systems policy framework to better understand how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and patterns of racial disproportionality in special education relate. The framework engages with ideology, power, privilege, and context across the multiple layers of the policy-implementation process…

Higher education diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have become an imperative for institutional change in an ever-changing pluralistic society. The impact of diversity on college campuses has come a long way since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Chang, 2005), but there is still needed work. Higher education institutions continue to…

As the American Psychological Association and Division 15 committed to addressing systemic racism after the 2020 summer of racial reckoning, orchestrated political attacks that vilify pedagogical approaches aimed at addressing racial injustice have thwarted schools' efforts across the nation. Against this context, the overarching aim of this…

Background/Context: Urban educational systems have garnered focused examination as bastions of educational inequity, particularly along race and class cleavages. These systems are often cited as inefficient bureaucratic institutions plagued by financial mismanagement and political corruption that produce dismal achievement outcomes. Contemporary…

"Not Paved for Us" chronicles a fifty-year period in Philadelphia education, and offers a critical look at how school reform efforts do and do not transform outcomes for Black students and educators. This illuminating book offers an extensive, expert analysis of a school system that bears the legacy, hallmarks, and consequences that lie…

Racism against Black people, otherwise known as antiblack racism or antiblackness, exists in Australian classrooms and in the Australian curriculum. Contrary to the belief that antiblack racism exists offshore in distant lands away from celebrated multicultural Australia, this article demonstrates how antiblackness lives within the nation. Despite…

Language assessments are often framed as benign mechanisms needed to objectively classify people's linguistic proficiencies. In this article, I argue for the need to critically re-examine how purportedly objective institutional language assessments and our participation in them deceptively reify historical and contemporary inequities. I offer the…

Within the context of the U.S., there has always existed a parasitic dynamic between the white and the Black, where Black is relegated to a structural antagonism by the white. Research within education that has taken up the issue race and racism has resulted in preoccupations with examining the academic achievement gap, and pursuits of racial…

Present-day educational inequities are the result of systemic racism rooted in longstanding policies and practices. The move to achieve equity is not a new phenomenon; however, the desire to achieve educational equity has become more prevalent in national conversations. Conversations about educational equity have trickled down to the school…

"The Big Lie About Race in America's Schools" delivers a collective response to the challenge of racially charged misinformation, disinformation, and censorship that increasingly permeates and weakens not only US education but also our democracy. In this thought-provoking volume, Royel Johnson and Shaun Harper bring together leading…

Background: A separate, apartheid system of schooling in South Africa entrenched European racialised ideologies of white supremacy that left a legacy of social, economic, and educational inequalities. The 1995 White Paper for Education, the 1996 South African Schools Act, and the Revised National Curriculum Statement outlined steps for equalising…

This article examines how three relatively recent decisions enacted and upheld by Pennsylvania lawmakers have increased racial disparities in education funding and are helping to explode what Ladson-Billings has termed the educational debt. We find that districts with the highest concentrations of Black and Latinx students are profoundly…

Americans are dissatisfied with the public school system--and student academic outcomes have fallen to historic lows. Increasingly, state lawmakers are responding by giving parents more options for their children's education. Some of these new opportunities, such as in Arkansas and Iowa, allow every child in the state to apply. Policymakers also…