Financial aid opens the door to a college degree and makes higher education a real possibility for students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Student knowledge about financial aid availability and application processes, however, varies substantially by race, ethnicity, and income. Despite belonging to families with lower-than-average family…

This piece is an abridged version of a panel discussion that was part of the symposium on Anti-Black State Violence Across the Americas: Power and Struggle in Brazil and the U.S., held at UC Berkeley on February 20-22, 2019, and organized by the LUTA Initiative, a coalition of scholars invested in facilitating international dialogue about…

There is a lack of racially and ethnically diverse faculty in US schools. It is very important to have a significantly higher diverse teacher to student ratio in American classrooms. Teachers of color offer a wide range of benefits to American schools and society. Black and Brown teachers can serve as role models, cultural mediators, and…

In this issue of the "Equity Dispatch" we focus on the collective power of minoritized communities to positively impact the quality of education students receive within their districts through the selection of equity-focused, locally-elected school board members.

Schools and districts that break the correlation between race and poverty on the one hand and academic achievement on the other hold enormous lessons for any educators willing to seek them out and ask: "Your kids are doing better than mine. What are you doing?" It is important to understand that educators who ask that question--whether…

Minoritized special education teachers of color often report feeling isolated in their work environments, affecting their sense of belonging and decision to stay in their positions. Although these teachers struggle with their identity in majority White workplaces, they are also often the only voice advocating for students of color eligible for…

Research Findings: Educators declare their commitment to high-quality education for all children. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has been increasingly included as critical topics, even for young children. However, there are exceptions, especially the provision of developmentally appropriate STEM experiences to children…

Potentially all over the world, there are children who have been improperly diagnosed with various forms of learning disabilities, with potentially life-long consequences. The primary aim of this essay is to stimulate readers to consider the fact that, in a natural classroom environment, average, academically functional students who are…

Affordability is considered a key predictor of college enrollment and academic success, yet higher education costs continue to rise. Over the past three decades, textbooks and course materials alone have increased almost three times the rate of inflation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). To identify the extent to which course material costs…

Teacher education is polarized. Traditionalists tend to center core practices, while justice-oriented scholars center ideologies embedded within our practices. Both, however, must consider how practices and ideologies can operate interdependently to disrupt inequity and cultivate agency among all students. Drawing on an intersectionally-aligned…

Using a critical qualitative approach, we explored ways student affairs professionals at predominantly white institutions within the South made sense of and enacted commitments to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Findings show that participants rarely engaged in direct conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion with their colleagues…

Empirical data show that the COVID-19 pandemic deepened and exacerbated social inequalities, to the detriment of low-income communities of color. Using the law as a conceptual framework and legal research methodology, this study examines education law against the exacerbated social inequalities low-income students of color faced during the…

Academic achievement in American high schools is increasingly defined in terms of quantifiable values. Despite being designed to produce favorable data, explicit standardized-test preparation has an insignificant impact on scores and is counterproductive to the cultivation of attributes necessary for success in higher education and effective civic…

In 2015 Oregon enacted a school discipline policy reform for students in grades K-5 to limit exclusionary discipline actions (suspensions or expulsions that remove students from classroom instruction) to situations that threaten the safety of other students and adults. The reform built on a 2013 policy that directed districts to shift from a…

The COVID-19 crisis has not only exacerbated existing inequities in child care access for families, but has also decimated the finances of child care providers, many of whom are women of color already economically disadvantaged by systemic racism and sexism. State and local chambers of commerce are uniquely positioned to offer urgently needed…