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Fifty years ago, in his book, Rich Schools, Poor Schools: The Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity, Arthur Wise noted the glaring inequities in public school funding and suggested that examination by the courts would reveal they were unconstitutional. In his blog, Wise describes advocates’ efforts to redress those wrongs through a judicial strategy, legislatures’ responses to court rulings and judicial orders, where we stand now, and what remains to be done to achieve equal educational opportunity.

As the US looks for ways to reduce school shootings, research shows that initiatives that reduce suspension, expulsion, and intervention from law enforcement and that focus on inclusion and social emotional learning show promise that arming teachers and expelling students do not.

Richmond, VA’s diversity is a point of strength, but the vast majority of its schools are still segregated by race and income. In the latest Education and the Path to Equity blog, Anne Holton writes about that reality and what one school is doing to change it. Holton is Visiting Professor of Public Policy and Education at George Mason University and former Virginia Secretary of Education.

In the 50 years since the Kerner Report was released, our country has struggled to fulfill its mission — and perhaps nowhere has this fight been more evident than in our classrooms, observes Center for American Progress President and CEO Neera Tanden. In the latest Education and the Path to Equity blog Tanden says we must invest in every school and take decisive steps toward integration.

Much was accomplished by the civil rights revolution, writes Gary Orfield, Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. But gains have been lost and times have changed. In this Education and the Path to Equity blog, Orfield says we need a new agenda for a more complex society and a new vision of integration in a century where we will all soon be minorities.

In this installment of the Education and the Path to Equity blog series, John B. King Jr., President and CEO of the Education Trust and former U.S. Secretary of Education, observes that 50 years after the Kerner Commission, the striking disparities in opportunity that still exist throughout our nation are a reflection of choices that we have made as a society. As a nation, we are not acting on what we know is in the best interest of our children. 

As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Report, we must recognize that educational institutions currently produce exactly what they were created to produce—opportunity gaps, writes Dr. Ebony Green, Executive Director of Equity and Access of the Newburgh Enlarged City School District. In the latest installment of the blog series, Education and the Path to Equity, Dr. Green shares how her school district is implementing a systemwide approach to equity in order to create opportunities and improve outcomes for all students.