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Education and the Path to Equity

Fifty years ago, the Kerner Commission issued a seminal report on racial division and disparities in the United States. This blog series commemorates the release of the Kerner Report and examines issues of education and equity 5 decades after that release.

Education and the Path to Equity blog series art

Showing 10 of 15 results
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Education and the Path to Equity blog series, featuring Janel George and Linda Darling-Hammond
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| Quietly—and at times with little attention of the public, policymakers, and the media—schools have been resegregating at rates that rival those preceding Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down legal segregation in public schools. As it did following resistance to Brown, the federal government can help to foster integrated schools through increased funding and evidence-based policies.
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Education and the Path to Equity blog series, featuring Janel George
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| The removal of all prohibitions on the use of federal school transportation funds to support school integration signals a hopeful shift in federal support of voluntary local school desegregation efforts—and the availability of much-needed resources to support them. This is particularly significant as the country is experiencing rates of school resegregation that rival those that preceded Brown v. Board of Education.
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Mark Warren
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| Grassroots organizing and movement building to combat the school-to-prison pipeline has focused on ending zero-tolerance and exclusionary discipline policies and implementing more humane alternatives, such as restorative justice. This movement is winning policy victories through the combination of research-based evidence and the personal stories of parents and students who are directly impacted by injustice, and by building broader alliances to bring more resources and clout to their efforts.
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Community Schools: A Powerful Strategy to Disrupt Inequitable Systems
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| Fifty years after the Kerner Report, our nation still struggles with persistent disparities in child welfare, educational opportunities, and economic outcomes—but there is still hope for change. In this Education and the Path to Equity blog, Christopher Edley, President of the Opportunity Institute, and Linda Darling-Hammond discuss the potential of community schools to overcome the entrenched inequities of today’s education system.
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Zakiyah Ansari: Kerner at 50: Who Will Be Bold and Courageous? Confronting Racism and School Funding Equity
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| Education has the potential to be the "great equalizer" in society—mitigating the impacts of poverty and race. But that potential has yet to be realized in America. In this Education and the Path to Equity blog, Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director with the New York State Alliance for Quality Education, discussed the progress made in investing in the right of every student to learn well.
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Arthur Wise: Rich Schools, Poor Schools: Fifty Years of Pursuing the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity
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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.
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Anne Holton: 50 Years After Kerner, It’s Time to Finish What We Started
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| 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.
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Neera Tanden: Separate and Unequal is Hurting America’s Children. It’s Time to Invest in Education and Integration on Behalf of Every Student.
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| 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.
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Gary Orfield: Time for a New Civil Rights Movement
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| 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.
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John King: Fifty Years After Kerner, the Nation Is Still Separate and Unequal, But It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
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| 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.