LPI Blog

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.

Fifty years after the Kerner Commission warned of a nation divided, school funding remains profoundly unfair and inequitable in most states, shortchanging students across the country, writes David Sciarra, Executive Director of the Education Law Center in this installment of the blog series, Education and the Path to Equity. Those most disadvantaged by this enduring failure are millions of children from low-income families and children of color, especially those in high-poverty, racially isolated communities.

This blog, Creating Loving Cities Rather Than “Separate and Unequal,” by Schott Foundation President and CEO Dr. John H. Jackson, addresses the racial segregation of communities and schools and its impact on children’s opportunity to learn and thrive, particularly children of color and children from low-income households.

This blog post, from Dr. Patricia Gándara, LPI Senior Fellow and Director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, is part of the Learning Policy Institute series, Education and the Path to Equity. Dr. Gándara discusses the changing demographics of immigrant students and how they’ve been impacted by increased immigration enforcement practices. She also argues for reframing how we think about immigrant students to focus on their assets, which “prime them to be the very best learners in our schools.”

Fifty years ago, the Kerner Commission issued a seminal report on racial division and disparities in the United States. With this blog by Learning Policy Institute (LPI) President Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, LPI launched a new blog series, Education and the Path to Equity. With it, we commemorate the release of the Kerner report and examine the persistent struggle to provide an equitable education for each and every student.

As California policymakers look to strengthen the state’s early care and education workforce, the state could take a page from New Jersey’s playbook. In 1999 the Garden State launched an initiative to strengthen and increase compensation for its pre-K teacher workforce. Within 10 years, nearly every preschooler in the state program was taught by a fully credentialed teacher being paid a public school teacher’s salary.

Access to deeper learning—classes in which students are engaged to think deeply and develop the skills and abilities they’ll need for college and work—is a central equity issue for our time, says Dr. Pedro Noguera in this LPI Blog. In this interview, Noguera discusses the role of deeper learning in providing all students with an equitable and empowering education and what it will take to “scale up” deeper learning practices.

In districts throughout California, many newly hired teachers lack any experience teaching the subject or students they were hired to teach and are not enrolled in a teacher preparation program. That’s according to a survey conducted last fall by the Learning Policy Institute, which found that persistent teacher shortages are once again leading districts to rely on underprepared teachers to fill classrooms throughout the state.