Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David C. Banks unveiled the initiative, “,” earlier this week, saying they hoped to build off the success of “NYC Reads.” 

Starting in the fall, 93 middle schools and 420 high schools will use the , open-source Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, which is . Schools in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle also use the curriculum.

Like many school systems across the country, New York City, the nation’s largest, has long struggled with the subject. in 2023, but the figure is stubbornly low and is even worse for some student groups: of the city’s Black and Latino children are not performing at grade level in the subject. 

“Schools all over the city, even on math, were just kind of doing their own thing — people just creating their own curriculum,” Banks said during a televised press conference. “That’s no way to run a system.” 

I’m proud to be following the groundbreaking rollout of ‘NYC Reads’ with ‘NYC Solves,’ reimagining math education and ensuring students and educators have access to high-quality instructional materials and support.

— Chancellor David C. Banks (@DOEChancellor)

The chancellor did not blame teachers, administrators or students for their struggle, saying they just needed a better framework. Marielys Divanne, executive director of Educators for Excellence-New York, said her group has been pushing for change for years: More than 1,000 of her 16,000 members signed a petition urging the city to act on the issue.

“Our educators feel that NYC Solves is a much-needed step forward in making progress in addressing our crisis in math instruction,” Divanne said, adding that the previous, school-by-school approach left “thousands of students with low quality instructional materials and uneven support for educators.” 

In addition to the mathematics initiative, Adams also announced the creation of the Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning, which aims to support multilingual learners and students with disabilities. The division will have a $750 million budget — and roughly 1,300 staff members.

Maria Klawe, president of Math for America, a non-profit organization founded 20 years ago to keep outstanding math teachers in the classroom, lauded the city’s choice of Illustrative Mathematics, calling it a very strong curriculum. She had already reviewed some of the materials and praised its approach in taking math from the theoretical to the practical.

“The whole idea is trying to help students understand that a mathematical concept, even if it’s abstract in nature, is actually something that you encounter in your daily life,” she said. “You have a sense that what you’re learning is … something that you can actually use.”

William McCallum, Illustrative Mathematics’s CEO and co-founder, was a lead writer of the Common Core State Standards in math. He said, through a spokesperson, that IM’s work “has evolved far beyond its original focus on illustrating the standards.”

The Common Core had a bumpy roll-out, was maligned by some parents and . The math portion became a , though it has won favor in academic circles.

McCallum strongly recommends teacher training for those who seek to implement Illustrative Mathematics. 

“The curriculum supports a problem-based instructional model that is a shift for many teachers, and they have the most success when they have the support they need to make that shift,” he said. “IM and its partners offer professional learning for those districts that want it.”

Klawe also credited Department of Education officials for making the curriculum the standard for schools. She said it allows teachers to work together across the city to share best practices. 

“It’s also very helpful for students who move from one school to another,” she added. 

New York City officials say each curriculum has been reviewed and recommended by , a nationally recognized nonprofit organization. The curriculum also has undergone a formal review by a committee of New York City Public school educators including those with expertise in mathematics, special education and multilingual learners — in addition to district-based mathematics specialists. 

Minus charter schools, there were close to in the NYC school system as of fall 2023. Nearly 73% of students were economically disadvantaged. 

Like Klawe, , executive director of The Education Trust–New York, favors the uniform curriculum, though she notes it might not be the preference for all. 

“Different schools have different feelings about that,” she noted. She added that the approach does, however, relieve teachers from the arduous task of having to develop their own curriculum, allowing them to instead focus on implementation.

But teacher Meredith Klein, who worked for more than a decade at before switching to West Brooklyn Community High School, which serves under-credited students, said the new curriculum might not satisfy all kids’ needs. 

“I’ve always worked with a really specialized population of students and the curriculum is usually not designed with them in mind,” she said.

Klein has spent the past year implementing Illustrative Mathematics as part of the pilot program and said she struggled to adapt the materials for her students. While the city initially pushed for strict adherence to a pre-set learning schedule, the coach who visited with her to help with the rollout soon recognized the need for adaptation. 

“The curriculum is written like a story and you need to teach the full curriculum without any alterations for a full year,” she said, but that’s not the educational experience of so many of the students she’s served. “There wasn’t any guidance about how to break it up … how to retrofit it to our existing system. Not all students are the same.” 

, who helped register Black residents to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, believed civil rights went beyond the ballot box. To Moses, who was a teacher as well as an activist, math literacy is a civil right: a requirement to earning a living wage in modern society. In 1982, he founded the to ensure that “students at the bottom get the math literacy they need.”

UPchieve, an ed tech nonprofit, is bringing on volunteer tutors to offer free, on-demand academic and college application support to any U.S. middle or high school student attending a Title I school or living in a low-income neighborhood.

The platform is a game changer for students of color living in poverty, disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and unable to access costly individualized tutoring. Often working jobs or tending to family responsibilities, many are prevented from utilizing traditional offerings afterschool.

Through a mobile app or website, students are matched with one of 20,000 trained, volunteer tutors worldwide within five minutes. Sessions are typically 40 minutes, but can extend beyond an hour until students feel confident with the task at hand. 

“Right now in the United States, that sort of extra support is not available to the majority of low-income students,” said founder Aly Murray. “That’s where we come in. We think that every student, regardless of their family’s income, should be able to get support with their classes and applying to college when they need it.”��

Murray, who grew up low-income to an immigrant single mother, launched UPchieve in 2017 looking to build the platform she wished she had as a child. Of the more than 37,000 students who have completed over 100,000 sessions since, 64% are first-generation college-bound and 81% are students of color.

More than half are not enrolled in any other academic or college access program, and many start programming with very low motivation or in the lower third percentiles in terms of academic performance — sometimes grade levels behind. 

“We’re reaching kids — and this is exactly what we wanted,” Murray added. “UPchieve is especially valuable and high impact in cases where kids have nothing else,” especially those whose college and career trajectory could be changed by this level of support.

That was the case for Michael Lyons, a rising 11th grader who works at a Bloomington, Illinois grocery store three days a week and usually starts schoolwork at about 10 p.m. Having used the platform since finding it in an internet search for writing help in 7th grade, Lyons now has dreams of becoming an elementary school teacher. 

“I need help on demand,” Lyons said. “I think of [UPchieve] as a teacher away from school … I could participate more, because I know what I’m doing.” 

After just nine sessions, students scored an average of nine percentile points higher on the national Star math assessment, gains equivalent to 8 months of additional learning, according to policy research firm Mathematica, which studied 9th and 10th graders in the 2021-22 school year. Students also showed increased academic motivation, confidence, and engagement in class. 

Mathematica’s report was the first to show the effectiveness of on-demand tutoring — findings “useful for the field of math tutoring because they are examples of preliminary evidence that on-demand, online tutoring drawing on unpaid, volunteer tutors improves math achievement and motivation.”

Math, particularly algebra and geometry, is UPchieve’s most commonly requested subject, accounting for about 56% of 2022’s sessions, followed by humanities and writing support at 22%, science at 17% and college prep at 5%.��

Because the model draws on volunteer labor, the operational cost to provide one student with a year’s worth of unlimited tutoring is only $5. In comparison, other tutoring programs with similar impact can cost thousands per student. 

UPchieve’s international tutor base ranges from college students and retired teachers to business professionals looking to make an impact. The majority have prior tutor experience, but all have to complete an introductory training to learn best practices and demonstrate content mastery. 

David Seides, director of finance and customer experience at AT&T, began volunteering nearly three years ago, encouraged to put some hours in as a corporate sponsor.��To date, he’s logged over 400 sessions.��

He sets the times he is available each week, and gets alerts when students request help. When he has an extra hour, Seides pops online to see if there’s any students waiting. The setup is ideal, he said, because his work schedule is unpredictable.

For students who are struggling in class but don’t want to let on to the teacher or their peers, UPchieve provides a level of needed distance, too.

“This online platform, it’s anonymous enough that I think we get people coming with the real problems that they can’t figure out how to solve,” Seides said. 

Confidence was a struggle for Stacy, a rising 11th grader from Ghana now in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her math grades pre-tutoring were in the 70s. Today, she regularly earns As and sees a future at one of the University of Massachusetts campuses. 

“I was surprised because I didn’t expect the tutors to help me so well. I started crying and screaming when I got it,” she told the nonprofit.

“They don’t just help me do [homework], but also make sure I understand,” Stacy said. “They also give me similar problems just like the ones on my homework or what I’m learning in school … My math teacher is really impressed with my grades and understanding in class now. I am very grateful for that.”

Like other programs, UPchieve is still working on how to get students to regularly return. While some students log on far above average, up to 400 hours in a single year, only about 12% of new students log 10 or more sessions — about 6 hours, the threshold for seeing large academic gains.

In comparison to the popular Khan Academy, UPchieve does seem to be striking a chord with students. Only about 7% of Khan’s new users complete two or more hours of sessions, according to a .

Adding an audio or video connection would be a welcome change, or being able to “favorite” past tutors, students told ����Ӱ��. 

The current text-based communication is preferred by most — especially because many use the platform late at night, or have slow or limited internet access. A predominantly text-based platform also streamlines student safety, Murray said, as chat logs are stored and reviewed, and filters in place prevent emails or social media accounts from being shared.

UPchieve does plan to develop voice capabilities, with safety measures, for students and tutors who both opt-in in future versions of the app, for times when a concept is particularly confusing. One of Seides student’s, for example, once had difficulty understanding which way to flip their paper to understand reflection and rotations on a quadrant plane.

Still, in its current iteration, the platform is filling a gap for students who need it most. 

“It has given me a support system in stressful times. Without the comfort of private tutors that my peers had, I knew I would have to work even harder,” Xin, a high school student in Queens, NY, told the nonprofit. “Having UPchieve meant that I wouldn’t have to work alone or live with the constant anxiety of falling behind.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to and ����Ӱ��.

And 45% of Black students considered stopping their coursework in 2022, weighing dropping out completely or taking a leave, according to the findings. 

The report from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation provides critical insights into what higher education practices impede them from post-secondary success. Higher education officials could revise childcare, housing and financial aid to better support students who are not childless, financially supported 18-year olds.

is the first in a series to be released this year exploring the state of higher education by student subgroups and key issues such as mental health and the value of post-secondary education. Over 12,000 students between 18 and 59 shared insights, including 1,106 Black students.

Most telling, according to researchers, were data showing the external responsibilities put on Black students and how frequently they experienced discrimination. Many expressed feeling psychologically or physically unsafe, feeling that nothing will come of, for example, reporting peers or faculty for discrimination, said Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning at the Lumina Foundation.

“These data help us to better understand why we’re seeing the enrollments decreasing at a time we need to see those enrollments increasing,” said Brown. “These two barriers are real, and it’s causing students to think about stopping out or never enroll in the first place.”

Institutional and financial barriers have created a troubling reality: Black students have the lowest six-year degree graduation rates of any racial or ethnic group, at about 44%, according to the .

Student response data also showed how institutions can combat the trends by boosting financial aid and offering night or remote courses, revising requirements to live on-campus. 

But change starts with a reality check.

“Most policymakers, my guess is if you ask them who college kids are, they think of somebody who goes to college at 18, they live on a campus for four years and then they graduate,” Brown said. “We have been trying to educate policymakers about today’s students. How do you think about childcare on campus?” 

It’s common, for instance, for colleges to limit to full-time students living on-campus, according to Brown. But the practice disproportionately denies financial aid to Black students, more likely to have working responsibilities that prevent them from enrolling full-time, and more likely to be parents, ineligible for on-campus housing. 

Findings from surveys and interviews conducted last fall suggest institution type has a large impact on Black student wellbeing, too. 

Black students in associate degree programs are more likely than peers in certificate or bachelor’s programs to feel that their professors care about them.

At the least diverse schools, roughly one in three feel unsafe and face regular discrimination — most rampant at private, for-profit schools and short-term credential programs. 

The Gallup-Lumina team told ����Ӱ�� that institutions often don’t do enough to curb interpersonal and classroom practices that discriminate, like out-of-date curriculum that excludes Black scholarship or worldviews. 

In order to hold staff accountable for discriminatory acts, according to Brown, institutions could adopt zero-tolerance policies and overall, “be harder when it happens.” 

Kia, a Black student aged 30-44, recalled a time race impacted university administration’s handling of a disagreement. 

“I’m Black and this person was Caucasian, and because of the person’s smaller stature and voice, [the university administration] just automatically assumed that I’m the one who started this verbal disagreement when it ended up showing that it was her,” Kia told researchers. “I’m not an aggressive person, but they automatically assumed [it was me].”

Her experience mirrors that of many college-bound Black students today: misunderstood and unsupported. 

“Institutions need to be student ready. And they’re not. These data show that they’re not,” Brown added. “If they can’t support the full student, if they’re creating a hostile environment for their students, they’re the ones that are failing them.”

The plan, released in April, seeks to make Black student success a top priority for the governor and state education department. It also calls for equitable educational funding statewide and for the elimination of the digital divide, among a dozen other strategies.��

It provides clear action steps in a state where Black students trail their white and Hispanic peers on virtually every educational measure, as evidenced by test scores out of the Indianapolis Public Schools: Last year, just in the district passed both the math and English sections of the state exams.

NAACP Education Committee member Carole Craig, who co-edited the report, said substantive change requires a new way of thinking about this group.��

“First, we must agree that all Black children can succeed,” she told ����Ӱ��. “If we don’t make a serious difference in the next couple of years, we are crippling the ability of this state to have a viable working class, to be a part of a global economy for all of its citizens.”

Most jobs require at least two years of education beyond high school, she said: Those who fail to graduate or pursue college will be unqualified.��

Russ Skiba, professor emeritus at Indiana University, praised the NAACP’s proposal for its concrete answer to an educational crisis that has gone largely unaddressed for decades.

“What is so impressive about this plan is that it’s a blueprint,” said Skiba, former director of The Equity Project at Indiana University, which provides evidence-based information on school discipline, school violence, special education and education equality. “It says, essentially, that if we are serious about addressing the gaps in our schools, which grow into gaps in our society, make no mistake, then these are the things that need to happen.”��

NAACP Education Chair Garry Holland said the report contains nothing new, that the data has been available for years. 

So, too, he said, has the funding to bring positive change. What hasn’t materialized, at least not yet, is a concerted, sustained, statewide effort to improve these students’ educational experience. 

“When you look at professional development, cultural competency, anti-bias training, does the school have the will to do these things and help these children?” he asked. “Money has been made available through ESSA (federal Every Student Succeeds Act) for that to happen. We know you have the resources. But do you have the will?”

Shawnta Barnes, an educational consultant who worked in Indianapolis Public Schools for three years ending in 2018, is among those trying to build that resolve. Barnes, who helped shape the NAACP’s plan, is now promoting it to local districts, presenting it not as a critique of their current practice, but as an opportunity to improve.��

“Each of us has been assigned to different school districts and have been going out and having intimate conversations about it,” said Barnes, the mother of two boys enrolled in Washington Township Schools in Indianapolis. “We don’t want any school to feel we are attacking them. It’s more of, ‘This is our plan and how can we help you?’ We’re here to talk to schools, see if they are willing to work with us … and help them get grants and connect them with resources. We are a partner… and we will be down at the Statehouse fighting for the policies to be passed.”

The NAACP’s plan faces numerous hurdles, among them that Black students are spread throughout many districts, even within Indianapolis, meaning advocates will have to sell the proposal to each one.��

Aleesia Johnson, superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools, the state’s largest, has already pledged to address the disparity. Her district, which serves 31,000 students, including those in charter schools, spent the 2021–22 school year designing a tiered support system for those campuses that have three consecutive semesters of “F” state-designated letter grades and are at the bottom of critical education metrics.��

These schools overwhelmingly serve Black and Hispanic students.��

In addition to expanding its tutoring program, her district has already partnered with two groups it hopes will improve student success: One is recognized for its anti-racist approach to learning and the other focuses on school district transformation.

“Unfortunately, the findings of the NAACP report on Black student achievement are not surprising,” Johnson said in a statement to ����Ӱ��. “The results are all too common among school districts across the country.”

Looking to repeat anti-CRT victory��

Though the NAACP’s plan faces numerous challenges, proponents take heart in an earlier, surprise win: The same coalition that managed to in Indiana earlier this year — including the Urban League, Equity Project, Indiana State Teachers Association and Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, among many others — also supports the NAACP’s plan. 

Critical race theory, which examines how American racism has impacted a wide range of the country’s systems and institutions, has become a catch-all phrase made popular by and politicians trying to around issues of race. Many thought the same type of anti-CRT legislation passed in would be embraced in Indiana, which considered a ban on that could make students feel guilt or discomfort because of their race or ethnic background.

But several gaffes from Republican legislators — Sen. Scott Baldwin said educators in teaching about Marxism, Nazism and fascism, for example —��and pressure from advocacy groups ensured its ��

Those same activists are already pushing for the NAACP’s success. 

Brandon Brown, CEO of The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that has helped launch dozens of new schools in the city, including many charters, is hopeful about the plan’s prospects. He said there is a growing acknowledgment from critical stakeholders that racial achievement gaps are unacceptable. 

“The NAACP has gotten a wide variety of audiences with state-level leadership who have been amenable to the data and strategies they laid out,” he said. 

The civil rights group is not yet collaborating with specific legislators to further its agenda. But it does have a list of priorities it hopes to achieve: It seeks full-day kindergarten — right now, children are not required to attend school until age 7 — and quality preschool for all, a revised school funding formula focused on equity, the creation of a legislative Department of Education equity officer and funding for “grow-your-own” school programs designed to recruit and retain Black teachers. 

“Each of these legislative items require the advocacy efforts of all of the voting citizens of Indiana and especially those organizations that lobby and have connections with legislators,” Craig said. 

Been here before

But some of what the NAACP proposes mirrors what was already agreed to by the state as part of its . Unfortunately, Indiana has struggled with the benchmarks established through the Obama-era directive. 

Indiana’s ESSA plan was first implemented in the 2017-18 school year and pledged to “ in English/language arts and mathematics for all student groups by 50 percent by 2023 for high school and by 2026 for elementary and middle school.” But the state couldn’t meet the commitment — COVID alone marked a major setback — and has since . 

“It’s one thing to have it in the law,” said Mark A. Russell, director of education and family services for the Indianapolis Urban League, speaking of ESSA. “It’s another to have it enforced. The patterns that are so prevalent for Black students have continued unabated. In fact, they have worsened since ESSA was first adopted.”

And it’s not the only time the state has failed to live up to a prior pledge. Indiana passed a in 2004 that was supposed to better prepare teachers for the classroom. But, so far, it has not materialized, activists say. 

“We are still trying to make sure it was being enacted,” said Gwendolyn J. Kelley, NAACP Education Committee member and the report’s lead editor. “It was as if a law was passed and put on the shelf and no one was monitoring it.”

But even more than monitoring existing laws or adding new ones, Kelley and other NAACP leaders face an even tougher battle: ending the state’s tradition of failing to recognize Black students’ talent.

“The whole idea of high expectations for children is key,” Kelley said. “When people’s mindsets change, they will implement all of the strategies we have in place.”

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

After five years of leading , where I work with school systems across the nation to help them create a reality where critical thinking is no longer a luxury good, I was extremely reluctant to step into the world of “equity training” when the demand exploded after the summer of 2020.

For one, I took great pride in my obsessive focus on practical, but powerful tools educators could use to seamlessly integrate critical thinking into their existing content. As a Black man leading this work, it meant something to be known as a curriculum and instruction expert, a resource for enhancing access and outcomes in gifted and talented programs, and a trusted guide for helping parents and families . I refused to be pigeonholed as the “DEI guy.” 

But this was not just about image, it was about impact. Although I’ve attended many powerful workshops dealing with issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, it always felt like something was missing. As many of our school system partners across 40 states engaged in this work, a strange pattern emerged. So many school leaders and educators left these workshops pumped up, especially when you looked past the naysayers and focused on those who were fully bought-in to the big ideas around systemic racism, implicit bias and opportunity gaps. 

This pattern raised a challenging question that confounded school system cabinets across the nation: Why do so many educators who are deeply committed to ending educational inequity still struggle with persistent inequities in their classrooms? Inequitable academic outcomes, inequitable disciplinary consequences, and in some cases, inequitable everything?

All of these educators understood why achieving educational equity was an urgent priority. They all saw enough of that equality vs. equity graphic with the little boys standing on crates to see the baseball game from outside of the fence to know, conceptually, what equity was. But the “how” remained elusive, and sometimes, flat-out wrong.

Part of why I wrote was to offer a clear definition of what educational equity actually means to me. I define educational equity as the work we do to eliminate the predictive power that demographics have on outcomes. This would destroy the norm of demographics determining destiny. The outcome of anything we call equity work must accomplish this goal. If the policy change, program, or service does not disrupt the predictive power of demographics, it isn’t equity.��

This transformational vision of educational equity is multi-layered. On one level, Tangible Equity requires a laser-focus on traditional academic outcomes. This approach is indifferent to the common practice of rejecting the deficit phrasing of “the achievement gap” calling it “the opportunity gap,” instead. This distinction means nothing to minoritized students grappling with intergenerational poverty, students who will struggle to have any opportunities without successful academic outcomes. In other words, the outcome is the opportunity. How could we reduce the predictive power of demographics on outcomes without focusing on outcomes?

But the second level of the Tangible Equity approach requires a bolder vision. As an achievement-over-everything educator, I preached the same sermon to my students that my immigrant grandmother and mother preached to me. The same sermon so many in marginalized groups heard when they grew up and still preach to their children: “You can’t just be good. You have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” 

It is easy to be outraged about crystal clear racial injustice, police killings of unarmed Black folks and racist shooting sprees. But after decades of hearing and preaching the work-twice-as-hard-to-get-half-as-far gospel,. I suddenly asked myself, “isn’t this unacceptable, too?” This gospel is and always has been extremely unjust, but it is so deeply entrenched into our reality that most marginalized and minoritized folks accept it and keep pushing it. But I couldn’t do that anymore. I drew a line in the sand. I refuse to teach this lesson to my children.

Maybe I could lead an equity workshop if the outcome was a practical instructional framework and set of tools that prepared students to not just play the game, but to slay the game. I want to use my life as an example of the problem here. My education was successful on the first level of Tangible Equity, because I am blessed to have a demographics-defying story. I grew up on free and reduced lunch in Brooklyn, New York as a child of immigrants in a single-parent home with a father incarcerated for selling drugs. And I “made it” by getting into NYC’s gifted and talented program, attending one of NYC’s top specialized high schools, graduating with my computer science degree from Syracuse University, teaching, graduating top of my law school class, getting the big law firm job, founding this organization thinkLaw that is working with schools all over the country, and selling over 20,000 copies of my first book, .

But so much of me “making it” was about me learning all the things and doing all the things necessary to successfully navigate an unjust system. I get that this is the way it is. But this is not the way it ought to be. If all we focused on was playing the game, we have to ask, “at what cost?” Scholar-activist and education leader Charles Cole III’s addresses this in his book, , where he coins the jaw-dropping term “The Black Achievement Trauma Tax.” I “made it,” but I also paid this tax. I started going bald in my early twenties, I struggle with prostate and high blood pressure issues, deal with deep levels of imposter syndrome and irrational fears that my success can instantly be snatched away, and grapple with strained family and personal relationships. 

Academic success matters. So does building instructional models that give students frequent opportunities to go beyond analyzing the world as it is and push them to question what the world ought to be. It would inflict massive harm on students if we did not give the tools needed to successfully navigate our systems. But if we do not also give them the tools to question and dismantle the unjust elements of these systems, the work is not enough. 

This is why I wrote . I wanted to help educators, school and system leaders see why it was so important to shift from a conversation to something more concrete. Tangible Equity obsesses with the “how” by providing several systemic approaches all stakeholders in our school systems can use to eliminate inequities by prioritizing issues within their individual scope of power and authority. 

This book also lays out the five philosophical shifts necessary for school systems to adopt a Tangible Equity culture, such as moving the conversation from closing achievement gaps to shattering achievement ceilings. And lastly, but most importantly, Tangible Equity provides practical, easy-to-implement frameworks teachers can seamlessly integrate into their existing curriculum to deepen learning relationships, accelerate learning outcomes and hold up a mirror to our students so they can see their own power.

It is my hope that this book helps educators, school and system leaders overcome the “one more thing” syndrome that often plagues new initiatives, including equity efforts. Because you should not have an equity plan, anyhow. Equity needs to be the lens used to plan for everything. Please let the Tangible Equity approach guide the vision of your equity lens and translate your plans into reality. A reality where students will successfully play the game and have all the tools necessary to slay the game.

In the introduction, I defined equity as reducing the predictive power of demographics and zip codes to determine the success of young people inside and outside of the classroom to zero. This utopian idea sounds too pie-in-the-sky for a book called Tangible Equity. But there is a reason I set forward such an extreme, unreachable goal for equity: the process matters more than the outcome.

The Tangible Equity process is part of my personal journey. My story, as a Black child receiving free and reduced lunch from a family of immigrants with an incarcerated father, is one of bucking the highly predictive power of demographics on student success. On demographics alone, I am the type of student our educational system typically does not serve that well. Making matters more complicated, I was not just a bad first grader — I was gifted at being bad. I went above and beyond in my mischief. Looking back at my behavior as an adult, I realize that the greatest crimes I committed were not quite the acts of terror they were painted as at the time.

Apparently, I talked. A lot. To everyone. At any time. It did not matter how many days in a row I would lose recess as a punishment, I was going to talk! It is worth noting that taking recess away from a high-energy child is probably going to punish that teacher post-lunch much more than it punishes the child. I was shocked to learn as an adult that at some point, my mother told my third-grade teacher she was no longer allowed to call her to complain about my unappreciated gift of gab. She couldn’t figure out how to stop me from talking either! So deal with it! With the hundreds of keynotes, YouTube videos, podcasts, and panels I speak on each year, maybe talking in class was not really willfully defiant after all.

I was also a repeat offender of the serious felony of excessive question-asking. Because how dare I ask “why” and protest that “it makes no sense” to write the word “paint” ten times when I already knew how to spell it before class even started? My most terrible act? Fighting my teacher. Not fist-fighting or physically attacking my teacher. I’m from a Caribbean family and I learned in pre-school that my family’s old-school method of parenting and my highly-sensitive rear end were not compatible, so I was not going to go there. By fighting, I mean having the audacity to question the way a teacher was doing something, or even worse, suggesting that she ought to do that thing my way instead.

As “bad” as these so-called behavior challenges were, they all stemmed from the same root: a lack of being challenged. As you read that last sentence, can you think of a child who shares my story? Behavior challenges arising due to a lack of academic challenges? I want you to personalize this as much as possible because a major event happened in my academic career that can certainly happen for the child you are thinking of right now. That major event was my accidental identification into the New York City Department of Education’s gifted and talented program. This was the most transformational experience in my educational career. But you know what the biggest transformation was? The fact that I did not change.

I was still the same Colin. But I was no longer “bad,” I was gifted. Talking was far less offensive in a class where student-centered work, student-centered inquiry, and basically student-centered everything was simply the way it was. We were the classroom that frequently got that knock from the law-and-order teacher next door about needing to tone it down because her students were almost always at Level 0 (complete silence) while learning. And for some reason, these students then and students I see in classrooms across the country today are often asked to be at Level 0 for all sorts of things that have nothing to do with learning. But that is an issue I will get to later in the book. Another transformation? Asking questions was no longer disrespectful. Asking questions was now required for what it meant to be inquisitive and curious. When Mr Eisenberg wanted me to do the required math fair project on fractions with some annoying, unoriginal recipe assignment about multiplying fractional quantities to feed the school what I was certain would be subpar cupcakes, I refused! I told him it was boring, dumb, and I did not want to do it. This would have been a no-recess-for-life moment in another classroom. But for Mr Eisenberg, he was as cool as the other side of the pillow:

            Him: “Do you have a better idea?”

        Me: “Of course I do! I play piano and I want to do a project called Fractional Music where we look at all the ways fractions show up in music with quarter notes, half notes, triplets, dotted quarter notes, etc.”

        Him: “Class, Colin had a different idea for the math project. Colin, explain what you were saying.”

         Me: “I am brilliant. Just do what I say because I am brilliant.” (paraphrased)

        Class (in unison): “Colin is brilliant! Let’s just do what he says because he is brilliant.” 

                                                                                   (100% accurate, word for word)

What could have been a moment of willful defiance in any other classroom became a moment where my advocacy and leadership was encouraged and celebrated. This memory helps me see that I omitted a huge piece of the puzzle in my zealous advocacy for a critical thinking revolution in education. There is a massive prerequisite for critical thinking to flourish in today’s education system that is almost entirely an adult issue: ensuring children have the safety to be brilliant. In many of our hyper-compliant, rules-over-everything classroom environments, I question whether these spaces are psychologically safe for students to wonder, ask, speak up, collaborate, offer alternatives, think creatively and do all the things we associate with 21st century readiness.

Culturally, my Caribbean upbringing, like the upbringing of many immigrant households and other super-strict families, was one where “because I said so” was a good-enough justification for parents to do just about anything. But when we think about the safety to be brilliant, do we ever ask ourselves why parent phrases like “don’t get smart with me” exist? It is hard for me to think that the grave consequences Black folks could face historically for “getting smart” with the wrong white person does not play a role in this type of rhetoric. I have undocumented family members. So, I am also very familiar with the guidance, said or unsaid, that children of undocumented parents receive about not shining their lights too brightly in school to avoid raising unnecessary attention.

Tangible Equity recognizes that we cannot rest on proclamations and resolutions about how much we care about and value student diversity. It makes no sense to have this beautifully diverse set of students and ask them to spend most of their time conforming to what we deem “normal.” There is no value to our students’ diversity if we do not find ways to allow them to be themselves as a regularly-scheduled aspect of their learning process.

This resonates with me because I have experienced the downside to what happens when we do not create the psychological and actual safety students need to exercise their brilliance. I lived the student experience of never having a learning space speak to the magic of my identity, and I know that I am not alone. My elementary school, self-contained gifted class bussed in some of the most brilliant children from South Brooklyn. But as amazing and transformational as this experience was, I spent years scratching my head about why three of these students did not graduate from high school. Not graduate school, not college, but high school. Mind you, my classmates and I all started high school at least one or two grade levels ahead because of high school credits we earned in middle school. Still, three did not graduate, and I was so close to being the fourth one with the 80 absences I had in ninth grade.

Why does this happen? Why do we have so many children who are rock stars in their earlier grades, but go through this process where the longer they are in school, the less they are into school? I have more questions than answers, and there are plenty of amazing scholars who research this question in more detail. I just know that the painful sight of leaving genius on the table was unbearable for me.

This sight stuck with me when I became a teacher. I was the outcomes-over-everything educator to the extreme. I was not pro-high stakes standardized exams. But I was, and still am, pro-reality. Leveraging Tangible Equity’s power must involve interrupting intergenerational poverty. As an educator, therefore, I had to ask myself a simple yes or no question: is education an important part of disrupting intergenerational poverty? Yes or No? Mind you, I’m not asking whether education is the be-all, end-all. But I doubt any reader of this book would doubt whether education was at least an important part of what it takes to interrupt intergenerational poverty.

If we believe this, we must also be able to look into our classrooms and see our students as future doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, and even future teachers. This means they have to pass tests. A common objection usually occurs around this time where someone chimes in saying “college isn’t for everyone.” When we say this, we miss the reality that the power of a thoughtfully financed college degree is undeniably transformational, particularly for women and people of color. Given the vast improvements in earnings with a four-year college degree vs anything less than this, it literally still pays to go to college. But in recognition of the growing opportunities for well-paid, high advancement potential fields that do not require a four-year college degree, we should be clear that tests are still necessary. Plumbers still have to pass tests. So do police officers. We cannot talk about Tangible Equity without talking about the outcomes needed to fulfill the promise of Tangible Equity.

Equity of outcomes sounds utopian. I am often asked, “don’t you mean to say equity of opportunity?” The answer is no. I mean to talk about the equity of outcomes. Recall that I am defining equity as reducing the predictive power of demographics on outcomes. This means that changed outcomes are the only way to show that the predictive power of demographics has been reduced. Fortunately, the equity of outcomes is tied to equity in opportunity in significant ways. I would not have received a transformational educational experience had I not been accidentally identified as gifted and bussed to a gifted and talented program outside of my neighborhood. For brilliant students with no such program within bussing distance and without transformational learning options in their neighborhood schools, they do not have this opportunity. But even if they did, opportunity itself would not be enough.

Let’s use basketball as an example. Pedro Noguera often uses an example of the National Basketball Association that I want to borrow to explain why opportunity is not enough. In 2020, although Black people represented 13.4% of the population, Black players in the NBA represent 75% of all NBA players. This statistic is often used by doubters, who say “See! Racism and poverty are just excuses. Black athletes’ dominance and prominence in basketball proves that if they cared about school as much as they cared about shooting hoops, these inequities would not exist.” But Noguera offers brilliant insights to counter this flawed reasoning that uses basketball to teach us what an equity of outcomes could look like in education.

In basketball, the rules are standardized and common to all players. The rim is always ten feet off the ground. Basketballs must be inflated between 7.5 and 8.5 pounds. The free throw line has to be set 15 feet away from the face of the backboard. The point system is standardized and common to all players. A basket in the hoop counts for two points during play. Free throws count as one point. Anyone gets three points for shooting the ball from 23’9” away from the middle of the basket. These rules are the same no matter what state you live in, what basketball court you are playing in, how much money your parents earn, the zip code you live in, your race, your ethnicity, your native language, or your parents’ educational level. Basketball, therefore, is a level playing field. The rules of playing the game and the rules for winning the game are always the same. I can therefore conclude that athletically gifted basketball players who do not get injured and put forth the time, effort, and hard work to reach greatness have as much of a shot at NBA success as anyone else with similar situated gifted, healthy, athletes who exert the same time, effort, and hard work.

We are nowhere close to this in education. The only universal standard in the United States’ education system is that nothing is universally standard. Outcomes must be tied to opportunity because equitable opportunity is not enough for a brilliant child who is the fourth generation of her family to grow up in an economically disadvantaged trailer park community. She can have a 4.0 grade point average and even be the valedictorian of her class. And even with this impeccable resume, she could still not be accepted to highly selective universities. As outrageous as this might sound, it is even possible that she could graduate at the top of her high school class and not meet the course requirements to enroll in her state’s flagship public university. This is not to say merit does not matter, because it does. But merit, alone, is not enough.

When we consider the extraordinary educational effort required to transcend intergenerational poverty, the time, effort, and hard work are not measured by any sort of standardized or common set of rules. Do you remember the wild Varsity Blues scandal that revealed the lengths wealthy families went through to buy their children access to universities through bogus sports accolades, extra-curricular activities, and faked test scores?7 This illegal scandal pales in comparison with the very legal system that gives the super-privileged access to (and the ability to afford) prestigious unpaid internships, and the pay-to-play social capital system from prestigious pre-kindergarten programs to Ivy League feeder high schools. These are not the same rules. This is not even the same game.

This reality is not news to those growing up in the struggle. Part of why I push so hard for equitable outcomes goes beyond knowing our students need to pass tests to be future doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, and even future teachers. Because this is so much more complicated than simply passing tests. As an immigrant, my mother was raised under the mantra that she had to work twice as hard to get half as far. She raised me to understand that as a Black boy growing up in Brooklyn, I was also required to work twice as hard to get half as far. As a father to two young children, I feel completely ashamed that at some point, I need to explain the same thing to my children. I am truly ashamed of myself.

I have dedicated so much of my life to ensuring that stories like mine are no longer the exception to the rule. Yet, I have spent so much of my energy challenging myself to successfully navigate this unfair system instead of challenging the unfair system itself. The rules for playing the game and winning the game are not standardized and common. The rules are highly dependent on what state you live in, what kind of school you go to, how much money your parents earn, the zip code you live in, your race, your ethnicity, your native language, or your parents’ educational level.

In education, we are still very far from being able to conclude that academically gifted students growing up in the struggle who put forth the time, effort, and hard work to reach greatness have as much of a shot at successful educational options as anyone else with similar gifts who exert the same time, effort, and hard work. Yet, I have spent so much of my energy helping children master all the tricks and shenanigans of playing an unfair game. What would happen if instead, I focused more on what it would take for them to master the skills needed to slay the game altogether.

Tangible Equity is not an either/or challenge? Academic success must be present for Tangible Equity to exist. But as long as a child’s race, income, and zip code translates to requiring extraordinary levels of academic success to reach ordinary outcomes, academic success is not enough. We need academic success and educational justice. Educational justice would mean getting our system to be similar to the standardized and common rules of basketball. The math teacher in me recognized the need for a formula to describe what I am trying to say here in a way that breaks it down more clearly in Figure 1.1.

Think about how often we celebrate stories of children who grow up in the struggle, overcome all sorts of unfair obstacles, and “make it.” The Tangible Equity Equation helps us rethink what it means to truly “make it.”

I recall my experience as a Computer Science major selected for the amazing INROADS program. This non-profit organization’s vision of diversifying Corporate America is 50 years strong, and I was proud to go to New York City and meet lots of other Black and Brown college students aspiring for internships that would put us on the path for lucrative, successful careers in Fortune 500 companies. I remember attending a workshop on how to dress appropriately.

All of us college students had our most professional clothing on, but I only heard what they told us young men because young women received a different workshop. I learned that facial hair was a no-go. I learned that bright-colored shirts underneath my suit were loud and improper. I learned that cornrows were unprofessional. Wearing my hair in twists or locks? Completely unacceptable. I learned how to sit. I learned how to look someone in the eyes and give a firm handshake. How to speak, sit, question, and answer professionally. I could only imagine the kind of lessons the young women learned about how not to dress and how not to style their hair. By the end of the day, I learned the hidden curriculum of how to succeed in Corporate America.

The most important lesson of this hidden curriculum was that important pieces of me needed to stay hidden. The two Black men presenting this workshop were passionate, funny, cool, and caring. They wanted nothing more than to open doors for us, doors that would not be opened if we could not master all the necessary ways-of-being that make these lucrative careers accessible to Black and Brown college students. We had to be “professional.” As uneasy as I felt about this, I carried this same mindset into my classroom. I spoke frequently to my students about code-switching so they understood that when they were in “professional” settings they needed to act differently. Speak “properly.” Act “appropriately.” Because again, if we want to realize the potentially transformational impact of education for students most impacted by the ills of racial discrimination and poverty, access to successful career paths matters.

Something always bothered me about my INROADS experience. If diversity is such an asset to Corporate America, why would they require folks from diverse backgrounds to conform in such an extreme fashion? How could they realize the benefits of my diverse perspective and unique understandings if I am asked to hide so much of myself to even gain access to the entry level? It is even more bothersome when I realize that I attended this INROADS workshop in the year 2000. In the 20-year period after that workshop, Fortune 500 companies have had only 16 Black CEOs, 36 Latinx CEOs, ten East Asian CEOs, and 22 South Asian CEOs. With only 72 white women holding at the helm during this same time period, leading in Corporate America is still clearly a white man’s game.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong about teaching our young people the hidden curriculum to successfully navigate an unjust system. But at what point do we teach them how to use their access to the system to question it, reimagine it, and dismantle it altogether? From an educational perspective, it is hard to think about classrooms that equip young people with the tools to lead, innovate, and break what needs to be broken when students still get in trouble for asking too many questions. I cannot envision a dismantling of unjust systems when it is still far too common for classroom teachers to punish student leadership and advocacy as “willful defiance.”

I understand and value my mother’s journey and why working twice as hard to get half as far mattered so much to her life that she had to pass that lesson onto me. I understand and value the journey of the gracious Black men who took a Saturday break from their challenging positions in Corporate America to school us to the tricks we needed to master to access these lucrative career fields. But the work of reducing the impact of demographics on the predictability of outcomes requires that we put equal effort into helping young people know what it takes to play the game as we do equipping them with the transformational tools needed to slay these unjust games altogether.

Some of these children also struggled with a language barrier — as did their parents — making the switch to remote learning even tougher, according to UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, which released the study July 11 at its conference in San Antonio. 

“This report comes at a pivotal time as our schools and communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Latino students and their families,” UnidosUS president and CEO Janet Murguía says in the foreword. “We cannot allow hard won educational gains to be reversed, yet we also know that the pre-pandemic status quo was not working as well as it should.”��

Latinos make up a formidable percentage of the K-12 population, growing from 9% in 1984 to 28% today. Some 94% of those under 18 are U.S.-born citizens and nearly three quarters are of Mexican descent. Despite stringent and sometimes hostile U.S. immigration policies, their numbers are increasing: Latinos are expected to hit 30% of the K-12 population by 2030. 

First Lady Jill Biden, who spoke at the conference Monday, said the White House stands in support of the Latino community. She touched upon the gun safety laws brought about by the tragic shootings in nearby Uvalde, the diversity of the Latino population as a whole and the goals that unite this group. 

“Yes, the Latino community is unique,” she said. “But what I’ve heard from you again and again is that you want what all families want. Good schools. Good jobs. Safe neighborhoods. You want justice and equality—the opportunity to build a better life for your families. It’s not only what all families want; it’s what all families deserve.”

Latino students have made substantial gains in recent decades on the education front, UnidosUS notes. Their on-time high school graduation rate increased from 71% in the 2010-11 school year to nearly 82% in 2018-19, an all-time high. Likewise, the number of Hispanic students enrolled in postsecondary programs jumped from 782,400 in 1990 to nearly 3.8 million in 2019, a 384% increase.

But both of these figures took a hit in recent years: The on-time Latino high school graduation rate dropped by .7% from 2020 to 2021, according to a data analysis from 25 states representing 57% of the student population. Even more troubling, Latino freshman enrollment in college shrunk by 7.8% in spring 2021 compared to the year before, marking the first such decline in a decade: The figure rebounded by 4% by the spring 2022 semester, UnidosUS found, but it remained below pre-pandemic levels. 

The trend is in keeping with that of the overall college population, which is down by more than 1.4 million undergraduates.

Not all academic indicators are available and many poor students were not tested during the height of COVID, but at least one critical test shows a lag: Latino students in 3rd through 8th grade saw greater declines than their non-Latino white peers on NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress, an interim assessment administered in schools across the country.

But, UnidosUS writes in its report, the loss needs to be put in context. Latino students were more likely to attend high-poverty schools that participated in remote instruction for a longer period of time, often yielding a greater rate of learning loss for students, the organization found.

UnidosUS recommends improved data collection and analysis meant to identify academic weaknesses and improve results. It implores districts to honor student’s rights to their education — some schools have been sued for failing to enroll immigrant students whom they feel will not graduate on time — and include the voices of students and their families in shaping education policies and services. 

It also calls for a major increase in funding, a “bold and historical investment in Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” the federal formula grant program intended to support English learners by increasing funding from $831 million to $2 billion. 

“Since 2001, the population of English learners has increased by 35%,” the report notes. “However, Title III funding has not kept pace. When adjusted for inflation, funding has decreased by 24% since 2002.”

The group found Latino students are more likely than their peers to attend a low-rated school and to have a novice teacher. These children also have limited exposure to educators who look like them — just 9% of teachers are Latino — which is an important factor in student success. 

And language access remains a challenge: More than three quarters of the nation’s 5.1 million English language learners are Latino and a similar percentage speak Spanish at home.

Research shows students learning English typically make academic gains at rates similar to or higher than their peers, the study notes, but experience greater learning loss in the summer months when they are not in the classroom. The pandemic, which sent the nation’s entire school population home for months at a time, worsened this slide for Latino children, who were disconnected from their teachers and the technology their schools offered. Just two years prior to the pandemic, data shows nearly a third of Latino households lacked high-speed broadband internet and 17% did not have a computer in the home.

Despite many schools’ efforts to place a device in the hands of every child, Latinos remain at a disadvantage. Two years into the pandemic, 1 in 3 often or sometimes faced one of the following problems: They had to complete their homework on a cell phone, were unable to turn in their assignments because they lacked computer or internet access, or were forced to use public Wi-Fi to complete at-home work, UnidosUS reported.

And their lack of connectivity wasn’t the only problem, the group found: 50% of Latino parents reported having difficulty helping their kids with unfamiliar coursework and 58% had problems communicating with teachers, possibly because of a language barrier and schools’ failure to employ translators.  

While education researchers have sounded the alarm for more than a year — that pandemic learning hurts low-income students and students of color most severely — recent scores suggest education solutions cannot come fast enough.

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“More students are two or more grade levels below their actual grade level this fall than before the pandemic began,” according to , which analyzed 3 million students’ fall 2021 i-Ready scores against averages from 2017-19.  

“This means that teachers will not only have fewer students beginning the school year on grade level, but they will also have more students in need of intensive intervention and support.”

In both math and reading, fewer students are ready for grade level work — across all first through eighth graders. 

Most concerning was the report’s finding that the pandemic has been especially detrimental for four groups: students beginning conceptual math in early middle school; students learning to read; students in predominantly Black and Latino schools; and students in lower-income zip codes.

I’d summarize the pattern of results as: “The academic effects of COVID-19 are concentrated in grades and subjects that are more difficult to teach/support at home, and are concentrated in populations that are historically denied access to adequate resources/quality schools.”

— Morgan Polikoff (@mpolikoff)

More than half of third grade students in predominantly Black and Latino schools are testing two or more grade levels behind in math.

And for children learning to read in second and third grade, 7 to 9 percent more students are two or more grade levels behind as compared to pre-pandemic levels. These rates are even higher for students in lower-income and predominantly Black or Latino schools. 

Here are four key findings from the report. 

For some visuals, only third grade is spotlighted as researchers say it’s a pivotal year for student learning, and one that can help . 

1. Roughly half of third graders in predominantly Black and Latino schools are 2+ grade levels behind in math and reading — 11-17% more than pre-pandemic.

Schools with the highest proportions of Black students have experienced the starkest learning gaps in third grade, faring slightly better with reading over math. 

As compared to pre-pandemic rates, 17 percent more students in predominantly Black schools are now two or more grade levels behind. The majority of students in predominantly Black schools, 59 percent, test below grade level in math.

2. 49% of third graders in lower-income areas are 2+ grade levels behind in reading and math — 10-12% more than pre-pandemic.

Unfinished learning is most stark in lower-income areas, but drops are across the board. In areas where families earn an average more than $75,000, roughly a quarter of students are two or more grade levels below. For areas with average incomes less than $50,000, there are double the amount of students below grade level. 

Disparities by income may corroborate concerns of inequitable access to technology, tutoring and one-one support.

3. In reading, early elementary schoolers appear most impacted by the pandemic. 9% more second graders are 2+ grade levels behind.

The greatest changes from pre-pandemic levels are for second through fourth graders, when many children learn key reading skills.

Upper-elementary and middle schoolers, who typically already know how to read and write longer texts, are testing closer to pre-pandemic levels. Still, only about a third are at or above grade level benchmarks.

4. In math, upper elementary and early middle school students appear most impacted by the pandemic. From second to sixth grade, 10% more students are 2+ grade levels behind.

The proportion of students behind grade level increases as students continue through middle school — this year 50 percent of 8th graders, for instance, will require intensive support to get back on track. 

Part of the reason may be due to content differences, according to Curriculum Associates’ analysis. Algebraic and conceptual thinking, introduced as students leave elementary school, is typically harder for students to grasp than number fluency in earlier grades.

These findings are consistent across racial backgrounds; sixth through eighth graders testing below grade level at higher rates than their peers in earlier grades.