Black Americans face a pivotal decision: continue fighting to reform systems that were never designed for us, or strategically build power within new frameworks to ensure equitable representation. The eyes of Texas, and the nation, are watching closely, because the forces at work here could soon be in everyone’s backyard.

When I ran for a seat on the Keller Independent School District Board of Education in 2023, I did so with a sense of urgency. The current board – which is all white in a district where half the students come from communities of color –  had made it clear they were intent on pushing a far-right agenda, banning books, targeting LGBTQ students, and undermining diversity initiatives.

Now the board is leading the charge to split the district in two, putting the fight for representation at the heart of these issues.

The push to break up Keller ISD, a 34,000-student district north of Fort Worth, is not about improving educational outcomes or addressing financial concerns. It is a modern evolution of white flight into white power preservation. In past decades, our nation saw white families leave diverse areas for more homogenous suburban communities. Today, as America becomes a majority-minority nation, this strategy has evolved. It is no longer just about physically leaving diverse spaces but about creating new structures that consolidate power. 

The proposed breakup of Keller ISD seeks to concentrate the power of white families within a smaller, predominantly white district while leaving behind a more diverse and potentially under-resourced counterpart.

If the split happens, the new Keller ISD would be 68.4% white – compared to now – while the newly formed Alliance ISD would be 43.8% white, with significantly higher Black and Latino populations. This restructuring is not just about demographics, it ties directly into the financial viability of both districts.

Proponents of the split claim it would improve financial management, but these claims are suspect. Texas public schools are already underfunded due to the state’s education formula, and school vouchers would divert even more resources. A financial analysis by the Moak Casey consulting firm indicates revenue distribution would largely remain the same, meaning the financial justification for the split is questionable.

The creation of two separate administrations – each requiring its own superintendent, financial officers, and support staff – would likely increase overall costs rather than reduce them. This raises concerns about whether the split is truly about financial sustainability or about consolidating power in Keller ISD while leaving Alliance ISD to struggle with fewer resources, given lower property values and limited possibilities for commercial development within its proposed boundaries.

At the same time, splitting Keller ISD in half would offer opportunities for Black and Latino communities to have a voice in the new district’s governance. 

As a Black attorney who ran for the school board, I view this moment through both a personal and legal lens. Despite earning 41.8% of the vote in my 2023 campaign, I failed to win a seat in a district that allows all voters to vote for all board positions. At-large voting has long diluted the political power of communities of color. Legal challenges, such as Texas’ Lewisville ISD’s Voting Rights Act , and landmark cases like have exposed the discriminatory impact and led to reforms.

This is why the fight for fair representation in Keller ISD is part of a national struggle. As Gen Z prepares to make up the majority of voters in the 2028 presidential election, we are witnessing backlash from those who fear losing control. The proposed breakup of Keller ISD is a reaction to this inevitable change, a last-ditch effort to hold onto power in an evolving country.

Viewed through that lens, my community should fight the district split. If these tactics of white power preservation go unchecked, they will be replicated elsewhere, further entrenching inequality in our education system and beyond. This is why the Voting Rights Act remains as crucial today as it was in 1965. 

At the same time, Black Americans have long fought for inclusion within systems designed to exclude us. Today’s fight goes beyond inclusion, it is about empowerment and reform. Why should we fight to stay in districts deliberately designed to deny us fair representation, especially when it comes to our children’s education? Shouldn’t we recognize that our survival and advancement depend on securing power for ourselves? This is about ensuring that Black communities have access to meaningful representation and decision-making.

Achieving fair representation requires a two-pronged approach. First, we must push districts like Keller ISD to replace discriminatory at-large elections with member-specific districts that ensure diverse communities have a direct voice in governance. This is true regardless of whether the district splits.

Second, we must recognize opportunities to reshape power dynamics – leveraging policies that attempt to isolate communities of color to instead create new districts where Black and progressive leaders can thrive.

This approach is even more critical given the current state of our judiciary. We are no longer dealing with the same Supreme Court that delivered Brown v. Board of Education. Instead, we face a judiciary that is disregarding precedent and seemingly moving toward a framework more aligned with the segregation allowed in Plessy v. Ferguson. 

In this legal climate, Black Americans cannot afford to rely solely on the courts to protect voting rights and representation.  We must proactively fight for structural reforms that ensure equitable political power and inclusive governance – and champion policies that dismantle exclusionary voting structures and build systems that reflect the full diversity of our communities.

A new report from the  released this week studied the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on disparities in reading, mathematics, and science achievement among racial and ethnic groups of elementary students in the United States.

Among other things, the study looked at which SES factors best explain existing achievement gaps, along with disparities among high-achieving students. The authors analyzed two sets of data from the federal Early Child Longitudinal Study, from 1998-99 and 2010-11.

The study’s resulting analysis “a broad set of family SES factors explains a substantial portion of racial achievement gaps: between 34 and 64 percent of the Black-white gap and between 51 and 77 percent of the Hispanic-white gap, depending on the subject and grade level.”

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“Racial achievement gaps in schools are well documented and remain a significant cause of concern in education. Troubling too is that the role of socioeconomic disparities in mediating these gaps remains unresolved,” the “While SES accounts for much of the racial achievement disparities, closing these gaps requires a comprehensive approach, including improving school quality and supporting family stability.”

The institute’s study used a broad set of measures of family background, including parents’ education, family finances, household structure, and “household opportunity factors.” The latter measure refers to academic, enrichment, and familial activities.

The authors of the study, University of Albany’s Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan, identified the following key findings from their analysis:

• Racial achievement gaps decrease significantly when controlling for the SES factors (though SES explains more of the Hispanic-white gap than the Black-white gap).
• Of all the SES factors analyzed, household income best explains the Black-white gap in academic achievement and mother’s education best explains the Hispanic-white gap.
• SES indicators, and the extent to which they explain racial/ethnic achievement gaps, are stable over time (1998-99 and 2010-11).
• SES also helps explain racial and ethnic excellence gaps (differences in the proportions of student groups within the highest achievement levels). The SES factors explain a larger share of Hispanic-white excellence gaps than Black-white excellence gaps across the board.
• The Black-white achievement gap grows as students age through elementary school, while the Hispanic-white gap shrinks.

Key findings from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s study.

To close such gaps, the authors recommend investments in early childhood education and income supplements, such as expanding child tax credits.

“Because achievement gaps are already evident by elementary school, including as early as kindergarten, investing in high-quality early childhood education programs, especially in underprivileged communities, may be beneficial in mitigating the effects of socioeconomic disparities,” the report says.

In addition to early childhood investments, the authors also propose the following solutions:

• Support programs to help parents earn their high school diplomas or higher education credentials.
• Economic support and financial aid for low-income families.
• Addressing racial and ethnic disparities, including the adoption of “curricula that reflect diverse cultures and programs that specifically support underrepresented students,” and student-teacher racial and ethnic matching.

“Whatever the approach, there is no denying the urgency of making the U.S. educational system more equitable,” the report says. “…The time to act is now. By enacting comprehensive and inclusive policies, we can narrow achievement gaps and create a more just educational landscape for the next generation.”

You can download and read the full study .

A look a gaps in North Carolina

Achievement gaps — also known as opportunity or equity gaps — follow national trends in North Carolina.

, following the start of the pandemic, only 51% of students tested as grade-level proficient. Proficiency was even lower among historically disadvantaged students, at 33% for Black students, 40% for Hispanic students, and 35% for economically disadvantaged students.

While those rates slightly increased during , gaps and low proficiency rates persist.

More highlights from the report

Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Michael J. Petrilli wrote in the report’s foreword that “the vast racial disparities in socioeconomic conditions and prenatal and early-life health experiences explain the achievement gaps we see between racial and ethnic groups, at least at school entry.”

Citing by economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt, “Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School,” Petrilli writes that this suggests that “universal, race-neutral interventions designed to improve the academic, social, economic, and health conditions of the poor would lift all boats and would also narrow racial gaps.”

Using data from the federal Early Child Longitudinal Study — data cited by Fryer and Levitt, along with more recent data — Petrilli said the report aimed to answer a few questions:

• Had the relationship between socioeconomic achievement gaps and racial/ethnic achievement gaps shifted?
• Was the Black-white gap still growing during elementary school?
• And how did all of this look for the white-Hispanic gap and for subjects beyond just reading and math?

Here is a look at the measures explored in the institute’s paper.

The institute’s study found that family socioeconomic factors explain more “of the Black-white achievement gap in first grade reading than in other subjects and grade levels.” The report proposes this may be the case because parents play a larger role in teaching language skills to young children than they do for math and science.

“The advantages of high SES—and disadvantages of low SES—thus show up more for students’ initial reading skills than for their math and science ones,” the report says. “As students get older and benefit from classroom instruction, their relative advantages and disadvantages start to matter less.”

However, while the gap narrows with age, there is still a gap. According to the report, this likely means “we still haven’t closed the ‘school quality gap’ between Black students and their white peers.”

As mentioned above, the report also found that family socioeconomic factors “explain more of the Hispanic-white achievement gap than the Black-white achievement gap.”

According to the report, this could be because Hispanic children in Spanish-speaking families “have latent potential that is obscured by their lack of English skills.”

The report also suggests that non-socioeconomic factors, racism, and bias affect Black children at higher rates than their Hispanic peers.

“For lower-income Black children, who are more likely to experience deep, persistent poverty than other groups, the combination of ‘adverse childhood experiences’ might exacerbate inequalities,” the report says. “And for middle class Black children, bias, stereotype threat, and related factors might be especially at play. This might also be why the Black-white achievement gap grows over the course of elementary school, while the Hispanic-white gap shrinks.”

Petrilli concludes: “When it comes to the interplay between race, poverty, and schooling, the honest read is that it’s complicated. What’s undeniable, though, is that much hard work remains, especially when it comes to providing effective schools to marginalized students, especially those who are Black. Let’s keep at it.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024.

At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of that kept Black Americans in .

As a professor of education and demography at Penn State University, I research . I’m aware that, after several decades of , the upcoming Brown vs. Board of Education anniversary comes at an especially uncertain moment for public education and efforts to make America’s schools reflect the nation’s multiracial society.

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Recent setbacks

In June 2023, the Supreme Court efforts. The decision followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which in the U.S.

Meanwhile, politicians and school boards have banned or removed books by from school libraries and restricted teaching about . I believe these legal setbacks amid the current political climate make finally realizing the full promise of Brown more urgent.

Resistance to Brown ruling

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision did not immediately change the nation’s public schools, especially in the completely segregated South, where there was . Resistance was so fierce in the first decade after Brown that compliance with desegregation orders at times required to escort to enroll in formerly all-white schools.

It would be a decade after Brown before the federal courts, a newly enacted and expanded federal education funding spurred .

While only 2% of Southern Black K-12 students attended majority white schools in 1964 – 10 years after Brown – the number had by 1970. The South surpassed all other regions in desegregation progress for Black students.

Segregation persists

Public school students today are the most racially diverse in U.S. history. At the time of Brown, about and most other students were Black.

Today, according to a , 46% of public school students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial and 1% American Indian. Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color.

And yet, public schools are deeply segregated. In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where were students of color. Black and Hispanic students who attend racially segregated schools also are overwhelmingly enrolled in .

A , a nonprofit that produced reports on school funding inequities, found that schools in predominantly nonwhite districts received $23 billion less in funding each year than schools in majority white districts. This equates to roughly $2,200 less per student per year. Unequal funding results in , to name just one example.

Benefits of diversity

While Brown was an attempt to address the inequality that students experienced in segregated Black schools, the harms of segregation affect students of all races.

Racially integrated schools are associated with , or simply building that teach children how to work effectively with others.

White students are the to students of other races and ethnicities, and therefore they often miss out on the benefits of diversity. Nearly half of white public school students attend a school in which white students are 75% or more of the student body.

Factors that exacerbate segregation

Although residential segregation is , many U.S. communities remain both . Segregated schools, therefore, often reflect segregated neighborhoods.

However, how students are assigned to schools and districts can play a key role in how segregated those schools are.

This is because school attendance boundaries often determine which local public school a student may attend. How those boundaries are drawn or redrawn can exacerbate or alleviate school segregation. More than that are predominantly of one race are located within 10 miles of a school that is predominantly of another race.

Studies show that within school districts could make a substantial number of schools less segregated.

The same is true when it comes to school district boundaries. A high level of income and racial segregation also exists . And district secession – when schools leave an existing school district to – is . Redrawing district boundaries or preventing the formation of new boundaries could affect segregation.

Another key factor is the rise of public school choice, which allows parents to send children to charter schools or other schools beyond their zoned school. One study found that areas with more students enrolled in charter schools were associated with .

Potential solutions

Several hundred , which require districts to eradicate segregation that existed prior to the Brown decision, still exist. These are largely concentrated in some Southern states.

For the rest of the country, efforts are attempts to finally achieve the goals of the Brown decision. These include Berkeley, California’s and legal cases brought against states that challenge existing segregation under .

Finally, since reducing residential segregation could also reduce school segregation, some efforts have combined and policies. Connecticut, for example, has piloted for eligible participants in its interdistrict school desegregation program.

Like 70 years ago when Brown was decided, addressing public school segregation remains important for a healthy democracy – one that today is more multiracial than ever before.

Shaheen fled Iraq in 1998 during Saddam Hussein’s regime, made a harrowing escape to Jordan and eventually settled in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Shaheen is now a substitute teacher for the Lincoln public schools, but not without the financial burden of enrolling in courses to meet English language requirements and taking student loans because her Iraqi degree wasn’t recognized.

“It was almost impossible for me to start from the beginning, which is very difficult for someone learning a new language,” Shaheen told ����Ӱ��.

A new program launched by for internationally trained immigrants and refugees who want to become teachers in the U.S. aims to ease the challenges Shaheen faced. 

According to the , more than one in three educators, or 34 percent, are unemployed or not using their degree.

Yet, thousands of teacher vacancies across the country persist — with more than , according to Kansas State University’s College of Education.

“Even as we experience the Great Resignation, which heavily impacted the education sector, there’s still individuals who want to be part of this workforce,” said Mikaela Santos, senior program manager of World Education Services.

“The cultural perspectives and new ideas immigrants and refugees bring to the table becomes wasted talent because of the many regulatory and systemic barriers in the American education system,” she added. 

To combat this problem, three organizations were awarded a $100,000 grant in July 2023 to create pathways for foreign trained teachers to become educators in the U.S.

In the next year, the in Lincoln, Nebraska; the in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and in Chicago, Illinois will place more than 150 teachers trained in their home countries at schools in their communities.

Here is a snapshot of each organization’s effort to help internationally trained teachers and address racial disparities in the classroom.

Asian Community and Cultural Center

Nearly 50% of Nebraska’s school districts had unfilled teacher positions during the 2022-23 school year — with 66% saying there were either unqualified or no applicants, according to the .

Lee Kreimer, the CareerLadder director at the Asian Community and Cultural Center, said the organization is looking to place at least 35 foreign trained teachers into Nebraska’s Lincoln public schools and South Sioux City public schools.

The need for diverse teachers is especially great in rural areas like South Sioux City that have had a high influx of Latino families immigrating partly because of the that has historically relied on foreign-born workers, Kreimer said.

The reported a growing 47.8% Latino population in South Sioux City with more than 63.6% Latino students .

“We see this as a great opportunity to tackle multiple challenges at one time and it’s truly a win-win way to help everybody,” Kreimer told ����Ӱ��.

The organization recently set up programs at schools in both districts for immigrants and refugees to be mentored as they finish up their U.S. teaching licenses.

“Investing in schools by providing teachers that look like their students helps them succeed,” Kreimer said. “And from a racial equity standpoint, children seeing teachers that look like them and have experiences like them helps with retention, staying out of trouble and getting better grades.”

Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity

In Oklahoma, there were nearly 180,000 unfilled teacher positions in 2022 — more than twice the average a decade ago, according to the .

The Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity estimates nearly 650 internationally trained teachers in Tulsa have education degrees but don’t work in the field.

Chief resilience officer Krystal Reyes said the city wants to hire at least 65 teachers trained in their home countries — largely from Latino, Afghan and Ukrainian backgrounds to reflect the families immigrating to Tulsa.

“Because we have a diverse student body, we need our teachers to reflect that,” Reyes told ����Ӱ��. “So we know that our immigrant community can help us meet that language and cultural need.”

Programs include expanding job training with ESL courses and creating free courses for those seeking alternative certification.

“We need to do more as a government to make sure that there’s full participation, representation and economic opportunities from all our communities,” Reyes said. “There may be a money barrier or an English barrier, but they’re still trained educators that could be filling a great need in our schools.”

Richard J. Daley College

In Illinois, 73% of districts report teacher shortages — with 30% saying positions remain unfilled or filled with someone less qualified, according to the .

Janine Janosky, president of Richard J. Daley College, said the school aims to connect at least 50 foreign trained teachers to schools across Chicago.

“We’re seeing many immigrants and refugees coming with professional experiences already from their home country,” Janosky told ����Ӱ��, adding how more than 10% have teaching licenses.

Trish Aumann, vice president of academic and student affairs at the college, said the need to hire diverse teachers is especially great because of the influx of immigrant families — particularly Ukrainian refugees.

“We need multicultural and multilingual individuals in positions in our schools,” Aumann told ����Ӱ��. “So it’s that bigger picture of supporting K-12 schools that will in turn help immigrants and refugees with their economic mobility.”

Janosky said the college is creating a pilot program for internationally trained teachers to fill vacancies in Chicago’s schools.

“Within the middle part of the United States, there’s very few of us doing this work,” Janosky said. “That gives us a huge responsibility, but also a huge opportunity, to make a big difference for Chicago, Illinois, and the entire country.”

White, the senior vice president of programs and advocacy for the , explored this through her contribution to — a research project that dissects racial justice issues in education, housing, criminal justice, health and economics.

“We’re seeing an increasing narrative that we do have racial equality in our nation,” White told ����Ӱ��. “I want to lift up this entire report as a counter to that prevailing and pervasive narrative.”

White’s research delves into how the promise of Brown v. Board of Education — a historic decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional — has not been fulfilled.

In addition, White noted that there are new ways racial integration has been repealed post-Brown as schools recover from pandemic learning loss. 

“One of the key takeaways is that Brown’s promise has not been fulfilled, and there are new ways inequality is not only surfacing but also re-entrenching,” White said. “We’re seeing some of the opportunities from Brown in the integration of curriculum be repealed based on interests of the political right.”

“When we have examples like the extracted from our curriculum, we are being regressed into something that is steps before Brown,” White said.

The goal of White’s research is to show how the state of K-12 education speaks to the broader conversation of America’s racialized society.

“Racial inequality not only exists, but in every layer of our society there’s opportunity and necessity for us to enact a solution,” White said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your research centers around how the state of school funding, high-stakes testing and curriculum instruction today are as a result of the policies and practices made post-Brown. Tell me more about this and how racial inequities continue to persist in K-12 education.

When we took up the question posed about how racial inequality exists in our present day K-12 education system, we cannot do that separate from understanding what happened post-Brown. The very structure of contemporary K-12 education rests on the approach, or attempt, to fulfill the promise of Brown. When we begin to unpack its potential, its design and the resulting policies that came after Brown, it is then that we get to see the ways that inequality endures in our K-12 education. 

Thinking about the contemporary ways inequality persists is seminal in the education sphere because it’s not just one of the biggest policy restructurings in education, but by design it was intended to address racial inequality. So there was no question of whether or not to start with Brown because of that frame by which it was shaped in the mainstream to really undo this unequal system, unequal funding, unequal facilities and all of the things that segregated schools had endemic to their nature. So noting that we’re in a contemporary society where racial inequality has persisted, let’s fill in the gap between those two bookmarks.

As schools recover from pandemic learning loss, how does your research speak to the disparities of students of color?

The majority of students of color are attending schools, often in urban districts, that are under-resourced in terms of their class sizes, teacher turnover and limited teaching resources. When you’re in an under-resourced school, especially Title I schools, there is support for students based on various needs. Whether students are unhoused or receiving free or reduced lunch, there are services provided through schools so they can get breakfast, lunch etc. As we think about them post-COVID when schools were shut down, there were students who were experiencing the squeeze — especially within those first couple of months. There were some schools that had to really ramp up what it would look like to ensure students had food to eat. And we felt that squeeze especially for students of color to just get basic needs. 

You also have the digital divide. It wasn’t an easy shift for students to just go home and hop on a computer to engage in their classrooms. So much of the world went to Zoom-landia and that wasn’t so easy for your average student of color who either had limited technology — whether that be a laptop, phone or tablet — and/or sufficient internet to get onto those platforms. During the pandemic when a lot of industries were able to shift to remote work, there were also essential workers and many others who were still going in-person. So there was this squeeze for students of color to engage with the technology while also having limited parent support.

And then there was an overwhelming impact for students of color to get through their classwork. As the pandemic shook and shut down the world, one in three or four students of color experienced a close loved one pass away. That’s a lot of children over the last few years that are not just experiencing the squeeze of a new format of education, but also having lost people who’ve raised them. So when we think about the impact of the pandemic, there’s a particular effect on not just learning laws, but also the social-emotional aspects that absolutely had an effect on the educational outcomes of all students — and certainly for students of color.

What would you say is a key piece of your research readers should take the most away from?

There’s a lot and it’s hard to whittle down. We took stock to identify those key areas you’ve named in terms of high-stakes testing, curriculum instruction, etc. So in each of those areas, I do think there’s a key point. To zoom out, solutions are both needed and possible. We need equitable state and local policies in the education sector in order to shift all of these key areas named in the report. But we also need folks to understand the key learnings in this. 

One key learning is that inequality has endured since Brown v. Board of Education. We’re seeing an increasing narrative that we do have racial equality in our nation. There’s this counter narrative that it already exists, so why are we attempting to put in different practices and policies that would advance equity? I want to lift up this entire report as a counter to that prevailing and pervasive narrative. It is true that inequality has endured, we do not have a panacea, and all levels of society — both political and individual — are required. 

Systemic change does not get resolved by one shot policies. There are multiple and they’re persistent because of how entrenched racial inequality is in our society. So at every level of our K-12 education system, both opportunity and a necessity for action is needed in order for equity to be achieved and realized. So that is the key takeaway. It is that racial inequality not only exists, but in every layer of our society there’s opportunity and necessity for us to enact a solution.

What is something nobody has asked you yet about your research?

People often ask what can be done and what does this mean for educators. But so far, I have yet to hear about what communities and students themselves can do. There’s opportunities for policy changes and districts to use their voice to shape who is selected on school boards. However, mobilization and organizing are not just local needs. Using their voice at the state level is needed to ensure legislators are giving schools resources at the level they need so students can thrive. 

There’s also ways parents need to be supported when addressing learning loss. Parents and families are often overlooked and seen as marginal to the education system. But they’re absolutely core, their voice matters and they have agency. So that is something I want to lift up when thinking about how we see educational inequality. 

Parents, families and students themselves have agency to really be co-constructors in the type of educational experience they need. They’re the closest to it and they have the voice to really answer what it is that they want and need. So giving space for that and having them empowered to know that is beyond important.

Taking note of the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, how should educators, researchers, policymakers, journalists, etc. apply your research to their work today?

One of the key takeaways is that Brown’s promise has not been fulfilled, and there are new ways inequality is not only surfacing but also re-entrenching. We’re seeing some of the opportunities from Brown in the integration of curriculum be repealed based on interests of the political right. When we have examples like the extracted from our curriculum, we are being regressed into something that is steps before Brown.

By design, all levels of our K-12 education system are Eurocentric and explicitly racist. So when we’re at a place where we can’t even name the histories and heroines and heroes for communities of color, we are going back to a place pre-Brown. Whether you’re a policymaker, teacher, principal or whomever, if you understand how we are repressing some of the earliest civil rights gains in education I think that is the powerful takeaway. It’s a key takeaway when it comes to curriculum, when we think about high-stakes testing and absolutely when we dive into school funding.

National test results released in September 2022 show in since the pandemic disrupted schooling for millions of children.

In response, educational leaders and policymakers across the country are and catch these students back up to where they would have been.

But this renewed concern seems to overlook a crucial fact: Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools were failing to adequately serve children of color. As a in K-12 education, I see an opportunity to go beyond getting students caught up. Rather than focus only on trying to close pandemic-related gaps, schools could seek to more substantially improve the quality of education they offer, particularly for students of color, if they want to achieve equitable and sustainable results.

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Studying schools

For more than a decade, I’ve been conducting research on how schools can successfully serve Black and Latino students. Most of this work has focused on New York City, but what I have learned is critical for any school.

In one long-term targeted at improving outcomes for Black and Latino boys, my colleagues and I collected data across more than 100 schools and through interviews with over 500 school leaders, teachers and students.

Based on this work, I’d like to highlight four critical conditions to improve the success and well-being of students of color.

1. Classrooms that reflect the students they serve

Research shows when their teachers and reflect their race, ethnicity and cultures. Yet statistics show that seldom happens.

Children’s books , like dogs and bears, almost three times as often as they , four times as often than Asian characters, five times as often than Hispanic characters, and nearly 30 times as often than Indigenous characters.

Moreover, while the teacher workforce remains nearly , research shows that students who had had better chances of graduating from high school and enrolling in college.

2. Connection, not control

Students of color are more than twice as likely to be as their white counterparts. And Black children who behave in the same ways as white children are to be suspended for the same actions.

Many schools have established , which emphasize repairing harm versus doling out punishment. These efforts can help from controlling student behavior to forming connections with young people.

These connections can also be built outside formal classroom environments. Activities such as peer mentoring groups and student-led clubs are good opportunities for cultivating student-faculty connections. In those environments, students are more likely to and expressing their feelings about both learning and other issues relevant to their lives.

3. Equitable access to academic challenge

Teachers than they do of white and Asian classmates. Black and Latino students are also underrepresented in and less likely to be placed in such advanced coursework as or in high school.

When students have less access to rigorous learning opportunities, it can limit their progress in other areas as well. Students are when they have taken four years of math and science. Yet Black and Latino students are less likely to be exposed to .

4. Teacher preparation and support

Teachers need strong preparation to serve an diverse student population. But many teacher education programs to meet the needs of the students they teach, particularly in schools that primarily serve students of color.

Teachers are required to have ongoing training to keep their . Similarly, school districts could provide ongoing support for teachers to present broader depictions of history and society as part of developing , which draw on students’ backgrounds, identities and experiences.

The current political climate has become who broach topics of race and racism. Teachers may call on principals and other education leaders to shield them from against exposing students to historical or current examples of racial injustice.

As schools seek to address pandemic-related gaps, there is now a unique opportunity to reimagine public education. For many students of color, business as usual wasn’t enough. Let’s learn from where we’ve been and aim for better than a return to normal.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . University of California, Irvine provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

Chris Riback: Kelly Allen Grey, thank you for coming.

Kelly Allen Grey: Hello.

Chris Riback: Hello. Thank you for coming to the Early Learning Nation Studio.

Kelly Allen Grey: Well, thank you for having me.

Chris Riback: So, let’s start in the past. When you served on the City Council in Fort Worth, how did you successfully elevate early learning with colleagues who maybe didn’t see the role for local government in early childhood learning and development?

Kelly Allen Grey: So how I even came to this is I wanted a library in my council district. And more importantly, I wanted a children’s library. I wanted not just a floor or two that was dedicated to children-

Chris Riback: One didn’t exist there.

Kelly Allen Grey: No, one didn’t exist. And I wanted a complete children’s library to focus on early learning, but zero to 18 because we lose our kids, especially in middle school. So, it really became my job to make my council members understand that education and economics go hand in hand. And so when you start to talk about how so many of our kids who grew up in Fort Worth, went to Fort Worth public schools, they went to college and then they never came back home. How do we get those kids to come him back home? That always is a great selling point. And so that became the foundation of education, economics in the city of Fort Worth.

Chris Riback: It brings them all together, doesn’t it?

Kelly Allen Grey: Absolutely.

Chris Riback: And how are you able to make this happen when you have to navigate a mayor, perhaps a state government, many different officials who might have different political backgrounds?

Kelly Allen Grey: So as crazy as this sounds, in the city of Fort Worth and in most of Texas, I’m sure, we’re nonpartisan. So, education in the city of Fort Worth wasn’t red or blue. It has really been about the kids. And how do we have kids reading on third grade level when they are supposed to and creating those partnerships? So really it was the mayor who started leading the challenge along with the superintendent from school district, several people from the business community to having that conversation about education and then us putting all of those pieces together and then bringing all of those people who are in that space of early learning together to collaborate. And that had never happened.

Chris Riback: And what are you focused on now? What are your priorities right now?

Kelly Allen Grey: So, post-council, still involved in early learning, although… So as crazy as this is, and I guess my whole life up to this point has been absolutely bananas.

Chris Riback: That’s for a different show you understand.

Kelly Allen Grey: Right. My background, actually, my undergraduate degree is in secondary education but I never taught. And I never taught because I never could figure out how to be just in a classroom all day long but the love and the passion remains. And so now I am a part of the Early Learning Collective, which the Bezos Foundation is one of those supporters of, and still being involved in that space, still doing all of those things with Reed, Fort Worth, from the city of Fort Worth, being involved in some of Mayor Parker’s initiatives. And just trying to make sure that we stay in the game on early learning and making sure at our littles are as best prepared for school and that next step in life as we most possibly can be.

Chris Riback: Kelly, what role does racial equity play in this work?

Kelly Allen Grey: It plays everything. In the city of Fort Worth, I-35 is the dividing line between east and west. And what happens on the west side of I-35 in schools, in communities is totally different than what happens on the east side. And so having that, being in that space of racial equity and talking about fairness and diversity and inclusion and making sure that the kids who live in what we consider our lower socioeconomic neighborhoods have those same advantages, that same technology, that same everything, so that they can compete on the same level as the kids who live in those upper middle-class neighborhoods is absolutely important. And it takes all of us, even in our uncomfortableness in talking about race and equity, to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.

Chris Riback: And in Fort Worth, you tell the folks in Dallas that the west actually starts at I-35. If you’re on the wrong side of I-35-

Kelly Allen Grey: You’re on the wrong side of I-35.

Chris Riback: On the wrong side… So, yes. That also is another show. That’s another conversation.

Kelly Allen Grey: That’s it and is it.

Chris Riback: Kelly, to close out, what advice would you have for newly-elected officials who want to try to drive real change and bring a library, put in an early learning center? What advice do you have out for them?

Kelly Allen Grey: Use your voice. Use your political capital. Do what you say you were going to do. When you ran to get elected, you were full of fire and you said you wanted to do all of these things, do those things. That’s my advice to you. Do those things. Don’t just make them be a campaign speech, actually put them into action.

Chris Riback: Listening to you today, I bet you use your voice and I bet you put them into action.

Kelly Allen Grey: It happened.

Chris Riback: It happened. Kelly, thank you. Thank you for coming to the Early Learning Nation Studio.

Kelly Allen Grey: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

The panel discussion, “Mothers Stand Up; The Rising Voice of the Black Mother,” took place March 10 as part of this year’s SXSW EDU virtual conference. It can now be viewed .

The event brought together four Black mothers who are leading parent movements across the nation: Alisha Thomas Morgan, author, entrepreneur and former Georgia state representative; Deirdra Reed, policy and advocacy partner at The New Teachers Project; Education Freestyle founder Ashley Virden and Lakisha Young, founder and CEO of The Oakland Reach. The conversation was moderated by Mimi Woldeyohannes, ����Ӱ��’s special projects and community manager.

The women shared their vision for parent organizing and what it looks like when Black parents have a meaningful voice in how education decisions are made. They also addressed what the learning landscape should be post-pandemic.

“Honestly, too much of this conversation is focused on getting “back to normal” as the answer. Our parents don’t want to go back to normal,” Young said. “Going back to a system where less than 30 percent of Black and brown students are reading on grade level is not a solution — and it’s certainly not a win. If the system wants to earn our trust, they need to show us a real plan for getting our kids access to high-quality instruction.”

While the survey finds that over three-quarters of elementary and middle schoolers attend schools that offer at least some classroom learning, a smaller share of students have actually opted into in-person classes. As of late January and early February of this year, 43 percent of fourth-graders and 48 percent of eighth-graders were learning virtually, according to the new data.

Within the eighth-grade cohort of remote learners, 1 in 10 weren’t getting any live instruction from a teacher at all, and another 6 percent were receiving less than an hour per day.

At rural and town middle schools, 13 and 16 percent of virtual learners respectively were receiving no live teaching, compared to only 3 and 4 percent of their urban and suburban counterparts, meaning they may be working on activities such as homework packets or watching pre-recorded lessons instead of attending online class in real time.

Adding in those who receive less than an hour per day of real-time instruction, the numbers grow to 21 and 30 percent of remote middle schoolers in rural and town settings left to learn on their own without facetime from their teachers.

Though over 40 percent of rural middle school students attend school in person five days a week — more than twice the share of in-person suburban students and nearly triple the rate of urban students — a full 28 percent of rural youth continue to learn remotely.

The biggest barrier to high-quality online school in rural areas, according to Gary Funk, director of the , is broadband access.

“It’s so uneven, and there’s many areas where it’s still not prevalent to any degree,” he told ����Ӱ�� in response to the new survey data.

Last year, the federal government estimated that . Over a year into the pandemic, 12 million students still lack reliable Wi-Fi access, according to recent analysis.

Through anecdotes, Funk heard of many rural schools printing out worksheets and mailing or delivering them to students in lieu of real-time virtual instruction.

“I would not call that interactive learning,” he said.

Preliminary reports have found a steep learning debt for remote students. Especially in asynchronous learning models, experts worry for the impact on young people.

“We know that kids are struggling with online instruction,” said Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Education Data & Research and a professor at the University of Washington.

“It’s not crazy to speculate that in terms of online instruction, it’s better if the kids are having more facetime, even if it’s over a screen, with teachers than just going off and doing work on their own.”

Differences by race

The federal survey data, which covers a nationally representative sample of nearly 7,000 schools and is the first in a series of polls to be released monthly through at least July, provides the clearest national picture to date of learning during the pandemic.

In addition to observations on remote learning at rural schools, the survey raised other equity concerns and confirmed large differences nationwide across racial lines, including:

• 49 percent of white elementary students were attending in-person school full time, while the same was true for only 28 percent of Black, 33 percent of Hispanic, and 15 percent of Asian elementary schoolers.

• Conversely, 68 percent of Asian, 58 percent of Black and 56 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders were learning fully remotely, compared to just 27 percent of white elementary students.

• Though many experts believe , only 42 percent of fourth-graders with disabilities and 29 percent of eighth-graders with disabilities have returned to classrooms operating five-days-a-week — just a smidge above the rates for all learners.

Jonathan Collins, an education professor at Brown University who conducted his own survey on , thinks that parental trust and school investments in safety measures might play a sizable role in the disparate return rates by race.

His survey revealed that over three-quarters of parents want their schools to implement safety protocols such as masking, ventilation and distancing. Rates were even higher among parents of color, who may be , previous polling indicates.

Where school districts fall short on safety measures, at times due to resource constraints, parents of color may be especially hesitant to opt into in-person learning.

“A lot of districts that haven’t put together clear plans on how they’re going to reopen safely, they’re unable to assuage a lot of the apprehension,” explained Collins. “Folks of color and low-income folks are particularly keen on making sure that … implementation of safety protocols is in place and strong.”

An opportunity to ‘level the playing field’

After the Trump administration last year punted on school data collection during the pandemic, claiming it was , the Biden Education Department created the reopening in response to an signed by the president on his first day in office. A key goal was to better understand the differential impacts on learners by race, class, ability status, and locale.

When it comes to rural schools, disparities have existed for years, Funk says. But the coronavirus has only made matters worse.

“What COVID has done is exacerbate and worsen existing inequities that are out there for kids in rural regions, and particularly underserved rural regions where there’s high poverty levels,” he said.

With the pandemic bringing these gaps into sharper focus, Funk hopes that leaders will use the opportunity to focus on helping students who have been left behind. He’s cheering the Biden infrastructure bill, soon to be introduced in Congress, which includes provisions for .

Connecting rural America with high speed Wi-Fi access would be a game changer for schools, he said.

“Digital learning, it has the potential to really help level the playing field in rural places,” said Funk. “It’s currently a disadvantage. It needs to be flipped into something that strengthens opportunities.”

Kandace Thomas, executive director of , moderated, introducing the topic of historical trauma and its meaning for child development. Here are our takeaways:

1. Culture is part of human systems. Cynthia García Coll (formerly Brown University, University of Puerto Rico) began by citing a that declared, “Science has a racism problem. And it is not limited to scientific discoveries and their attendant usage. The scientific establishment, scientific education and the metrics used to define scientific success have a racism problem as well.”

Professor Coll noted that the vast majority of social science studies focus on so-called WEIRD (White Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) subjects, even though they account for just 12% of the world’s population. Her remarks traced the history of the science of child development, moving rapidly from Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud through Arnold Gesell, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Urie Bronfenbrenner. Despite the efforts of these thinkers to put a scientific gloss on their cultural biases, she said, “Not all stages are universal. Poverty and racism matter.” For Professor Coll, is worth considering:

In our model, culture has the role of defining and organizing microsystems and therefore becomes part of the central processes of human development. Culture is an ever-changing system composed of the daily practices of social communities (families, schools, neighborhoods, etc.) and the interpretation of those practices through language and communication. It also comprises tools and signs that are part of the historical legacy of those communities, and thus diversity is an integral part of the child’s microsystems, leading to culturally defined acceptable developmental processes and outcomes.

2. Race is different from culture. Marva Lewis from Tulane University cited the : A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.

Professor Lewis summarized her on how “hair combing interaction” plays a key role in establishing secure attachments for African American children. These brief encounters facilitate such core parenting behaviors as positive verbal interaction, loving touch and responsive listening. Playing off of Selma Fraiburg’s classic 1975 study Ghosts in the Nursery, she said this approach addressed nappy haired ghosts in the nursery.

Professor Lewis urged early childhood educators and researchers to account for people’s multiple social identities. Her advice for white professionals: Leverage your privilege in the service of social justice.

3. Diversity must be taught. Kang Lee, of the University of Toronto, presented his finding on how babies perceive race. Presented with photographs showing faces of different races, newborns do not seem to discriminate, but 3-month-old infants show a preference for looking at someone the same color as them.

Professor Lee also chronicled his investigations into “they all look the same” bias—that is, difficulty distinguishing between two faces of the same race, but different from the observer—finding that it starts at about 9 months. The cause, he found, is lack of exposure to individuals of other races. His prescription: increase ecological diversity. Situated in environments where people of different colors are the norm, children will seek out diversity. Situated in a homogenous environment, they are less likely to seek out diversity. He compared it to dietary preferences; given a steady diet of the same flavors, children fail to develop an appetite for new foods. And the same goes for the racial identity of heroes and villains in children’s literature.

4. It still takes a village. Iheoma Iruka (recently of , currently with the University of North Carolina) introduced us to her RICHER for combating racism:

• Re-educate about history
• Integrate rather than just desegregate
• Critique everything
• Humility of privilege
• Erase racism
• Re-vision new ways, approaches, theories, teams, etc.

Iruka recommended Eddie Moore, Jr.’s , which has been taken up by numerous United Way chapters to promote steady consumption of books, podcasts and other media to nourish understanding of issues related to power and oppression in our society. The result, she promised, would be “villages of protection, affection, correction and connection.”

Afterwards, conference participant Lisa Matter, who runs a professional development initiative for the Colorado Department of Human Services, told me, “The session reinforced the urgency of taking part in systemic change alongside advancing the lives of individual children, families and caregivers. Appropriate for a conversation about diversity, it showcased a genuine diversity of perspectives.”

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith, a clinician, consultant and trainer, moderated the conversation, with Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of , and Ibram X. Kendi, author of , weighing in on a range of urgent issues for parents and, really, anyone concerned about the state of our union.

Here are five takeaways from the event.

1. Racism is about denial. Briscoe-Smith expressed dismay at white people who say, “I don’t see race,” when babies as young as 6 months are known to pay attention to racial queues. Denying race by claiming to be “color blind” and avoiding conversations about it are behaviors that reinforce racist views by letting them go unexamined and unchallenged. (Read , from Common Sense Media.) “Slaveholders and Jim Crow politicians also denied they were racist,” added Kendi.

2. Media matters. Recalling her own emotional devastation over the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Tamir Rice in 2014, Lythcott-Haims argued that there should have been more extensive media coverage at the time. She asked, pointedly, what the news media decided was more important. “When you see a story,” Briscoe-Smith recommended, “ask yourself who’s getting paid for that.”

3. State your mission. Briscoe-Smith urged parents to collaborate with their children on a . The words and concepts should be age appropriate. Kendi noted that while kindness and fairness may be easily understood, they are sophisticated concepts that engender important conversation.

4. Books rule! All three participants agreed that reading about racism independently and with children is one of the most important ways of understanding history, recognizing racism and learning how to build equity. It’s never too early. Kendi just published a board book titled Antiracist Baby. (Two lists to get started: from Social Justice Books and  from Common Sense Media.)

5. Look for the “Wakanda Moments.” Referring to the mythical African kingdom in the 2018 superhero film The Black Panther, Lythcott-Haims called upon parents to celebrate real and fictional examples of Black empowerment. While protests and advocacy are important, the participants noted that joy, too, is an act of resistance.