Race and Education – serie

Millennial Teachers of Color explores the opportunities and challenges for creating and sustaining a healthy teaching force in the United States. Millennials are the largest generational cohort in American history, with approximately ninety million members and, of these, roughly 43 percent are people of color. This book, edited by prominent teacher educator Mary E. Dilworth, considers the unique qualities, challenges, and opportunities posed by that large population for the teaching field.Noting that a diverse teaching and learning community enhances student achievement, particularly for the underserved and underachieving preK–12 student population, Dilworth argues that efforts to recruit, groom, and retain teachers of color are out-of-date and inadequate. She and the contributors offer fresh looks at these millennials and explore their views of the teaching profession; focus attention on their relation to schools and teaching; and consider how these young teachers feel about teaching for social justice.The book is intended to disrupt the current line of inquiry that suggests that by simply increasing the number of teachers of color equity has been established. Readers will gain insights on this unique and valuable group of prospective and practicing preK–12 educators and understanding of the need for more contemporary approaches to recruitment, preparation, hiring, and placement.

Restorative justice represents “a paradigm shift in the way Americans conceptualize and administer punishment,” says author Maisha T. Winn, from a focus on crime to a focus on harm, including the needs of both those who were harmed and those who caused it. Her book, Justice on Both Sides, provides an urgently needed, comprehensive account of the value of restorative justice and how contemporary schools can implement effective practices to address inequalities associated with race, class, and gender.Winn, a restorative justice practitioner and scholar, draws on her extensive experience as a coach to school leaders and teachers to show how indispensable restorative justice is in understanding and addressing the educational needs of students, particularly disadvantaged youth. Justice on Both Sides makes a major contribution by demonstrating how this actually works in schools and how it can be integrated into a range of educational settings. It also emphasizes how language and labeling must be addressed in any fruitful restorative effort. Ultimately, Winn makes the case for restorative justice as a crucial answer, at least in part, to the unequal practices and opportunities in American schools.

Culturally Responsive School Leadership focuses on how school leaders can effectively serve minoritized students—those who have been historically marginalized in school and society. The book demonstrates how leaders can engage students, parents, teachers, and communities in ways that positively impact learning by honoring indigenous heritages and local cultural practices.Muhammad Khalifa explores three basic premises. First, that a full-fledged and nuanced understanding of ""cultural responsiveness"" is essential to successful school leadership. Second, that cultural responsiveness will not flourish and succeed in schools without sustained efforts by school leaders to define and promote it. Finally, that culturally responsive school leadership comprises a number of crucial leadership behaviors, which include critical self-reflection; the development of culturally responsive teachers; the promotion of inclusive, anti-oppressive school environments; and engagement with students' indigenous community contexts.Based on an ethnography of a school principal who exemplifies the practices and behaviors of culturally responsive school leadership, the book provides educators with pedagogy and strategies for immediate implementation.

Science in the City examines how language and culture matter for effective science teaching. Author Bryan A. Brown argues that, given the realities of our multilingual and multicultural society, teachers must truly understand how issues of culture intersect with the fundamental principles of learning. This book links an exploration of contemporary research on urban science teaching to a more generative instructional approach in which students develop mastery by discussing science in culturally meaningful ways.The book starts with a trenchant analysis of the 'black tax,' a double standard at work in science language and classrooms that forces students of color to appropriate and express their science knowledge solely in ways that accord with the dominant culture and knowledge regime. Because we are in an interactive, multimedia world, the author also posits the necessity of applying what is known about best practices in science teaching to best practices in technology.The book then turns to instruction, illustrating how science education can flourish if it is connected to students' backgrounds, identities, language, and culture. In this empowered-and inclusive-form of science classroom, the role of narrative is key: educators use stories and anecdotes to induct students into the realm of scientific thinking; introduce big ideas in easy, familiar terms; and prioritize explanation over mastery of symbolic systems. The result is a classroom that showcases how the use of more familiar, culturally relevant modes of communication can pave the way for improved science learning.

Race, Sports, and Education highlights the myriad ways in which organized collegiate sport has both positively contributed to and negatively detracted from the educational experiences of Black male college athletes. Specifically, John N. Singer examines the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of Black males who have played NCAA Division I football and/or basketball at historically White colleges and universities.Singer is intensely aware of the ways in which many Black athletes have been shortchanged by the collegiate sport system. He describes how the colleges and universities have exploited athletes for the institutions' financial gain and deprived them of basic educational opportunities that ought to be enjoyed by all students. At the same time, Singer argues that sports do in fact offer genuine educational opportunities and benefits for many of these athletes. He is acutely attuned to the fact that these athletes love their sports, and that their participation in these sports makes unique educational experiences available to them. As Singer shows, to understand the situation and to chart realistic, fruitful reform measures requires a full appreciation of the complexity-indeed, of the many competing and contradictory elements-that characterizes intercollegiate sport and the experiences of Black athletes at the present time.The book brings to the fore the voices, stories, and perspectives of twelve Black male college athletes via a case study of teammates from a big-time college football program and individual reflective vignettes of athletes across several different college programs. Through his analysis of the system and his attention to student views and experiences, Singer crafts a valuable, nuanced account and points in the direction of reforms that would significantly improve the educational opportunities and experiences of these athletes.At a time when collegiate sports have attained unmistakable institutional value and generated unprecedented financial returns-all while largely failing the educational needs of its athletes-this book offers a clear, detailed vision of the current situation and suggestions for a more equitable way forward.

In the thoroughly revised second edition of Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There, H. Richard Milner IV addresses the knowledge and insights required on the part of teachers and school leaders to serve students of color. Milner focuses on a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms.The book, anchored in real world experiences, centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. The case studies- of teachers in urban and suburban settings- are presented amid current discussions about race and teaching. In addition, the second edition includes a new chapter dedicated to opportunity gaps in education and an expanded discussion of how Opportunity Centered Teaching can address these gaps.Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There strives to help educators in the fight for social justice, equity, inclusion, and transformation for all students. It is a book urgently needed in today's increasingly diverse classrooms.

In the thoroughly revised second edition of Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There, H. Richard Milner IV addresses the knowledge and insights required on the part of teachers and school leaders to serve students of color. Milner focuses on a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms.The book, anchored in real world experiences, centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. The case studies- of teachers in urban and suburban settings- are presented amid current discussions about race and teaching. In addition, the second edition includes a new chapter dedicated to opportunity gaps in education and an expanded discussion of how Opportunity Centered Teaching can address these gaps.Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There strives to help educators in the fight for social justice, equity, inclusion, and transformation for all students. It is a book urgently needed in today's increasingly diverse classrooms.

Based on interview data, life testimonios, and Chicana feminist theories, The Chicana/o/x Dream profiles first-generation, Mexican-descent college students who have overcome adversity by utilizing various forms of cultural capital to power their academic success.While college enrollment rates for Chicana/o/x students have steadily increased over the last decade, this cohort still faces significant barriers to academic achievement, including minimal information about college and limited access to the kind of preparation and advising that will help them get there. As a result, Chicana/o/x students maintain stubbornly low four-year completion rates. Against this backdrop, Gilberto Q. Conchas and Nancy Acevedo address the mechanisms that shape the achievement, aspirations, and expectations of Chicana/o/x students who grew up in marginalized communities and unequal school contexts and share success stories about this growing population of students.Conchas and Acevedo elevate the voices of students at a research university and in the community college sector to reveal important issues and factors impacting and shaping the students' academic journeys. The college-age men and women in the narratives evince hope, resistance, and empowerment in the face of marginalization, anti-immigration sentiment, poverty, and an education system that too often reinforces deficit-minded stereotypes. The authors critique the educational policies and practices that systematically fail to champion Chicana/o/x success and examine the use of community cultural wealth that supports US-born and US immigrant students of Mexican descent to make their achievement possible. In so doing, the authors  look toward the future by highlighting the actions that Chicana/o/x students take in creating bridges between K–12 to college and between their communities and higher education.The Chicana/o/x Dream helps define the heart and soul of tomorrow's America and elucidates how Chicana/o/x college students maintain hope, enact resistance, and succeed against injustice. The book offers a call to action to K–20 educators and administrators to develop better supports to foster the success of Mexican-descent students.

Restorative Justice in Education makes the case for restorative justice as a practice as much as it is a paradigm. Through essays, case studies, and interviews, the book outlines for educators and teacher educators how restorative justice can be leveraged to teach across disciplines.Building on the success of Justice on Both Sides, this book consists of four sections that explore instructional practices in history, race, justice, and language. The contributors examine a variety of educational issues and questions for teachers to explore through a transformative justice lens. Topics include how access to history and histories can promote agency for and among marginalized students; how science and mathematics education can be re-imagined to catalyze the creativity and capacity of Black math learners; and how restorative justice practices can foster healthy student identities.The book includes the voices of leading practitioners and scholars, who address the need for both restorative and transformative justice work within, across, and beyond the core disciplines. Particular attention is given to areas of education often omitted from these conversations: early childhood, special education, and ethnic studies.Restorative Justice in Education offers educators the pedagogical tools they need to transform their classroom into just, inclusive, and uplifting spaces.

Teachers of Color describes how racism serves as a continuous barrier against diversifying the teaching force and offers tools to support educators who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of Color on both a systemic and interpersonal level. Based on in-depth interviews, digital narratives, and questionnaires, the book analyzes the toll of racism on their professional experiences and personal wellbeing, as well as their resistance and reimagination of schools.Teacher educator and educational researcher Rita Kohli documents the hostile racial climate that teachers of color experience over the course of their academic and professional lives—first as students and preservice teachers and later in their classrooms and schools. She also highlights the tools of resistance these teachers employ to challenge institutionalized oppression and the kinds of professional development and support they need to thrive.Analyzed through the lens of critical race theory, Teachers of Color exposes the ongoing racialization via counter-stories from thirty racially, geographically, and professionally diverse educators.  The book concludes with recommendations that various education stakeholders can employ to improve the racial climates of schools and support the growing diversity of the teaching force.At this critical moment, Kohli offers readers an opportunity to strengthen their racial literacies and better understand the strengths, struggles, and power of teachers of color.

An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving analyzes the complex process of racial equity reform within K–12 schools. Scholar Decoteau J. Irby emphasizes that racial equity is dynamic, shifting both as our emerging racial consciousness evolves and as racism asserts itself anew. Those who accept the challenge of reform find themselves “stuck improving,” caught in a perpetual dilemma of both making progress and finding ever more progress to be made. Rather than dismissing stuckness as failure, Irby embraces it as an inextricable part of the improvement process.Irby brings readers into a large suburban high school as school leaders strive to redress racial inequities among the school’s increasingly diverse student population. Over a five-year period, he witnesses both progress and setbacks in the leaders’ attempts to provide an educational environment that is intellectually, socio-emotionally, and culturally affirming.Looking beyond this single school, Irby pinpoints the factors that are essential to the work of equity reform in education. He argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. Irby emphasizes how schools must strengthen and leverage personal, relational, and organizational capacities in order to sustain meaningful change.Stuck Improving offers a clear-eyed accounting of school-improvement practices, including data-driven instructional approaches, teacher cultural competency, and inquiry-based leadership strategies. This timely work contributes both to the practical efforts of equity-minded school leaders and to a deeper understanding of what the work of racial equity improvement truly entails.

Not Paved for Us chronicles a fifty-year period in Philadelphia education, and offers a critical look at how school reform efforts do and do not transform outcomes for Black students and educators.This illuminating book offers an extensive, expert analysis of a school system that bears the legacy, hallmarks, and consequences that lie at the intersection of race and education. Urban education scholar Camika Royal deftly analyzes decades of efforts aimed at improving school performance within the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), in a brisk survey spanning every SDP superintendency from the 1960s through 2017.Royal interrogates the history of education and educational reforms, recounting city, state, and federal interventions. She covers SDP's connections with the Common School Movement and the advent of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools, and she addresses federal policy shifts, from school desegregation to the No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Acts. Her survey provides sociopolitical context and rich groundwork for a nuanced examination of why many large urban districts struggle to implement reforms with fidelity and in ways that advance Black students academically and holistically.In a bracing critique, Royal bears witness to the ways in which positive public school reform has been obstructed: through racism and racial capitalism, but also via liberal ideals, neoliberal practices, and austerity tactics. Royal shows how, despite the well-intended actions of larger entities, the weight of school reform, here as in other large urban districts, has been borne by educators striving to meet the extensive needs of their students, families, and communities with only the slightest material, financial, and human resources. She draws on the experiences of Black educators and community members and documents their contributions.Not Paved for Us highlights the experiences of Black educators as they navigate the racial and cultural politics of urban school reform. Ultimately, Royal names, dissects, and challenges the presence of racism in school reform policies and practices while calling for an antiracist future.

Racial Opportunity Cost turns critical attention to the specific challenges faced by high-achieving students of color and gives educators a framework for recognizing and addressing these issues. Terah T. Venzant Chambers roots her discussion in the concept of racial opportunity cost, using a term borrowed from economics to refer to the obstacles faced and tradeoffs made by Black and Latinx students on the path to academic success.Gathering first-hand accounts from students, practitioners, and researchers, Chambers underscores a set of experiences common to academically successful students from racially minoritized backgrounds, especially those who attend predominantly white schools. These individual testimonies collectively show how, despite their successes, high-achieving students of color regularly encounter educational racism. As their experiences reveal, their academic progress may also be impeded by secondary stressors such as peer and cultural isolation and struggles with racial identity. These personal accounts illustrate the many ways in which the negative effects of racial opportunity cost extend from K–12 education into postsecondary academics and beyond.In this clarifying work, Chambers identifies the factors, such as school culture, intersectionality, and community acceptance that can increase or lessen racial opportunity cost across educational environments. She considers how the individual challenges that high-achieving and high-ability students of color confront reflect larger systemic problems. Chambers’ framework will help educators proactively cultivate change in their classrooms and schools so that they may lower racial opportunity cost and improve student experiences.

Equality or Equity sets forth a compelling argument urging us to shift our understanding of the role of our education system from providing equal opportunity to building an equitable society.A leading scholar-practitioner and ardent proponent of culturally responsive forms of education, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade aims to settle the debates over whether we should work toward a public education system built on the goal of equality, in which identical resources are provided for all students, or equity, in which different resources are offered in response to differences in student interests and needs. Duncan-Andrade centers his argument on the importance of creating meaningful education experiences for all students, particularly for low-income students of color and immigrant students, who have gained relatively fewer benefits from decades of equality-focused education reform.Drawing on research from across a range of disciplines, including neuroscience, social epidemiology, public health, and social work, Duncan-Andrade introduces three essential domains of a pedagogy that are both culturally and community responsive: relationships, relevance, and responsibility. He enlists the voices of practitioners to provide grounded examples of what community-responsive pedagogy looks like in each of these domains. These examples demonstrate how equitable classroom practices can enrich student engagement, enhance trauma responsiveness, and improve educational outcomes.Equality or Equity makes an urgent appeal for designing and implementing a truly equitable school system and shows us how we can begin to accomplish that goal.

Race and Culturally Responsive Inquiry in Education examines how assumptions about race and culture have shaped US education research and the interpretation and implementation of its results.This ambitious volume sheds light on the detrimental effects of educational praxis and policies that have characterized communities of color and historically underserved communities as deficient. It reveals how such bias has affected many facets of educational inquiry, from research design and planning to education policy making and evaluation practices. The provocative essays in this work challenge traditional suppositions about whose evidence matters, highlighting approaches for reframing educational inquiry and arguing for the adoption of a culturally responsive stance that can correct inequities by accounting for students’ diverse backgrounds and needs.Edited by Stafford L. Hood, Henry T. Frierson, Rodney K. Hopson, and Keena N. Arbuthnot and featuring contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the collection is organized around three key areas—education research, educational assessment, and program evaluation. The contributors identify provocative problems that exist at the intersection of race and education in these areas, and they illuminate the many ways in which education reform can address intersectionality. Calling for effective action, they suggest compelling solutions for consideration by policy makers and practitioners as well as researchers.Together, the essays in this volume make the case that culturally responsive methods that deepen our understanding of educational disparities, appropriately measure what students know and can do, and ensure that we have accurate information about the effectiveness of educational interventions can improve educational outcomes for diverse learners.

A rallying cry for equitable education informed by a revolutionary re-reading of Brown v. Board of Education, on the 70th anniversary of the ruling. In Radical Brown, renowned developmental scholar Margaret Beale Spencer and critical legal analyst Nancy E. Dowd offer a fresh perspective on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Noting that decades of flawed implementation have subverted Brown's great promise of educational equality for K–12 public school students, Spencer and Dowd propose a bold framework for a new interpretation of the Supreme Court decision, one that is inclusive, identity affirming, and culturally sensitive. Even as they envision a more equitable future for US students, Spencer and Dowd look critically at the historical context of Brown v. Board of Education, examining the roots of the inequality and segregation the ruling attempted to address, the resistance that the resulting school integration met, and the legacy of attempts to enforce the ruling. They trace the ways in which post-Brown policies have reinforced race privilege for white students and race subordination for Black and marginalised students and show how structural and cultural racism in education have impeded youth development and caused collective identity injury for all. Ultimately, this galvanising work introduces a way forward that upholds the Brown ruling's intended meaning and mandate. Radical Brown offers suggestions for action, from everyday practice to policy change, to help legislators, school boards, scholars, and educators correct course and enact the decision's true intent--of safeguarding rights based on a common humanity.

A stirring testament to the realities of Black teaching and learning in the United States and to Black educators' visions for the future. The personal accounts, educator portraits, and research findings assembled by Darrius A. Stanley in #BlackEducatorsMatter constitute an unstinting exploration of the experiences of Black K–12 teachers in the United States. Spotlighting the invaluable work of Black educators, this volume reveals that although they are underrepresented in educational institutions, they have profound positive influence not only on students of color but also on school climate and ultimately on all of society. Contributions from both emerging and established scholars lay out the historical and contemporary issues that confront Black educators. Viewing this landscape through the lens of BlackCrit and other race-centric perspectives, the contributors critically frame and explicitly name the challenges. They make plain that a common thread in the Black experience in US schools is antiblackness, which remains an endemic feature of US society even as recent social justice campaigns, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and public discourse on Critical Race Theory have brought greater awareness to longstanding inequities. This work also illuminates the efforts of Black educators to fight oppression and institutionalized racism in schools. It provides strategies that district and school leadership, including superintendents and principals, can adopt to recruit, retain, and support Black educators in K–12 schools. As this volume makes clear, such efforts will play a key role in shaping a more equitable and just educational system.

The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools delivers a collective response to the challenge of racially-charged misinformation, disinformation, and censorship that increasingly permeates and weakens not only US education but also our democracy. In this thought-provoking volume, Royel Johnson and Shaun Harper bring together leading education scholars and educators to confront the weaponized distortions that are currently undermining both public education and racial justice. The experts gathered in this work offer strategies to counter these dangerous trends and uphold truth in education.In focused, practical chapters, the contributors examine efforts both broad and specific, from restrictive education legislation, to book bans, to twisting terminology like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), that are obscuring truth in public education. They demonstrate how this narrowing of allowable ideas does a disservice to all students and especially to those who are underrepresented in curricula, including students of color and LGBTQ+ students.Ultimately, the book offers clear, actionable insights for educators, policymakers, and advocates who seek solutions that will counter recent trends and transform educational contexts within both K–12 and higher education. Among other actions, this volume advocates strengthening educational alliances through shared leadership, organized collaboration, and parental involvement. It also presents innovative countermeasures to help defend public education.

An incisive examination of the school discipline crisis and a strategic, evidence-driven playbook for educational decision-makers who aim to resolve disciplinary disparitiesRichard O. Welsh takes on the school discipline crisis in Suspended Futures, delineating the persistent racial disparities in how educators perceive and respond to the behavior of students. Welsh offers a framework for disrupting and dismantling a disciplinary system that disproportionately disadvantages students of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous identities. Underscoring the urgency of the dilemma, he discusses how the prevalence of exclusionary discipline in school—in which students are punished with removal from the classroom through suspension, expulsion, or alternative placement—results in significant loss of instructional time, which can lead to a cascade of negative student outcomes, from low achievement to carceral consequences.Welsh synthesizes research and analyzes data from sources such as the Civil Rights Data Collection and New York City Public Schools to lay out context for the ongoing disagreement over the root causes of and solutions to student misbehavior.The book argues for a shift from student-focused to educator-focused approaches to education reform and a shift from blaming to supporting teachers, principals, and administrators. Welsh emphasizes the need for school discipline reform that improves the school climate, addresses pervasive anti-Blackness, and supports inclusive learning. An ideal transformation, he proposes, incorporates restorative justice and Afrofuturism to create spaces of student healing, validation, and reward in schools.