It’s bad out there right now. Even if you’ve been following the anti-”CRT” backlash closely, the sheer volume of activity might still be surprising. As reported recently in Ed Week, PEN America did a national scan of the 2022 legislative session so far, looking for bills that restrict K-12 classroom conversations or staff training about…
This post is written by Andrene J. Castro & Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, each professors in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Along with Kimberly Bridges, Shenita E. Williams, and Mitchell Perry, they’ve been engaged in a larger project researching school rezoning across Virginia between 2019 and 2021. The summary below offers key findings from…
This post is written by Madeline Good, a former teacher and current doctoral student studying educational policy at the University of Missouri. Her primary research focuses on how policies interact with the sociological, political, and technological contexts of education, especially regarding issues of equity and teacher expertise. A new era of school integration efforts may…
This post is written by Karen Babbs Hollett, a former teacher, instructional leader, and director at a state department of education. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Penn State University where she studies racial equity in early care and education (ECE) policy. The pandemic has made clear how reliant our nation is on early…
Penn State’s Center for Education and Civil Rights (home of this blog) recently hosted a conversation between Genevieve Siegel-Hawley & Courtney Martin about their two fantastic books: Genevieve’s “A Single Garment” & Courtney’s “Learning in Public.” It was a great conversation- sort of like friends reconnecting over a meal and some drinks (full video here).…
This post is written by Maraki Shimelis Kebede, an education researcher currently based in Montreal, Canada. Maraki received her Ph.D. from the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University, where she studied the experiences of minoritized and immigrant students as well as educational equity in international development efforts. Maraki also served as a…
There was major school integration news that you might have missed in the frenzy of these pandemic times: Connecticut’s Sheff v. O’Neill case – originally filed in 1989 – reached what is likely to be its final settlement. This post is about two-way dual language programs, not Sheff, but it’s all connected. First, briefly, for…
In part 1 of this post, I looked at SchoolSparrow.com, an equity-oriented school ratings site that is positioned as an alternative to GreatSchools.org. In the lead up to its national launch, I had an email conversation with the founder, Tom Brown, where I outlined some mixed feelings about the site. As I say in part…
This guest post is written by Katie Dulaney, a former middle school teacher in North Carolina. Katie is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University, where she studies how school districts instill and nurture commitments to equity. This post is part two in a three-part…
If you’ve followed the debate about GreatSchools.org ratings, you might have also heard about SchoolSparrow.com. Positioned as an equity-oriented alternative school rating site, SchoolSparrow started about ten years ago in Chicagoland, and it went national in 2021. On its website, you can search for your own school/the schools in your town, and you can read…
School Diversity Notebook 