As new federal funds for school integration efforts become a possibility, we should explore how current integration policies address race and choice in their design

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…

With the potential for new federal funding for ECE, we need to critically analyze how current funding policies have built on decades of discrimination

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…

Hate incidents in “good” schools

Things aren’t looking good in Massachusetts’ suburban schools these days. Last month, the Boston Globe released a series of articles on a culture of racism and homophobia on the Danvers High School hockey team. On “hard R Fridays,” students on the all-white team shouted the n-word in team huddles. When one player refused, others welted…

New Research: Literacy outcomes in segregated schools

I’m excited to feature new guest authors on the blog, with a new study that supports a fundamental pillar of school integration advocacy: segregated schools are bad for student learning. Specifically, the authors re-analyzed all studies, from the last 25 years, that compare English language arts/reading outcomes with school composition (race and SES). They went…

New Research: School resegregation in Boston

A new report puts concrete (and indeed shocking) numbers on something we know anecdotally: White families with kids leave the city (in this case, Boston) when their kids get to be school-aged. Released last month, Kids Today from Boston Indicators looks at how these (and other) troubling trends have contributed to increased segregation in Boston’s…

Preschool Segregation, part 2: “Segregation at an Early Age” 2019 update

I’m thrilled to announce the release of “Segregation at an Early Age – the 2019 Update,” co-written with Erica Frankenberg and published by Penn State’s Center for Education and Civil Rights. In part 1 of this post, I summarized three very recent studies of preschool segregation, part of a flurry of activity on this topic.…

SD Research Roundup: Barriers to integration via school choice

For the research roundups, I’ve wanted to focus on particular topics so that I can look at similarities/differences across different articles. (See recent posts on charter schools and school discipline.) Along those lines, this post focuses on a major (the major?) topic in contemporary education policy – school choice. Specifically: Can school choice be used…

SD Research Roundup: Housing Studies, Privatization, & Multicultural Picture Books

The SD Notebook is easing back into the new year with a very quick post that highlights a variety of good and important studies from the end of 2018. I mainly just didn’t want these pieces to get lost amidst all the activity of the holidays, end of semester etc. As always, I hope you…

SD Research Roundup: Focus on school discipline, part 1

There have been major stories recently regarding school diversity (among other things!), including the Trump Administration’s reversal of Obama-era guidance on Affirmative Action. By design in the Trump era, just about every day brings a deluge of stories that are often as consequential as they are morally shocking. And, in that constant wave of big…