This guest post is written by Bryan Mann, a faculty member in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at the University of Kansas. Bryan uses geographic methods and spatial theories to understand educational policies and their effects. You can view his research team’s website at https://geographyedu.org/. The summary below offers a contrast to a…
Courtney Everts Mykytyn, my friend and late founder of Integrated Schools, always talked about the power of “playground” conversations in shaping the school choice decisions that parents make for their children. As a white person in our deeply segregated society, I’ve mostly had these kinds of conversations with other white parents. As you’d imagine, test…
This guest post is written by Alexandra Freidus, an educational ethnographer, writer, and professor of educational leadership at the University of Connecticut. Alex uses sociocultural and critical race theory to explore how educators, policymakers, families, and young people sustain and interrupt racialized inequality in public schools. Alex’s writing and teaching are deeply informed by more…
This post was originally published in Poverty & Race a journal from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. In addition to the article posted below, the most recent edition includes articles about expanding access to affordable housing and an excerpt from this new book on school segregation in NYC. All are highly recommended. The…
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…
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…
This guest post is written by Karen Babbs Hollett, a former teacher, instructional leader, and director at a state department of education. Karen is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University, where she studies issues of racial equity in early care and education (ECE) policy. Following…
Glenn Youngkin was in the news a lot last week. It wasn’t great. And, while this post won’t attempt a summary of what he knew and didn’t know, said and didn’t say about the prayerful salute to a Jan 6 flag at one of his rallies, it did feel like a good reason to revisit…
School Diversity Notebook 