Race and Equity

�� partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

Carrie Spector — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:44:57 +0000

�� partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

Carrie Spector Thu, 09/25/2025 - 13:44

A new �� research initiative is working to identify what’s driving racial disparities in special education referrals. (Photo: iStock)

K-12 | Learning Differences | Race and Equity

GSE Professor Alfredo J. Artiles leads a new research initiative to design changes in a system where Black students are far more likely than all other students to be referred to special education.

September 25, 2025

By Carrie Spector

For decades, educators and researchers have raised concerns about students of color, particularly Black students, being disproportionately enrolled in special education. At San Francisco’s public schools, disparities persist, despite the district’s many efforts to address the problem.

A new �� research initiative is reaching further upstream to find solutions. Led by �� education Professor Alfredo J. Artiles, a team of interdisciplinary researchers from across the country has partnered with leaders at San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and California Education Partners to identify what’s driving the disproportionate enrollment and, based on their findings, design new approaches to change those conditions and create an environment where Black students can thrive.

“Some kids need special education, but when you look at the data on how students in different subgroups are identified with a disability, you see trends that make you question how and for what purposes the tools of disability policy are being used,” said Artiles, the Lee L. Jacks Professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is leading the initiative as part of a research-practice partnership between �� and SFUSD that began in 2009. “There might be racialized patterns that make you wonder if disability identification is being used to push students out. How can we use special education to provide the resources that some kids need, without making it a tool for exclusion? That’s the challenge.”

Here, Artiles talks more about the persistent issue of racial disparities in special education, what makes this new initiative different from previous efforts, and what they’ve found so far.

GSE Professor Alfredo J. Artiles

What has past research shown about disproportionality in special ed?

The first time this was addressed in the research community was in 1968, in an article published in the journal Exceptional Children, and from that point on, there have been debates about this issue.

Disproportionality isn’t just about overidentification — some groups tend to be underidentified for intellectual, learning, and emotional disabilities, and that’s a problem, too. But most of the attention has been on patterns of overidentification.

Two explanations have prevailed over time. One view attributes disparities to poverty – that children who are disadvantaged by high poverty don’t develop the dispositions and skills that prepare them to do well in school, so they struggle. We know that poverty, particularly persistent and intergenerational poverty, has a significant impact on children’s development. But Latinx groups, for instance, tend not to be overidentified for special education at the national level, even though there are high poverty levels in this community. There are Asian American subgroups that experience high poverty levels but do not experience disproportionality in special ed.

An alternative explanation focuses on factors in schools, like teacher bias or a school climate that is less conducive to learning. In other words, it is not clear if these students’ difficulties in school are because of a lack of opportunity or a low-quality education. We have less evidence on the role of these types of institutional and systemic factors in producing disproportionality, and the findings are somewhat mixed.

But nobody is questioning the overrepresentation of Black students, right?

Some researchers do question whether overidentification exists, finding that students of color are underidentified and reporting an absence of racial bias. But scholars have raised a number of conceptual and methodological concerns about these studies.

Another issue is that the federal government started requiring districts to monitor special education placement by race in the late 1990s. If districts report disproportionate levels of identification for distinct groups, they are cited and have to develop and implement plans to address the problem. Federal guidelines to determine disproportionality were also vague. So districts began to game the system by changing the criteria required to determine disproportionality, often resulting in a relatively small group of school districts being designated as disproportionate.

You’re now working with SFUSD, which has documented disparities in special ed in the district and tried for years to address them. What’s different about the approach you’re taking?

For one, we recruited a group of scholars from a variety of disciplines — sociology, learning science, linguistic anthropology, data visualization, digital technology – many different fields in addition to special ed, because we wanted to disrupt the way the issue has traditionally been framed. The district has worked hard over the years to deploy policies and interventions to address the problem, and we wanted to find a new way of understanding it.

We’re focusing our attention on the conditions that exist before a student is identified with a disability. We spent the first year reviewing and analyzing district-wide data on the history of the problem and interventions to address it. We consulted administrators, educators, parents, and community and religious leaders about the problem and alternative solutions.

We’re also prioritizing the design of a system in which Black families are part of ongoing decision-making in the district. Throughout SFUSD’s history of disproportionality, Black parents have provided a lot of input and suggestions. But they’re not experiencing meaningful participation, and many express involvement fatigue, like, ‘Here comes another team of researchers to do focus groups, and then they go away and nothing happens.’ A shared governance model offers a way of participating in a legitimate fashion about investments, priorities, problem-solving, and so on at the district level, where systemwide change happens.

“We found that on average, Black students at the elementary and K-8 schools were five times more likely than all other students to be referred to special education. At 50 of 70 of the schools in the district, Black students were at least three times more likely to be referred, which means the problem isn’t driven by a few schools — it’s a district-wide problem.”

Alfredo J. Artiles

Professor, �� Graduate School of Education

What’s the reason for looking at students’ experience before they’ve been assessed and formally identified with a disability?

Prior research on this problem has looked at identification rates – how many students in various groups are being placed into special education and the predictors of identification. We wanted to examine the precursors of these processes, to see who was getting referred.

The referral decision is a key marker that a student is already on a different trajectory. By the time you get to that point, the system has likely done interventions, provided extra support and accommodations, and you have a high chance of being identified or designated as having a disability. We’re interested in understanding the support systems available and how they’re implemented in general education before an educator decides to refer a child for special education assessment.

What has your research revealed about referrals at the district?

We found that on average, Black students at the elementary and K-8 schools were five times more likely than all other students to be referred to special education. At 50 of 70 of the schools in the district, Black students were at least three times more likely to be referred, which means the problem isn’t driven by a few schools — it’s a district-wide problem.

We calculated a referral risk index by school, so we could identify high- and low-referring school sites. Then we began taking a more in-depth look at both types of schools and asking contextual questions: What do they do when a kid begins to struggle? What are the systems of support? Do kids have access to specialists? Are parents involved? We also have access to school climate data collected by the State of California, so we can see the connection between the sense of belonging and trust in relation to the risks of referral.

What will you do with the information?

Right now we’re mapping the distribution of disproportionality, finding the hot spots with high referral rates and exploring factors shaping disproportionality at the district level as well as in a small set of pilot school sites. We’re also broadening our analysis beyond the schools, looking at ‘ecologies of learning’ — features of neighborhoods that are potential resources for learning and nurturing, like libraries, community centers, advocacy organizations, anything that might offer opportunities for kids to stay engaged. They might have nothing to do with disproportionality, but they might allow us to identify assets that could be brought to a school’s efforts. A geographer and a data visualization specialist are collaborating with us to create visualizations of this information.

The data we’re collecting is incredibly rich, and having tools that show the cultural and spatial dimensions of the problem can help us to see it in a new light. The goal is to design district-wide systems that can be sustained over time, and to create learning environments where educators don’t have to resort to expulsion or pushing students out.

This initiative has been supported by a vision grant from the Spencer Foundation, as well as funding provided through the ��-SFUSD Partnership.

Research Stories

split

Faculty mentioned in this article: Alfredo Artiles

�� study links access to new AP computer science course to a jump in participation, especially among underrepresented students

Carrie Spector — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:32:45 +0000

�� study links access to new AP computer science course to a jump in participation, especially among underrepresented students

Carrie Spector Mon, 04/07/2025 - 11:32

The number of students taking an AP computer science exam more than tripled after schools in the study began offering the new course, a �� study finds. Access to the newer course also appears to have a spillover effect, increasing participation in other AP subjects. (Photo: iStock)

Curriculum and Instruction | Race and Equity | Science and Math Education

A college-level option focused on concepts in computing draws more female, Black, and Hispanic students without affecting participation in the original course, �� researchers find.

April 10, 2025

In a bid to engage more U.S. high school students in computer science, the College Board introduced a new Advanced Placement (AP) course in 2016: Computer Science Principles, which explores a range of topics in technology and computation, in contrast to the original AP course’s strict focus on programming skills.

A new study by �� researchers, analyzing changes in the population of students taking AP computer science exams before and after the launch of the alternative course, shows a direct link between access to the course and a sharp increase in participation, with a sizable jump for traditionally underrepresented students.

After schools in the study began offering CS Principles, the number of students taking an AP computer science exam more than tripled overall, the researchers found. Exam counts for female, Black, or Hispanic students more than quadrupled.

What’s more, schools that adopted the new course expanded participation in AP computer science without drawing students away from the original, programming-focused course. Access to the newer course also appears to have a spillover effect, increasing student participation in other AP subjects.

“Computer science education is valuable at so many levels, giving students a set of skills that apply across countless domains,” said Daniela Ganelin, a doctoral student in education data science at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who coauthored the study with Thomas S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor of Education at the GSE. “Computing in general, and AI in particular, are so influential right now, and it’s important for students to learn about it so they can understand it, use it responsibly, and be part of guiding its transformation over the course of their careers.”

The analysis, published April 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that access to CS Principles could account for roughly two-thirds of the growth in AP computer science exams taken nationally over the past decade.

“We’re finding a dramatic take-up of academically rich content at the high school level, without crowding out kids from taking the pre-existing course,” said Dee, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and faculty director of the GSE’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. “This is a rare and compelling example of an educational reform that appears to be driving improvement on a nationwide scale.”

GSE Professor Thomas S. Dee

A reflection of national trends

While the original AP computer science course focuses on teaching students how to write and test code in the Java programming language, the CS Principles course introduces students to programming as well as a wide range of concepts involving computers and technology, with an emphasis on creativity and collaborative problem-solving.

To assess the impact that access to the newer course has had on students’ engagement with advanced-level computer science, the researchers drew on data from all public high schools in Massachusetts – the only state that researchers found publicly provides data on AP participation at the level of detail they sought, separated by subject, school, and student characteristics such as gender and ethnicity.

Massachusetts is a state with an unusually high AP participation rate to begin with, the researchers noted. “Because Massachusetts leans into AP so much, you might expect to see more of an effect there,” Ganelin said. “On the other hand, if the state is well saturated with AP already, you might expect more dramatic effects in other states where the room for growth is higher.”

The state’s overall growth in AP exam-taking during the time period of the study mirrors trends in national data, the researchers said, which points toward the generalizability of their findings.

GSE doctoral student Daniela Ganelin

The researchers drew on data from the state’s nearly 300 traditional public high schools over a 15-year period, from the 2006-07 school year through 2020-21. They found that after a school introduced CS Principles, its exam count in any AP computer science course jumped by an estimated 16 exams, more than tripling participation for the average school that adopted the course.

Analyzing the uptake for different demographic groups, the study found that the number of AP computer science exams taken by female, Black, or Hispanic students more than quadrupled: average female exam counts went from a baseline of 1.3 exams per school to about 6, while average exams for Black or Hispanic students went from 0.7 to about 3.

The new exams were concentrated in CS Principles, with no statistically significant drop in students taking the exam for the original AP computer science course.

The study also found that the initial spike after the course’s introduction was followed by further growth over time, a trend the researchers said suggest that factors supporting students’ participation – like staff capacity, the quality of the class, and awareness among students – strengthened after the course was adopted. That could be due in part to the standardization of content within the AP program, they said.

“When you have an intentionally designed course that’s being offered in a relatively similar way throughout the country,” said Dee, “it creates better opportunities for supporting teachers’ capacity to deliver that content effectively, as well as student-focused learning supports.”

The College Board has released descriptive findings in the past indicating similar patterns of growth, but the independent study by the �� researchers goes further to support a cause-and-effect relationship between increased participation and the introduction of CS Principles in individual schools.

A spillover effect

In addition to expanding participation in AP computer science, the launch of the new course appeared to boost engagement in other AP subjects. The study found that after introducing CS Principles, a school’s total AP exam count grew by an estimated 33 yearly exams, representing a 9% increase for the average adopting school.

The gains were concentrated particularly in AP Environmental Science and English Language and Composition, which the study noted often serve as introductory college-level courses for their respective subject areas.

“I can imagine a situation where students taking one AP course might say, ‘I felt successful here,’ and want to take more in other subjects,” said Ganelin, a former computer science teacher and curriculum specialist. “Or where a school might say, ‘We’re having success in getting kids from a variety of backgrounds into this AP course. Let’s see if we can encourage them to take others as well.’ ”

Given the advantages AP courses offer in preparing students for college and the ongoing challenge schools face in recruiting computer science teachers, the researchers said the AP program’s standardized approach offers a promising model with economies of scale.

“There was a lot of work involved upfront in putting this course together, but now, if you’re a principal or a teacher who wants to bring computer science to your school, this option exists,” Ganelin said. “There are curriculum materials out there, there are training resources for teachers, so any principal can bring it to their school. And what we’re seeing is that there’s a good chance that if you offer it, kids will come. There will be take-up across demographic groups.”

Research Stories

split

Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas S. Dee

U.S. textbooks portray Asians in a limited and negative light, new study shows

Carrie Spector — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:48:28 +0000

U.S. textbooks portray Asians in a limited and negative light, new study shows

Carrie Spector Thu, 03/27/2025 - 11:48

A new study uses artificial intelligence to analyze the portrayal of Asians and Asian Americans in widely used U.S. history textbooks. (Photo: iStock)

Civics and History | Curriculum and Instruction | Race and Equity

In an analysis of widely used U.S. history textbooks, �� education scholars find that the rare mentions of Asians and Asian Americans largely use language related to war.

March 31, 2025

By Carrie Spector

Despite the instrumental role Asians have played in developing American infrastructure and institutions, they are rarely mentioned in popular U.S. history textbooks, according to a new study co-authored by �� researchers. Even the infrequent references tend to portray Asians and Asian Americans in a negative light, the study finds, largely in the context of war as enemies and outsiders.

Researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze each word and sentence of 30 of the most widely used U.S. history textbooks in California and Texas high schools, two states that have the highest student populations in the United States and make up the largest markets for textbook publishers.

They found that only 1 percent of sentences in the textbooks contained any mention of Asians or Asian Americans. Most of the references were related to war and foreign affairs, rather than their contributions to U.S. society.

“There’s very little discussion about Asian Americans in these textbooks, which is especially surprising for states like California and Texas, which have a huge Asian American population,” said Minju Choi, PhD ’25, who co-led the study as a doctoral student at the GSE and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Germany.

Minju Choi, PhD '25

The study also found that the sentiment of verbs used to describe Asians was markedly negative, more so than the language used to describe actions of other ethnic groups. Specifically, the researchers identified the prevalence of words like attack, invade, and threaten in connection with Asians, in contrast to verbs like begin, want, and believe used in connection with groups like Germans and the British.

“The disparity is shocking,” said Patricia Bromley, an associate professor at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the �� Doerr School of Sustainability. “For Asian groups, not only did we see the dominance of the war narrative, but the language is much more aggressive, more negative. The negative sentiment is higher for Asian groups relative to other social groups, in sentences related to war and in non-war contexts.”

The study, published March 27 in the journal Educational Researcher, was co-led by Lucy Li, who earned her bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science from �� and is now a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley. David Bamman, an associate professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, is also a coauthor.

A disproportionate focus on war

While war is commonly a centerpiece in U.S. history textbooks, the researchers said, they found that the emphasis on war was far greater for Asians than for other ethnic groups. More than 45 percent of sentences mentioning Asians or Asian Americans were focused on war or conflict, compared with about 14 percent of sentences in the textbooks overall.

“That focus obscures the social history of Asians and Asian Americans, the complicated history of migration and other transnational experiences as they’re linked to militarism,” said Choi. “It also perpetuates the stereotype of Asian Americans in history as the foreign enemies.” The emphasis on “fighting” verbs in connection with Asians oversimplifies their roles into either aggressors or victims, she said.

GSE Associate Professor Patricia Bromley

The researchers also gave examples of Asians who had an important role in the history of the United States but were rarely or not mentioned in the textbooks. For one, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1898 brought about by Chinese American Wong Kim Ark helped to establish birthright citizenship for anyone born within U.S. territory, but only one textbook in the study sample included a reference to his case. None of the textbooks mentioned Japanese American Yuri Kochiyama, an activist who played a significant part in the U.S. civil rights movement.

When historical figures were named in sentences mentioning Asians or Asian Americans, nearly two-thirds of the individuals who were named were white, the researchers found. This sentence, for example – “In fact, because most Japanese people had never seen steamships before, they thought the ships in Perry’s fleet were ‘giant dragons puffing smoke,’ ” – refers only to Matthew Perry, a white American naval commander, by name.

“Asians and Asian Americans are reduced to groups and treated quite monolithically, versus the white figures, who get to be heroic actors with power and agency as individuals,” said Bromley.

The study also found that most mentions of Asian Americans were limited to Chinese and Japanese Americans, excluding groups such as South or Southeast Asians. Filipino Americans are the third-largest Asian American group, Choi noted, but rarely appeared in the textbooks except in the context of the U.S. annexation of the Philippines.

Using AI to analyze words and sentences

The study builds on past textbook analyses led by Bromley and her collaborators, investigating how U.S. textbooks characterize different population groups such as men, women, and people of color, as well as how political movements and climate change are represented.

For this study, like some of the previous work, the researchers analyzed each word and sentence in the textbooks using natural language processing (NLP), a form of artificial intelligence that enables computers to recognize and understand text. One popular NLP method, known as topic modeling, identified the prevalence of certain topics in sentences that mention Asians and Asian Americans. Another, known as dependency parsing, identified verbs associated with Asians and Asian Americans, to analyze actions ascribed to them in the textbooks.

The researchers did not find meaningful differences between the California and Texas textbooks in terms of the prevalence and nature of references to Asians and Asian Americans, but noted that the use of computational methods to identify general patterns might not reveal more nuanced differences in ideology between the two states’ books.

For educators, the researchers suggested that supplementing textbooks with more inclusive materials could provide a broader perspective on the historical portrayal of Asians in the United States. They recommended lesson plans and teaching resources from the �� Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education for more representative accounts.

The limitations of existing textbooks can also provide a springboard for discussing the implications of their depiction of Asians, Bromley said. “It can be a chance to point out the omissions and the language used, to reflect with students on the meaning and creation of narratives of American national identity.”

Research Stories

split

GSE area

GCE

Faculty mentioned in this article: Patricia Bromley

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 20:02:46 +0000

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector Mon, 02/10/2025 - 12:02

A new report by �� and Harvard researchers provides a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses in thousands of U.S. school districts. (Photo: Allison Shelley for EDUimages)

K-12 | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

An analysis by �� and Harvard researchers finds widening achievement gaps but also pockets of success, including high-poverty districts regaining pre-pandemic achievement levels.

February 11, 2025

By Carrie Spector

A new report by researchers at �� and Harvard finds that while the average U.S. student still lags behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading and math, students in a number of school districts across the country have regained the ground they lost in both subjects.

The analysis, which provides exclusive data on district-level changes in student achievement from 2019 to 2024, identifies 102 medium and large districts now performing above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading, including high-poverty communities in Louisiana and Alabama.

Despite scattered bright spots, the researchers found that socioeconomic and other disparities in achievement have continued to grow. The highest-income districts nationwide were almost four times as likely to recover as the poorest districts, and districts enrolling the highest proportions of Black and Hispanic students have seen bigger declines in test scores since 2019 than predominantly white and more affluent districts.

Even within communities, Black and Hispanic students lost more ground than their white peers in the same district.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years, and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University (EOP), who co-led the analysis. “Test scores have declined far more in middle- and low-income communities than in wealthy ones.”

The researchers also investigated the impact of federal pandemic aid on academic recovery, finding that the funds helped to prevent larger losses in the highest-poverty districts.

The findings were released on Feb. 11 as part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard.

GSE Professor Sean Reardon

Mapping trends in thousands of school districts

The Education Recovery Scorecard uses data from the �� Education Data Archive (SEDA), a national database built by the EOP that includes test scores and demographic information from 2009 to 2024 for students in every public school district in the United States. SEDA, which has been publicly available online since 2016, is used by researchers and policymakers to study patterns and trends across the country and by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

With SEDA data, the Education Recovery Scorecard delivers a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses for thousands of individual school districts across the country. The analysis builds on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), widely known as the “nation’s report card,” which measures progress at a state level and for 26 large urban school districts.

The Education Recovery Scorecard provides a higher-resolution picture, mapping trends in more than 8,000 school districts nationwide. It allows users to compare progress in one district with that of another, even if the districts are in different states and use different tests and proficiency standards.

A key challenge in comparing performance among U.S. students nationwide is that all states use different tests and standards to define proficiency, which can change even within a state from year to year. By aligning annual statewide test results with scores from the biennial NAEP, Reardon’s team at the EOP established a common metric — in the form of grade-level equivalents — to compare student performance across states and over time.

For the Education Recovery Scorecard, the researchers used SEDA data from 43 states (the remaining states were left out for various reasons, such as low participation rates on state tests or inadequate data reporting). The states included in this analysis capture roughly 35 million students in grades 3 through 8, almost 80 percent of those enrolled in U.S. public schools.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years,
and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality.”

Sean Reardon

Professor, �� Graduate School of Education
Faculty Director, The Educational Opportunity Project at �� University

Widening achievement gaps

As of Spring 2024, the average U.S. student remained nearly half a grade level behind 2019 scores in both math and reading, the researchers found. But “the declines were not visited equally upon all school districts,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research.

For instance, between 2019 and 2024, the difference in average scores between students in districts with the lowest and highest proportions of Black students increased by 17 percent. The gap between students in high- and low-poverty districts also increased, by about 11 percent.

“That’s a sizable growth in the disparity between districts serving different populations of kids,” Reardon said.

Also notable, he said, was a sharp change in gender gaps over the past five years. “For a decade or so before the pandemic, girls and boys in these grades had basically equal math scores on NAEP,” said Reardon. “But since 2019, girls have fallen about a third of a grade level behind.” This trend is pervasive not only throughout the United States but globally, he said.

The researchers continued their 2024 investigation into the impact of federal pandemic aid on student achievement, which indicated that these dollars were contributing to the recovery and helping to narrow achievement gaps. In the 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard, based on more recent data, they report that federal relief funds aided the recovery in the highest poverty districts, boosting achievement in both math and reading on average by one-tenth of a grade level.

How districts allocated the money made a difference, they noted. For instance, in California, which maintained comparatively detailed spending data, student achievement grew more in districts that spent greater amounts on academic interventions such as tutoring or summer school.

The researchers also studied the increase in chronic absenteeism and its possible impact on the rate of academic recovery. Districts at all socioeconomic levels have seen a rise in absenteeism since the pandemic, with larger increases in higher-poverty districts. The researchers said the data indicate that districts with high rates of absenteeism experienced slower recovery, but the full extent of the impact is still unclear.

‘The rescue phase is over’

The Education Recovery Scorecard also offers recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers going forward.

“The rescue phase is over. The federal relief dollars are gone,” said Thomas Kane, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of CEPR, who co-authored the report. “It is time to pivot from short-term recovery to longer-term challenges.”

First, said Kane, states and districts should dedicate their own funds or funds they control to continue “catch-up” interventions like tutoring and summer learning. Second, community leaders — including mayors and employers — should join schools in working to lower absenteeism.

“This is one of the few things that folks outside of schools can be doing to help right now,” Kane said, suggesting efforts such as organizing public awareness campaigns, supporting field trips and other extracurricular activities to draw kids to school, and addressing transportation challenges that might keep students from getting to school.

He also advised teachers to keep parents informed if their child is not achieving at grade level. “Parents aren't going to sign up for summer learning, or ask for a tutor in school, or agree to an increase in the school year if they're under the impression that everything's fine.”

Finally, the report calls for a concerted effort to study literacy interventions to determine their impact. Most states have implemented various reforms in recent years, but nationally, reading test scores on average continue to decline. The report urges research across states and districts to better assess the effectiveness of different approaches now underway.

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Andrew Ho, Ben Shear, Jie Min, Jim Saliba, Jiyeon Shim, Sadie Richardson, Sofia Wilson, Julia Paris, Demetra Kalogrides, Ann Owens, Ishita Panda, Amelia Bloom, Nahian Haque, and Jackson Kinsella (Educational Opportunity Project); Daniel Dewey, Victoria Carbonari, and Dean Kaplan (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College).

The research was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin and Griffin Catalyst, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

Research Stories

split

Faculty mentioned in this article: sean reardon

Lessons for the future: How past practices help reimagine education

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 01:59:19 +0000

Lessons for the future: How past practices help reimagine education Olivia Peterkin Tue, 02/04/2025 - 17:59

Civics and History | Diversity and Identity | Race and Equity

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Professor Maisha Winn discusses how positive insights from the history of education can be used to shape its future.

February 6, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

Often when people think of why we study history in any form, it’s to remember and reflect on past mistakes to avoid repeating them in the future.

However, Maisha Winn, a professor at �� Graduate School of Education, believes that there are lessons in the history of education that are not only positive, but important to apply to create a better future.

“I think about history as an opportunity to learn about the actions and activities of people that we may want to tap into, especially in the case of education,” said Winn, who is also the faculty director of the Equity in Learning Initiative at �� Accelerator for Learning.

“I think that a lot of times we think about innovation as something that is ahead of us, something that has yet to be discovered, something that is inherently futuristic,” she said. “However, there have been people, especially in non-dominant communities, Indigenous communities, who have been engaged in ways of teaching and learning for a very long time that we can learn from and learn with.”

In her role in the Accelerator, Winn spearheads projects that address disparities in educational outcomes, and in her research as a professor, she studies how under-resourced communities create practices, processes, and institutions of their own. Most recently, she has been looking into the work of Black institution builders, who were central to the Black Arts Movement between 1965 and 1975, and their perspectives on how to support student success.

“Many of these institution builders’ minds were about three pillars: identity, purpose, and direction,” Winn said. “And that if young people had those three pillars as anchors in their lives, that would help launch them as civic actors in our country.”

Winn joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss historical insights into education, the importance of establishing identity to student success, and how parents can help children connect to themselves and their communities.

“I think that it’s important to think about supporting our young people in developing really solid narratives about their lineage, about who they are, about what their goals are now and where they see themselves going,” she said. I cannot express enough how important I think it is for young people to have this strong sense of identity that allows them to connect with other people in really powerful ways.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Maisha Winn (00:00):

History matters, race matters, justice matters, language matters, and futures matter.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights and learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and Co-Founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:35):

And I'm Dan Schwartz, I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:45):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed. Well, hello Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:56):

Well, hello Denise. So I have a question for you. Surprise.

Denise Pope (01:02):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (01:03):

So I'm going to see if I can channel my 11-year-old voice.

Denise Pope (01:08):

Oh.

Dan Schwartz (01:08):

You ready?

Denise Pope (01:09):

This is an eleven-year-old question?

Dan Schwartz (01:11):

Yeah, maybe 12.

Denise Pope (01:11):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (01:12):

So why do we study history?

Denise Pope (01:15):

Why do we study history? Okay. What a lovely question, Daniel. Why do we study history? I believe that it is really important to study the past, a lot of people say so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. I think it's really important to look back at the history of countries, the world, et cetera, and figure out why we are in the state we're in, for better or for worse, right? It's a sense of kind of looking back so that you don't screw up the next generation. That's what I would say to little Danny. What do you think?

Dan Schwartz (01:59):

Little Danny stopped listening about halfway through because... No.

Denise Pope (02:04):

Cause it was boring?

Dan Schwartz (02:05):

I thought that was interesting. It's a very instrumental response. Rather than following that, I thought we'd just introduce our guest who actually does it.

Denise Pope (02:13):

Okay, good.

Dan Schwartz (02:14):

It's my pleasure to introduce Professor Maisha Winn at the Graduate School of Education. She's also a Director of Initiative on Equity and Learning at the �� Accelerator. So Maisha studies the Black student experience in and out of schools, and like many of our guests, she was a teacher before becoming a professor. So welcome, Maisha.

Maisha Winn (02:34):

Thank you for having me, Denise and Dan.

Dan Schwartz (02:37):

So here's the question, you are maybe a historian of the future or maybe you study history and the future, why do we study history?

Maisha Winn (02:47):

I love that you started with that question, Dan. And Denise, I love that you offered a response that I think many of us are familiar with. You hear this over and over again, that we look at history because we don't want to repeat mistakes. However, I might bring a different perspective in thinking about why we look at history. I think about history as an opportunity to learn about actions and activities of people that we may want to tap into, especially in the case of education. I think that a lot of times we think about innovation as something that is ahead of us, something that has yet to be discovered, something that is inherently futuristic. However, there have been people, especially in non-dominant communities, Indigenous communities, who have been engaged in ways of teaching and learning for a very long time that we can learn from and learn with. And so I might offer to that traditional story about why we teach history and think about history this other avenue of exploration about how we might find innovation in the past.

Denise Pope (03:53):

I love that. And so what does that mean exactly?

Maisha Winn (03:58):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (03:58):

What have you found?

Dan Schwartz (04:02):

You particularly specifically looked at people who changed education, isn't that right?

Maisha Winn (04:07):

Yeah. So my most recent work has been looking into the work of Black institution builders who were a part of the Black arts movement, which is typically situated between 1965 and 1975. These institution builders were poets, writers, they were parents, they were everyday people who were concerned about the conditions of their schools, particularly public schools. The group that I write about is a group that was located in Chicago, they started the Institute of Positive Education in 1969. Two years before that, one of the co-founders founded a Black publishing house. And they were very concerned about math scores and reading scores. And even though we didn't use the language of achievement gap or educational debt, as Gloria Ladson-Billings often says, we weren't using that language, but that was in existence. And so this was a time period where many Black Americans were deeply disappointed that after civil rights legislature, that things still had not improved in their communities and in their schools, so they took it upon themselves to start their own preschools and elementary schools and even high schools. And this was happening throughout the country.

Dan Schwartz (05:22):

It's amazing how important local action has been for minoritized communities. But so I got to bring it back, Maisha, so what have you learned that's going to help me borrow that into the future?

Maisha Winn (05:35):

Yeah, well, one of the things that I have learned and really think is important to share is this idea that education and many of these institution builders' minds was about three pillars, identity, purpose, and direction. And that if young people had those three pillars as anchors in their lives, that would help launch them as civic actors in our country.

(06:03):

And I want to really hone in on that because I think that sometimes people miss some of the sort of underlying foundation of the Black power and Black arts movement, people think it was just about the liberation of Black people. But if you ask institution builders about this time, they would argue that it was not just about the liberation of Black people, but the liberation of all communities that had experienced some sort of oppression or had been overlooked in some ways. So those movements really launched Brown Pride, the Chicano movement, LGBTQ movements in places like San Francisco and Northern California, Asian solidarity work.

(06:43):

And so this notion of identity, purpose, and direction, I map that onto thinking about our past, our present, and our future. Because when you think about identity, that takes us back to what are our different individual histories? How do we show up? What are the stories that our families tell about us, about our community, about our lineage? And then when you think about purpose, that's the now, that's why are we doing any of the things we're doing now? And then direction is where are we headed into the future? And so I think a key piece of this work is around civic engagement, civic literacy, civic discourses, and how to show up as a full participant in the country.

Denise Pope (07:25):

So I love that. And I think identity, purpose and direction speaks volumes to what, if you just think of every kid, think about who am I, how do I show up, how am I in relation to others, what is my purpose, why am I here and where are we going?

Maisha Winn (07:44):

Yeah. So when I was on faculty at Emory early in my career, there's a psychologist there whose work was very influential to me, her name is Robyn Fivush, she runs the Family Narratives Lab. And she found that young people who are able to articulate a narrative of their family lineage and sort of who their people are, if you will, had better success academically and socially in school settings. And I thought that was always so powerful and it always sort of stayed with me, I would even say dare haunted me a little bit, I thought about it a lot throughout my work, what does it mean to support young people in developing a really strong narrative about who they are?

(08:29):

And one of the things that she found was that the narrative was not supposed to just be some ascending narrative like, "Our family is great. Everything we've done is wonderful, we're fabulous people." And it certainly didn't help when the narrative was, “Wow, we've just always had bad luck and we're just a downtrodden group and community of people." She found that what she called the oscillating family narrative was one that helped anchor kids. So the oscillating family narrative would be, "We've had these really amazing times in our family and we've had some times that have been challenging, and this is how we dealt with those challenging times," so that young people would then know that when they are struggling, there are ways in which they can change things, they can use their own agency to turn things around for themselves, but everything is not just upward and onward, which can feel very isolating, I think, for young people.

Denise Pope (09:26):

And is there something about having it be from your family even more powerful? Because I know Jeffrey Cohen, one of our colleagues, looks at when people come and tell stories and, "Hey, you know what? It was hard for me and it's okay if it's hard for you," we see that that's been very influential. But there's something more here that you're saying, which is it's intergenerational. What piece is that?

Maisha Winn (09:50):

Yeah, I think it's the intergenerational piece. And I think what's exciting is we have breakthrough work, even our colleague Tom Dee and colleagues do some really beautiful work around the power of ethnic studies and young people learning about the contributions that their people made and how that made them want to engage even more in school to, one, show up, to be there. It improved things like truancy and it improved things like being present, and improved their academic participation. So those kinds of findings are really powerful and compelling.

Dan Schwartz (10:22):

So do you think this sort of discovering my history and where I sit in it is particularly important for minoritized communities?

Maisha Winn (10:30):

Absolutely, absolutely.

Dan Schwartz (10:32):

As opposed to the dominant where everything around me tells me where I am?

Maisha Winn (10:37):

Yeah. And I think that's why part of these schools, they had an African-centered or Pan-African education, but in addition to that, they taught hardcore math, science, all of the foundational disciplines. And so what they did that I think might be different, because I interviewed one of the math specialists at the Institute of Positive Education, and I asked her, I said, "Is there a difference between African-centered mathematics and regular math?" And I asked her this because I learned that she was actually headed to �� to do one of Jo Boaler's trainings and I thought, "Wow." And she said she loved Jo Boaler's work, and she was still active tutoring young people, primarily African-American young people.

(11:20):

And so one of the things that we sort of drilled down to was it wasn't that the math was different, it was the orientation toward math. It was lifting up the fact that Black people, people of African descent have had a long relationship to mathematics and making sure that children are anchored in that so it doesn't feel like it's somebody else's discipline, but it really is something that is a core part of who you are, is part of your identity.

Dan Schwartz (11:54):

So Denise, I have kind of an academic question for you that in the last maybe decade, the amount of research on identity in the psychological space has really increased. And so I'm trying to decide, is it because we've discovered how important this is and people have figured out how to study it, or is it that issues of identity have become more important for people and therefore people are moving towards studying it? So has like the role of identity in people's lives changed, is that what's driving the increase in identity research? Or is it that we just figured it out that this is really important?

Denise Pope (12:33):

I think we are slow to roll in this world, and I think identity has always been important.. particularly if you feel like you're othered in some way, you feel it, you live it, you don't have to be told it. It's like the fish in the water thing, right? Anyone who is not benefiting from the majority culture has been feeling this all along. I think we are finally understanding the connection between that and having a positive learning experience, right? I think it's often been split, "That's a home thing, that's an identity thing, that's a person thing, that's a culture thing," and then you learn math, right? And it took a while for us to figure out, oh wait, it's a system. And cognitively, our processes are all intertwined neurologically that if you feel like you don't belong, you're not going to learn. If you feel like you're being bullied, you're different, you don't see yourself reflected in the curriculum, you're not going to learn. So I think it's the former.

Dan Schwartz (13:35):

The former meaning it's always been there and we're just finally discovering how important it is?

Denise Pope (13:40):

Yes.

Dan Schwartz (13:46):

So I want to go back, people may not know how strong the assimilationist view was of education.

Denise Pope (13:54):

Do you want to explain what that word means?

Dan Schwartz (13:56):

It was that everybody needs to be assimilated to kind of whatever the vision of the American way was. And so the idea is you replace some values with American values. This was extremely strong, right? This was how to make America. So I think the group that you study, for them to find a way to stand up to that and kind of say, "No, you don't want to do that. You want to hang on to the culture, here the argument is educational, it's good for the kids," I'm sure there are other arguments as well. So how did they manage to pull it off, right? I mean, there was so much push towards assimilation.

Maisha Winn (14:39):

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Thank you, Dan, for that. And I would say that potentially many of these institution builders would say that what they were doing was fundamentally American. It was developing and cultivating a new generation of young people who would be active participants, who would stand up for themselves and for other people, who would notice when things were not right, not just for themselves, but for others, and would feel compelled to hold people accountable to do right by other people. That was part of the value system. And so I would say that this community of people would say that that's fundamentally what it means to be American.

Denise Pope (15:26):

And live in a democracy where you have to be educated and community-oriented in order for it to work.

Dan Schwartz (15:36):

Absolutely.

Denise Pope (15:38):

That kind of gives me hope.

Dan Schwartz (15:40):

So Maisha, there's a lot of wisdom. And so how are you turning this into action? I know you have Institute for the Future, I think it's called, tell us about this.

Maisha Winn (15:52):

Yeah, so my research team, the Futuring for Equity Lab, has been partnering with the Institute for the Future, which is actually based here in Palo Alto. I started working with the Institute for the Future in 2019 before the pandemic, and I'm really glad we launched that relationship prior to the pandemic. I attended their Foresight Essentials training, which is basically a training that is used for corporations and people who are trying to forecast what they need to do for their businesses, they're trying to-

Dan Schwartz (16:25):

Oh my God, how many Post-it notes did it involve?

Denise Pope (16:29):

Are you poo-pooing this, Dan? Are you being cynical here?

Maisha Winn (16:33):

They don't use just any old Post-it notes at Institute for the Futures, they actually use something, I don't have any around here, but they use something called Idea catchers, and they're really big Post-it notes, basically.

Denise Pope (16:43):

Big, big idea catchers.

Maisha Winn (16:45):

Big idea catchers, they're fabulous, lots of those. And one of my grad students at the time at UC Davis pointed me in their direction and I was really working on conceptualizing what I call five pedagogical stances for engaging in justice and equity work in schools. And those stances are history matters, race matters, justice matters, language matters, and futures matter. And when I was working on the futures matter stance, I was finding some of the ed literature a little bit limiting, but I also didn't find what I was looking for in sort of the speculative futures literature because I wanted to drill down on things that we could actually do. And so that led me to the Foresight training at Institute for the Future.

(17:32):

And what I learned were some really powerful activities and steps that people can take to think about, to plan for what we call preferred futures. Part of that are collecting signals, signals are like innovations, data, current trends maybe even about what's happening in education. So foundational work was collecting these signals. And I have to tell you that when we found ourselves in the pandemic, I had this historical work covering my dining table, analyzing all of these primary source materials, and I remember moving them over to collect signals for the future of education because I just thought, "I don't know what else to do right now, and I feel like this historical work, I'm not sure if this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now so let me collect these signals."

(18:24):

And as I was collecting these signals, some of them were about how parents were putting together these co-ops, they were figuring out who on the street in the building and the neighborhood were like the humanities/social science parents, and who were the math/science families and how they could cover the kids' school day so that somebody could get some work done. And I just started to look at all of these different ways in which parents were putting their children's education together.

(18:53):

And then after the murder of George Floyd, I started seeing signals around how many Black and Latina families were saying, "Well, we're not really afraid of COVID, we're afraid of racism and racial terror and violence, and we might just want to keep our kids home longer until we can see how other things play out in this arena." So then I started collecting those signals. And all of this ended up leading me back to this historical work around why these parents had started these schools in the first place. A lot of their concerns were very similar to some of the concerns of parents who were deciding not to send their kids back once things were sort of cleared for children to go back to school in the pandemic.

(19:39):

So the Institute for the Future has talked a lot about democratizing the future, and I thought, you know, these skills that these business people are getting are amazing and they're really expensive and they're pretty much inaccessible to everyday folks, and what if we thought about how to adapt some of these tools and make them user-friendly for parents? And then what we decided to do was not just have parents involved in learning the activities and learning the steps and learning the processes, but have them do work with their children.

(20:16):

So we had a pilot, and we have more workshops coming up, where we bring parents in with their children to actually go through different processes where they're planning and thinking about their education futures 10, 15, 20 years out. And it's not just an exercise of, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" But more like what kind of person do you want to be? How do you think you can get there? What are the kinds of things that you do now to prepare for that? And some of those things are in the arena of your academic intellectual work, some of those are in the financial arena, some of them are in the health arena, the mental health arena especially. So we really think about what this looks like across domains.

Dan Schwartz (20:56):

It sounds incredibly useful. Denise, I asked the wrong question. It should have been “How do I think about my future?”

Denise Pope (21:03):

Yeah, for sure.

Dan Schwartz (21:04):

“While honoring my past.”

Denise Pope (21:06):

While honoring my past. I mean, I think that's absolutely right. Here's a question, and I hope I'm not watering it down too much, is there something that you could teach some of our listeners who are parents, just maybe a little baby tool, a little baby way to get started with this, with their own kids are in their own communities?

Maisha Winn (21:22):

Absolutely. My husband laughs at me all the time because when I came back from my Foresight Essentials training, I came back and did all this stuff with our kids at the dining table and he said, "What is going on here?" So I will shout out Lyn Jeffrey at Institute for the Future for helping me think about some of these activities. But she takes you through this activity called Finding Future Me, where basically you're imagining we are 10 years out from now. So it is now the year 2035. First of all, how old will you be?

Dan Schwartz (21:51):

Old.

Denise Pope (21:54):

Old. Dan says old, but yes, okay.

Maisha Winn (21:57):

Where do you think you will be physically? For my kids at that age, I think they were going to be later on in high school thinking about college. What ways will your body be different? How might it change? One of my kids said they were going to have more muscles, one of my kids say they were going to be taller. I wanted to say I was going to be taller too but that probably is not going to happen.

Denise Pope (22:20):

Probably not a good futurist speculation there.

Maisha Winn (22:22):

And Dan, it's funny that you said old because-

Dan Schwartz (22:25):

I said older. No, I said older.

Maisha Winn (22:27):

Older.

Denise Pope (22:27):

I think you said old, my friend.

Maisha Winn (22:29):

I thought you said old, but okay, we'll give it to you.

Denise Pope (22:31):

Okay, all right, okay, all right. You're nicer than me, Maisha.

Maisha Winn (22:35):

But I will say that it's important at this stage in the exercise to also offer up the fact that maybe we can think about how we're going to get better, so not just older but better at something. I want to be one of those women who's swimming laps in the pool. I'm not that person yet, but I hope 10 years from now I'm one of those people who's doing that in the morning when it's freezing cold. I'm not there yet. So what ways will your life improve? What kinds of skills will you have in 10 years that you don't have now? And so finding your future me is a way to just start putting yourself in the head space of thinking about 10 years from now where you would be.

(23:14):

And then we do some exercises, some thinking around if we're feeling optimistic, hopeful, somewhere in between, because I think it's really important for people to talk about how they're feeling about this current moment and what they think is possible 5, 10 years from now, and then what role will they play in creating that kind of future that they want? And children can talk about that. I think my youngest was in first grade when we were doing this, my oldest was in third grade, and they had a vision for themselves. And I think the sooner you start talking and processing about that vision can be very powerful. And it's more than, "What do you want to be when you grow up? What college do you want to go to?”

Denise Pope (24:01):

Or, "What's your passion?" Which gets thrown around a lot too to kids.

Maisha Winn (24:04):

Yes.

Dan Schwartz (24:05):

No, I think people will be surprised at how good kids are at this. So I was doing a study once and I was asking this kid, "Let's say you took a math test and you thought you did well, and then the score comes back and you did badly, you got a D," I said, "What would you do?" And he said, "Well, it's over. I'll do better on the next test."

(24:26):

So then I said to him, "What sport do you play?" He said, "Basketball." And I said, "Well, imagine you're in a game in basketball and you only make three out of 10 free throws. What are you going to do about it?" And suddenly he laid out these plans where “I would work this many hours a day, and if I stick with it, I'll be able to get on a basketball team when I go to college. And then from there I'll get support to get stronger.” He had it all laid out, but I don't think he'd ever thought about it until I asked him, but he could generate it right there. And so if you go into a space that they think about, you'll be surprised at how good they are at this.

Maisha Winn (25:03):

Yeah. And I love this idea that in something that this young person, this example that you're sharing, something that they cared deeply about, they could imagine the steps. And so I think one of the tangible things that we can do right now in schools is we actually need to support our young people with the steps that it takes to get to wherever they want academically.

(25:26):

And we talk about that in terms of executive functions. I remember when I was in this magnet program in my high school, and I didn't realize that most of the students in my school were not getting the same kind of learning experience that I was getting, we were just a small select group, but we actually had human study skills classes that helped us plan and map out how we were going to write a paper, how we were going to attack this math exam. So we had that kind of thing, and a lot of students in the school did not have that. So we were sort of ushered along that kind of pipeline.

(26:03):

And I think about in hindsight how powerful that would've been for so many of my peers who were not in that kind of program. And you see the same thing now. In a lot of our independent schools, we have classes, we have support systems around human skills, around study skills, around just trying to get your ducks in order and have a plan, and we don't necessarily have that for all of our public schools.

Denise Pope (26:30):

It's something I know we're working on at Challenge Success where just even building time in the schedule to have that is one big piece and then you have to find teachers who feel comfortable teaching it and all of that, but it makes such a difference.

Maisha Winn (26:43):

It really does.

Denise Pope (26:44):

First of all, thank you, Maisha, because we've learned so much and we can go on forever. But I do want to just put to you kind of to have a sense of if you were going to sum up, which is hard, some key points that you want our listeners to walk away with, what would those be?

Maisha Winn (27:00):

Well, let's start asking young people about their futures, how they're imagining their futures. And let's not always have that be embedded in what college you're going to or what you want to do when you grow up, but what kinds of things you care about, what kinds of things that you're interested in, in and beyond school and academics, I think that that's very important.

(27:26):

I think that it's important to think about this notion of identity, purpose, and direction and supporting our young people in developing really solid narratives about their lineage, about who they are, about what their goals are now and kind of where they see themselves going. I cannot express enough how important I think it is for young people to have this strong sense of identity that allows them then to connect with other people in really powerful ways. Because when you have a sense of who you are, it's really easy to connect and build with other people. And I think some of the social pressures and complications in schools with young people, and quite frankly even with our adults, are around people sort of searching and trying to measure themselves against someone else's measuring stick. And I think that we have to invite our young people to be agentive in telling their own stories.

Denise Pope (28:28):

I love it. Maisha, thank you so much. It's such important work that you're doing, it's really caused me and the listeners, I'm sure, to think so much so this was great. So thank you and thank all of you for joining this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (28:50):

Oh, I'm the same guy as always, I'm Dan.

Maisha Winn (29:00):

That was so fun.

Denise Pope (29:03):

I'm glad. You see what I go through here? Yeah.

Maisha Winn (29:06):

I'm just afraid that I was laughing at Dan half the time.

Denise Pope (29:10):

No, you were perfect.

Podcast

split

GSE area

Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , Maisha Winn

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:28:40 +0000

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education Olivia Peterkin Wed, 12/18/2024 - 10:28

Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity | Research and Practice

On this episode, Amy Gerstein, executive director of ��’s John W. Gardner Center, discusses the effects of unstable housing on students.

December 19, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

From effective pedagogy and group work, to creating a safe and engaging learning environment, many teachers and educational leaders are well-versed in how to foster student success within school walls.

However, what happens outside those walls has an equal, if not larger, impact on educational performance, begging the question — how do schools support students outside of the classroom?

“It is imperative for schools of education to be doing research on communities,” said Amy Gerstein, executive director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. “Schools don’t do it alone and we need to be more intentional about breaking down silos and making connections all for the same goals of improving the lives of youth and trying to really address and create equitable outcomes.”

In her role, Gerstein directs the center in its mission to conduct research that advances equity for young people and their communities, while working with nonprofits and community members across sectors.

“We’re always studying youth who are in dependent care, multilingual learners, foster youth, youth who have had challenges with discipline or with their health, and those who are in need of special education services” she said. “All of those groups of young people tend to perform poorly, have lower educational outcomes in that they are less likely to graduate from high school, they’re less likely to be prepared to go to college, and less likely to have strong attendance. And then when we looked at this population of youth who are in unstable housing, it’s really dramatically worse.”

Gerstein joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss how schools can identify students in unstable housing, train staff to support those students sensitively, and partner with community organizations to meet needs.

She also talks about the “community school” model, where resources are centralized around school’s as a hub in the community.

“If you’re hungry, unhoused, have concerns about your immigration status, need a job, or need to learn English, all of these kinds of services and issues can be identified and addressed by the school having formal partnerships with community-based organizations that provide it,” Gerstein said.

“[The community school model is] great for making sure that the whole child and the whole family is being helped.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Amy Gerstein (00:00):

I think there's a very large stigma associated with this. So who wants to declare that they're struggling in this way? No one.

Denise Pope (00:09):

Today we're diving into a topic that's often overlooked but has a huge impact on student success, how schools can support students facing unstable housing. These are challenges that go far beyond the classroom, but they have a huge effect on educational outcomes.

Dan Schwartz (00:25):

That's right. There are a lot of things that happen outside of school that impact students' performance in school, but this has to be one of the biggest, and schools can't handle this alone. It really takes a whole community effort.

Denise Pope (00:38):

That's right. And that's why we're really excited to bring in an expert who's leading the way on how schools and communities can work together to help these students in need. It's going to be a really important conversation. Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at �� Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of �� GSE and Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:19):

We brought a foremost expert who's going to explain why it is imperative for schools of education to take a look at communities.

Denise Pope (01:28):

Yes, I'm excited for this conversation. So we have Amy Gerstein here who is the Executive Director of ��'s, John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. It's built right into the name.

Dan Schwartz (01:41):

Right into the School of Education.

Denise Pope (01:43):

Right into the School of Education, and the Gardner Center has a rich history of partnering with schools to understand the factors that inhibit growth in students and communities, and the center uses research-based insights to advance equitable opportunities for youth. So Amy, thank you so much for being on the show and welcome.

Amy Gerstein (02:00):

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Denise Pope (02:02):

We're excited to have you here. And obviously you are someone who thinks that schools of education should study communities, and I know that one of the things that you've been doing among many studies is a recent study on youth who are either unhoused or in unstable housing, and to me that's very much looking at the community, right? So tell us how that came about and a little bit about the study.

Amy Gerstein (02:28):

Sure. So I think it is imperative for schools of education to be doing research on communities. And I want to say just as a word of background, that my whole career prior to coming to the Gardner Center was really squarely focused in education, in schools, in districts, and with foundations who were working with schools and districts, maybe institutions of higher ed, but I had not, until I came to the Gardner Center, really turned my lens outward to, oh, where school situated and why does that matter?

(03:08):

And a really important part of the whole founding of the Gardner Center was this notion that our work needs to be multi-sector, that schools don't do it alone, they never have, and we need to be more strategic and intentional about breaking down silos and making connections all for the same goals of improving the lives of youth and trying to really address and equitable outcomes for youth. So for us, that's a big grounding of who we are. So the study that we conducted was a county-wide study in San Mateo County to really look at the educational outcomes of youth who were experiencing homelessness or unstable housing. And there isn't a lot known about that. We had done a similar study in San Francisco a few years prior, but in this case we were looking to understand what are the educational outcomes of students who are in unstable housing.

Dan Schwartz (04:18):

Amy, is there any model in which their educational outcomes are better than students who have housing?

Amy Gerstein (04:24):

No.

Dan Schwartz (04:25):

I hate to say duh, but it can't be good, can it?

Amy Gerstein (04:30):

It's not only not good, it's the worst. We're always studying youth who are in dependent care, foster youth, or youth who have had challenges with discipline or with their health or who are in need of special education services or who are multilingual learners. All of those groups of young people tend to perform poorly, have lower educational outcomes in that they are less likely to graduate from high school, they're less likely to be prepared to go to college, and less likely to have strong attendance and so on.

(05:07):

And then when we looked at this population of youth who are in unstable housing, it's really dramatically worse. So for example, students who are experiencing unstable housing, and it's important that I kind of come back and define that, but students who are in that kind of situation are four times as likely as students who are in stable housing, they are four times as likely not to complete high school. That's a lot. They're five times as likely, all through, yeah, it's a lot, and five times as likely, elementary, middle, and high school, they're five times as likely as those peers who are in stable housing to be chronically absent. They're five times as likely to have out of school suspensions. So there's sort of a number of ways we can cut the data and also just their educational outcomes in terms of achievement are also much lower.

(06:09):

In other studies we have at times measured some of the social and emotional development issues, so we know there's potentially higher resilience among this population of students, which I think is a really exciting outcome. We were not able to do that, we did that in San Francisco, we were not able to do that in San Mateo County, mostly because the school districts don't collect those data. In San Francisco, they were collecting those data, so we could look at that, and we did that with Jelena Oberdovich. So we were able to talk about a few positive assets.

(06:45):

So just one more word on the unstable housing or the instability. So one of the challenges facing this population and facing communities writ large are different definitions of homelessness. So for example, from the federal level, that means what they call literally homeless, maybe sleeping in a car or being on the streets. In education, we use a different definition. This is federal as well, and it's the McKinney-Vento definition which means anyone in essentially unstable housing. So if you are, and that is defined as families that are doubled up. So we know around here, that was a very, it's a prominent way, very common for families to address this really crazy region that we're in terms of housing. And so that means 2, 3, 4 families in one unit. So that's considered unstable housing. If you're in a garage. There are any number of arrangements that are considered unstable.

(07:50):

And why that's important is because then they have access to resources if it's declared. So if we know that about young people, we can lean in with some resources. And when we did this study, 100% of the school districts, which was all the districts in the county, said, "We'll happily share these data, and you should know 100% these are an under count." So they said, "However bad it looks to you, it's really worse because we know there are more students experiencing unstable housing than have declared it on our books."

Denise Pope (08:28):

Is that because of shame? What causes someone to not declare it, especially this is preventing them from getting resources?

Amy Gerstein (08:37):

So this was a mixed method study. And so one of the reasons that we did qualitative research was to dig into this question because when every district is reporting this, we need to understand this. So I think there's a very large stigma associated with this. So who wants to declare that they're struggling in this way? No one. And a lot of the families are mixed status. They may be undocumented or may have members of the family that are undocumented. That's what I mean by mixed status. They're afraid. They're afraid to tell an official person at a school, even though their schools are sensitive places. They are protected, but they're afraid of that. So they're also afraid of having any, what is considered a public charge, so if you get some public services, if you get help from a community-based organization, a nonprofit, will that count against families who are trying to become legal residents in the country?

(09:40):

And for many years it was not considered a public charge to get these kinds of resources, but it became that way in 2016, actually 2017, and so that actually was really bad for this population. It's also who's watching? So this is again about breaking down the boundaries and the silos. Often, we've learned that it was the people in the front office, the school secretary, who was the first person likely to identify, "I've seen this kid wear the same clothes for six days." And so some districts were really thoughtful and trained the front office staff to first know how to identify but also think about how to approach them and do it in a way that was respectful and so on.

(10:38):

And often those folks in the front office actually live in the community. They speak the language of people who are living in the community, so they're actually great people to be able to do that if they're trained appropriately. And so that was one of the areas we learned from school districts that they just weren't attending to it because in many ways it just hadn't occurred to them that they need to.

Denise Pope (11:00):

I love that the front office staff can play that role and can be a force for good.

Dan Schwartz (11:09):

So we're a school of education. We need to decide the scope of our work. So where do we do research? What do we hire faculty in? What do we offer programs in for students? So this is a tough problem because education shapes all of life. You're a parent, you're a kid, you're in school all the time, and then you're a parent, and your kids are in school all the time. So education's shaping all that. At the same time, everything around life shapes education like where you live. So what should be the scope of the research of a school of education? Should it just be K-12 classrooms? Should it be teacher unions? Should it be early childhood? Should it be workforce development? Should it be communities and families? Should the GSE do work with communities like research and intervention? Or should schools of education just say, "Look, you deal with schools?"

Denise Pope (12:08):

It's actually a really interesting question. I know it's a bit facetious because I think my answer is going to be yes. Okay. Well-

Dan Schwartz (12:14):

Sorry. Sorry. The general question is quite interesting. The question of whether we should do research on communities, given that we have one of the foremost community researchers with us, is a little facetious. Yes.

Denise Pope (12:26):

Okay. But no, I think that first of all, I think it's a really important question because as you said, schools don't happen in a vacuum, and yet there's this phrase, we don't want to boil the ocean. Does that make sense to you?

Dan Schwartz (12:42):

You like that phrase?

Denise Pope (12:43):

This is why I like the phrase. I never heard the phrase before until, I don't know, about 15 years ago. And it just makes sense because you can't do everything. I feel like because of the way we know how schools operate and how people learn and that education happens over the course of a lifetime, it puts a really tough burden on schools of education and also kind of thinking like, well, what makes us different then from a school of social work who would also allegedly study communities and organizations? And where do those lines stop? And is it okay to blur it?

Dan Schwartz (13:16):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (13:16):

Right?

Dan Schwartz (13:18):

Yeah. And at some point you have to make a decision.

(13:25):

So Amy, quick question. I'm a school, and I discover my students in unstable housing. What kind of resources do I provide?

Amy Gerstein (13:35):

So that's a terrific question. So first of all, this is again about the importance of breaking down silos. It's critical for the schools and the district to have partnerships with community-based organizations that work with families like this. So that's one of the first things that'll happen is trying to connect the family with an organization like Life Moves that works to help folks in this kind of situation get into stable and what they consider permanent housing, which means not a shelter. So they really work at that. So immediately hooking them up with a community-based organization.

(14:14):

It also means making sure that transportation is not an issue. So oftentimes when a family is experiencing unstable housing that might go move in with a cousin who lives in a different town who lives in a different school district. Well, when the family is having so much instability, it really helps to keep the child in the same school district, same school. So assuring the child that that's going to happen and giving them support with transportation. Sometimes that literally means paying for taxis, it means bus passes, it means lots of different things, but a lot of the resources were around transportation.

(14:52):

It also means making sure they have the basics. Like do they need a school uniform? Do they need a backpack? Do they need notebooks? What kind of equipment do they need? And getting it to them with very little fanfare. And I think also making sure there are all these ways in which making sure they're on free and reduced, probably free lunch and other free meals, but also making sure that these little things that come up, field trips, yearbooks, that these young people are on a list that is known to just a few people because of the privacy issues, but that list makes sure that all these young people get what they like everyone else, they get a yearbook, they get tickets to the prom, they get to go on the field trip, and it's handled with respect. I think that one of the areas that we learned is that you can imagine schools and districts vary in their ability to carry out sharing of those resources.

Denise Pope (15:54):

You also mentioned earlier the front office would see the kid come to school in the same clothes. And I, a friend of mine, ran a study where Whirlpool donated washers and dryers to the school site, and it was done very respectfully that it was open to these families to have laundry facilities. It's like all of those things, you don't even think about, tickets to the prom and laundry. And I think it's all the more reason why we want these people to admit the situation so that they can get the resources. Right, Amy?

Amy Gerstein (16:28):

Right. That's exactly right. And one of the challenges with the front office staff in terms of training is making sure that they know a simple attestation is enough.

Denise Pope (16:38):

What does that mean? Walk us through that.

Amy Gerstein (16:40):

In other words, if a family is experiencing these kinds of challenges, all they have to do is let anyone in the building know, any school personnel like the school secretary and say, "We lost our apartment." And they don't need to bring an eviction notice. They don't need to bring proof of anything. But until and unless those school personnel are trained, they might ask for more. And we have heard that. That's one of the reasons there's an under count, or there's just the fear that they will have to provide proof, but all they have to do is say, "We lost our housing." That's it. And sign something saying this happened.

Dan Schwartz (17:21):

So I can see why training the school personnel is so important. All the resources are waiting. You have some beliefs that make it so you're not getting access to that. School personnel could help a lot.

Amy Gerstein (17:36):

They can help a lot. And often it's also the people who are providing the free lunch that are monitoring those lists. Those are the people who in some ways are really all knowing. They're the ones who know, who's experiencing unstable housing, who might be in dependent care, at foster youth, and there was real variability as to how much the people in those roles were actually communicating openly about this. We got to make sure this family is taken care of.

Dan Schwartz (18:08):

So it's a little tangential, but I would imagine the paraprofessionals in classrooms basically aids from the community know a lot if the kid says, "I'm homeless," is that enough to trigger or it has to come from the parent?

Denise Pope (18:22):

Oh, good question, Dan.

Amy Gerstein (18:24):

It is actually. That's considered a disclosure to a teacher or an aid, and that is also enough to start some of the resources flowing, and it has to be done really sensitively. I think the example of the washers and dryers is actually terrific. There's a local school district that they have 50%, 50, of their students are considered an unstable housing, and so the school district installed washers and dryers in every school.

Denise Pope (18:52):

Amazing.

Amy Gerstein (18:53):

There's also, again, a community-based organization that has what they call dignity wagons, that they're like trailers that pull up, and you can take a shower.

Denise Pope (19:03):

Wow. I mean, that's huge. That's amazing. I can imagine there'd be some issues though about who's going to the dignity? You have to be careful there too.

Amy Gerstein (19:15):

Right. Again, that's another community-based organization, and they do a terrific job of figuring out how to do that and how to, again, be respectful, give people clean clothing, just try to help them and make sure that no stigma, no shame is being communicated, and that's really hard and really profound if we can do that.

Denise Pope (19:40):

Why aren't these things being offered just as part of the deal, right? In communities where you know that there's going to be large populations in need, why do we have to fight for all this? What's an answer here, Amy, if you have one?

Amy Gerstein (19:55):

Well, I have some insights from, I think some really strong practices that a few districts were doing. In a few districts, if a student was ever considered in unstable housing, they kept that flag on the student's file forever because they said, okay, so maybe Amy's family is struggling and needs a lift this year, this academic year. Chances are, even if Amy's family gets into stable housing, it's probably not all that stable. The chances are they're still, they may be scraping by, so we'll keep a flag that says this is a family that might need a little extra. So I think that's a very good action that school districts can take. There's no need to, once you're identified, let's just keep you identified as someone in need of extra support.

Dan Schwartz (20:52):

Where does the school district get the money to do this?

Amy Gerstein (20:55):

So there are federal and state resources. I will say I thought that the resources were meager, not in terms of dollars, but that these families needed more. And it was really hard on the schools and districts to be the providers. So where they had strong partnerships with community organizations, it was much better for the family.

Denise Pope (21:20):

A show a while back on, I forget what the actual phrase is, but community schools where all of the resources are kind of there or the community's all working together with them. Is that a potential, it's like how much can the school take on is a question?

Dan Schwartz (21:40):

Say more about the model, Amy.

Amy Gerstein (21:42):

So the community schools are an area that we've been doing research for over 20 years, and it's getting increasing attention. The state just passed a bill that is providing some funding for statewide community schools, and what it is it's a model, and it's a strategy that is intended to help remove barriers to learning. That's the way I like to talk about it. So if you're hungry, if you're unhoused, if you have concerns about your immigration status, if you need a job, if you need to learn English, all of these kinds of services can be, and issues, can be identified and addressed by the school, by the school having formal partnerships with community-based organizations that provide it.

(22:28):

So in these community schools, there's generally a full-time person who could be called a community school manager or community school coordinator whose job is to work with teachers and with the community-based organizations to be able to say, "Teachers, you might pick this up in your classroom. You might have a student that divulges something. You might notice that this is a child that keeps falling asleep in class. Maybe they're hungry, maybe they're sick. Maybe there's something going on. You need to let the community school manager know so that they can identify appropriate resources." Those are some of the best models. And I can say Redwood City as a school district has addressed that district-wide. Oakland has been trying to do that district-wide as well. It's great for making sure that the whole child and the whole family is being helped. There are mental health services. Sometimes there are school clinics, sometimes there are dental services, the dignity wagons, all of that. And there's one person for sure at the school site that is handling all this discreetly.

Denise Pope (23:31):

And that just makes so much sense to me, and it doesn't seem like it's that hard. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but gosh.

Dan Schwartz (23:38):

Well, it's sort of surprising that the main problem is a lack of information, that parents don't know where to go, and the school can't tell.

Denise Pope (23:47):

Or are afraid.

Dan Schwartz (23:50):

Or they're resistant, and the school doesn't quite know who. And maybe without a community organization, the school doesn't have a triage model for helping them find the right resource.

Denise Pope (24:01):

I could also just see as someone who knows something, maybe in the lunchroom or whatever, there's all these privacy rules, so it's not surprising to me that the person at this end of the school doesn't talk to the person at this end of the school because of the privacy rules. And there's privacy rules about everything. I mean, what you can and can't divulge.

Amy Gerstein (24:20):

There are, and HIPAA also comes into play, which is a privacy role that's related to which for sure show up around mental health or even physical health because a lot of these community schools have clinics, or they have vans that visit and do confidential medical care for both students and sometimes families. What I would say about the sharing of information is a lot of these privacy laws are poorly understood, so people tend to err on the side of keeping things private, and they may not always have to. One of the colleagues we work with the most is a child psychiatrist in the medical school here at ��, and he always calls it the Great Wall of HIPAA, and he thinks it's just overly worried about, that we can honor privacy, and we can make sure people are getting the help they need.

Denise Pope (25:14):

Especially when the well-being of the child is at stake, you would think that that would be, but I get it, it's hard. But it does bring us back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is why schools of education should absolutely have centers like the Gardner Center that studies communities, because you can't learn, as you said. This is the worst thing that can happen, and we know there's so many other things that affect kids in learning. It's sad that we need to do these kinds of studies, that these issues even exist at the extent that they do. And yet, I'm so glad that you and your team are doing this and doing this really, really important work, Amy, so thank you. Thank you for being here, but also thank you for the work.

Dan Schwartz (26:04):

I agree. Thank you, Amy. It's been a great conversation and very informative in an area where I think a lot of people don't have a chance to see what's happening and how we can do things outside of school or in school that support these children.

Denise Pope (26:19):

For sure. I really think we're just starting to scratch the surface of how much these partnerships can actually help. Dan, I'm curious, do you think schools are ready to navigate the creation of these triage models?

Dan Schwartz (26:33):

I think it's going to be a challenge. Schools need to stay up to date on the laws and work within the system to support the students more effectively, but it is going to be finding that balance between respecting privacy and getting students the help they need.

Denise Pope (26:47):

And that's where the research really comes in, giving schools the knowledge they need to make smarter and more informed decisions. So thank you to Amy once again for sharing all these insights, and thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (27:08):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

Podcast

split

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

Teaching ethnic studies: Four takeaways from �� education conference

Carrie Spector — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 17:49:40 +0000

Teaching ethnic studies: Four takeaways from �� education conference

Carrie Spector Fri, 10/18/2024 - 10:49

(Photo: Allison Shelley for EDUimages)

Curriculum and Instruction | Race and Equity | Teaching

The RILE program brought together researchers and educators to forge a path for statewide implementation of ethnic studies.

October 17, 2024

By Isabel Sacks

Starting next academic year, high schools across the state of California must offer ethnic studies courses, and they will be a graduation requirement starting with the class of 2030. In a large and diverse state with nearly 2 million secondary students, districts are working on – and sometimes struggling with – how to effectively bring the coursework into their schools and create meaningful and high quality lessons that enrich and benefit students.

The 2024 annual conference of the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) program at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) addressed this issue through a multi-day convening, “Exploring Ethnic Studies: A Collaboration Research & Training Event for Everyone.” The conference aimed to support California educators, administrators, and districts to implement the ethnic studies mandate, and featured two days of virtual panels with researchers and practitioners, followed by two days of in-person teacher professional development workshops with the Khepera Curriculum Group.

For the first time, the �� Accelerator for Learning was a collaborator on the event, having initiated a seed grant exploring new approaches to ethnic studies earlier this year as part of its Equity in Learning initiative. Ethnic studies is an interdisciplinary approach to learning about the histories, experiences, and cultures of marginalized groups that emerged from student activism in the 1960s. Research by Tom Dee, a professor at the GSE, has shown both short and long-term academic benefits of an ethnic studies program in San Francisco, leading to adoption of an ethnic studies mandate in the state.

While ethnic studies is a contentious topic in education, the conference sparked honest discourse between researchers, curriculum developers, classroom teachers, and teacher educators and raised key questions to consider as the subject is implemented in schools statewide.

Some insights from the conversations:

1. Ethnic studies can be transformative for students and society.

Eujin Park, an assistant professor at the GSE and faculty affiliate of the Accelerator, took her first ethnic studies course as an undergraduate. “It was revelatory and transformative, and gave me a new language and a new framework to understand my own experience and that of others,” she said. “It shaped the rest of my four years in college and the trajectory of my career and research.”

As a high school teacher for more than a decade in San Jose and East Palo Alto, where her students are largely Latino, Irene Castillon, MA '10, witnesses the benefit to her students of learning Mexican-American history. “I see engagement and love for learning, and there is a lot of question-asking,” she said of her students, crediting the connection of the course to student identities. She noted that students in these courses brought in stories of their lives and their families, and went above and beyond because they wanted to, not just for the sake of a grade.

“One of the most powerful impacts of ethnic studies is that it can create humanizing spaces in classrooms and in our society,” she said, and shared that several of her former students have now become ethnic studies teachers themselves, pointing to the multigenerational impact of the approach.

Albert Camarillo, a professor emeritus of history at ��, is widely regarded as one of the founding scholars of the field of Mexican-American and Chicano Studies. He reflected on his decades of experience teaching ethnic studies at the college level to students who rarely had access to these types of courses in high school.

“When you provide this information to students who are open-minded and thirsting for this knowledge, they are listening intently,” he said. “We can see today how race is still such a dividing idea used to drive fear and anxiety in the hearts of a lot of Americans. Don’t we as educators have a fundamental commitment to provide a basis for our students to be able to understand each other?”

Albert Camarillo, a professor emeritus of history at ��. (Photo: Linda A. Cicero / �� News Service)

2. Ethnic studies cannot be taught in a silo; it must draw upon students’ realities.

Several panelists expressed concern about the challenge of implementing ethnic studies successfully across the diversity of school settings in California, and highlighted the importance of ethnic studies courses that reflect students’ lived experiences, family backgrounds, and communities.

Tony Green, a 30-year veteran social studies teacher at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, has developed and taught Black Studies courses for years, drawing upon local history and community.

“In the East Bay, there is a rich legacy of Black community and I try to bring in elders as the foundation of the class,” he said. “They are a primary source to tie into African American history. Allowing community involvement builds on the richness of the content.”

Green has taken his students to see Bobby McFerrin as part of a lesson on the oral tradition of West Africa, leads an annual field trip to Marcus Books, the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the United States, and invites his students’ families to class to share their stories. “The more I bring in the community, the more the content and pedagogy changes,” he said.

Park sees potential for ethnic studies to make schooling more responsive to marginalized students and communities. “What happens when their knowledge and experiences become centered the way that ethnic studies demands that we do? What would it look like to seriously engage the funds of knowledge that communities hold? How can that transform California’s K-12 schooling?” she asked.

3. Teacher preparation and self-reflection are crucial in the implementation of ethnic studies.

Rita Kohli, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), coordinates the ethnic studies pathway of the university’s teacher education program. Her work has focused on building and strengthening the racial literacies of teachers, especially teachers of color. Kohli noted that between 85-90% of teacher preparation faculty are white, and traditionally, teacher certification programs talk little about race. However, this fall, every incoming teacher candidate at UCR will take the ethnic studies pathway course.

“Teacher education programs need to grow and be responsive – the ethnic studies pathway is a possibility for this to happen,” said Kohli. “But it will take the willingness of teacher prep program leaders, districts, and schools to grow in their understanding of ethnic studies.”

She also noted the danger of ethnic studies teachers, particularly teachers of color, being held responsible for all social justice and diversity work in their schools, which she has seen become stressful and draining for teachers she’s worked with. “What are the things we can do to invest in everyone’s racial literacy?” she posed to the group.

Castillon shared what it’s taken for her to become a successful teacher of ethnic studies. “Ethnic studies is the merging of the hearts and minds, and I think about ethnic studies as ‘a work of heart,’” she said. “Teaching is sometimes go-go-go. But it’s important to have pause moments to include families and the community to do this work.”

She cited self-reflection and consideration of identity and positionality as key. “Before teaching ethnic studies, teachers need to consider, ‘Who am I? What is my story? What do I need to learn and unlearn?’”

4. Researchers are key collaborators in developing ethnic studies programming.

Antero Garcia, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty affiliate of the Accelerator, is coordinating the Accelerator’s seed grant that funds new research on how to teach ethnic studies across school contexts. He described some of the in-progress research projects and reflected on the role of universities in supporting the implementation of California’s ethnic studies mandate.

“When it comes to setting our research agendas in academia, we need to consider: who does our work reach? How does it improve teacher practice? Who does this work benefit?” he said. Garcia urged researchers to consider both their research methods and dissemination to be most useful in classrooms. “If ethnic studies is about uplifting these communities we have worked with for years, do the ways we communicate that work fulfill that promise?” he asked.

Camarillo echoed that higher education needs to support ethnic studies implementation in high school, saying, “Ethnic studies is already being offered and is successful at universities in a lot of places, and collaborations between districts and universities are being established across the state.” He called upon both high school teachers and researchers to seek out and invest in these collaborations. “It’s a larger educational movement.”

Research Stories

split

GSE area

normal

Faculty mentioned in this article: Antero Garcia , Eujin Park

Youth mental health: Racial trauma and stress

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 22:25:28 +0000

Youth mental health: Racial trauma and stress Olivia Peterkin Wed, 10/09/2024 - 15:25

Diversity and Identity | Race and Equity | Research and Practice

On this episode of School’s In, Assistant Professor Farzana (Saleem) Adjah discusses racial trauma and its effects on student mental health.

October 10, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

In 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism a serious public health threat due to its deleterious effects on the mental and physical health of people of color. This includes school-age students, who may not have the tools to identify what they’re experiencing and navigate their experiences in a healthy way.

Assistant Professor Farzana (Saleem) Adjah at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) says equipping students with strategies to process and heal from racial trauma is one of the best ways to support their success.

“We want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive,” she said on the latest episode of GSE’s School’s In podcast.

Adjah joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss how racial bias can show up in schools and how educators can adopt a culturally-responsive, trauma-informed lens when interacting with students. Adjah also shares research-based strategies to help young people thrive amid adversity.

Her research focuses on the impact of racial stressors on health, wellbeing, and academic success, and she has experience providing therapy to children and adolescents, delivering treatment, and consulting and coaching others in trauma-informed, evidence-based intervention in schools.

“We know that having a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity for young people of color is a buffer against race-related stressors,” Adjah said. “We tend to see that having that sense of cultural pride, knowing about your heritage, knowing the strengths of your cultural group, knowing how your cultural group has overcome, or even how they’ve used strategies around resistance or empowerment, can also reduce the impact.”

In addition to community-based interventions, Adjah and her colleagues are using technological tools like virtual classrooms to study how educators respond to students’ questions about race-related topics race-related distress.

“Eventually our goal is to figure out how we can help teachers be able to increase their self-efficacy and confidence and skills to respond to student race-related topics and distress within the classroom,” she said.

If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, the National Institute of Mental Health lists resources on their webpage.

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (00:00):

So we want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Today, once again, we're looking at the mental health of our students, a subject you all know is near and dear to my heart. In fact, we're going to spend several episodes this season on mental health issues. It's that important. In this show, we'll be focusing on racial trauma and stress and the effect that it has on all of us.

Dan Schwartz (00:33):

It's an important conversation. Are you feeling ready for it?

Denise Pope (00:36):

Definitely. Let's get into it.

(00:41):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at �� Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of �� GSE and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:10):

When I think about mental health and things that create a threat to mental health, I think of things like unstable housing, poverty, a fractious home. In 2021, the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, declared racism as a mental health threat. And in some ways it surprised me because it was just a category I wouldn't have put there. But then when I heard it made complete sense...

Denise Pope (01:37):

Oh, yeah.

Dan Schwartz (01:39):

... that racism would be a tremendous threat to mental health.

Denise Pope (01:42):

Yeah, unbelievable. I mean, we've known this for years, right? If you think about structural racism built into the system and someone's trying to buy a house in a neighborhood that's been redlined or try to get healthcare, there's so many examples that this should not be a surprise to anyone, that it's a huge toll on your mental health.

(02:07):

I think what's even scarier is you've got two things happening. You have structural systemic racism, and that's really hard to wrap your head around, like, "What can I do as an individual to change that?" But then you also have just the day-to-day unrelenting attacks on your identity. But this is why we are really lucky to have an expert with us today.

(02:27):

So I'm very excited to introduce a leading expert in trauma and racial bias in schools. Dr. Farzana Adjah is a professor at �� Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the impact racial stressors have on health, wellbeing, and academic success. So right up my alley, right? Farzana has experience providing therapy to children and adolescents, and beyond delivering treatment, she's consulted and coached others in trauma-informed evidence-based intervention in schools. So we are so glad you're here. Yay. Welcome.

Dan Schwartz (03:04):

Welcome, Farzana.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (03:05):

Thank you all. Thank you for having me.

Denise Pope (03:08):

We were just opening this up, but you're the expert here, so give us some definitions, maybe help us define racial bias and trauma in particular.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (03:18):

Yeah. We were talking earlier when you all started too about this idea of structural racism versus interpersonal racism. And so I think that just making sure folks are on the same page about that too, thinking about systems, policies, and practices that are biased based on race and that cause different disparities over time versus the interpersonal piece, we think about that day-to-day interaction, and that's maybe one-to-one, whether that's racial bullying or teasing or racial slurs that you might hear. And so thinking about the different forms of racism or race-related stress that might happen.

(03:56):

And then I think you also asked about thinking about the definition of trauma or trying to understand the definition of trauma. And so what folks might say is there is some really stressful, life-threatening event that happens to an individual that poses a threat to physical or psychological integrity. So there's something that poses this threat to safety, and then that can have consequences on different outcomes. So for example, people might have intrusive thoughts. So maybe you're having thoughts about the situation that happened or nightmares. You might feel more like hypervigilant or overstimulated or aroused. You might have different cues or reminders maybe when you're visiting that place that trigger that trauma response, as well as just psychological symptoms, so maybe worry, stress, sadness. So it can result in these different types of symptoms as well as impact focus in other areas too.

Denise Pope (04:57):

So I think when people think of schools, and I'm going to generalize, I think when people think of schools, you tend to think of safer places, places where adults care about kids. How does this play into then kids in schools? Because we know that there's structural racism built into schools, but tell us more.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (05:15):

Yeah, so I think the one thing that I consider a lot is there are kids coming into the school context with a whole life outside of school, which we know. And so the experiences that they have both outside of school that they're bringing in show up in the classroom. And so for example, sometimes trauma experiences or trauma symptoms even can show up and be conflated with other types of challenges that youth might have, for example, ADHD. So difficulty sitting still or being fidgety, having outbursts or being triggered. So sometimes we're thinking about how children are showing up in the classroom context. I think a lot about how trauma is important for teachers to have this trauma-informed lens and culturally-responsive trauma-informed lens when trying to interact and understand student behavior and make sense of what might be going on.

(06:06):

And then I also think about, to your point too, of thinking about the perpetuation of things that might happen within the school context that could also be stressful or traumatic for young people. And so we know that youth spend a lot of time in schools, particularly in K-12. And so that time that they're spending in schools, things might happen in the school context that they're trying to make sense of, that they're trying to even process. So that could be things like racial teasing, racial bullying, could be experiencing something traumatic that happens within the larger school context. And so students are coming in with these experiences, but then it's also possible that they're having encounters that are stressful or traumatic actually within the school context too.

Dan Schwartz (06:47):

Before we consider the things you might do about this to ameliorate it, I'm a teacher, am I going to be able to tell if a kid's coming in with trauma, like they act out and they didn't use to or a change of behavior? What are the kinds of things I should look for where I might then go get some help?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (07:08):

I think that it's not going to possible to necessarily give a diagnosis, so to say, "This child is definitely dealing with trauma," unless they report, and maybe you know of something directly where, "Okay, this family just had a parent maybe get removed from the household or experienced a car crash," or whatever it might be. So it's possible you might have that information and then you might notice changes in behaviors. And also to just acknowledge too, not everyone responds the same to something. So there could be one child that experiences the same type of adverse event, but they might have a different reaction to it. And so I appreciate that young folks are able to develop strategies around these kind of skills or coping when difficult things happen, although it's unfortunate that these things even happen in the first place, but just recognizing that each child will react differently.

(08:00):

So I think you could be able to identify some things that might inform, "Hey, I wonder if there might be something going on related to mental health or trauma here." So if you do see changes in behavior, if you've known a student for a while and you've noticed maybe they're more fidgety, they're more restless, they're having more difficulty concentrating, maybe they do have outbursts, so it could look more like outbursts. It could also look like withdrawal. So going from that more externalizing and/or internalizing, depending what might be going on with them or how they might be processing it. Sometimes they might be more disengaged within the classroom context. So again, that difficulty with focusing or maybe even having intrusive symptoms or just being really consumed with what might be going on with them. So it could look like disengagement within the classroom context as well.

(08:50):

I think looking out for some of those changes, or if you are newer to learning a student and you notice a pattern of these behavioral markers, I think it should put up an antenna to say, "Okay, I wonder what might be going on." And then hopefully there are other resources too where maybe you could talk to a school counselor or figure out if there are other resources or information about what might be going on with the student if you don't talk directly with them. So those are a couple of suggestions.

Dan Schwartz (09:24):

I've heard the assistant who works the front desk at the school is probably the best at being able to see changes coming in the door.

Denise Pope (09:34):

Okay. Why do you think that, Dan?

Dan Schwartz (09:34):

The parents come in with a child, and I think the parent's behavior is more transparent at revealing that something's going on, that there's been a change. The kids coming into school late with the parents, things like that.

Denise Pope (09:48):

I was going to say, I mean it's not surprising because I would say they also know all the absentee rates, and often they're the ones that call home. I don't know if people know this, but in some schools, when your kid doesn't show up, there is a call home to see if everything's okay. But also with adolescents, it's to make sure that they're not ditching or doing things that they shouldn't. So they have a lot of the knowledge.

Dan Schwartz (10:17):

Farzana, I hate to put the burden on the kid. So there's a child who's going into situations where their racial identity is being threatened, they're getting some self-doubt about with their positioning, ideally the school would be able to create supportive environments. But are there things you can do to help children? I know you work on this, to try and get children a good framing for interpreting what's happening. How do you do this?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (10:50):

My colleagues and I co-developed a group-based intervention that's helping youth essentially be able to gain strategies for understanding what might be going on as youth might be making sense of different race-related stressors, navigating identity or challenges around just racial identity development, and then trying to heal from the consequences. So I think the beginning of the podcast we had talked about racism as a public health threat or concern and the consequences of race-related stressors. And so the intervention is also designed to help think about strategies to promote healing and resistance.

(11:27):

A few things that we've found that we're examining and we're looking at based on both theory and some of the research within the literature is sometimes it's having vocabulary. A lot of times when you can name what's happening to you, you can make more sense of it. So it's like, "Okay, I am having chills and I'm having a fever and I can't breathe. Okay, maybe I have the flu. Oh, there's something going on. Now let me figure out how to resolve the issue." And so similarly, I think when youth are experiencing these things, sometimes they already have the language because maybe they have parents or they have even peers in the adolescent developmental period or family members or other folks in the community who talk to them about this stressor that could happen. But that language is really important, I think the recognition, the critical consciousness, the ability to name and analyze and recognize systems of oppression. So that's one piece, so having the language around understanding and awareness,.

Dan Schwartz (12:24):

I think I'd have a hard time talking to kids giving them definitions. Some of them are experiencing this, so it's a dangerous situation. So how do you do it?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (12:34):

Yeah, we have different strategies within the content. So it's group-based, so very community-based setting, and we do different things. One strategy that I think has been helpful is we actually have animated content. So when we created the intervention, we had a community advisory board of young people and then adults who are in different child serving settings, so juvenile justice schools and different roles, for example and so they provided feedback. Members of the community advisory board and the development team actually shared their experiences, and we have those as animated videos that accompany each of the gatherings that we have within the intervention. And so, one way to do it is they're seeing an animated video of a real person's experience and it's narrated by us. And then again, it's an experience from our young adulthood or childhood. And so they can even see the symptoms or hear what's going on and see what's going on in the video.

(13:33):

And then sometimes they might be able to relate to it, sometimes they might not be able to. But I think having, especially as a young person, and even as adults, sometimes it's easier for us to see things in other folks and then say like, "Huh, okay, I can make sense of that. I can grapple with that," and then be able to grapple with the fact that this might be happening with me or it might be a personal experience I'm having. So we've used experiences. I think narratives and testimony is a big part of the process of thinking about healing, so having this collective space and folks sharing experiences is one way.

(14:07):

There are some practical definition pieces where we have youth go through and ask, "Have you heard of discrimination? What does that mean to you? How do you define that?" Because also the terms that we use as adults, these terms are very often not how youth are going to define them or talk about them. And so we also give a lot of autonomy and space for them to be able to define, and then we provide scaffolding around helping them understand these different terms and experiences. So there's different modes that we use to try to get them engaged and facilitate discussion and awareness of the topics.

Denise Pope (14:42):

So awesome, so important. You have to name what's going on in order to really understand it and work it out. I've heard that as a general strategy for all youth and adults even. So maybe walk us through what some of the specific strategies are that really are race specific in this case.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (15:03):

Three other strategies that we implement and we teach within the TRANSFORM intervention beyond naming is then resisting. So how do I, for example, not internalize? When these things are happening to me, we don't want young people to internalize and think there's something wrong with them. We want them to be able to say, "Okay, there's something wrong with this system. There's something wrong with this individual's beliefs that they have. There's nothing wrong with me." And so part of that is thinking about the connection even between understanding what's happening in your environment and then how you're interpreting in that information, connecting thoughts, feelings, and actions, which are also a general strategy, but naming, "Do I think this is based on historical things that have happened or something that is specific to race within the context of this situation?"

(15:54):

So if I'm being followed around in the store and if I notice that me and my friends every time we go into the store we're being followed around, how do I make sense of that? And then how do I make meaning of that? So there are strategies that they can do in terms of deciding to say, "This isn't something that I've done. I know I came in, I intended to pay. I won't be patronizing the store anymore, so I won't be coming back in. And this is nothing that I've done wrong." So being able to say, "I think that person has a racial bias, because every time a group of my friends maybe come in and we're Black, we look different, or we're of a different racial group, I notice that this pattern continues to happen." So the resistance strategies both around how to respond and then how they're making sense of it.

(16:37):

And then in part of the response piece too is we do practical strategies of even within respond or response acronyms. So what do I do in the situation? Because oftentimes young people say, "I feel frozen" or "I feel really angry and I maybe want to punch someone in the face when these things happen." So how do we utilize a safe strategy for what to do? And so thinking about, okay, maybe I report, maybe I tell a trusted adult. I document the incident. So thinking about different ways to teach them to respond, and then also thinking about things like critical action. So a part of critical consciousness too is the ability to think about, "Okay, what are things that I can do? Again, I'm not going to fix the system." There are policies and practices that also are happening, and so we're not putting it on the child to say, "Fix this issue." But at the end of the day, we also know that young people need strategies on how to manage these things in their lives and not internalize it, again, because this is a characteristic that they were born with, thinking about the color of your skin or your culture or your heritage, of having people treat you differently because of these situations or not feeling represented within your curriculum or course content, whatever the level of race-related stressor or racism might be.

(17:52):

And so we want young folks to be able to name it, be able to resist, be able to respond, and then ultimately be able to thrive. What does it look like to build a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity? We know that having a healthy sense of ethnic racial identity for young people of color, that is a buffer against race-related stressors. So we tend to see that having that sense of cultural pride, knowing about your heritage, knowing the strengths of your cultural group, knowing how your cultural group has overcome or even use strategies around resistance or empowerment. So these different strategies can reduce the impact of race-related stressors. And so thinking about that thriving piece is also very important, and we embed that through the critical action as well as building a sense of cultural pride and cultural assets.

Denise Pope (18:41):

It's awesome, and I think a lot of adults forget that asking a child to do something about it is putting a lot on the kid. So I love that you have these options of very concrete things that you can do, right? This happens to you, there's very concrete things you could do. The onus is not on you to change the system. But there's also that sense of working with the adults to help them understand this. You mentioned even just the example of if you don't see yourself represented in the curriculum what that might do for a child. I know that there's this notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy, culturally sustaining curriculum, culturally responsive curriculum. So what are some of the things that you tell adults to help take the onus off of those kids having to make all of that changes themselves?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (19:40):

Within TRANSFORM in particular, so we actually try to train folks embedded within the child serving context. And so we work with adults within the child serving context to deliver the intervention. So the idea is that the skills and the strategies will stay within that context, or maybe even they'll spread it to other folks. They'll also be able to be disruptors of racism. So that's an example of thinking about... They participate in a training.

(20:04):

A lot of the initial work is doing some self-reflection, like thinking about your own perception of your racialized identity. When did you first learn about your racialized identity? What does that look like? What type of privileges and power do you hold? How do you think about the intersections of your identity? Because there are certain aspects of our identity where we hold more privilege and power. We can think about race, we can think about education, we can think about gender.

(20:32):

So really the processing at the individual level and the reflection at the individual level, and then thinking about, "Okay, what are strategies that I can do?" They're walking through the curriculum themselves, they're learning the strategies that they're teaching young people, but they're also learning what it means to be disruptors. So when they see something happening within the school context, whether that's peer to peer, whether that's adult to peer, how can they intervene? And so, one of the things that we measure essentially is an aspect of racial socialization competency, essentially it's a self-efficacy to be able to respond to racism that happens or race-related stressors. So how confident do I feel to name or call out a student or a colleague that makes a racist joke or comment? How confident do I feel to correct some sort of microaggression that I see perpetuated within this context? So assessing their self-efficacy and being able to respond. And so that's one thing that we hope that both young people and adults who participate gain that self-efficacy to be able to respond and disrupt when that happens.

Dan Schwartz (21:40):

So Farzana, I'm going to switch for a second or maybe for the rest of the show. This is ��. We are in Silicon Valley. It means you must be using technology somehow.

Denise Pope (21:52):

Oh my God.

Dan Schwartz (21:54):

So tell us about what you're doing with technology to see how you can advance this work.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (21:59):

Yes. Another line of the work that's related to this too, I think a lot about practical strategies to help adults and young people. And so one project that we're working on is a virtual classroom study and we are recruiting teachers and we're trying to understand how they respond to students' questions about race-related topics and even student race-related distress within the virtual classroom environment. And so teachers are instructed to read a book that primes them for conversations about race-related topics. The first part of the study, it's kind of unstructured, they're coming in with a lesson plan, and then the second part is more structured, so the virtual students actually ask specific questions.

Dan Schwartz (22:46):

Hang on, I have a headset on and I see three cartoon character-ish kids in a classroom, and I am in the front of the classroom teaching. The kids are nodding slowly because that's what happens in those. And then eventually the kid says something and I, as the teacher, need to respond to this synthetic character who's playing out a role. Do I have it right?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (23:16):

Exactly. There's no headset. So it's technically mixed reality, which I had to get schooled on quickly. It's different from virtual reality.

Denise Pope (23:25):

Okay. What does that mean?

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (23:27):

So they're logging into essentially a Zoom platform. You can think about it as a virtual Zoom platform. And so they're coming in and then they see within the Zoom screen a virtual classroom of students, and each student has a name tag in front of them, and then there is a person that's controlling what the students can say. So there is a script to what the students say, but then there's a little bit of free flowing. So we have the teachers, again, at the beginning, they're teaching, and then the second part, they're responding to student questions.

Dan Schwartz (23:58):

Does it work? Does it work?

Denise Pope (24:00):

Yeah, that was my question too.

Farzana (Saleem) Adjah (24:03):

Yeah, we've been asking teachers post their engagement in the virtual classroom, we ask them, "How did it feel? What was it like?" I think they said that it felt like a good space for doing training. Of course, it feels different from being with real students, but it feels like a safe space. Also thinking about mitigating harm, because I think when teachers are trying to practice what does it look like to be affirming when a student discloses... I think one of our virtual students discloses being called a racial slur. And so figuring out how the teacher navigates that and trying to code and look for patterns of how are teachers responding to these different questions that students ask, and then also how are they engaging in these conversations? We also know that conversations about race or DEI in general around different parts of the country have been shut down.

(24:51):

And so we need to think about how important this topic is in terms of having conversations about race within the classroom, about equity and inclusion also within the classroom. So for example, at the beginning part of the simulation, we noticed that there are fewer race-related words that teachers are using unprompted when they're teaching compared to when prompted by student-specific questions. So we're even doing a deep dive right now, it's looking at trying to understand the patterns that are coming up in the unprompted teaching compared to when they're responding to these specific questions that are being asked by the students to the teachers. Eventually our goal is to figure out how do we help teachers be able to increase their self-efficacy and confidence and skills to respond to student race-related topics and distress within the classroom.

Denise Pope (25:51):

It is so important the work that you are doing. As a teacher or educator, you want to know how to show up as much as you can for the kids. It's really great that you've provided a space where they can learn how to better respond to these race-related stressors, which we know are just so difficult and you don't get a lot of training around. So thank you so much for the work with the adults and with the kids too.

Dan Schwartz (26:16):

Agreed. Thank you, Farzana, for sharing all this with us today. You mentioned, and it's so important to remember, that every kid can respond to a stressful and traumatic situation differently. There's no right answer, but there are ways to help kids navigate those moments to protect them from further harm.

Denise Pope (26:32):

Exactly, Dan. I love the strategies where you teach them how to name it and resist it and how to respond to it, and then ultimately really to get beyond it and to carry on and thrive. I think at the end of the day, all of us just have to do our best as educators to really listen to the kids and look for any changes in their behavior that's concerning, anything that worries us, and obviously to always speak up when you see something of concern.

(26:59):

Well, thank you again to Farzana, and thank you all for tuning into this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (27:10):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

Podcast

faculty

GSE area

podcast

Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Farzana Tabitha Adjah , Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

Youth mental health: Finding support

Olivia Peterkin — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 20:22:19 +0000

Youth mental health: Finding support Olivia Peterkin Fri, 09/20/2024 - 13:22

Parenting | Race and Equity | Students

On this episode of School’s In, �� Dr. Steve Adelsheim discusses destigmatizing mental health needs, how adults can support student success.

September 26, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

The mental health crisis among youth has led parents, educators, and policymakers to look for solutions that benefit the well-being of children and adolescents. Dr. Steven Adelsheim, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at �� School of Medicine, says early intervention is key.

“The earlier we can link young people to the supports they need, as well as their families, the better outcomes people have,” he says on the latest episode of School’s In, a podcast of �� Graduate School of Education. “Not only short-term, but long term as well.”

Adelsheim joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss destigmatizing the expression of mental health needs, how parents and schools can support students, and models for success in improving well-being.

Adelsheim’s work involves cultivating behavioral health partnerships in the community that value the input of young people. Part of that work has included the creation of Allcove, a model that brings community-based behavioral and mental health resources to places near where youth live, learn and play.

“One of the things that's exciting about these Allcove models is that they really are grounded in the idea that young people have a critical role in creating safe and comfortable places for other young people to come in,” Adelsheim said.

He says the input from young people and peer mentoring relationships available at Allcove centers are possible because newer generations feel less stigma in discussing the topic of mental health. A model he hopes parents and older adults will follow.

“I think there's more of an acknowledgement that all of us as human beings have these issues,” he said.

“For young people from very diverse cultures, there was quite a bit of stigma and taboo in many cultural groups around talking outside of the immediate family about mental health challenges. And I think for many of our young people, there's more of a willingness to acknowledge it.”

“And so we're seeing a lot of peers interested in supporting each other as well.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, the National Institute of Mental Health lists resources on their webpage.

Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Steven Adelsheim (00:00):

We do need to acknowledge we have serious challenges in terms of really creating the mental health support that our young people need.

Dan Schwartz (00:11):

Today, we are addressing a critical and timely issue. This is the mental health of our children. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic played a large role in our students' mental health, and it intensified the challenges many young people face. It's made it more important than ever to understand the signs and know how to support them.

Denise Pope (00:30):

I completely agree, Dan. We are seeing rising rates of anxiety, depression, other mental health issues, and it's really crucial for parents and educators and communities to come together to support the young people. This is not just a side issue. This is a really central issue facing our kids today.

Dan Schwartz (00:47):

Fortunately, we have Dr. Steven Adelsheim, and he's going to help to guide us through this conversation about mental health.

Denise Pope (00:56):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at �� GSC and Co-founder of Challenge Success. And I am with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, who is Dean of the �� Graduate School of Education and Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:26):

He's a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist who works to support community behavioral health partnerships locally, regionally, and at the state and national level. He is the Director of the �� Center for Youth Mental Health and Well-being in the Department of Psychiatry. And he's partnered in developing statewide mental health systems, including those focused on school mental health. And so for many years, Steven's been developing and implementing early detection and intervention programs for young people both in school and in primary care. So Steven, I'd sort of like to start indirectly. How did you get into this business?

Steven Adelsheim (02:03):

The truth is Dan, I actually started thinking in high school that I really did want to actually become a child and adolescent psychiatrist. And I was a pre-med psychology major in college. And my first job was on an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit. And then I worked in a very rural community in Alaska and actually went and worked in schools doing... In villages, in rural Alaska, working with kids in different school settings. And I did that for a year before I started medical school.

Denise Pope (02:40):

So then Steve, I know you did a lot up until this point, but one thing that I'd love to talk about on this show is this new thing, this allcove. Do you want to ease us into that?

Steven Adelsheim (02:53):

Sure. I was a director of school mental health programs actually in the state of New Mexico for about 16 years. And I was in New Mexico for 28 years before coming to work at ��. And during that time, I spent at least a day a week working in school-based health centers. And in that role I worked with all the school health and mental health professionals. I worked side-by-side with primary care providers working in school-based health centers. And at the state level, we were really expanding access to health for adolescents really through school-based health center settings. I found that after doing that for a very long time, it was really great work in terms of early detection and there were young people that didn't want to talk to someone at the school. There were issues about what would happen over the summer. There were concerns about issues related to the confidentiality.

(03:55):

There were principals turning over on a regular basis, some of which said, this is all really nice, but our job is education. It's not about the healthcare of our students. And so there was a point where I started looking for other ways to provide the support in the community side-by-side with school mental health services so we could more broadly build those connections. So we learned about this model called Headspace back in Australia. This was before the meditation app. And Headspace was this clinical program for young people, 12 to 25 to come in on their own or with a friend for early mental health care and primary care, support, education, employment.

(04:42):

We learned it was a model that was very successful in Australia, and I'll share with you now there 170 Headspace centers in Australia, which is half the population of California. And this is a model that every legislator in Australia wants to have in their home community. And it's a model that really has taken off all over the world. And so we started exploring how do we bring this community-based access to the young people of the United States and particularly starting here in California.

Dan Schwartz (05:17):

So you rent space off the school campus or?

Steven Adelsheim (05:21):

Actually no. We really look for physical spaces in the community that are near transportation, that are near community centers, that may be accessible from the school but aren't really by or necessarily next door to a school, but accessible for students. And we continue the initial model. We see young people 12 to 25, and our role as a center has really been to support the implementation of this model. And so we've worked with the state of California's Mental Health Services Commission to create some initial funding. And now through the Department of Healthcare Services, there's more funding. There are three of these centers open right now, one in Palo Alto, one in San Mateo, one down in Redondo Beach, allcove Beach Cities. And we've got eight more actually on the way that are sort of in the process of getting started that are physical spaces in the community for young people.

Denise Pope (06:25):

So Steve, if I am a parent who's worried about my kid or a teacher who's worried about a kid, how does this work? They go to allcove and what do they get? How do you get in?

Steven Adelsheim (06:35):

Great question, Denise. So these allcove centers are run by different agencies and basically young people can walk in for some initial support. And these centers have early mental health care. They do sort of short-term therapy. They have physical healthcare providers as well. They have peer support specialists. They have people who work with you around supported education and employment, early addiction treatment as well. And you can schedule an appointment or you can go in. Most of the centers have evening and other weekend activities so that young people can come in for a group or an activity and just get a feel for the place, see if they're comfortable there. And then they might decide they want to talk to a therapist there. They might want to talk to a peer support specialist about some issues that they may be dealing with or want linkages to other supports and services. So we see these as central hubs for young people to access the supports they need either on site or with linkages into the community.

Denise Pope (07:46):

And I just want to point out that that's super rare, that typically what used to happen, and Steve correct me if I'm wrong, is someone would be worried about a kid. Maybe they'd have to go to an emergency room and get a psych hold placed on the kid and the kid would... Then they'd have to find a place like a hospital to hold the kid. Or you just are on a wait list for months to try and find a therapist for your own kid and to have the ability to walk in and get care almost immediately, right Steve? it's like a miracle for some of these kids and for some of these families.

Dan Schwartz (08:21):

So, well, I've heard from teachers and principals that mental health issues on adolescents are becoming more pressing concern. And I know you do lots of important surveys. Do you collect information on this?

Denise Pope (08:40):

Yeah, so challenge success, we don't collect specific information like a modified depression index or something like that. But one of the main questions that we ask early on in our survey to adolescents is what are some of your major sources of stress? And we have about 30% of our students are saying that mental health is a major source of stress. So most of them are choosing workload or homework or grades, but mental health comes up quite frequently, and particularly if they are LGBTQ or from historically marginalized communities, we see that even higher.

Dan Schwartz (09:24):

Does the item say mental health?

Denise Pope (09:26):

It says mental health. Yeah. So it's a pull down menu, right?

Dan Schwartz (09:29):

How do you think people interpret that?

Denise Pope (09:31):

That's a great question, Dan, because sometimes they'll say it's just overwhelming stress. Sometimes they will name things as depression or anxiety, which may not be officially diagnosed depression or anxiety, but they will say things like, I can't fall asleep because I'm always so stressed, or I'm freaking out about this, or I get so nervous that it prevents me from doing things. Or I'm afraid to do some of the things that I'm normally doing. I can't get out of bed in the morning, right? So we hear all sorts of things in our focus groups. But we also just know from statistics around the country, even the U.S. surgeon General has written about this, that particularly since COVID, the mental health of adolescents has really been getting worse. And there's a very high percentage of parents who said 35% of teens according to parents experience mental health issues. And it's definitely become a more prominent thing that people are worried about, always worried before the pandemic, but now even more so.

Dan Schwartz (10:38):

Some of it is I don't do the things I normally do.

Denise Pope (10:43):

Or I can't, my brain is not allowing me to, right? I'm perseverating or I'm catastrophizing, or I just can't fall asleep because I'm spinning, right? We have some of that, but we also have literally, I'm too anxious. I can't get out of bed, I won't go to school.

Dan Schwartz (10:59):

That's a complicated set of feelings.

Denise Pope (11:07):

We know that the challenges facing youth's mental health today are really, really significant, but the good news is, so are the opportunities to make a difference. So Steven, can we go a little bit deeper into how these community-based approaches like the allcove model are really empowering young people to take control of their health and also to support each other?

Steven Adelsheim (11:27):

One of the things that's exciting about these allcove models is that they really are grounded in the idea that young people really have a critical role in creating safe and comfortable places for other young people to come in. So the allcove centers all have very active youth advisory groups that are made up of the diversity of the communities where they're developed. And those young people make a lot of the decisions about hiring, about the look and feel of the place, about the groups and different activities that happen at allcove centers.

(12:01):

And they are the voice of outreach also that will tell their friends, this is a comfortable place to come into and you should feel free and comfortable coming here. Whether to be hanging out with other youth or be able to get access to some type of service as well. So that peer voice is really important when young people come in. A peer specialist is often the person that greets you at the door and helps you decide what kind of services you might want or gives you a tour of an allcove center so you can get a sense of what's going on there and what's available as well.

Denise Pope (12:39):

So a peer specialist is like a 15-year-old, like a kid?

Steven Adelsheim (12:44):

No, no. The peer specialists that are there, generally people with lived experience who are employed and work there. But at the same time, one of the things that's interesting Denise, as you say, is that we're finding that actually many of our youth advisors, as they're progressing through their maybe year or two of leadership training and development of the youth advisors, a number of them are actually taking jobs as peer support specialists in these different allcove settings. And we're seeing it become almost beginning of a behavioral health workforce in terms of seeing those roles happen.

Denise Pope (13:21):

Well, that's good because I know we are desperado for more people to go into this, right? We don't have the adults employed to cover the need of all the kids who need clinicians and therapists, right?

Steven Adelsheim (13:34):

Absolutely. And one of the things that also has been happening is we see young people, and I would say the generation of youth, we have now quite a bit more comfortable talking about mental health issues. The stigma issues are much less for them than for many of us in our generations. And so we're seeing a lot of peers interested in supporting each other as well. So we're seeing frankly at many of the high schools in California and in programs across the country, the development of peer-to-peer opportunities. And this is for that 15, 16, 17-year-old student you were talking about, to get skills to learn how to support themselves and support their friends and have those conversations. So we've also been working with a group of young people as well to develop a peer-to-peer curriculum so that youth can start then supporting other youth directly, allcove centers as potential places where then that training and support can also happen down the road.

Dan Schwartz (14:38):

Can I ask a slightly tangential question?

Steven Adelsheim (14:41):

Sure.

Dan Schwartz (14:42):

So a couple years ago, I'm at a dinner and a very senior famous psychologist professor asked me about my feelings and I say, "I don't really like to talk about my feelings." Is this a generational shift? This sort of willingness to talk about one's mental contents?

Steven Adelsheim (15:02):

I think there's more of an acknowledgement that all of us as human beings have these issues. I think culturally, we see a real difference. I think for young people from very diverse cultures, there was quite a bit of stigma and taboo in many cultural groups around talking outside of the immediate family about mental health challenges. And I think for many of our young people, there's more of a willingness to acknowledge it. We see it in our famous American athletes now breaking down that stigma. And for many others, it's becoming more comfortable just to acknowledge that this is part of our lives.

(15:43):

Just like any other medical condition, we have mental health conditions as well. And so I do think at least there's some more honesty about it. We will encourage parents to be more honest with their own kids about their own challenges, their own failures, their own struggles. So their parents don't often come across as sort of perfect beings that never had a problem in their lives. And then their kids thinking, well, what am I doing with all these issues? My parents are so perfect. So we're trying to build that intergenerational conversation, but it's the young people who were more comfortable with it, frankly right now.

Denise Pope (16:23):

Okay, a cynic... And I'm not a cynic, but a cynic might say, is this too much? Because now you've got kids who are sort of self diagnosing as depressed when they're not. Everything is now elevated. I'm having a mental health crisis. We see some reports saying maybe we're doing too much. I am not this person. I'm just asking you as a potential cynic might say. How would you react, Steve?

Steven Adelsheim (16:49):

I still feel like we have a long way to go to be doing enough, to be quite honest with you. I think it's great that young people are getting more sensitized to these issues. I am grateful that we're creating opportunities to develop resiliency skills potentially in some school settings. We had a youth mental health crisis before the COVID epidemic, and it's only been accentuated over time. And so even if you look nationally at the rates of young people with serious depression, anxiety, higher rates of not only suicide attempts, but at times suicide rates going up in our young people, we do need to acknowledge we have serious challenges in terms of really creating the mental health support that our young people need.

Denise Pope (17:37):

So if you are a parent or an educator, what are some things to look for? Because I think we miss a lot, right? What are some things to look for?

Steven Adelsheim (17:46):

I think some of the key things really to be looking for are a change in a young person. And that can often be whether or not they're struggling to get out of bed to go to school, but also less interest in social activities, more time spent at home alone in their room not interacting or socializing with friends. Often tearfulness, for many young people there are also increasing somatic complaints. So what I mean by that is sometimes kids will have more stomach aches or more headaches or more physical complaints or saying, I don't feel well. I can't go do whatever my regular activity might be as well. So all of those things can be signs of the potential of an early mental health challenge, which at least it's important to check in well with our kids and see how they're doing.

Denise Pope (18:47):

And we usually tell people, if you're at all worried, you go talk to a pediatrician, talk to the school counselor, but don't just ignore it. Parents are like, oh, teenagers will be teenagers. They're moody, they're sulky, they have outbursts, right? But it's better to catch this early. Is that right, Steve?

Steven Adelsheim (19:04):

Well, like any other medical condition, early intervention has really shown for all mental health issues to be really beneficial as it is for anything else. And so the earlier we can link young people to the supports they need as well as their families, the better outcomes people have. Not only short-term, but long term as well.

Dan Schwartz (19:26):

What's an example of an early intervention to help?

Steven Adelsheim (19:30):

In a school setting, it would frankly be a young person telling their friend that maybe they're feeling like they don't want to go out with their friends anymore, they're feeling sad, or they're feeling like they don't have the motivation anymore to do their work. And they tell their friend and their friend actually convinces them to go with them to talk to the counselor at school in very simple terms. Or if they refuse to go to that friend, maybe even telling their parent, I'm worried about my friend here and I just want you to know that this is going on. And then having that family member taking it seriously. And then really, like Denise said, maybe calling up the pediatrician and asking for that early guidance.

Dan Schwartz (20:18):

So the kid goes to the counselor and then what happens?

Steven Adelsheim (20:22):

The truth is, I think it really varies in terms of our school settings and our counselors. Right now in California, as we're seeing the broader potential for school mental health professionals to be more involved directly in therapy, I think there are more opportunities for young people to get that supported school, often, as I mentioned, working in school-based health centers. We have community providers also in school where even that school counselor can say, let's go talk to that person from the neighborhood mental health organization who's at our wellness center. And let's have an initial conversation with them and see what kind of support you need.

(21:06):

And then it might be some kind of talking through with that young person what's been going on, helping them maybe in a few sessions sorted out. Or maybe that young person says, "I don't want to talk to someone at school."

(21:18):

And then the counselor can help make that call or connection to the allcove center down the street to be able to help that young person get over there for a first visit as well. Or maybe talk to the family with that young person and get them to the allcove center for early support.

Denise Pope (21:35):

This has been so helpful. I have one question that I know people will probably have on their mind, which is early prevention. What can I do as a mom to really support mental health? I mean, should we take the phones away? Should we prevent them from ever going to parties? People are just grabbing at things because they're so nervous about this suicide rate going up and the levels of depression and anxiety. What do you think?

Steven Adelsheim (22:06):

Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of things about the dangers of social media, but I have to say that from the work that I and our center teams have been doing, I think we feel like there's some real benefits for young people around social media. And what's important is they get support to think about how to use it safely. Our young group of advisors through a good for media program, our young people that are mentoring other youth and how to use social media in ways that support their mental health, they put out a guide for parents on how to talk to your kids about using social media.

(22:43):

They provide support for young people and how to think about what to turn on and what to turn off for it to be safe. I think for parents, what's really important I think, is to find those ways to check in and to listen to young person and to be able to do that in informal ways, to do it in a non-judgmental way. And I think our young people are getting pretty good at sort of having a sense of what they need. And I think being able to trust that without us really sort of telling them necessarily all the time what they need in terms of some of those issues.

Dan Schwartz (23:17):

We hear you Stephen. We definitely want to equip everyone with the right tools to succeed. So thank you so much for sharing your insights today. The work you're doing to support youth mental health is crucial. It's innovative, it's making a difference, and it's going to help us face these ongoing challenges.

Denise Pope (23:35):

I completely agree. I completely agree, Dan. And now it's time to talk takeaways and I will kick us off this time. I think the biggest one for me is really the importance of early intervention. Catching mental health issues early seems to make all the difference. And I think having community-based resources like the allcove centers also really helps make support more accessible for our kids. It gets them in there and we know that they're getting the help that they need.

Dan Schwartz (24:00):

And for the parents and educators, the thing that stood out to me is remember to stay engaged and watch for changes in behavior that might signal something more serious. And of course, just continue to encourage conversation as much as we can.

Denise Pope (24:14):

That's right. We've got to show up for the kids. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for those opportunities. So Steven, thank you so, so much. We learned so much today. Thank you for this really important discussion and thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (24:40):

And I continue to be Dan Schwartz.

Podcast

GSE area

podcast

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 16 May 2024 19:00:14 +0000

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin Thu, 05/16/2024 - 12:00

�� Law School professor Rick Banks (far right) moderates a panel on legal strategies to promote school integration and educational equity with panelists Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law (middle right); Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center (middle left); and Myron Orfield, professor of civil rights and liberties law at the University of Minnesota. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Events | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

On the 70th anniversary of the landmark court decision, the conference delved into ways to support integration in U.S. public schools.

May 16, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

It’s been 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” But school segregation has increased steadily over the past three decades.

A May 6 conference at �� explored the legacy of the historic court ruling, bringing together scholars, educators, policymakers, and legal experts to chart a path forward.

“We held this conference to take stock of where we are now, 70 years after the historic Brown v. Board decision, in terms of school segregation and equality of educational opportunity in the United States,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University.

“We want to honor the progress that we've made, but also assess and interrogate the challenges that the promise of Brown still faces and the work we still have to do.” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Southern California, in her opening remarks.

The event, organized and led by Reardon and Owens, was co-sponsored by the GSE, the Educational Opportunity Project, the �� Institute for Advancing Just Societies, �� Graduate School of Business, �� Law School, and the �� Center for Racial Justice.

What schools look like 70 years after Brown

The conference featured three panels on the effectiveness of school desegregation and what courts, school districts, and states can do to support it, bookended by keynotes looking at the current state of segregation in U.S. public schools and the road ahead.

In the opening session, Reardon and Owens presented new research findings on racial and economic segregation among schools, which has grown steadily in large school districts over the past 30 years. Researchers on the joint �� and USC project found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status increased 52 percent between 1991 and 2019.

“While we would say that we're not back to pre-Brown levels, the rise of school segregation in large districts that serve students of color is still troubling,” Owens said.

“The best current research on the consequences of segregation demonstrates unequivocally that segregation has significant negative long-term consequences for black and Hispanic students,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research. “And our new research shows that segregation has been increasing in the last 30 years in large school districts as a direct result of educational policies that have abandoned the goal of integrated schooling.”

Owens and Reardon’s research found that the dissolution of court orders focused on integration and the prevalence of policies favoring school choice over integration have played the largest roles in increasing racial and economic segregation in U.S. schools in recent decades.

“Those two things together entirely explain all of the growth in school segregation since 2000,” he said. “If we don’t do more to create racially and economically integrated schools, we will be perpetuating a system of unequal educational opportunity.”

During the conference, Reardon and Owens also announced the launch of the Segregation Explorer, an interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University that provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022.

Why integration is important

During each of the panels, researchers and faculty from �� and other universities discussed the importance of integrated schools and strategies to increase integration using different systemic and organizational levers.

“Integration is not about just the assignment of children to schools, but is fundamentally about school resources – it’s about funding teacher quality, access to multicultural curriculum, and access to college preparatory curriculum,” said Rucker Johnson, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, in a panel moderated by GSE assistant professor Michael Hines that discussed evidence on the effects of historical and contemporary school integration efforts. “These are the pieces that get undermined with segregated schools.”

Johnson shared data on the effects of desegregation efforts showing improved academic and life outcomes for students who had early and continued exposure to well-resourced schools, including increased wages and a significant reduction in the annual incidence of poverty in adulthood.

“Moving from desegregation to integration means moving from access to inclusion,” he said. “It means moving from exposure to understanding, and those things don't happen overnight.”

Reasons for hope

In the closing keynote Prudence Carter, a professor of sociology at Brown University and former Jacks Family Professor of Education at the GSE, and Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, discussed the need for perseverance, collaboration, and hope to reverse patterns of segregation in U.S. public schools.

“As we know, we as a nation have infrequently and inconsistently achieved the Brown promise to make education available to all on equal terms, beginning immediately following the Supreme Court's decision and persistently thereafter,” Lhamon said.

“We have lived a long history of unequal schooling, even since Brown, that persists now, punctuated periodically with beacons of hope and confirmation that inequality is not in fact inevitable,” she said.

Lhamon shared a commitment on the federal level to champion nondiscriminatory education, describing investigations and enforcement actions that her office has carried out over the years since it was established to uphold civil rights legislation.

“Thomas Jefferson is famous for having said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” she said. “And we know – and our history has confirmed again and again – that the struggle to offer equal schooling on a nondiscriminatory basis requires just that vigilance.”

USC professor Ann Owens (left) and GSE professor Sean Reardon (right) co-led the event. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of California at Berkeley professor Rucker Johnson (left), Texas A&M University professor Kalena Cortes (middle), and Tufts University professor Elizabeth Setren discuss the effects of school integration efforts. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees look on during the conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling. (Photo: Christine Baker)

A �� law student poses a question to panelists during the conference's Q&A portion. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Columbia University assistant professor Marissa Thompson presents on how parental choices drive policies that affect segregation patterns. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of Virginia law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson presents on legal strategies to promote school integration. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Marissa Thompson (left); Irene Lo, an assistant professor of management science and engineering at �� (center); and Tomás Monarrez, a senior research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, discuss school and state policy strategies for integrating schools. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education (left), talks about hope and the path forward with Brown University professor Prudence Carter (right). (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees converse with Prudence Carter, a former professor at �� GSE. (Photo: Christine Baker)

GSE News

split

GSE area

school_news

Faculty mentioned in this article: sean reardon , Ralph Banks

Race and Equity

������������ partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

������������ study links access to new AP computer science course to a jump in participation, especially among underrepresented students

A reflection of national trends

A spillover effect

U.S. textbooks portray Asians in a limited and negative light, new study shows

A disproportionate focus on war

Using AI to analyze words and sentences

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Mapping trends in thousands of school districts

Widening achievement gaps

‘The rescue phase is over’

Lessons for the future: How past practices help reimagine education

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education

Teaching ethnic studies: Four takeaways from ������������ education conference

Youth mental health: Racial trauma and stress

Youth mental health: Finding support

������������ event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

�� partners with San Francisco schools to get to the bottom of racial disparities in special education

�� study links access to new AP computer science course to a jump in participation, especially among underrepresented students

Teaching ethnic studies: Four takeaways from �� education conference

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education