Posts Tagged ‘equity’

Education and Democracy: Critique of Diversity, Equity, and Race for Liberatory Practices

This op-ed originally appeared in Diverse Issues in Higher Education and is reprinted with permission.

Kimberly White-Smith and Jacob Easley

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. – James Baldwin 

The momentum of social and racial justice fueled by recent events finds us at a significant crossroad with divergent paths—one path opening to opportunity and one leading to entropy. The approach we choose to follow will affect society and the lives of many for generations to come. Should we choose the way of opportunity, we must seriously grapple with the debates and our commitment to preserving a true democracy. Should we select the other, we accept the deterioration of hard-earned civil rights—choosing to abdicate to systems, laws, and politics that have historically disadvantaged those unable to make a living wage and people of color. As deans of educator preparation programs who work closely with the nation’s two largest school districts (New York City Department of Education and Los Angeles Unified School District), we understand the relevance of education. It is the core vehicle for liberatory practice and for championing American democracy. If education is the road to national mobility, and we believe it is, we must preserve the mechanisms and freedoms to critique and examine the governing structures of our society.

Celebrating Brain Differences with More Services and Support

From left, Ben Wilner, Terry Nguyen, Monika Williams Shealey, and John Woodruff, director, Accessibility Services

This article originally appeared on the Rowan Today news website and is reprinted with permission.

On October 20, Rowan University announced an expansion of support and services, establishing a first in New Jersey Center for Neurodiversity on the Glassboro campus.

Rowan’s expansion of services for neurodiverse students stems directly from President Ali A. Houshmand’s commitment to access and inclusion throughout the University.

Education Funding Bills on the Move

School financing and education business concept as a group of children drawing a hopscotch game on a floor with dollar signs as a symbol of student loans and paying for schooling fees.This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide updated information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE. 

As you will recall, in July the House Appropriations Committee approved the FY 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill . The bill included historic increases for education from the FY 2021 level—a 41% increase for the Department of Education, which would bring the Department’s total budget to $102.8 billion. This week, a bit unexpectedly, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) released drafts of the nine remaining fiscal year (FY) 2022 Senate appropriations bills, including the Labor-HHS-Education bill. This is an unusual move, as we usually don’t see bills until they have gone through the Subcommittee markup. These drafts have not been approved by either Subcommittees or the full committee. Rather, they are intended to be a marker to keep the process rolling.

URI’s Feinstein College is Lead Institution in AACTE Consortium to Address Barriers to a Diversified Teaching Workforce

The University of Rhode Island’s Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Education and Professional Studies will represent the state as a lead institution in the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments, an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that engages 14 states in a study of state-level tests and qualifying scores for entry into educator preparation programs.

URI will collaborate with the Rhode Island Department of Education, Rhode Island College, Central Falls School District, and Pawtucket School Department to examine state data and practices, as well as engage in quarterly convenings to inform guidelines and recommendations for setting qualifying cores for educator preparation program entry and exit.

NYACTE Partners with NYSATE to Host 2021 Annual Conference

New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education logo

The New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (NYACTE) is hosting its annual conference jointly with the New York State Association of Teacher Education. The 2021 conference is entitled Educational Innovation for Equity and Excellence. Progressively delivered in a virtual format September 30 through November 2, all events are free of charge. It is not too late to join us for an interactive member presentation that will take place on October 21 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST. In addition, asynchronous (pre-recorded) paper presentations are also available.

The conference highlights the ways in which New York educator preparation programs (EPPs) and PK-12 engage in partnerships and innovations for advancing educational equity. The conference addresses ways in which state level policy and local practices address programming for greater outcomes among diverse student populations and school communities. The conference concludes with our keynote speaker Elaine Gross, who will challenge the profession in its efforts for racial justice.

Building a More Ethnoracially Diverse Teaching Force

Building a more ethnoracially diverse taching force - A Kappan Special ReportPhi Delta Kappan (PDK) recently released a special report about teacher workforce diversity, Building a more ethnoracially diverse teaching force: New directions in research, policy, and practice, guest edited by AACTE members Conra Gist (University of Houston) and Travis Bristol (University of California, Berkeley). The special report highlights the forthcoming Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color (AERA, 2022) by Gist and Bristol, featuring research by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) educators on developing a more diverse teacher workforce.

The Kappan report provides brief overviews of the 11 domains of inquiry that are explored in greater length in the handbook by Gist and Bristol, along with a wide range of contributors. To bring Teachers of Color, Indigenous Teachers, and other educators into the conversation about how best to diversify the teaching profession, each domain pairs research briefs with teacher-written testimonies. The domains of inquiry include the following:

A Call to Action: #TeachTruth on George Floyd’s Birthday

National Day of Action.  Justice for George - Oct 14As of September 25, 2021, there are 11 states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Utah—that have passed restrictions on racial justice education in public K-12 schools. As programs that prepare educators to enter classrooms during this current onslaught of education censorship, it is imperative to ensure they are prepared to balance the harsh realities of these bills with their abilities to affirm student identities by teaching a curriculum that is a full and accurate representation of our nation’s history across disciplines.

AACTE invites you to join “Black Lives Matter at School ‘Year of Purpose’” in a national day of action to #TeachTruth about structural oppression on George Floyd’s birthday, Thursday, October 14. This day of action is co-sponsored by the African American Policy Forum and is supported and endorsed by the Zinn Education Project (a project of Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change), National Education Association, Alliance for Quality Education, NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, and NYC Coalition for Educational Justice.

AACTE’s Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments Needs You

Marketing segmentation, target market, target audience, customers care, customer relationship management (CRM), human resources recruit and customer analysis concepts, bokeh in background.The Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments (CREA) is seeking your help to recruit teacher candidates, teachers, and faculty for its upcoming focus groups. The Consortium, which is comprised of educator preparation programs (EPPs) and state and local education agency representatives across 14 states, is examining the processes and considerations that states use to determine cut scores for entrance (i.e., Praxis Core) and teacher licensure examinations.

Through data collection of key stakeholders, analysis of trends and policies, and shared learning, the Consortium will produce recommendations and guidelines to establish equitable criteria for setting qualifying scores and model state policies that promote equity and diversity in the profession.

Advancing Educational Equity

This article is a personal reflection of the 2021 Holmes Policy Institute by attendee Rangel Zarate.

Rangel ZarateThis year’s AACTE Holmes Policy Institute was rich with memorable discussions about culturally-relevant care, digital technology in the classroom, and equity issues in schools.

The year 2021 has led to an unexpected metamorphosis in education and has forced many instructors and educational leaders to rethink the way they approach student learning and their own teaching practices. In our conference panel discussion, “Advancing Educational Equity Post-COVID” AACTE staffer and associate professors at Columbia University’s Teachers College Deltra Price-Dennis and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz invited us to reflect on our own thoughts surrounding this new culture of change in educational institutions.

UCF Professor Retires After 52 Years in Education

This article originally appeared on the UCF Today and is reprinted with permission.

Martha Lue StewartMartha Lue Stewart, the first Black woman promoted to the rank of professor at UCF, retired on August 7. (Photo by Amy Floyd)

If one word could encapsulate the journey that Martha Lue Stewart has had at UCF, it’s grateful. As the professor submitted grades for her final course last week and packed up the books, photos and other mementos in her office, she reminisced on countless stories.

As the first Black woman promoted to the rank of professor at UCF, Stewart has been instrumental in helping build a diverse and inclusive campus. Early on, she served as chair of the Diversity Programming Committee that organizes events like Diversity Week. Stewart was also actively involved in the Black Faculty and Staff Association, where she served as president from 1998–99. Her first service project with the association involved launching the university’s first Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration.

“I enjoyed having a place where I could meet other colleagues of color,” she says. “It felt like a family and that’s amazing.”

The College Program Attracting—and Retaining—Black Male Teachers

Graduates of Call Me MISTER: Photo by Patrick Wright, Clemson University, Photographic Services-University Relations.

This article originally appeared in EdSurge and is reprinted with permission.

When Alphonso Richard Jr. walked into his first teacher education course at Clemson University, he experienced a shock.

“Being in a class where you’re the only male, I didn’t know where to sit,” he says. “Girls were looking like, ‘Oh my goodness, is that a guy in here?’”

Compounding the confusion: Most women in the room were white, and Richard is Black. The dissonance was enough to send a shiver of doubt through the aspiring educator’s mind.

“It was a scared, hesitant feeling at first,” Richard says. “Am I meant to be here? Is this for me?”

It takes courage to enter a space where you’re not sure you belong. That’s the kind of threshold that Black men training to become educators have to cross many times. They make up only 2 percent of U.S. public school teachers (men overall compose 24 percent). They’re also underrepresented in college teacher-preparation programs, as education is “one of the least diverse major fields in higher education,” according to a 2019 report from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Join AACTE in Growing and Sustaining White Racial Allyship in Education

Growing and Sustaining White Racial Justice Allyship in Education

AACTE invites like-minded educators to attend the webinar, “Combating Racism in Education Prep: An Introduction to Authentic, Action-Oriented Allyship as Educators.” As part of AACTE’s Combating Racism in Educator Preparation series, this webinar is the first one produced for a “White Racial Justice” affinity group. The webinar takes place July 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Who should attend?
This is an opportunity for anyone who is an educator or education advocate to learn more about and/or re-energize and re-frame the conversation on creating equitable educator preparation programs that prepare teachers to enter the nation’s schools armed with not just an understanding of how we got here, but also with strategies to be advocates for themselves and their students who may have less institutional agency.

AACTE Combating Racism Webinar Focuses on Authentic, Action-Oriented Allyship

Growing and Sustaining White Racial Justice Allyship in EducationA panel of experts who have dedicated their careers to the pursuit of equity in education will present AACTE’s first webinar produced for a “White Racial Justice” informal affinity group as part of AACTE’s in Combating Racism in Educator Preparation series. Join your like-minded peers and attend the webinar, “Combating Racism in Education Prep: An Introduction to Authentic, Action-Oriented Allyship as Educators” on July 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Through the panelists’ diverse background and experiences, the presenters will introduce language, frameworks, resources, and strategies for the audience to use in their learning and reflection to be anti-racist educators and learn discussion and advocacy techniques to use in their professional and personal lives.

This is an opportunity for anyone who is an educator or education advocate to learn more about and/or re-energize and re-frame the conversation on creating equitable educator preparation programs that prepare teachers to enter the country’s schools armed with not just an understanding of how we got here, but also with strategies to be advocates for themselves and their students who may have less institutional agency. 

AACTE’s ‘Combating Racism is Educator Preparation Series’ Offered to Informal Affinity Groups

Growing and Sustaining White Racial Justice Allyship in Education

You are invited to register for the upcoming BIPOC affinity webinar and White Racial Justice affinity webinar offered as part of the “AACTE Racism is Educator Preparation” series.

AACTE’s “Combating Racism is Educator Preparation Series’ began in 2021 with three specific objectives for our membership, audience, and the field at large:

  1. Contextualize the role of racism in structural oppression and how the education system at large maintains and promulgates these oppressive systems.
  2. Engage with you, our audience, to understand you and your organization’s understanding and capacity to address racism using antiracist, abolitionist, inclusive, and intersectional policies.
  3. Normalize and humanize critical conversations around racism within the field that will lead to collaborative action around structural oppression in education.

The Consumer’s Guide to Data: New resource from DQC

The Consumer’s Guide to Data: New resource from DQC As advocates, we want data to be used for accountability and transparency, to tell stories, and to inform impactful, equitable policies. But without context, clarity, transparency, the stories data could tell about school, student, and teacher experiences can be lost to misinformation and distrust.

Last week, the Data Quality Campaign released a new resource that breaks down what it means to build trust in data for both those who share it and those who consume it—providing tips to make meaning from the numbers that you see so you can demand clarity, uncover biases, understand how to foster trust in data, and take action armed with full information.

This Consumer’s Guide to Data is an especially great resource for producers of data (such as state or district leaders) and consumers of data (parents, families, or interested community members), but it can also be valuable to advocates who are looking to support good decision making and storytelling at every level.

Download the guide.