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Education Equity: Challenges and Suggestions

Equity in education has long been an ideal. It’s an ideal celebrated in a variety of contexts, too. Even the Founding Fathers celebrated education as an ideal, something to which every citizen ought to be entitled. Unfortunately though, the practice of equity in education has been less than effective. That is, equity is a difficult ideal to maintain and many strategies attempting to maintain it have fallen far short in the implementation. The most obvious and horrendous element, of course, is the No Child Left Behind Act. But even Obama has notably dabbled in an attempt to manage equity in …

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Black Boys in Crisis: Is Punishment Too Harsh?

It’s no secret that Black boys are considered the trouble makers of society. In America’s prison systems, black citizens are incarcerated at six times the rates of white ones – and the NAACP predicts that one in three of this generation of Black boys will spend some time locked up. Do these numbers tell the true story though? Are Black boys inherently more dangerous than their white and Hispanic peers – or are they the products of racial profiling and a society that sets them up to fail? In the first part of this series I looked at the connection …

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Report: HBCU students better prepared after graduation than peers

A new Gallup-USA Funds Minority College Graduates Report shows that “HBCU graduates are more likely to prosper after graduation than students who graduate from non-HBCUs.” The news comes as HBCUs are under scrutiny for effectiveness and if black students are better served by attending Predominately White Institutions (PWI). Some HBCUs are struggling to survive due to debt but this report shows that the product being produced at America’s predominately black colleges and universities is pretty good. For anyone who has been lauding the relevancy of HBCUs for some time now (like me), this is music to our ears. The study found that …

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Struggling with racial biases, black families homeschool kids

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.** Ama Mazama, Temple University Homeschooling, common among white Americans, is showing an increase among African- Americans kids as well. African-Americans now make up about 10% of all homeschooled children in this fastest-growing form of education. However, the reasons for black kids to be homeschooled may not be the same as white kids. My research shows that black parents homeschool their children due …

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How to Craft a Culturally-Responsive Teaching Approach

As a student-centered instructional method, culturally-responsive teaching is focused on catering to the social, emotional, and educational needs of the student.  Among the first goals that teachers must achieve in order to successfully create a culturally responsive environment is convincing their students that they genuinely care about their cultural, emotional, and intellectual needs. Get their names right. It may sound simple enough, but a teacher who does not take the time to even know the names of his or her students, exactly as they should be pronounced, shows a basic lack of respect for those students. Teachers should learn the …

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Can Big Bird really close the achievement gap?

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.** A guest post by Sam Chaltain Don’t get me wrong: I love Big Bird as much as the next guy. But when people start talking about how Sesame Street is just as effective at closing the achievement gap as preschool, I start to worry that we’re becoming enamored with a seductively simple characterization of a …

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A diverse perspective: Breaking perceptions and stereotypes one day at a time.

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.** A guest post by Justin Aaron Foster As one of only two black male educators in a school district of over 400 employees times can get very interesting, not to mention lonely. As an educator now for over fifteen years being the only minority employee in a district is something not exactly new to me. …

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