Equity: Equity in Education (General)

For low-income and minority students, education is the key to success and upward mobility. But evidence has shown in past decades that education has not been acting as the Great Equalizer. AIR's work covers a broad range of equity issues in education, through initiatives including the Equity Project, the Breakthroughs in Education and Social Mobility Research Speaker Series, and the Center for Education Equity (CEE) at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC), one of four regional equity assistance centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Led by MAEC in partnership with AIR and WestEd, CEE promotes equal educational opportunities and addresses problems in public schools caused by segregation and inequities.

To learn more about that kind of action, I talked with Pedro Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Dr. Noguera has been a leader in educational equity for over two decades, authoring 12 books, publishing over 200 articles, and speaking and consulting with schools and districts all over the country.

America is becoming increasingly more diverse. According to the Census Bureau, by the year 2100, the U.S. minority population will become the majority, with non-Hispanic whites making up about 40% of the U.S. population. And while the school population shifts, the teacher population is projected to remain overwhelmingly white and female. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics found that in 2011-2012, over 80% of classroom teachers identified as white.

"Equity in education requires putting systems in place to ensure that every [student] has an equal chance for success. That requires understanding the unique challenges and barriers faced by individual students or by populations of students and providing additional supports to help them overcome those barriers."