NYU Metro Center Blog

Revisiting and Learning from the Legacy of Black Communities’ Education for Liberation Efforts

For centuries, Black people have spearheaded education for liberation, saving themselves and radically transforming America, leading us all to a more just society. This three-part blog series seeks to share this vital history as a guide and inspiration for liberatory education.

Suspending Suspensions: Time to Reexamine Discipline in Schools in the Age of COVID-19

Social, emotional, and economic disruptions are ravaging American families and schools should look to ameliorate rather than exacerbate the educational disruption of the pandemic. Suspending suspensions is a reasonable step in that direction.

Spanish Flu, COVID-19, and the City’s Schools

Given New York City’s very high infection and death rates in the initial stages of the current COVID-19 pandemic, what can be learned from how the city responded to the 1918 Spanish Flu?

Anti-Racist Education is Essential for Research Universities

Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation, reflects on the importance of Anti-Racist Education for Research Universities.

I Can't Read

Illiteracy remains an issue in schools. How we identify and support these students matters.

Black Political Statements Across Time

U.S. radical politics has often been riven with disputes about whether race, class, or gender issues should dominate policy, organizing, and advocacy. The following belief statements, promulgated by influential Black political advocacy groups across the past half-century, track the oscillations of class, race, and gender and their intersections, from the 1960s to the present.

Student Voices on Schooling during COVID-19

In Spring 2020, 565 respondents participated in Chalkbeat New York’s survey about school reopening, which gave insight into student ideas related to the Fall 2020 reopening. The Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at the NYU Metro Center analyzed those results.

An Alternative High School and a Police Chief

Written in honor of a police chief who understood that an alternative high school for dropouts could reduce youth delinquency. Williams’ vision of law enforcement honored the necessity to expand society’s provisions for young people’s academic, emotional, and aesthetic capacities, rather than continuing to incarcerate them.

A Successful College Access Experiment Reaches Citywide Scale

A reflection on the College Now program. College now started at Kingsborough Community College in 1986 with a few participating Brooklyn high schools. Today, the program offers dual enrollment in high school and college as well as college-readiness programs in almost 500 New York City high schools, enrolling over 23,000 students annually.

University Instruction in the Time of COVID-19 (Part 4):

the final installment of the four-part series exploring university instruction in the time of COVID-19 focuses on re-envisioning examinations to foster, rather than challenge, equity.

University Instruction in the Time of COVID-19 (Part 3):

Instructor-Student Relationships. This piece describes attempts to accommodate students' needs and offers ways that student-teacher relationships can help to co-construct an equitable online learning environment.

University Instruction in the Time of COVID-19 (Part 2):

Reconceptualizing Participation. Long before COVID-19, university instruction has often defaulted on equitable understandings of student participation. We provide ideas for how to rethink narrow and normative ideas of participation in the shift to online teaching and in our response to COVID-19.

University Instruction in the Time of COVID-19 (Part 1):

Equitable Online Teaching. This four-part blog series aims to review ways in which online learning platforms may be wielded more equitably within tertiary settings.

The Revolution is in the Hands of the Young: Youth Organizing and Leadership Spaces

Youth leaders and organizers regularly and intelligently unpack the implications of racial profiling and other structural inequities as they proactively address the consistent criminalization of the people in their communities. Researchers at NYU Metro Center in partnership with the University of Michigan have followed the work of some of these young people.

#UpliftBlackScholarship

As academia took a much-needed break from “business as usual” during #ShutDownAcademia, I found myself revisiting the “OG” Black female scholars who pushed and persisted in academic spaces to humanize how Black people live.

Depolicing Schools

During this moment of nation-wide opposition to police killings of Black men and women, we should consider ending two longstanding NYC public school security policies–the NYPD’s control of the city’s School Security Agents, and the imposition of metal detectors in selected city schools.