Perspectives 2021

Blogs from 2021

Foreman teaching apprentice working with tools.

Towards Career Apprenticeships

Though specific U.S. occupations and trades have developed small-scale apprenticeship programs, we have no national structure that coordinates or supports subsidized apprenticeship opportunities for our country’s youth.

Structural Racism Begins in Kindergarten

Kindergarten in a Large Urban District, a recent study by Mimi Engle, Robin Jacob, Amy Claessens, and Anne Erickson, analyzes how time is used in kindergarten classes in low-income and higher-income schools.

Student follows a lunch line, ordering sweet potato fries from the cafeteria custodian.

Universal Free Meals in NYC Schools

A recent study by Emily Gutierrez finds that several important benefits to students result from the Universal Free Meals (UFM) program in NYC schools.

Three people stand in front of a rainbow flag.

Supporting Success in 2021-22: Education, Disability, and Equity Pt. 3

Part 3 explores how schools can expand their definitions of access, where educators embrace students' autonomy, honor difference, and model interdependence.

A tight crop of three Black and disabled friends (a non-binary person with a cane and tangle stim toy, a non-binary person sitting in a power wheelchair, and an invisibly disabled femme) smiling and taking a cell phone selfie together.

Supporting Success in 2021-22: Education, Disability, and Equity Pt. 2

Part 2 explores how schools could be spaces for liberation, resistance, and joy.

A dark skinned wheelchair user with long hair and a beanie sits at a small table, using their laptop to participate in a video meeting. The laptop screen is shown to their right, with the call being live captioned. The main speaker is a dark skinned person wearing a hijab and glasses, and 3 other participants are at the bottom of the screen, in smaller windows. In the bottom right corner, a yellow service dog bounds towards the wheelchair user.

Supporting Success in 2021-22: Education, Disability, and Equity Pt. 1

Part 1 of this 3-part series introduces key terms, concepts, and the 2021 context as it relates to education, disability, and equity.

graphic for CREHub.org featuring illustrations of people with their arms raised

Under-Prepared for Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education: Teachers Entering New York City's Classrooms

Meaningful CRSE implementation requires educators to engage skills such as cultural competence and the ability to center joy alongside critical conversations about society and institutions.

A second-grade student rests her head on her hand during a lesson.

Vulnerable Schools and COVID-19

We compared the NYC Health Department’s COVID-19 Neighborhood Data with the key findings from our Demography/Destiny study to analyze the relationship between students’ college readiness rates, the racial/ethnic composition of students’ home neighborhoods, and neighborhood indicators of the severity of COVID-19 diagnosis and death rates.

A music instructor who is a Black woman sits at the front of the room, smiling, with a violin on her lap

Improving Racial Diversity in the NYC K-12 Teacher Workforce: What Can the Mayor Do?

The most promising proposals to increase teacher diversity involve addressing barriers to entry for candidates of color and the systemic issues which drive high rates of turnover for teachers of color.

Opportunity to Learn

Monitoring Educational Equity is so important because it’s the first time a respected national entity has called for efforts to pair the measurement of student outcomes with an assessment of the quality of learning schools and districts provide to students of differing race, class, gender, disability and language ability.

Redefining Infrastructure: Schools in a Care Economy

What is infrastructure and how should it be defined politically? This question is central to current debates about what infrastructure consists of and how it should be funded.

“I Felt Like I Never Fit in”: Increasing College Access and Persistence

In the past five decades the costs of college-going have skyrocketed, and student college-incurred debt has increased exponentially. Has the transition to college eased for first-generation students like Monica and our high school’s students of color?

A standing girl student stares at the camera in a classroom with a background of other standing students

Bringing School Racial Socialization to Light: The Importance of Intentionality and Resistance

Racial socialization occurs with youth on a regular basis from all kinds of sources and these messages inform how youth make sense of race and their own racial identities.

Protesters at the New York Legislator building in Albany, NY.

Historic Steps towards Funding Equity for NYC’s students

This July, New York City will receive an initial $1.4 billion down-payment on the accumulated debt the state owes the city’s schools, based on the New York State Court of Appeals 2006 final decision in CFE v State of New York

Two girls hold a textbook and look at the pages as they stand in front of a school bus

Recuperation and Innovation: New York City’s Transfer High Schools

New York City's 56 transfer schools have a 25-year history and currently support the 15-20% of students who disengage from their original high schools. Yet, due to ESSA regulations, this sector of schools founded to serve students at high risk of not graduating is vulnerable to state regulatory action.

Reducing High School Segregation: What Can the Mayor Do? (pt.2)

This blog explores actions that have the ability to lessen the intense segregation of New York City high schools by examining the 50 least diverse high schools (highest percentages of Black and Latinx students) in the City and suggests ways to increase diversity in those schools and address their unique needs.

A group of racial diverse students sit together happily studying

Reducing High School Segregation: What could the mayor do?

This blog explores actions that have the ability to lessen the intense segregation of New York City high schools by examining entry requirements of the 50 least diverse high schools in the City.

Teacher Stands at the front of the room pointing to a student with their hand raised

Monopolizing Whiteness

A reflection on Erika Wilson's forthcoming work that argues, across the country, state-drawn school district boundaries in diverse urban districts allow advantaged whites with significant social and political capital to transform those districts into enclaves of similar racial and socio-economic status.

A young girl watches her instructor through her laptop

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Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools