As revelers with noisemakers and confetti close out 2024, the staff and leadership of NYU Metro Center is filled with gratitude for the effort and passion each of their partners and collaborators brings to the shared mission of advancing educational equity. Over the last calendar year, this university-based center has successfully navigated challenges and celebrated triumphs, all in service of creating transformative educational experiences for historically marginalized youth and families.
Throughout 2024, the Metropolitan Center for Research and Equity and the Transformation of Schools joined with community organizations and fellow education stakeholders to amplify diverse community voices, empower educators and district leaders, strengthen community partnerships, as well as support youth development and college preparation.
Through their open-access journal, Voices in Urban Education (VUE), NYU Metro Center continued to highlight diverse perspectives, and foster critical dialogues that challenge inequalities as well as inspire meaningful change. The latest edition of VUE is titled Centering Community Healing, Sustenance, and Resilience in STEM and Computing Education Through Art and Social Justice. This dynamic, special issue focuses on the importance of cultural sustainment for students of color in STEM and Computing education. This heralded educational scholarship highlights the importance of bringing love, community, and joy to the center of learning experiences to support a diversity of youth to flourish.
Empowering Educators:
The previous calendar year was punctuated by NYU Metro Center’s diligent efforts to augment the capacity and enhance the practices of not only classroom teachers, but school and district leaders alike. Metro’s Center for Strategic Solutions (CSS) engaged deeply with schools and educators, providing tools and strategies to navigate conversations around race, privilege, and power. As an individual subunit, Dr. Wenimo Okoya and her CSS team excelled in offering professional development, technical assistance, consultation, as well as coaching to educators that delves into the importance of culturally responsive education, socio-emotional wellness, and cross-cultural understandings to more than four hundred (400) public school educators throughout the course of 2024.
Strengthening Community Partnerships
The Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative (EJ-ROC) at NYU Metro Center has stood alongside organizers, families, and advocates, shaping policies that prioritize education justice and community-driven solutions. The EJ-ROC team held public facing trainings and workshops serving upwards of one thousand (1,000) students, teachers, parents and school administrators. Topics ranged from “How to Build a Culture of Equity and Antiracism,” to “Migrant Equity,” and “Empowering Youth Voice,” as well as the importance of “School Integration.” EJ-ROC’s expertise with the history and policies that surround school integration in NYC Public Schools helped facilitate a co-sponsored report on the subject with our partners, and fellow education advocates at New York Appleseed. The report titled, Crests to Valleys: NYC's Battle for Integration 70 Years After Brown, commemorates the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v Board decision by examining the state of integration in New York City Public Schools, outlining the impact of policy, leadership, and community organizing on classroom desegregation efforts.
Supporting Youth Development
NYU Metro Center’s Youth Development and College and Career Preparation (YDCCP) unit provides young people with mentorship tools, college prep knowledge, and career exploration skills to transition to the next phase of their development. In the course of the 2023-2024 academic year, Metro’s YDCCP unit, comprised of The Liberty Partnerships Program (LPP) and the College Prep Academy/ 1199 Workforce (CPA/1199 WF), combined to serve more than one thousand three hundred fifty-nine (1,359) students, parents, and caregivers. The astounding impact made by these two Metro teams, LPP NYU & CPA/1199 WF, was achieved by aiding more than 90% of their students to successfully transition from high school to college. The comprehensive services provided by NYU Metro Center’s Youth Development and College and Career Preparation unit are expertly designed to meet the academic, psychological, social, and other developmental needs of high-risk students, as well affirm their capacity to complete high school and pursue postsecondary education.
Most notably, the Liberty Partnerships Program at NYU Metro Center held a public art installation at NYU’s Kimball Hall. This comprehensive program encouraged NYC high school students to share their talents and perspectives on a large, public stage, with the intention of empowering students to be active participants in their learning communities at school, in college, and beyond.
Ahead with Hope and Determination
As NYU Metro Center sets its sights squarely on 2025, a palpable sense of hope and determination resounds. There is nothing in the 47-year history of this institution that suggests it will be deterred or hampered in its long-held mission of empowering Black and other historically marginalized communities. This persistence of vision has forged NYU Metro Center into a nationally recognized leader in educational equity and social justice. The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools stands resolute and stout in the continued fight to secure a better future for all of our children through the advancement of excellence in education, and connecting to legacies of justice work through critical inquiry and research, professional development and technical assistance, community action and collaboration, as seen through these initial Metro Center objectives for the new calendar year:
2025 Equity Now Conference: NYU Metro Center is honored to welcome Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings as conference keynote speaker. This educational luminary will guide us and deepen attendees' understanding of welcoming, affirming, and healing schools.
Launch of the Institute for Healing and Belonging in Schools (IHBS): This new NYU Metro Center initiative will expand and grow efforts to create educational spaces rooted in equity, care, and belonging.
- Expanding Research Initiatives: Metro’s Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation (PRE) will continue to delve into the complex interplay between schools and communities, seeking pathways to positive educational outcomes for all.
The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools is an institution that has continuously made strides in positively impacting the nation’s educational landscape throughout its forty-seven-year existence. 2024 saw the combined efforts of NYU Metro Center teams execute 1,656 meetings/trainings/workshops to provide research and professional learning services, and share equity-focused, evidence-based innovations in educational research and programming with a cohort of 17,320 educational stakeholders. If history shall be our guide, in 2025 we can again expect NYU Metro Center to collaborate on a range of projects to strengthen and improve access, opportunity, and educational quality, particularly for youth in vulnerable and historically marginalized communities.