We are very pleased to be awarded a new study $1,000,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to be used to study the interconnected relationships of culturally responsive-sustaining education (CRSE), racial identity formation, and student academic success. One of the things we hope to accomplish through this project is the exploration of what it means for CRSE to be a dimension of quality for academic solutions (i.e., in order for a solution to be deemed effective in improving the academic experiences of Black, Latinx, and students impacted by poverty, a solution must include some element of CRSE). In this light, we think of CRSE as a dimension of quality education; thus, funding will be used to codify CRSE approaches and elements that are solutions based and that emerge out of important lessons that might be learned in the course of this project.
Through this investment, NYU Metro Center will work with and study a cohort of organizations committed to improving student racial identity to better understand their approaches, harness the components of their programs that are central to their approaches, determine how each organizations measures impact, and explore current identity development measurement frameworks to see whether they can be applied to programs focused specifically on racial and cultural identity. We are deeply grateful to our generous benefactors, for placing their faith in us to do this vital work in the pursuit of racial equity in education.