Policy Perspectives
“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”~ Ibram X. Kendi
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the compounding inequities in society that anchor the lived realities of communities of color. This public health crisis has unveiled the impact of institutionalized policies that are exclusionary, limited in scope or unequitably implemented. While all students have been impacted by this devastating pandemic, historically minoritized and underserved students — students of color, students experiencing poverty and/or homelessness, Emergent Bilinguals (also know as English learners under federal statute), students with disabilities, students in the foster care or juvenile justice system, immigrant students, and students who identify as LGBTQ — are disproportionately affected. Beyond interruptions to instruction, many of these students have experienced food insecurity, housing instability, unreliable access to remote learning technology, mental health issues, reduced access to student supports and education services and potentially the loss of a family member. The unprecedented global pandemic, in concert with a long-overdue racial reckoning in the United States, has deepened educational inequities as well as heightened stress and anxiety for students of color and exposed the unique challenges they face. This pandemic requires equity-focused leaders to think differently as they rebuild a school system where responsive policies, structures, and practices render equitable outcomes for students disproportionately impacted.
The country has a responsibility to invest federally infused stabilization funds to wholly transform how schools work in partnership with communities to effectively support students. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provides roughly $125 billion in one-time federal funds to states and local education agencies (LEAs) which translates to thousands of dollars of additional support per student. Far beyond responding to the immediate needs of COVID, we have an obligation to confront and address, head-on, the deep-rooted inequities that students of color have long been subject to in our public school system and society at large. We must reimagine an education system that authentically honors and celebrates the vibrant diversity of students and leads to equitable outcomes for all.
It is an urgent and timely moment to disrupt the policies that set the conditions in the education ecosystem. In this New Dawn, we propose to forge a new path. We will elevate best practices to inform policies and redesign ecosystems that allow all students to thrive. We will do this by recognizing their intersectional identities and defining them through an asset-based perspective rather than a deficit-based lens that feeds into the soft bigotry of low expectations and projects images of imperfect, at-risk children, and youth. While many of the policies outlined in the subsequent section are not new; these policy solutions are anchored in the explicit context of serving historically underserved students of color. The policy recommendations are also informed by the lived experiences and professional expertise of a national network of leaders of color working in various education systems and at multiple levels (national, state and local).
The RISE UP Coalition is led by people of color representing school districts, charter networks and organizations across the country. Collectively, this national coalition enjoys a broad diversity of perspectives and experiences, but also a common purpose and commitment to reimagine and transform the education system with policies that are supportive and responsive to students, their families, and educators. The coalition’s collaborative work has contributed to a priorities map that paves the path forward to an equity-driven, action agenda as well as a repository of demonstrations, and a policy blueprint that outlines priorities. The forthcoming recommendations are guided by the following policy principles:
- Enact policies and practices that lead to equitable outcomes for students of color who now represent the majority of students in U.S. public schools.
- Architect a new equity-based school ecosystem.
- Hold states and districts accountable to ensure that Students of Color receive equitable resources and supports.
To advance the above policy principles and make equity an actionable and tangible reality for underrepresented students, the RISE UP coalition proposes the following policy recommendations.
Policy Recommendation 1: Target resources to support students with the highest needs.
The unprecedented investment in education from the federal government reinforces the obligation that states and LEAs have to close opportunity gaps that existed prior to COVID-19. The total investment in K-12 schools through the combination of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in April 2020, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act in December 2020, and the most recent Covid relief package, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), is nearly double the amount that was invested in schools through the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to address the impacts of the Great Recession. To ensure the equitable implementation of these funds by targeting students with the highest needs, states and LEAs should consider the following recommendations:
- Base education funding levels, during and after the recovery period, on funding needed for equitable outcomes.
- Sustain maintenance of effort in high need schools and LEAs.
- Adopt and sustain maintenance of equity requirements even after the stabilization funds from ARPA sunset. Budget cuts must hold harmless programs focused on low income, students of color, and other historically underserved student populations.
- Ensure that federal stimulus funds are targeted to support traditionally underserved students who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This requires a clear system to monitor and report on the use of federal funds and how they were invested on students with highest needs.
- Ensure that federal stimulus funds and additional state funding are directed to programs that accelerate learning, language development, demonstrate effectiveness, and are responsive to students’ academic, social, and emotional needs.
- Fund research on innovative programs that are showing evidence of academic success and language proficiency for students of color and Emergent Bilinguals.
- Collect and compare data of students who returned to in-person instruction and the data of virtual learners to gain a better perspective of the potential inequities that emerged in different learning environments. This data should be used to tailor professional development opportunities, direct funds to address learning gaps, and identify new policy proposals.
Base education funding levels, during and after the recovery period, on funding needed for equitable outcomes.
Sustain maintenance of effort in high need schools and LEAs.
Policy Recommendation 2: Redefine student success to meet the needs of the whole child.
Students deserve to see themselves as people who are supported in their learning journey regardless of where they started or the challenges they face along the way. Similarly, the needs, talents and identities of students must be honored and addressed comprehensively to safeguard each child’s wellness and safety, and to support long-term success. Redefining student supports and success requires the following policy shifts:
- Expand the definition and metrics of student success to still include, but go above and beyond academic learning.
- Consider and address conditions that can impact student learning at various levels and scales.
- Share power with parents to jointly define student success and identify the resources needed to actualize the vision of success.
- Establish a transparent, culturally and linguistically responsive feedback loop to engage parents in their child’s academic and social development progress.
- Require assessment data to be shared with teachers in a timely and practical way that enables them to tailor instruction for student growth and success.
- Ensure that parents, educators, and leaders of color are meaningfully engaged in shaping the future of assessments and accountability measures.
Policy Recommendation 3: Meaningfully engage and serve families and communities in the school ecosystem.
Schools should be student-centered, honor the family’s cultural and language backgrounds, understand their local context, and authentically engage the community as valued partners in the decision-making process.
- Redesign education ecosystems to meet the comprehensive needs of students through an array of wrap around services and supports.
- Invest in partnerships with community-based organizations to provide extended learning opportunities and culturally and linguistically responsive support services.
- Ensure families have access to broadband internet, technology, and digital literacy support.
- Invest in creating and expanding authentically diverse community-led and indigenous school models.
- Create competitive grant funding to invest in developing, piloting, and scaling innovative school models based on evidence that support children of color.
- Establish and/or expand programming geared at engaging parents/guardians, including monolingual families, in the schooling experience of students.
- Continue to offer virtual options for family engagement as technological platforms have proven to be an effective tool to facilitate communication and participation of family and community members.
Policy Recommendation 4: Acknowledge that educators are the key to healthy and meaningful learning experiences.
More than half of our nation’s public-school students are students of color, but nearly 80% of the teacher workforce is White. It is vital that our children have role models and leaders in their lives and in each classroom, who reflect their racial, cultural, or linguistic background from an early age to boost their opportunities for success. Furthermore, the social, emotional, and academic benefits of the racial and ethnic diversification of the educator workforce are widely documented. The diversification of the educator workforce (including teachers and administrators) benefits all students, as such, it should be prioritized by school systems.
- Create a task force to diversify the educator pipeline and develop, advance, and retain talent.
- Establish an Educator Diversity Data Dashboard to collect and report teacher recruitment and retention rates by racial and ethnic demographic data as well as language diversity, and to collect and report on promotions and professional advancement of educators of color.
- Support Grow Your Own programs that recruit and prepare a diverse workforce including high school students, local community members, paraprofessionals, after-school and tutoring providers to pursue a teaching career.
- Dedicate funds to enhance educator training programs aimed at culturally and linguistically sustaining practices that intentionally address the belief gap that leads to implicit bias practices and differentiated treatment of students of color.
- Provide funding and professional development to address the well-being of educators.
- Use data to inform teacher preparation, practice, and professional development.
Policy Recommendation 5: Focus school culture on wellness and relationship-building.
Approximately 14 million students attend schools with police presence but no counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 48 states do not meet the recommended student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1. At the same time, policies that result in corporal punishment, out-of-school suspension, and expulsion have been shown to disproportionately impact students of color and students with disabilities and result in profiling. This does not have to continue being a reality for millions of American students.
- Properly equip schools with the tools and resources to provide a safe and welcoming environment for the shift back to in-person instruction.
- Provide trauma-informed support to address the disproportionate impact of COVID on students of color.
- Strengthen data collection on school discipline disaggregated by race and ethnicity and publicly report findings.
- Adopt policies that address the over-identification of students of color and students with disabilities in school discipline actions.
- Adopt restorative discipline policies and reduce exclusionary practices.