The new school year is fast approaching with many unknowns, but one thing is for sure: the Black Lives Matter movement has woken America up to the racial inequality in schools across the nation. What comes next?
Today, Wednesday host Ali Muldrow takes up a discussion of race, education, and where we go from here with two distinguished educators, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings and Dr. Maxine McKinney de Royston.
Over the course of the conversation, they take up a variety of topics including neoliberal austerity in education, the role of white parents and educators, discipline in schools, the problem with the so-called “achievement gap,” professional opportunities and barriers for Black educators, the carceral logic of schools and why removing SROs isn’t enough, and how to get adults to stop punishing Black kids and start teaching Black kids.
Gloria Ladson-Billings is the former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and faculty affiliate emeritus in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (Jossey-Bass, 1994), Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms (Jossey-Bass, 2001), and many journal articles and book chapters.
Maxine McKinney de Royston is assistant professor of Secondary Mathematics Education & Multicultural Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previously, she was a fellow at the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters on race and education.
Cover photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash