Racial inequality in education is an entrenched and enduring issue in American society. Despite this, many continue to suggest that education is the great equalizer and a sure pathway to opportunity. This roundtable discussion invites Brown faculty to reflect on some of the current conditions in the US school system.

About the speakers

Mahasan Chaney is an Assistant Professor of Education. Her research and teaching focus on education policy, and the history of education and center on three related policy areas: the racial politics of education, the politics of school punishment, and the ideologies and discourses of education reform. Chaney received her Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019 and was later a posdoctoral researcher with the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (CSREA) and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

John Diamond is Professor of Sociology and Education Policy in Brown’s Department of Sociology and Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Before coming to Brown, he was the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education and Professor of Education at Wisconsin – Madison. A sociologist of race and education, he studies the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, examining how educational leadership, policies, and practices operate through school organizations to shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes.

David Rangel is an Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University. As a sociologist of education, he studies the relationship between education and social inequality, with emphasis on the Latinx experience in the U.S. In particular, his research examines family-school relations, focusing on how social class, race, ethnicity, and the broader social context structure relations within families, between families, and between families and schools. His work documents Latinx parents’ experiences in school settings to understand if, how, and to what extent Latinx parents pass on educational advantages to their children. His most recent work has appeared in various outlets, including the American Educational Research Journal, Sociological Perspectives, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, and Social Science and Medicine – Population Health.

Noliwe Rooks is Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana Studies/Rites and Reason Theatre. Her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. The author of four books and numerous articles, essays and op ed’s, Rooks has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation among others. She lectures frequently at colleges and universities around the country and is a regular contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine and NPR.

Rooks’ most recent book, in which she coined the term “segrenomics,” is Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

This event took place on March 4, 2022 as a virtual session.

Annenberg Institute’s Center for the Study of Educators at Brown University is releasing a new policy brief the week of February 15th that identifies key challenges and opportunities faced by the Providence Public School District (PPSD) as it works to expand its teacher applicant pool and recruit teachers of color. We are convening a panel that includes a PPSD administrator, principal and community leader to talk about the policy implications of these findings.

Panelist:
Soljane Martinez, Education Coordinator, Brown University
John Papay, Associate Professor of Education and Economics, Brown University
Zachary Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Operations, Providence Public Schools
Nkoli Onye, Principal, Providence Public Schools
Paige Clausius-Parks, Senior Policy Analyst, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT

This event took place on February 24, 2021 as a virtual session.

The disruption to in-person and traditional school routines are demanding more from families than ever before, as many try to fill in instructional gaps on top of providing emotional and physical care. Long-standing patterns of excluding and marginalizing families and communities of color from actively engaging in their students’ schooling presents new and even starker threats to their sense of community and trust in schools.

Given these challenges, what can the research evidence tell us about how schools and districts can support families in their diverse contexts and build practical trust to support student learning?

Join Nancy Hill, professor of education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Todd Rogers, professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Greg White, president and ceo of the LEARN Charter School Network, and Justin Jones, Senior Managing Director of Family engagement at Flamboyan Foundation for a lively discussion moderated by EdWeek’s Christina Samuels. The panel will draw on the evidence in the new EdResearch for Recovery brief, “Engaging Parents and Families to Support the Recovery of Districts and Schools.”

Panelists:

Nancy Hill, Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Todd Rogers, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Greg White, President & CEO, LEARN Charter School Network
Justin Jones, Senior Managing Director, Effective Family Engagement, Flamboyan Foundation

Moderator:
Christina Samuels, associate editor for Education Week

This event took place on December 18, 2020 as a virtual session.

Gain a deeper understanding of effective STEM instructional improvement programs – including the features and characteristics that lead to improved student outcomes.

Overview

With today’s heightened focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, school leaders continue to look for ways to enhance instructional methods and raise STEM achievement levels. At the same time, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) mandates that districts receiving Title I funding implement “evidence-based interventions” – with both requirements and incentives in place to improve student performance around STEM.

Professional Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) has introduced a new online workshop, STEM Instructional Improvement That Works, which incorporates findings from cutting-edge HGSE research analyzing the program characteristics -- for both professional development programs and curriculum for students -- that generate better student outcomes. In addition, participants will gain access to a list of effective STEM instructional improvement programs and begin to develop the basis for a STEM-related action plan that can improve student performance in their learning context.

Program Details

The two-week online workshop offers participants the opportunity to increase their understanding of the role STEM professional development programs and curriculum materials play in generating better outcomes for students. Specific activities include:

• Video lectures
• Reading materials culled from relevant research
• Online discussions with fellow participants
• Exploration, reflection, and self-assessment exercises
• Examination of effective STEM curriculum and professional development programs
• Identification of STEM-related instructional goals and development of an action plan to reach them

The online workshop will require a total of five to seven hours of work. Participants who complete all individual assessments and contribute to group discussions will receive a certificate indicating completion of five clock hours of instruction.

Heather Hill, Jerome T. Murphy Professor in Education, Harvard University, and Kathleen Lynch, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University, presented “STEM Instructional Improvement That Works” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on April 15, 2019 in a virtual session.

The talk presented work on the Home Visit Program, an effort to build connections between schools and families. Susanna Loeb, Director of the Annenberg Institute; Katharine Meyer, Postdoctoral Research Associate; and Biraj Bisht, Education Research Data Specialist, Brown University, presented “The Home Visit Program: Building Bridges and Making Connections” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on December 7, 2021. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

A National Study of Public School Spending and House Prices (joint w/ Patrick Bayer and Kenneth Whaley)

We conduct the first national study of the causal impact of school spending and local taxes on housing prices by pairing variation induced by school finance reforms with 25 years of national data on housing prices. Our analysis speaks to two classic questions in economics: whether school spending matters and whether it is provided at efficient levels. The results indicate that households highly value school spending and, in particular, spending on the salaries of teachers and staff. Moreover, we find that salary spending is provided at inefficiently low levels throughout much of the United States, as increases in salary spending within a school district funded entirely by local taxes would generally raise house prices. Our analysis points to both the hiring of more teachers and increasing teacher pay as mechanisms for improving the efficiency of the provision of public schooling in the United States.

Peter Blair, Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard University, presented “A National Study of Public School Spending and House Prices” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on January 28, 2021 in a virtual session. The talk was part of the Annenberg Seminars on Educational Policy, a series that brings education researchers from institutions across the country to Brown to present and discuss their work.

Emily Rauscher, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Brown University, presented work in progress at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on February 5, 2019. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

This study quantifies the relationship between school closure timing and COVID-19 deaths and cases in the general population in all U.S. states. COVID-19 has higher symptomatic infection rates among the elderly, suggesting school closures could be unrelated to transmission. However, predicting daily cumulative COVID-19 deaths by state, earlier school closure is related to fewer deaths per capita and slower growth in deaths per capita. Results are consistent when predicting COVID-19 cases per capita or number of cases or deaths in each state. Estimates within matched pairs of nearby counties in different states and with different school closure dates suggest earlier school closure reduces COVID-19 deaths and cases.

Emily Rauscher, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brown University, presented “Lower State COVID-19 Deaths and Cases with Earlier School Closure in the U.S.” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on May 28, 2020 in a virtual session.

The talk presented evidence from a randomized controlled trial on whether technology can transform teacher-parent communication. Alex Bolves, Research Analyst, Brown University, presented “Will Technology Transform Teacher-Parent Communication? Evidence from an RCT” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on March 5, 2019. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

Katharine Meyer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University, presented work in progress at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on October 29, 2019. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.