“There’s no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom.” – Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
In her 2025 book, Dr. Eve L Ewing uses historical research to explore the foundations of the United States schooling systems and approaches. Dr. Ewing recounts a compelling history that highlights how schools were designed to shape and treat students differently. Describing the book, “If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives (Penguin House).” More than this, Dr. Ewing paints a picture in which schooling has helped enforce white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students, and to prepare Black students to be moldable laborers.
Anti-racist education in early childhood classrooms requires educators to do more than highlight the history of Indigenous people or acknowledge the civil rights movements. It requires educators to imbed into the curriculum a deep belief in the inherent value and potential in every student and their communities.
And, more than 65 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, studies show that public schools across the United States are just as racially segregated as they were in the Jim Crow era. According to a 2024 study by The Education Trust-Midwest almost “half of Michigan students of color and two-thirds of all Black students attended schools in districts with high concentrations of poverty, where 73% or more of the students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. That compares with 13% of white students” (Detroit Free Press, 2024). The study also found that pandemic-era learning loss was significantly worse in school districts that serve predominantly Black and Latino students than other schools.
Schools comprised of predominantly students of color also receive significantly less funding. One reason for this is the way that attendance zones are drawn to include, and exclude, families of certain races based on the neighborhoods they live in. “We have built a school funding system that is reliant on geography, and therefore the school funding system has inherited all of the historical ills of where we have forced and incentivized people to live,” says Rebecca Sibilia, CEO of EdBuild. Decades of housing and neighborhood discrimination have caused inequities in where people live; this has made it even easier to draw attendance zones according to “desirable” or “undesirable” neighborhoods which further separate students based on racial lines.
The Learning Policy Institute reviewed the book, Schools of Opportunity: 10 Research-Based Models of Equity in Action. In its blog post, The Learning Policy Institute summarizes findings from the book including the well-studied reasons opportunity gaps exist in schools and how to close them. These include:
- Create a positive school climate through a culture of inclusion and belonging
- Ensure strong student, family, and community engagement and well-being
- Replace harsh discipline practices with positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS)
- Provide rigorous curriculum for all students
- Offer expanded and enriched learning opportunities
- Provide meaningful professional development
Close the Gap Foundation reminds us, “the simplest way to help close the opportunity gap is to learn more about it and share that with others in your community.”
Today’s Challenge
Read
- Learn more about Freedom Schools and the long history of efforts used to reshape education to be a tool for liberation. Civil Rights Teaching: A Project of Teaching for Change, “Exploring the History of Freedom Schools” by Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View. https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/resource/exploring-freedom-schools
- In recent years, mainstream media has begun to highlight what American Indian communities have experienced and known for years about the painful and violent history of Indian boarding schools. Learn more at The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition: https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/
- Read this Texas State Historical Association article that provides an overview of discrimination and progress related to bilingual education in Texas.
Michigan is in the bottom 10 states for African American students in early literacy and eighth-grade math. Review the 2021 Michigan Achieves! Indicators (page 45) in this 2021 State of Michigan Education Report. (5 mins) https://michiganachieves.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/Education-Trust-Midwest_The-Urgency-of-Now-Michigans-Educational-Recovery_January-13-2021.pdf
Watch
- Watch How America’s Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty, a TED Talk with Kandice Sumner. “We sit and we keep banging our heads against this term —’’ ‘achievement gap’…I think we, as Gloria Ladson-Billings says, should flip our paradigm and our language and call it what it really is. It is not an achievement gap; it’s an education debt, for all of the foregone schooling resources that were never invested in the education of the Black and Brown child over time.” (13:42) https://www.ted.com/talks/kandice_sumner_how_america_s_public_schools_keep_kids_in_poverty
- Watch this TedxTalk by Dorinda Carter Andrews, MSU Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Teacher Education, where she challenges us to consider how gaps in critical consciousness and mindsets for adults and students in schools prevent us from providing equitable schooling experiences for all students. (15:06) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOrgf3wTUbo
Engage
- Review ProPublica’s interactive database to examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline. Data is available for more than 96,000 individual public and charter schools and 17,000 districts. https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/
Discuss
- Dr. Eve L Ewing distinguishes between schooling (structured, institutional process, often taking place in schools), and education (a broader space of teaching and learning that can occur in many different places and contexts). Consider how the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge and other tools can offer education that is/was absent for us in schools. How did your own race shape your schooling experiences?
- What can we, as individuals and collectives, do to disrupt racism within education and schooling? What education can we offer, participate in, and/or cultivate in and out of schools? What does action look like?
- What’s happening in your community to close the racial opportunity gap in education? What can you do today to learn more?
