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Educational equity measures the ability of all students to access the resources they need to meet their full academic and social potential. Parents, activists, scholars, policymakers, students, and so many others have labored for years around the common goal of improving educational outcomes, in particular for those in marginalized groups who are most vulnerable to institutional failures. The effort to achieve equity in education has included a focus on shifting resources to the places where they are needed most; valuing and adapting to the unique characteristics that students bring to the classroom and which impact their learning process; the closure of achievement gaps; the disruption of inequitable institutional practices; fair treatment among traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools; and so much more.
Its value notwithstanding, key aspects of this equity project are on shaky ground or are explicitly under attack. Reformers struggle to secure the resource allocations that would benefit children in under-served schools. Expanded efforts to prioritize school choice have undermined already-weakened public schools and disadvantaged the children who attend them. Noncompliance and limited compliance with laws like the IDEA threaten the right of students with disabilities to a free and appropriate public education. Laws and policies in many jurisdictions let parents weaponize their objections to diversity by silencing teachers and penalizing unwitting transgressors. The Supreme Court has substantially curtailed the use of race in university admissions and activists are moving to a new set of attacks: facially neutral policies meant to address racial disparities. This is an opportune moment to examine educational equity, the challenges it faces, and the role that law and legal actors can play in addressing them.
The Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity at Touro Law Center is seeking papers in connection with its annual symposium which will examine present and future concerns related to educational equity in the K-12 setting and in higher education. The symposium is scheduled for March 21, 2024 and it will take place entirely over Zoom. The symposium organizers welcome proposals that consider this issue from any perspective, though we are especially interested in topics related to equity in funding, barriers to student success, school choice, special education, book bans, restraints on the delivery of curricula, and the future of diversity in higher education. Abstracts should be 250-500 words and are due by October 16, 2023. Please submit abstracts here: https://tourolawcenter.wufoo.com/forms/z1o28ged06xxvps/. Authors of selected papers will be invited to participate in the Journal’s annual symposium. Completed papers should be 5000-7500 words in length and will be due no later than May 15, 2024, for publication in our Winter 2024 edition. Please direct all questions to Symposium Editor, Damian Jhagroo, at [email protected] or faculty advisor, Professor Tiffany Graham, at [email protected].
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