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Show Notes

• Aurelio asks Bradley why we still need to be concerned with civil rights in education today.

• Bradley talks about the role of the nation’s 10 equity assistance centers, including the IDRA-directed South Central Collaborative for Equity, in addressing these civil rights issues (gender discrimination, sexual abuse, racial hostility, etc.) and working to make schools work for all learners.

• Bradley discusses the five priorities for the equity assistance centers, as directed by the U.S. Department of Education. The first is the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which focuses on boys of color.

• The second priority centers on parent involvement. Bradley considers the ways that some parents are systematically excluded from important discussions at their children’s schools, and the systems of redress they should have when they or their children are discriminated against.

• For the third priority, discipline guidance, Bradley explains the societal impact of the disproportionately high suspension and dropout rates among poor and minority students.

• The fourth priority is collaboration around dropout prevention, and the need to “not just warehouse [kids] in schools,” as Bradley says, but rather to “get them ready to competently go on to college.”

• Bradley explains that the fifth initiative around teacher equity includes building capacity in teachers to better accommodate and reach diverse student groups in more culturally competent ways.

• Aurelio and Bradley call out the dangerous assumptions inherent in the claim that “college is not for everybody” – including the road to infringing on students’ civil rights.