The Equity Line contains original analyses, commentary, and “on the ground” stories of students, parents, educators, and activists all over the nation striving to improve education. It chronicles our efforts, as well as those of partners and friends who are working toward the shared goal of closing gaps.
Celebrating 10 Years of College Results Online!
by Meredith WelchTen years ago, we created College Results Online to challenge the conventional wisdom that colleges’ graduation rates were simply a function of the students th…
Too Much Testing? Or Not Enough Quality Testing?
by Sonja Brookins SantelisesAs an educator who has spent nearly all of her professional life in urban education, I am deeply concerned about the direction that current (and admittedly muc…
Grappling With Disturbing Discrepancies in Discipline
by Karin ChenowethIt’s sometimes thought that teachers support the suspension and expulsion of trouble-making students, but the two major teacher unions have both opposed exclud…
What Would Happen Without Annual Testing?
by Deborah VeneyI have a very personal connection to annual testing.When my daughter began elementary school, I decided to enroll her in a school with ethnic and economic dive…
What’s the Score on Assessments? Most Say to Keep Them Annual and Make Them Count
by Matt de FerrantiToday’s Senate hearing on assessments and accountability reaffirms why annual statewide testing used to prompt meaningful action is essential for continuing th…
Why I Teach Where I Teach: The Opportunity to Share In Schoolwide Decisions
by Arnold PuldaArnold Pulda is a U.S. history teacher at University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, which is 82 percent low-income students. He has been an educator for …
Between the Echoes: Broken School Windows and Unbreakable Boys
by Brooke HaycockAn offshoot of Ed Trust’s Echoes From the Gap series, drawing stories of students from behind the statistics, this blog series shares shorter narratives — brie…
Dumb Policy Ideas Not Limited to the Far Right
by Kati HaycockThe joint proposal for ESEA reauthorization from the Center for American Progress and the American Federation of Teachers shows that bad policy ideas aren’t li…
Civil Rights Organizations Agree: Students Who Aren’t Tested Won’t Count
by Kati HaycockToday, a large coalition of civil rights and disabilities organizations — including The Education Trust — released its top priorities for Congress to consider …
Why I Teach Where I Teach: Because I’m Needed
by Angela CampbellAngela Campbell is in her 20th year as an educator in Southern California, working in schools with high percentages of non-native English-speakers. Currently, …
Black Students (and Issues of Race and Perception) Matter
by Ashley GriffinCredit: Franklin & Marshall CollegeMy nephew, a young black male who takes AP classes and is applying to college, has always had a hopeful and trusting at…
‘It Stops Today’: Racial Profiling in the Classroom
by Rachel MetzThe day-to-day realities of the impact of racial profiling come alive in the stories under the #AliveWhileBlack hashtag. But it’s not just tales of interacting…
Education and Racial Justice: The Need for a Protest Within
by Kati HaycockMy whole life’s work has been bound up in the fight for racial justice. So my heart aches every time I confront evidence of how far we still have to travel unt…
Wasting Time
by Karin ChenowethWhenever I hear educators promote the idea of “project-based learning” I get shivers from the memory of all the “projects” my kids did when they were going thr…
Why I Teach Where I Teach: I Feel Empowered
by Justin StoeckelJustin Stoeckel, a second-grade teacher at East Millsboro Elementary School in Delaware, which is 68 percent low-income. He began his teaching career when he j…
The Problem With Merit Aid
by Chelsey JonesThere is a misnomer in a term commonly used in higher education: merit aid. The use of “merit” implies excellence or worthy of praise, but unfortunately, in th…
Bringing Order Out of Chaos
by Karin ChenowethOne of the things that sometimes gets lost in all the talk about education is how complex schools are. Many of them are the size of small towns — complete with…
Why I Teach Where I Teach: A School Community Centered on High Expectations — For Everyone
by Crystal ByrdCrystal Byrd is a special education teacher at Calcedeaver Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Ala., where most students are “MOWA Choctaw,” or descendants of A…
When the Data Come Alive
by Hilary TackieWhen I started at Ed Trust, my first project was to sort and filter through states’ school-level achievement and demographic data. My mission: to find schools …
Blog: Is Tufts’ Lack of Diversity Undermining Its Civic Mission?
by Andrew Howard Nichols and Meredith WelchThe White House recently hosted a summit on civic engagement at one of the nation’s most elite and least diverse institutions of higher learning, Tufts Univers…