5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias

This article was originally published in Education Week in August 2018.

The article outlines that in order for social-emotional learning to advance educational equity, education leaders must be prepared to talk about race. Recommendations include:

• Invest time in professional learning. Educators need regular opportunities to increase their self-awareness about how their various social identities, including their race, have shaped their own education experiences and inform their interpretations of student behavior.

• Identify and eliminate biases in student placement and discipline. School leaders and teachers should re-examine the policies and practices that determine who gets access to honors and Advanced Placement classes, as well as student-leadership roles and extracurricular activities. They also need to take a hard look at who gets disciplined and how.

• Elevate narratives that promote the intellectual achievements of students of color. Research has shown that teachers can mitigate the effects of “stereotype threat” by implementing well-timed reflection activities in which students write about values that are important to them and their families. This practice counters the effects of pervasive racial stereotypes and reduces stress in students of color. The reflections reassure students about who they are and protect their sense of academic belonging, which ultimately leads to greater engagement and higher grades.

• Develop a repertoire of approaches for building trust, especially across race, class, and culture. Trusting relationships between students and teachers prepare the brain for learning by reducing stress and releasing oxytocin, a hormone that promotes social interaction. Educators should work to learn about the passions and interests of individual students of color and apply what they learn to inform instructional strategies.

• Utilize social-emotional-learning practices to engage in productive dialogue about race. Building “racial literacy” is a critical dimension of both self- and social-awareness for all students. Teachers should engage all students in deep listening and reflection on complex issues and current events surrounding race, racism, and exclusion. This provides students the opportunity to develop SEL competencies, including communication and relationship skills, self-management, and responsible decisionmaking.