EDUCATION LAW & POLICY
Achieving Resource Equity Within a Single School District:                Erasing the Opportunity Gap By Examining School Board Decisions By Edwin C. Darden and Elizabeth Cavendish Education and Urban Society ~ January 2012   Each day children in poverty attend urban schools, deserving (and likely expecting) education resources that match the quality available to their cross-town rivals in the same District. Since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,1 that vision of equity has been the implied legal promise of public schooling in the United States. Yet two generations of students after Brown have attended schools where resources were not equally apportioned. City school boards and superintendents—often inadvertently—distribute pivotal human, curricular, and infrastructure resources unevenly, causing an opportunity gap between kids living in affluent versus poor neighborhoods.  Click here for full article     Read the PowerPoint slides: "School Board Power to Erase the Opportunity Gap," Edwin Darden's Webinar presentation to the National School Boards Association on August 9, 2011. Resource Equity Assessment Documents  (Basic, Detailed and Basic Side-by-Side)     School Boards Must Prioritize Student Equity By Edwin C. Darden  Education Week ~ May 25th, 2011   The American dream of upward mobility is projected as tantalizingly within reach—the reward for hard work that children in poverty should strive to achieve. But as a society that reveres success, we should worry about dangling false hopes before students in high-poverty schools. Unless a high-quality education is available to prepare their minds for 21st-century challenges and negate the effects of being poor, the grand vision of a good life is, in reality, just a mirage...Click here for full article
Education is one of the most effective tools for helping students in poverty enter the social and economic mainstream. As such, Appleseed ensures that educational opportunities are equally available to all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, disability or immigrant status. See above for further details on Appleseed’s groundbreaking project to Erase the Opportunity Gap. Scroll down for further details on Parent Involvement or other initiatives.
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT	PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ASSESSMENT FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS	NYC TEACHER RECRUITMENT
ERASING THE OPPORTUNITY GAP
Achieving Equity within School Districts

School boards and superintendents in urban and large suburban school districts sometimes distribute pivotal human, curricular and construction resources in a way that becomes unintentionally uneven, causing an opportunity gap between children living in well-off versus poor neighborhoods. This widely acknowledged problem rarely inspires the attention it deserves.  Appleseed seeks to engage the issue in a three-step process:
1.					Identify the extent of the problem by highlighting disparities using a three-year sample period.
2.					Identify those “mobilization moments” when community organizations ought to be present at the table (but usually are not) so that leaders can make their views known and better represent economically poor and politically powerless individuals.
3.					Advocate through Appleseed Centers and National Appleseed channels to enact change. This work would be accomplished in conjunction with existing local and national organizations.
School board members make one-at-a-time decisions that have long-term consequences.  Among them: the number and nature of Advanced Placement courses at a given high school; assignment of principals, teachers and guidance counselors; the age and re-conditioning of school buildings. All of these actions at first blush appear to be neutral choices. Yet, when the best resources are persistently handled in a way that favors affluent areas in a single school district, inequity becomes a repeating pattern locked in over decades. The result is an opportunity gap that finds some students receiving an inferior education simply because of their zip code.

 

Report ~ "The Same Starting Line: How School Boards Can Erase the Opportunity Gap Between Poor and Middle-Class Children"   Click here for Executive Summary, Spanish translation

(Multiple Documents)  East Baton Rouge RSD Super Saturday:  Enhancing Parent Engagement for Student Achievement

Appleseed Engagement Implementation Guide

Flamboyan Foundation’s Family Engagement Matters

ABCs of Communicating with Parents

Parent Engangement for Student Achievement

True/False Parent Involvement Quiz

Appleseed's Making It Clear brochures help parents of students at failing schools secure better educational opportunities for their children.

Click below to view photos from Delaware's Stakeholder Forum on Sept. 30, 2011. U.S. Senator Tom Carper U.S. Senator Chris Coons Edwin Darden and Gina Backus   Click below to see photos from the convening, How School Boards Can  Erase the Opportunity Gap Between Poor and Middle-Class Children, on Thursday, Oct. 20. Edwin Darden  Bob Kettle, Connecticut Appleseed's Executive Director Patte Barth, director of the Center for Public Education at the National School Boards Association  TEACHER CONTRACTS