Dive Brief:

• The changing demographics of the K-12 public school population were brought into stark relief by the Civil Rights Data Collection Survey, which found 49.7% of students are students of color, about a quarter are Latino, and 15.5% are black.
• NPR reports black and Latino students are underrepresented in gifted programs as well as Advanced Placement classes, overrepresented in school discipline cases, and their schools are more likely to have first-year teachers.
• The CRDC showed 1.6 million students attend high schools where there is a police officer but no guidance counselor, and for students in justice facilities, 21% of the facilities offer less than a full year of instruction.

Dive Insight:

As minority students make up a growing share of the United States student population, their success will be even more critical to the success of the nation in improving graduation rates and other outcomes metrics. The equity issues highlighted by the CRDC make very clear there is much work to be done.

Both conscious and unconscious biases impact classroom instruction, grading, and discipline decisions. Better training about a growth mindset could help address these issues and encourage teachers to be intentional about confronting their biases. Trauma-informed teaching can also help educators better understand where behavior problems are coming from in their students, laying the foundation for working past them and getting back to learning.