Equity in Education

The only way to make equity in education a standard in Delaware schools is through collaborative efforts from parents, community members, educators, and of course, students themselves.

Parent engagement is vital to equity in education. Parent allies are effective advocates for safe and healthy schools that support achievement. Voting in school board elections, volunteering in equity initiatives, and helping provide off-campus opportunities for kids’ achievement are also important pieces that all community members – not just parents – can add to the puzzle of equity in education.

Teachers, school staff and administration, and the Delaware Department of Education, all hold the bulk of decision-making power when it comes to education initiatives. Bringing these groups on board and working collaboratively is essential in making equity a systemic part of our education system.

Ultimately, equity in education is meant to benefit students. Ensuring student perspectives are always an active part of academic planning and programming is key to bringing equity in education to schools state-wide.

Civic engagement and civic achievement programs can accelerate learning, raise expectations for performance, and normalize help-seeking behavior. Students who are involved in their larger communities through school programs often feel a sense of inclusion and belonging in their own school communities, leading to better education outcomes. Civically engaged students can also begin a path of civic engagement that can last far beyond their grade school years.

Children should be educated, not incarcerated. It's essential that we challenge policies and practices within public school systems and the juvenile justice system that perpetuate a school-to-prison pipeline in order to achieve equity in education.

Student discipline is a racial justice issue. Implicit biases against Black and brown children cause them to experience harsher discipline than their white peers. Further, many kids who experience high discipline rates have disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse, or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished, and pushed out.

These students aren't just slipping through the cracks – they're being pushed into the cracks. Delaware educators need to address high school discipline rates by learning and adopting systematic approaches that encourage problem-solving and create opportunities for students to take responsibility for their behavior and learn new, better behavioral patterns.

Centuries of racism have created an education system that offers vastly different experiences for children who live in different parts of our state. Historically white neighborhoods boast schools that are well-funded and well-resourced, while schools in historically Black and brown neighborhoods are left to scrape funds from the bottom of the barrel, leaving resource gaps wide enough for entire communities to fall through. Kids who are living in poverty aren’t starting their education in the same place their peers from higher-income backgrounds are. They’re starting their journey miles behind the starting line, with plenty of barriers along the way.

Efforts to improve funding for Delaware’s low-income schools have increased in recent years, but without concentrated efforts to continue to bridge these funding gaps, a huge imbalance in education equity will continue to persist. Realizing equity in education means addressing these demographic barriers at the academic level and on a personal level, so that all students can begin their academic journeys at the starting line with their peers.