Big Ideas: What Does It Mean to Be an Anti-Racist Educator?

The ongoing pandemic has exposed the deep fault lines in our nation’s public education system. Whatever schools were doing and however they were doing it up until spring of this year will need to be reconsidered in big and innovative ways. But the reality is that a growing number of Americans are ready to address the existing inequities in this country, beginning with our K-12 schools.

Today, roughly 80 percent of the nation’s teachers, principals, and districts leaders are white, but more than half of their K-12 students are not. In a nationally representative survey, conducted the EdWeek Research Center in June, 87 percent of teachers, principals, and district leaders agreed that Black students face higher rates of school discipline than their white peers due to discrimination.

In spite of this consensus, some educators do not feel comfortable or adequately informed or prepared to address racism or racist policies that have created and then furthered academic disparities between Black and white students. In a recent, nationally representative EWRC survey, although more than 80 percent of respondents—teachers, principals, and district leaders—said they were willing to teach or support, respectively, the implementation of anti-racist curriculum, about 60 percent said they had neither the training nor the resources to do so.

The Big Ideas Summit will offer the Education Week audience opportunities to engage directly with the reporters on this project—and their guests, including possibly students, school leaders, researchers, and policymakers—to discuss proactive steps that educators, school and district leaders, educator preparation programs, policymakers and advocates can take to make a difference in the lives of our nation’s Black students.