The University of Kentucky College of Education and the NAACP have agreed to establish a research center at the university to address issues of concern to African American communities. The driving force behind this project is the new Dean of the College, Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, who is a nationally recognized scholar on equity policies. Heilig has written extensively about civil rights, charter schools, and Teach for America. He is a founding board member of the Network for Public Education.
Valerie Strauss writes in the Washington Post:
The NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States, is launching a new education initiative with the University of Kentucky that will provide a home for Black faculty to conduct and disseminate research on the community in a new way.
The enterprise marks the first time that the NAACP has joined with university-based education scholars to help address racial inequities that for decades have plagued public schools around the country.
“It’s a brand new paradigm,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Education who has served on the NAACP executive committee and as the education chair for the NAACP’s California Hawaii State Conference. “There is no playbook.”
Vasquez Heilig, who is the initiative’s mastermind, said research will be done not by finding topics in the halls of academia, as is usually done, but rather in African American communities.
The idea here is to go to communities and understand what research they think needs to be done,” he said in an interview. “Instead of going to communities in the colonial way and taking research, we are asking what research they think is important to do.”
The focus of the initiative’s work will be to advance and protect education for students from preschool through higher education — with an emphasis on race-based discrimination. Special attention will be paid to students from underserved communities in Kentucky, which reflects many around the country.
The initiative will also seek to understand the challenges of students who are marginalized in the education sector based on factors including ability, gender, ethnicity, age and sexuality — and it will explore the intersectionality of these identities.
The agreement for the new initiative — for which a director and researchers have been hired — was signed by Vasquez Heilig, NAACP president and chief executive Derrick Johnson, NAACP Chairman Leon W. Russell and David Blackwell, the provost of the University of Kentucky. It will be based in the department of educational policy studies and evaluation at the College of Education at the university, which is largely funding the initiative.
These scholars will partner with students, educators, and communities to document the experiences of those facing educational disparities and use research to shape public policy,” Johnson said in a statement. “To see change, we must focus on discipline policies, school funding structures, college and career readiness initiatives, and our own great teachers in underserved communities.”
The director of the initiative is Gregory Vincent, a renowned civil rights attorney who just joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky. He is also the outgoing Grand Sire Archon of the Boule’, the nation’s first Greek-letter fraternity founded by African American men.
Researchers hired for the initiative include Sarah LaCour, arriving from the University of Colorado at Boulder, who will serve as an assistant director of the civil rights initiative, and Cheryl Matias, a scholar who studies culturally responsive education practices.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The idea here is to go to communities and understand what research they think needs to be done,” he said in an interview. “Instead of going to communities in the colonial way and taking research, we are asking what research they think is important to do.”
I’m not black, but my guess, based on what I’m hearing from black people, the answer will be something like, “We don’t need research. We need action. We’ve been ‘studying the problem’ long enough. The solutions are already obvious: defund the police/Pentagon/prison system, reparations, economic justice, healthcare, job protections, education.”
As Andre Perry writes in his recent book, “Know Your Price,” the norm in all research is white behavior, attitudes, test scores, etc. Perry was raised by a friend of the family whom he called “mom.” For him, this arrangement was normal. In the eyes of white researchers, it was abnormal. What the new center at UK will do is look at racial issues from the perspective of African Americans.
Test Scores? Please explain.
“…. The solutions are already obvious: ……education.”
That is exactly what the pro-charter privatizers say. Because the current faux “studies” funded by right wing anti-public school billionaires supposedly “prove” that African American students do much better academically if they are subject to the harsh “no excuses” discipline that those same studies never “prove” that white students must have or they will be abject failures in their private schools.
Any real research has showed over and over again that charters only achieve results if they can use methods to cherry pick among their lottery winning students. And since legally charters can’t legally force the students to leave that they don’t want to teach, ‘no excuses’ gives them an excuse to target with punishment and humiliation the lower performing students.
Now there are racists who strongly believe that there are real studies that “prove” that white students don’t do well with no excuses but that black students “need’ it. But the truth is that it would be simple for charters in white areas to also “prove” with those kind of flawed studies that white students also need harsh no excuses discipline or they will be abject failures. If charters serving white middle class students whose parents were college educated simply targeted with harsh discipline all the kindergarten and first grade students who they did not believe would thrive academically until their parents pulled them out, their CEOs could certainly try to blame the white students for their own violent behavior and blame their parents who did want a good education for their children but instead preferred them to be abject failures. But it is unlikely that all the white trustees at the SUNY Charter Institute would believe that the way they believe it when it is black kindergarten and first graders and their parents being trashed that way by a white charter CEO.
Charter-funded research is all about comparing the “average” of a group of cherry picked students who remain at charters with the “average” of a much larger group that is not comprised of cherry picked students.
The biased research funded by the pro-charter billionaires is like the flawed hydroxychloroquine studies that Trump said “proved” that the drug worked miracles to cure COVID-19. It turned out that a closer look showed that those studies compared a cherry picked group of patients who did well under the drug and left out the patients who didn’t do well! Or they included patients who took hydroxychloroquine along with the steroids that have already been proven to be helpful and falsely claimed that proved that the results were due to the hydroxychloroquine and not the steroids.
“Education” is a meaningless word as anything can be called “education”. The point of real studies is to demonstrate the obvious. That despite the lies of the people who promote charters, there is no cheap and easy solution to education. But complexity is an anathema to those who make money from promoting the easy cure.
This is a wonderful initiative that can study some real problems in African American communities, people and society at large. Like NPE it can provide legitimate information on topics that nobody is examining in order to keep us from repeating the mistakes of the past. We need to move forward. For example, the whole “no excuses” approach that so many charters adopt, where is the evidence that this is the best way to address black students? I see it as racist, but research can give us evidence. Researchers can provide society at large with information from black, not white researchers and scholars. White researchers may not ask the right questions. Perspective is important.
Vice News aired an interesting story about African American support groups run by a psychologist. Her focus was on trying to help people deal with the stress of racism in America among other issues. It is a new day, and we need to look forward to build a better future for all our people.
We have plenty of research on “no excuses” charters. Depending on what side of the issue you’re on, the research definitively shows (a) such schools increase test scores, lead to greater college acceptance and higher earnings, and provide poor and minority students with opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have had or (b) such schools cream the best test takers to get their great results and in the meantime they cause devastating mental and emotional health problems because of issues involving power and control, rewards and punishment, shame and humiliation.
Are you talking about action research or scholarly peer reviewed research? Action research is “I did it, and it works.” Kids sit like “good soldiers” in the classroom.
Another outcome of no-excuses would be a high level of attrition, expulsions and counseling students out. A scholar may set out to study the impact of such treatment, and their approach would be very different. It would review the literature and perhaps investigate the common elements among the recipients of this treatment. Then, the research would be published in a scholarly journal and reviewed with regard to methodology, data etc. It is a whole elevated level of scrutiny and study in a scholarly research project.
Retired Though I am sure some who research under the label “action research” have reduced its critical aspects and applied it wrongly (as your note suggests), your depiction of action research as such is not at all what the field is about–and it IS a legitimate field with its own questions and critical tenets. It has to do with science-drive applications of the kind of scholarly research that you rightly refer to as below:
“. . . research can give us evidence. Researchers can provide society at large with information from black, not white researchers and scholars. White researchers may not ask the right questions. Perspective is important.” CBK
CBK. You’re correct. Action research can also be about studying something over time in multiple settings. For example, statins have been widely prescribed for lowering cholesterol. Only after studying the impact on many people over time, did scientists also discover that the drug may also impede cognitive functioning.
“Depending on what side of the issue you’re on…..”
Sigh. This is exactly how false right wing propaganda gets promoted.
It has NOTHING to do with “what side of the issue you are on”.
It has EVERYTHING to do with whether you are doing real research using facts or pulling out whatever false statistics you want.
Real scientific studies have always depended on an underlying belief that people actually care more about learning the truth than in promoting one view or the other. Certainly some scientists have been accused of fudging results or making misleading conclusions that the evidence doesn’t prove, but they are often found out and discredited. It’s not perfect, but it has resulted in a culture of people trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. There were all sorts of attempts at finding better treatments for one kind of highly lethal breast cancer. Finally, a drug trial of herceptin was conducted under rigorous standards and it was truly a game changer. There were all sorts of medications tried for decades before that which were not game changers and did not get promoted as such, or if they did, were soon discredited.
It’s long past time for charters to be discredited. They should become magnet schools that are part of the public school system. This is what Deborah Meier’s Central Park East School is. But charters would not be able to promote themselves dishonestly if they could not cherry pick while denying that they cherry pick.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. This French expression means the more we change, the more it’s the same. We need a new paradigm. I feel like we are reliving Jim Crow. Lots of police departments are encrypting their messages on scanners so the public cannot hear the racist chatter. Voter suppression and mass incarceration of people of color must be eradicated. Despite the civil rights act, racism remains a major issue. We have some well-meaning laws on the books, but we cannot legislate morality. We still have a great deal of work to do.
Vasquez’ news is spectacular!
Kentucky’s citizens are very fortunate especially if the state avoids the fate of its neighbor, Ohio, where the billionaires’ Fordham Institute runs the education department for colonialists.
I volunteer Boston!
Harvard’s colonial lens has crippled our public schools, and far too many bow at their feet.
This is a truly great idea. Are they real scholars, not charter “scholars” who are still k-12 students?
Vasquez Heilig is a serious scholar that has been fighting for equitable education for years. You can learn more about his work from his website, Cloaking Inequity. https://cloakinginequity.com/
I know, I was making fun of charter schools. I should label my sarcasm. Vasquez Helig is a tremendously erudite academic scholar.
Thanks for the link.
What would the white donor class do if black organizations like urban leagues joined in the new center’s democracy-affirming mission?
Gates’ Impatient Opportunists operating from the ivies, John Arnold- funded college departments carrying freight for DeVos and, the anti-democracy ruling class can’t be happy with the turn of events at the University of Kentucky.
UK’s announcement should drive rebuke for AEI’s debasement of educational institution integrity. (Frederick Hess’ disgusting article, Philanthropy Roundtable, “Don’t Surrender the Academy” )
What’s remarkable about collaboration between UK and NAACP is that UK is providing the funding, not venture philanthropists.
Funding matters. Special interests can squew results. We see this with drug companies that publish their own results on their own drug. Of course, the conclusions are generally glowing.
Diane I hope they realize the fundamental problem is with HUMAN BIAS, which we are all prone to.
However, in the case of the history of the United States, it’s the bias as emergent, alive, and fostered in the pervasive remnants of slavery, one of which is still pervasive to white-consciousness. Unless they want to just wait for white racists to die . . . which won’t work anyway because, though it’s slowly washing away, the bias is passed down before they die . . .
. . . they need to also focus on bringing to mind the presence of racial bias in specifically-white consciousness and, “with surgical precision,” on how bias and its inherent hypocrisy is long-embedded in our writ-large social and cultural institutions, and set out systematic steps to change what is, in our present siutation, a white-person’s problem.
Much is written about these issues, of course. However, one book that draws from history and that made a great impression on me is: “The Natural Inferiority of Women: Outrageous Pronouncements by Misguided Males,” compiled by Tama Starr. It’s not about race, but completely analogous to our present problems with it. CBK
Sorry to go a little off topic, but Dr Bettina Love just now gave the most amazing speech about fighting racism at the UTLA Leadership Conference. I’ve never heard anyone better break down white supremacy in schools and society. It wasn’t recorded, but you have to hear her. You have to read or hear her about standardized testing, school police, and SEL and spirit murdering.
Funding by the University of Kentucky is really remarkable. I hope the funding sources are ample for the outreach projects that may be needed.
I hope this research center and collaboration with NAACP will also endure across multiple administrations, not just the current one that is enabling and supporting this visionary program. I speak from experience with several state university programs markedby “churn” in administrative priorities and budgets and the politics in state legislatures.
I know that Dean Heilig and the scholars he recruits will be able to produce strong qualitative and quantitative research from perspectives too long ignored in education. Congratualtions !!!
This is wonderful news—congratulations to all.
Am hopeful that this initiative will lead to scholarship beyond the deficit models on which we so often rely.
May it also lead beyond Zooms, conversations and task forces—I.e., actually taking on systemic racism.
All the best.
In contrast to UK’s new center, the John Arnold-funded ERA center operates at Tulane University (private). ERA posted a photo array online of its “Leadership and Staff”. The array shows 40 people with what appears to be a lone black person among the group, a female graduate student. (Reminder- Tulane is in the state of Louisiana.)
Included in the photo array is a Professor from the University of Arkansas who “advocates for Catholic education”. Arkansas Catholic, (Patrick Wolf), “A Catholic You Want to Know”,
(9-26-2017)
Patrick Wolf, an enthusiastic advocate of school choice, has served as the “independent evaluator” of voucher programs in Milwaukee and D.C.
Rhetorically, did Wolf inform the folks in Milwaukee and D.C. about Arkansas Catholic’s description of him so that they could draw a conclusion relative to his independence? Or, is it possible he was chosen with an expectation about his research outcomes?
Funding for the University of Arkansas education faculty – any of it from the Waltons?