The New Dawn

Just as a rainbow rises after a storm, today represents a step into a bold and vibrant future for K-12 education. The unprecedented global pandemic in concert with a racial reckoning in the United States has sown the seeds for a harvest of ideas and innovations designed to embrace our students as their whole selves.

In moving forward, we do not want to turn to a prior playbook that is rooted in inequity. We have an unprecedented opportunity to wholly transform how schools work in partnership with communities to effectively support our students.

The good news is we are emerging after a tumultuous fifteen months with:

• New policies and practices to support learning at-home and in-school, a deeper focus on students’ mental and emotional health, more robust school-and-community connections, expanded teacher peer collaboration models and much more.‍
• A recognition of the need for teaching and learning policies, systems and practices centered in the diversity of our 55+ million students who embody an array of experiences, environments, identities and cultures -- and that each student must be seen and valued in every dimension of learning.‍
• A willingness  to create and actualize conditions in our K-12 systems where students have equitable access to learning opportunities and pathways and are not identified by deficit-centric academic and economic constructs, such as “gaps” or “poverty”.
  

We -- the RISE UP Coalition -- call this The New Dawn. And together we have developed an Action Agenda Honoring the Vibrant Diversity of Students.

As a coalition of leaders of color representing school districts, charter networks and organizations across the country, we offer The New Dawn: An Action Agenda Honoring the Diversity of Students as a national blueprint to systems and school leaders for collaborating with communities to transform systems and practice by:

• Auditing existing inequitable policies, practices and data
• Creating the conditions for equity-centered transformational policies to take root
• Defining a set of asset-centered priorities and actions
• Implementing demonstrated solutions that have been natively-designed to effectively support the diverse experiences, cultures and identities of the student population
  

While our focus is anchored in how school districts and charter networks can design and support the conditions that enable students of color -- who have clearly been disproportionately impacted by COVID and historical inequities -- to thrive, we acknowledge that inequities are not solely impacting students of color. We recognize that white students’ across the country are experiencing high-poverty and a lack of access to quality education, from rural-to-urban areas.

We also know that the intersection of race and poverty compounds systemic inequities for ALL. Reference Targeted Universalism Policy and Practice by john a. powell, Stephen Mendenian and Wendy Ake and the report Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie Jones and Sonia R. Porter. 

By effectively addressing the intersectionality, the RISE UP Coalition’s work will support ALL students in having access to high-quality, richly diverse learning experiences.

As education practitioners, entrepreneurs and innovators, we know from experience that to address the intersection and create the conditions for students to thrive:

• Schools must deeply partner with communities and families as imagineers and co-designers of a new learning ecosystem
• Innovation must be defined by how a solution -- a framework, program, curriculum or tool -- recognizes, reflects and rewards the vibrant dimensions of a child
• Learning context is as important as content
• Every student has an identity that must be centered and celebrated for us to achieve the definition of high-quality education
  

Our hope is that The New Dawn: An Action Agenda Honoring the Diversity of Studentssparks new ideas, creates opportunities for relationship and trust building and centers innovation in communities as partners to schools.

We invite you to join us on a journey to creating a thriving equitable education ecosystem that addresses the vibrant diversity of students!

Join us as advocates and allies in this work! Sign our interest form.

We united in the spirit of engaging our national networks of leaders in supporting school districts and charter networks who are facing both tremendous challenges and, simultaneously, opportunities to design effective systems to support historically marginalized students.

As a collective, we have created and implemented a valuable portfolio of frameworks, practices, programs and tools that are effectively supporting the needs of students of color -- Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander students. We joined together to contribute our know-how, expertise, intuition, solutions and lived experiences to inform and guide the national dialog and landscape.

‍Our work as the RISE UP Coalition is to publish a national Action Agenda focused on three goals:

1. Name a set of Big Ideas and a comprehensive Priorities Map to guide a path forward
2. Identify Policy Perspectives that honor the needs of the diverse cultures and experiences of students across the country
3. Share existing Demonstrations of best practices, programs, and models that are currently being employed by school districts, charter networks and organizations 
   

The Convening Organizations joined together to lead this effort as representatives of national networks of education leaders across the country:

• Camelback Ventures: Camelback Ventures increases access to opportunity for entrepreneurs of color and women by investing in their ventures and leadership while advocating for fairness in their funding.
• Digital Promise: Digital Promise is a nonprofit organization that builds powerful networks and takes on grand challenges by working at the intersection of researchers, entrepreneurs, and educators.
• Education Leaders of Color: EdLoC is a membership organization dedicated to elevating the leadership, voices and influence of people of color in education and to leading more inclusive efforts to improve education.
• Pahara Institute: Pahara provides transformational leadership development opportunities for leaders who are reimagining the public education system for all children.
• Surge Institute: Surge educates, develops, and elevates leaders of color who create transformative change for young people, their families and our broader communities.‍
• Unidos US: UnidosUS, previously known as NCLR (National Council of La Raza), is the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.
  

As a convening group, we invited Collaborating Organizations to join the coalition who represent an equitable cross-section of school districts, charter schools and organizations led by leaders of color from urban, rural, and suburban geographies across the country to ensure we are representing all students.

‍The Collaborating Organizations who represent school districts, charter networks and organization leaders across the country are:

It is abundantly clear that the academic, cultural, emotional and physical wellbeing of a child is paramount to their ability to fully engage in education. We have to ask ourselves as adults who are leading systems and organizations:‍

How do we design education systems that demonstrate/embody the conditions that embrace the health, wellbeing, spirit, diversity and genius of students?‍

As the RISE UP Coalition, we answer this question by drawing on:

• Our lived experience as students of color growing up in a K-12 education system
• Our lived experience as adults -- teachers, principals, administrators, entrepreneurs and policymakers -- who are leading education systems and organizations centered in equity
• The intersectionality of race and poverty and the proven impact on students of color
  

We believe that our education system is at a precipice. As a sector, we can no longer avoid or ignore the fact that an education system created hundreds of years ago designed to meet the needs of a monolithic “model student” does not work. 

We must acknowledge the impacts of a history wrought with acts of inhumanity that reverberate today to ensure our systems going forward are celebrating differences as opportunities to learn and grow, not replicating trauma.

‍The time is now. We have a moral imperative to create an education system that honors the colorful tapestry and diversity of our students and communities. This is OUR WHY.

We move beyond theory and ideas to steps that you can take, and we point you in the direction of leaders and organizations that are doing the work. We “rise up” the buried treasure of programs, tools and models created by school districts, charter networks and entrepreneurs that are effectively supporting the needs and aspirations of students of color.‍

The RISE UP Coalition Action Agenda includes the following components:

1. Big Ideas: We define eight Big Ideas aligned to a set of themes that are at the core of a reimagined education system that centers families and communities
2. Priorities Map: We identify five Priorities within each Big Idea that specifically addresses the “how” of systems change
3. Policy Perspectives: We put forth a set of Policy Perspectives that represent the actions that need to be considered at the federal, state and local levels
4. Demonstrations: We launch a clearinghouse of best practices, programs and tools that are supporting the needs and ability to thrive for students of color.
   

On June 30, 2021 we released the Big Ideas and Priorities Map. On August 4, 2021, we will release the Policy Perspectives and Demonstrations.

We invite you to utilize the Action Agenda as a flexible guide to inform your work and practices and hope that you will join us as an advocate and/or ally for this work.

Big Ideas

How do we reimagine education systems that are centered in families and communities?

Our Big Ideas outline a core set of tenets that school systems and schools can employ to inform the design, development and implementation of solutions to support the vibrant diversity of students.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the compounding inequities in society that anchor the lived realities of communities of color. This public health crisis has unveiled the impact of institutionalized policies that are exclusionary, limited in scope or unequitably implemented. While all students have been impacted by this devastating pandemic, historically minoritized and underserved students — students of color, students experiencing poverty and/or homelessness, Emergent Bilinguals (also know as English learners under federal statute), students with disabilities, students in the foster care or juvenile justice system, immigrant students, and students who identify as LGBTQ — are disproportionately affected.  Beyond interruptions to instruction, many of these students have experienced food insecurity, housing instability, unreliable access to remote learning technology, mental health issues, reduced access to student supports and education services and potentially the loss of a family member. The unprecedented global pandemic, in concert with a long-overdue racial reckoning in the United States, has deepened educational inequities as well as heightened stress and anxiety for students of color and exposed the unique challenges they face. This pandemic requires equity-focused leaders to think differently as they rebuild a school system where responsive policies, structures, and practices render equitable outcomes for students disproportionately impacted.

The country has a responsibility to invest, federally infused stabilization funds to wholly transform how schools work in partnership with communities to effectively support students. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) provides roughly $125 billion in one-time federal funds to states and local education agencies (LEAs) which translates to thousands of dollars of additional support per student. Far beyond responding to the immediate needs of COVID, we have an obligation to confront and address, head-on, the deep-rooted inequities that students of color have long been subject to in our public school system and society at large. We must reimagine an education system that authentically honors and celebrates the vibrant diversity of students and leads to equitable outcomes for all.

It is an urgent and timely moment to disrupt the policies that set the conditions in the education ecosystem. In this New Dawn, we propose to forge a new path. We will elevate best practices to inform policies and redesign ecosystems that allow all students to thrive. We will do this by recognizing their intersectional identities and defining them through an asset-based perspective rather than a deficit-based lens that feeds into the soft bigotry of low expectations and projects images of imperfect, at-risk children, and youth. While many of the policies outlined in the subsequent section are not new; these policy solutions are anchored in the explicit context of serving historically underserved students of color. The policy recommendations are also informed by the lived experiences and professional expertise of a national network of leaders of color working in various education systems and at multiple levels (national, state and local).

The RISE UP Coalition is led by people of color representing school districts, charter networks and organizations across the country. Collectively, this national coalition enjoys a broad diversity of perspectives and experiences, but also a common purpose and commitment to reimagine and transform the education system with policies that are supportive and responsive to students, their families, and educators. The coalition’s collaborative work has contributed to a priorities map that paves the path forward to an equity-driven, action agenda as well as a repository of demonstrations, and a policy blueprint that outlines priorities. The forthcoming recommendations are guided by the following policy principles:

1. Enact policies and practices that lead to equitable outcomes for students of color who now represent the majority of students in U.S. public schools.
2. Architect a new equity-based school ecosystem.
3. Hold states and districts accountable to ensure that Students of Color receive equitable resources and supports.
   

To advance the above policy principles and make equity an actionable and tangible reality for underrepresented students, the RISE UP coalition proposes the following policy recommendations.

Policy Recommendation 1: Target resources to support students with the highest needs.‍

The unprecedented investment in education from the federal government reinforces the obligation that states and LEAs have to close opportunity gaps that existed prior to COVID-19. The total investment in K-12 schools through the combination of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in April 2020, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act in December 2020, and the most recent Covid relief package, the American Rescue Plan (ARP), is nearly double the amount that was invested in schools through the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to address the impacts of the Great Recession. To ensure the equitable implementation of these funds by targeting students with the highest needs, states and LEAs should consider the following recommendations:

• Base education funding levels, during and after the recovery period, on funding needed for equitable outcomes.
• Sustain maintenance of effort in high need schools and LEAs.
• Adopt and sustain maintenance of equity requirements even after the stabilization funds from ARP sunset. Budget cuts must hold harmless programs focused on low income, students of color, and other historically underserved student populations.
• Ensure that federal stimulus funds are targeted to support traditionally underserved students who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This requires a clear system to monitor and report on the use of federal funds and how they were invested on students with highest needs.
• Ensure that federal stimulus funds and additional state funding are directed to programs that accelerate learning, language development, demonstrate effectiveness, and are responsive to students’ academic, social, and emotional needs.
• Fund research on innovative programs that are showing evidence of academic success and language proficiency for students of color and Emergent Bilinguals.
• Collect and compare data of students who returned to in-person instruction and the data of virtual learners to gain a better perspective of the potential inequities that emerged in different learning environments. This data should be used to tailor professional development opportunities, direct funds to address learning gaps, and identify new policy proposals.

Policy Recommendation 2: Redefine student success to meet the needs of the whole child.

Students deserve to see themselves as people who are supported in their learning journey regardless of where they started or the challenges they face along the way. Similarly, the needs, talents and identities of students must be honored and addressed comprehensively to safeguard each child’s wellness and safety, and to support long-term success. Redefining student supports and success requires the following policy shifts:

• Expand the definition and metrics of student success to still include, but go above and beyond academic learning.
• Consider and address conditions that can impact student learning at various levels and scales. 
• Share power with parents to jointly define student success and identify the resources needed to actualize the vision of success.
• Establish a transparent, culturally and linguistically responsive feedback loop to engage parents in their child’s academic and social development progress.  
• Require assessment data to be shared with teachers in a timely and practical way that enables them to tailor instruction for student growth and success.
• Ensure that parents, educators, and leaders of color are meaningfully engaged in shaping the future of assessments and accountability measures.

Policy Recommendation 3: Meaningfully engage and serve families and communities in the school ecosystem.

Schools should be student-centered, honor the family’s cultural and language backgrounds, understand their local context, and authentically engage the community as valued partners in the decision-making process.

• Redesign education ecosystems to meet the comprehensive needs of students through an array of wrap around services and supports.
• Invest in partnerships with community-based organizations to provide extended learning opportunities and culturally and linguistically responsive support services.
• Ensure families have access to broadband internet, technology, and digital literacy support.
• Invest in creating and expanding authentically diverse community-led and indigenous school models.
• Create competitive grant funding to invest in developing, piloting, and scaling, innovative school models based on evidence that support children of color.
• Establish and/or expand programming geared at engaging parents/guardians, including monolingual families, in the schooling experience of students.
• Continue to offer virtual options for family engagement as technological platforms have proven to be an effective tool to facilitate communication and participation of family and community members.

Policy Recommendation 4: Acknowledge that educators are the key to healthy and meaningful learning experiences.

More than half of our nation’s public-school students are students of color, but nearly 80% of the teacher workforce is White.[2] It is vital that our children have role models and leaders in their lives and in each classroom, who reflect their racial, cultural, or linguistic background from an early age to boost their opportunities for success. Furthermore, the social, emotional, and academic benefits of the racial and ethnic diversification of the educator workforce are widely documented. The diversification of the educator workforce (including teachers and administrators) benefits all students, as such, it should be prioritized by school systems.  

• Create a task force to diversify the educator pipeline and develop, advance, and retain talent.
• Establish an Educator Diversity Data Dashboard to collect and report teacher recruitment and retention rates by racial and ethnic demographic data as well as language diversity, and  to collect and report on promotions and professional advancement of educators of color.
• Support Grow Your Own programs that recruit and prepare a diverse workforce including high school students, local community members, paraprofessionals, after-school and tutoring providers to pursue a teaching career.
• Dedicate funds to enhance educator training programs aimed at culturally and linguistically sustaining practices that intentionally address the belief gap that leads to implicit bias practices and differentiated treatment of students of color.
• Provide funding and professional development to address the well-being of educators.
• Use data to inform teacher preparation, practice, and professional development.

Policy Recommendation 5: Focus school culture on wellness and relationship-building.

Approximately 14 million students attend schools with police presence but no counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 48 states do not meet the recommended student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1. At the same time, policies that result in corporal punishment, out-of-school suspension, and expulsion have been shown to disproportionately impact students of color and students with disabilities and result in profiling. This does not have to continue being a reality for millions of American students. 

• Properly equip schools with the tools and resources to provide a safe and welcoming environment for the shift back to in-person instruction.
• Provide trauma-informed support to address the disproportionate impact of COVID on students of color.
• Strengthen data collection on school discipline disaggregated by race and ethnicity and publicly report findings. 
• Adopt policies that address the over-identification of students of color and students with disabilities in school discipline actions.
• Adopt restorative discipline policies and reduce exclusionary practices.

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[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cge.pdf

[2] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/still-mostly-white-and-female-new-federal-data-on-the-teaching-profession/2020/04

We designed The New Dawn: An Action Agenda Honoring the Vibrant Diversity of Students to offer inspiration, ideas, strategies and solutions that can light pathways to creating systems, schools and classrooms that reflect the diversity of the communities where they reside. As the RISE UP Coalition, we will continue to advocate for, support and champion an unapologetic commitment to ensuring our diverse student population is celebrated, honored and respected for their vibrancy and shine every single day.

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