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LEADS THE WAY TO EQUITY IN DETROIT
The pursuit of racial equity in public education has a long history in the United States. For example, in the 1780s, 14 Black parents in Boston petitioned the Massachusetts Commonwealth's legislature to give their children access to newly formed public schools (Hill, 1981). Since then, Black people, and people of color more broadly, have led heroic efforts for equal access, racial integration, fair school funding, and language equity in public schools.
Although that initial petition was denied, the ongoing work has resulted in enormous changes in our public education system, from desegregation of public schools to dedicated federal funding for schools with low-income families and multilingual students (Stanford University, n.d.).
Yet, despite decades of progress, racial inequities are a persistent, even paralyzing, presence in American public schools. The No Child Left Behind era saw noticeable increases in test scores across all student groups, but outcome differences by race remained pronounced (Smith & Brazer, 2016). Stubborn patterns of inequity in graduation rates, grades, test scores, disciplinary actions, and access to extra- and co-curricular activities still plague our schools (The Education Trust, 2017).
These patterns exist across urban, suburban, and rural schools, and even within schools. Outcomes are sometimes so disparate that white and Black students, for instance, can experience the same school in completely different ways.
Inequities persist across all content areas, but are particularly entrenched in STEM subjects (UNCF, n.d.). The Detroit Public Schools Community District's Office of Science, where we serve as executive director and training and support coordinator, is striving to change that. With our colleagues, we aim to address some of the root causes of racial disparities endemic to science classrooms and across the curricular spectrum by focusing our teacher professional learning on instructional practices that engage students. Specifically, we're focusing our teacher professional learning on student talk in our science classes and whether students of all backgrounds contribute to discussions.
Before addressing the specific interconnections among science talk, equity, and instructional practice, we provide a brief overview of the research on student talk and then connect it to our core mission of racial equity in science instruction.
EQUITY IN STUDENT TALK MATTERS
Decades of research link student talk to student learning through intra-...