PSO listened in to a webinar co-sponsored by The 74, the Progressive Policy Institute and Education Civil Rights Now to hear from experts about the current status of – and future hope for – equitable rights of students to access a quality education across the country.

The Zoom broadcast of panelists was moderated by Curtis Valentine, co-director of Reinventing America’s Schools – and included former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Alan Page, former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, Ben Austin of Civil Rights Now and Dr. Pedro Noguero of the University of Southern California.

The question posed to our panelists: What sort of impact would a quality public education have on closing racial and economic achievement gaps in America? The short answer – a lot. Much of this would depend on how you define a quality education in written policy, cited former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Page. In many states, there is no definition of a quality education written in statute. In most cases, he says, states call for an ‘adequate’ education. Invariably, this is not the sort of policy we should sit well with, because what defines an ‘adequate’ education?

The analogy we liked most was that of equating school quality to highways. When you are traveling on a highway, you don’t encounter potholes on the portion of the road that travels through poverty-stricken communities, and you don’t have stretches of well-kempt highways in affluent, well-funded areas. Food for thought, certainly, and we appreciated this deeper dive into the current status of what constitutes a ‘quality’ education, and what parents need to ask of their policymakers to bridge this gaping divide.

A video preview of the event can be found here.

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