Advancing Equity With Policy
How to build fairer schools through smarter policy
Blog Posts
Jean-Pierre Jacob, M.Ed., MS, is a freelance policy writer and AP Biology Teacher.
Category: STEM Education
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Because Vermont centralizes its education funding at the state level, it is frequently cited as one of the most equitable school finance systems in the United States. While the state has successfully eliminated wealth-based disparities in funding, the persistence of outcome gaps suggests that its education funding does not meet the goals of increased equity…
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Vermont offers a useful case study for policymakers, as its school finance system is often cited as one of the clearest examples of how court intervention can fundamentally reshape how public education is funded. Today, Vermont spends nearly $27,000 per pupil on education, second only to New York. For context, Vermont spends more than twice…
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Over the past two decades, New York has made a sustained and costly commitment to public education. Per-student school spending has risen sharply, placing the state well above the national average and ahead of nearly every peer state. Yet during the same period, student math achievement, measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP),…
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Background Structural Barriers to STEM Equity Concentrated poverty is a policy-constructed condition under which economically marginalized families and students are clustered into under-resourced neighborhoods. This spatial segregation correlates strongly with race and ethnicity due to discriminatory housing practices, exclusionary zoning, and disinvestment in communities of color over time. This spatial segregation is deeply racialized and…
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Executive Summary New York currently has an educational system in which access to rigorous STEM coursework is primarily determined by residential ZIP code, race, and class. This disparity in access is due to concentrated poverty and racial segregation, which have been driven by decades of exclusionary housing practices. These discriminatory public policies have resulted in…
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As discussed in my previous blog post, New York State is currently facing challenges with a high teacher turnover rate and a decreasing supply of new teachers. As seen in Figure 1, teacher retention is the lowest it has been in about a decade except for 20+ year teachers. This data matches up with the…
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While public discourse often frames the teacher shortage as a post-pandemic crisis, two decades of empirical evidence tell a very different story. In short, New York has struggled to recruit, prepare, and retain qualified math teachers for more than twenty years. This teacher shortage is the product of long-standing structural conditions, labor-market dynamics, and policy…
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In my last post, I showed that New York’s Grade 8 math performance has declined over the last 8 years. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the average Grade 8 math score for New York public school students in 2024 was 271, with only 26% of students scoring at or above NAEP…
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If you’ve been in schools over the last decade, you’ve felt the shift in math learning. Teachers talk about it, students feel it, and families notice it. But when you look at the long-term data, the story becomes even clearer: math achievement in New York has declined significantly over the last 15 years, and the…
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Across the country, school districts are using academic tracking as a tool to tailor instruction to students’ perceived ability. These tracking systems sort students into high, middle, or low academic paths as early as elementary or middle school. On paper, academic tracking promises a fix to student scores backsliding since the COVID-19 pandemic (NAEP, 2024)…
Advancing Equity With Policy 