education justice articles

Why Access to Education is Key to Systemic Equality

All students have a right to an equal education, but students of color — particularly Black and Brown students and students with disabilities, have historically been marginalized and criminalized by the public school system. The ACLU has been working to challenge unconstitutional disciplinary policies in schools, combat classroom censorship efforts that disproportionately impact marginalized students, and support race conscious admission policies to increase access to higher education.

Let’s break down why education equity is critical to the fight for systemic equality.

What does “education equity” mean, and why is it a civil rights issue?

Education equity means all students have equal access to a high quality education, safe learning environment, and a diverse student body that enriches the educational experiences of all students.

As the Supreme Court said in Brown v. Board of Education , education “is the very foundation of good citizenship.” Through education, young people learn important values about our culture and democratic society, and about their own values and relationships to others in this society. In addition to being an important foundation for kids’ and young adults’ future professional success, education allows individuals to be informed voters and participants in democratic processes, and public education is the first experience most people will have with the government.

For all of these reasons, equity in education is a critical foundation for a democratic society in which people of all backgrounds are equally included. Without equal opportunities to obtain an education, they will not be able to participate equally in jobs, in voting, and in other crucial areas of life. And when students are not able to learn together, this harms their ability to work together and live and engage with one another later in life.

What was the foundational Supreme Court case aimed at addressing discrimination in education nationwide?

Modern understandings of educational equity have their roots in Brown v. Board of Education , the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision that ordered an end to school segregation and held racial segregation in education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the constitution. The ACLU played an important role in the Brown litigation, and has continued to fight for education equity on many fronts in the decades since.

What is the “school-to-prison pipeline”?

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to school discipline practices, such as suspensions and referrals to law enforcement, that funnel youth out of the classroom and into the juvenile and criminal legal systems.

This trend reflects our country’s prioritization of incarceration over education, and it's made worse as resources for public schools are cut. From inadequate resources for counseling to an overreliance on school-based police officers to enforce harsh zero-tolerance policies, many students — overwhelmingly students of color and students with disabilities — are isolated, punished, and pushed out of our education system for typical childish behavior and behaviors associated with disabilities.

Cops and No Counselors

How the lack of school mental health staff is harming students.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Even a single suspension or disciplinary infraction can have enormous consequences for a child’s education. As a student is pushed further down the school-to-prison pipeline, those consequences escalate quickly. In some jurisdictions, students who have been suspended or expelled have no right to an education at all. In others, they are sent to disciplinary alternative schools.Youth who become involved in the juvenile system are often denied procedural protections in the courts, and students pushed along the pipeline find themselves in juvenile detention facilities, many of which provide few, if any, educational services.

How are Black students, students of color, and students with disabilities disproportionately impacted by discrimination in education? What barriers to higher education exist for students of color?

Black and Brown students and students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to discipline and referrals to law enforcement that remove them from the classroom and subject them to additional punitive consequences and even physical injury. For example, over the 2017-2018 school year, Black students accounted for 28.7 percent of all students referred to law enforcement and 31.6 percent of all students arrested at school or during a school-related activity — despite representing just 15.1 percent of the total enrolled student population.

Our country’s schools are increasingly diverse, but also increasingly segregated . Students of all races are harmed by the inability to learn with one another in diverse school settings. Black and Latine students are also more likely to attend schools that are intensely segregated both by race and by socioeconomic status. Students of color are also less likely to have access to advanced courses, and are frequently tracked away from college preparatory courses when they do exist.

Moving Beyond the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Rulings

The work to ensure educational opportunities for people of color continues, despite the court’s decision.

Inequities in K-12 education can be replicated in college and university admissions criteria. As with elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities are required to ensure that educational opportunities are open to all students from the application stage and through student’s experiences during their college education. There are a wide range of things that colleges and universities can do to ensure that educational opportunities are open to people of all backgrounds.

What non-punitive responses should schools take when approaching school discipline issues? What non-punitive resources should schools invest in?

There are a range of evidence-based methods schools can use to respond to the behavioral needs of students. These range from strategies that teachers and schools can use to foster a positive learning culture and model, to interventions addressing particular disciplinary issues, such as conflict de-escalation or restorative justice, to using functional behavioral assessments and wraparound support for those students with higher levels of need.

Additionally, schools that employed more mental health providers saw improved student engagement and graduation rates . Schools that used other types of support, including restorative and trauma-informed practices, saw beneficial results, including reduced disciplinary incidents, suspensions, dropouts, and expulsions. Investing in mental health resources, support personnel, and interventions that promote positive student interactions can make schools safer and healthier learning environments, while also helping to combat the discriminatory school-to-prison pipeline that targets students of color and students with disabilities.

How do classroom censorship efforts (i.e. laws that block students and teachers from talking and learning about race and gender) lead to inequality in education?

Instruction about racism and sexism belongs in schools because it equips students to process the world around them and to live in a multicultural society.

Attacks on education have morphed from demands to exclude critical race theory from classrooms to ever-increasingly devious and dangerous demands to erase entire concepts from American history. Book bans, so-called transparency laws designed to intimidate educators into compliance, and attacks on individual expression have left our education system at the mercy of a hostile and discriminatory minority. Students can’t learn in that type of environment. Our future depends on educational institutions that value instruction about systemic racism and sexism. We need to expand culturally relevant instruction and increase funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools, not attack it for its role in uplifting the systematically oppressed.

What can colleges do to ensure they create opportunities for students of color in light of the recent Supreme Court decision effectively eliminating the use of affirmative action in college admissions?

Affirmative action in college admissions has been an important tool, but it is not the only avenue for ensuring that educational opportunities are open to all. In the absence of affirmative action, it is more important than ever that schools work to identify and remove inequitable barriers to higher education. At a minimum, schools must continue to comply with federal and state civil rights laws that require them to provide educational opportunities on an equal basis. They can achieve this by ensuring that policies and practices do not unnecessarily limit opportunities for people on the basis of race or ethnicity (or other protected characteristics, including disability, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity) and by ensuring that school climate enables all students to access and engage with educational opportunities .

What does the ACLU’s work in education equity look like today?

The ACLU and our affiliates around the country are challenging disciplinary policies that disparately target students of color and students with disabilities and infringe on their right to a safe learning environment. This includes litigation, such as our recent victory resulting in the end to charging students with “disorderly conduct” or “disturbing schools” in South Carolina schools, and advocacy, such as the ACLU of Idaho’s recent report Proud to be Brown and the related civil rights complaint. The report documents how school districts in Idaho are jeopardizing Latine students’ civil rights and liberties by enforcing “gang” dress codes that target mostly Latine students in a discriminatory way, and have negative consequences on their cultural identity, discipline, and education.

CYAP v. Wilson

The ACLU Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s “disturbing schools” law.

We are also fighting back against efforts to ban books and restrict what students can learn about race, gender, and sexual orientation. In Florida, for example, we’re challenging the state’s harmful Stop WOKE Act. We continue to press for equity in higher education following the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, and defend against attacks on diversity in K-12 schools.

From K-12 to higher education, the ACLU is working to combat discrimination in education and ensure all people have equal access to safe, quality education.

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How COVID taught America about inequity in education

Harvard Correspondent

Remote learning turned spotlight on gaps in resources, funding, and tech — but also offered hints on reform

“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. This part looks at how the pandemic called attention to issues surrounding the racial achievement gap in America.

The pandemic has disrupted education nationwide, turning a spotlight on existing racial and economic disparities, and creating the potential for a lost generation. Even before the outbreak, students in vulnerable communities — particularly predominately Black, Indigenous, and other majority-minority areas — were already facing inequality in everything from resources (ranging from books to counselors) to student-teacher ratios and extracurriculars.

The additional stressors of systemic racism and the trauma induced by poverty and violence, both cited as aggravating health and wellness as at a Weatherhead Institute panel , pose serious obstacles to learning as well. “Before the pandemic, children and families who are marginalized were living under such challenging conditions that it made it difficult for them to get a high-quality education,” said Paul Reville, founder and director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Educators hope that the may triggers a broader conversation about reform and renewed efforts to narrow the longstanding racial achievement gap. They say that research shows virtually all of the nation’s schoolchildren have fallen behind, with students of color having lost the most ground, particularly in math. They also note that the full-time reopening of schools presents opportunities to introduce changes and that some of the lessons from remote learning, particularly in the area of technology, can be put to use to help students catch up from the pandemic as well as to begin to level the playing field.

The disparities laid bare by the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent from the first shutdowns. “The good news, of course, is that many schools were very fast in finding all kinds of ways to try to reach kids,” said Fernando M. Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and director of GSE’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and International Education Policy Program. He cautioned, however, that “those arrangements don’t begin to compare with what we’re able to do when kids could come to school, and they are particularly deficient at reaching the most vulnerable kids.” In addition, it turned out that many students simply lacked access.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right. You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it,” says Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

The rate of limited digital access for households was at 42 percent during last spring’s shutdowns, before drifting down to about 31 percent this fall, suggesting that school districts improved their adaptation to remote learning, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge of U.S. Census data. (Indeed, Education Week and other sources reported that school districts around the nation rushed to hand out millions of laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks in the months after going remote.)

The report also makes clear the degree of racial and economic digital inequality. Black and Hispanic households with school-aged children were 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white ones to face limited access to computers and the internet, and more than two in five low-income households had only limited access. It’s a problem that could have far-reaching consequences given that young students of color are much more likely to live in remote-only districts.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right,” said Reimers. “You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it.” Too many students, he said, “have no connectivity. They have no devices, or they have no home circumstances that provide them support.”

The issues extend beyond the technology. “There is something wonderful in being in contact with other humans, having a human who tells you, ‘It’s great to see you. How are things going at home?’” Reimers said. “I’ve done 35 case studies of innovative practices around the world. They all prioritize social, emotional well-being. Checking in with the kids. Making sure there is a touchpoint every day between a teacher and a student.”

The difference, said Reville, is apparent when comparing students from different economic circumstances. Students whose parents “could afford to hire a tutor … can compensate,” he said. “Those kids are going to do pretty well at keeping up. Whereas, if you’re in a single-parent family and mom is working two or three jobs to put food on the table, she can’t be home. It’s impossible for her to keep up and keep her kids connected.

“If you lose the connection, you lose the kid.”

“COVID just revealed how serious those inequities are,” said GSE Dean Bridget Long , the Saris Professor of Education and Economics. “It has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with special needs, and school systems that are under-resourced.”

This disruption carries throughout the education process, from elementary school students (some of whom have simply stopped logging on to their online classes) through declining participation in higher education. Community colleges, for example, have “traditionally been a gateway for low-income students” into the professional classes, said Long, whose research focuses on issues of affordability and access. “COVID has just made all of those issues 10 times worse,” she said. “That’s where enrollment has fallen the most.”

In addition to highlighting such disparities, these losses underline a structural issue in public education. Many schools are under-resourced, and the major reason involves sources of school funding. A 2019 study found that predominantly white districts got $23 billion more than their non-white counterparts serving about the same number of students. The discrepancy is because property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, and white districts tend to be wealthier than those of color.

The problem of resources extends beyond teachers, aides, equipment, and supplies, as schools have been tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities, from the basics of education to feeding and caring for the mental health of both students and their families.

“You think about schools and academics, but what COVID really made clear was that schools do so much more than that,” said Long. A child’s school, she stressed “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care.”

“You think about schools and academics” … but a child’s school “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care,” stressed GSE Dean Bridget Long.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

This safety net has been shredded just as more students need it. “We have 400,000 deaths and those are disproportionately affecting communities of color,” said Long. “So you can imagine the kids that are in those households. Are they able to come to school and learn when they’re dealing with this trauma?”

The damage is felt by the whole families. In an upcoming paper, focusing on parents of children ages 5 to 7, Cindy H. Liu, director of Harvard Medical School’s Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities Laboratory , looks at the effects of COVID-related stress on parent’ mental health. This stress — from both health risks and grief — “likely has ramifications for those groups who are disadvantaged, particularly in getting support, as it exacerbates existing disparities in obtaining resources,” she said via email. “The unfortunate reality is that the pandemic is limiting the tangible supports [like childcare] that parents might actually need.”

Educators are overwhelmed as well. “Teachers are doing a phenomenal job connecting with students,” Long said about their performance online. “But they’ve lost the whole system — access to counselors, access to additional staff members and support. They’ve lost access to information. One clue is that the reporting of child abuse going down. It’s not that we think that child abuse is actually going down, but because you don’t have a set of adults watching and being with kids, it’s not being reported.”

The repercussions are chilling. “As we resume in-person education on a normal basis, we’re dealing with enormous gaps,” said Reville. “Some kids will come back with such educational deficits that unless their schools have a very well thought-out and effective program to help them catch up, they will never catch up. They may actually drop out of school. The immediate consequences of learning loss and disengagement are going to be a generation of people who will be less educated.”

There is hope, however. Just as the lockdown forced teachers to improvise, accelerating forms of online learning, so too may the recovery offer options for educational reform.

The solutions, say Reville, “are going to come from our community. This is a civic problem.” He applauded one example, the Somerville, Mass., public library program of outdoor Wi-Fi “pop ups,” which allow 24/7 access either through their own or library Chromebooks. “That’s the kind of imagination we need,” he said.

On a national level, he points to the creation of so-called “Children’s Cabinets.” Already in place in 30 states, these nonpartisan groups bring together leaders at the city, town, and state levels to address children’s needs through schools, libraries, and health centers. A July 2019 “ Children’s Cabinet Toolkit ” on the Education Redesign Lab site offers guidance for communities looking to form their own, with sample mission statements from Denver, Minneapolis, and Fairfax, Va.

Already the Education Redesign Lab is working on even more wide-reaching approaches. In Tennessee, for example, the Metro Nashville Public Schools has launched an innovative program, designed to provide each student with a personalized education plan. By pairing these students with school “navigators” — including teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches — the program aims to address each student’s particular needs.

“This is a chance to change the system,” said Reville. “By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now.”

“Students have different needs,” agreed Long. “We just have to get a better understanding of what we need to prioritize and where students are” in all aspects of their home and school lives.

“By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now,” says Paul Reville of the GSE.

Already, educators are discussing possible responses. Long and GSE helped create The Principals’ Network as one forum for sharing ideas, for example. With about 1,000 members, and multiple subgroups to address shared community issues, some viable answers have begun to emerge.

“We are going to need to expand learning time,” said Long. Some school systems, notably Texas’, already have begun discussing extending the school year, she said. In addition, Long, an internationally recognized economist who is a member of the  National Academy of Education and the  MDRC board, noted that educators are exploring innovative ways to utilize new tools like Zoom, even when classrooms reopen.

“This is an area where technology can help supplement what students are learning, giving them extra time — learning time, even tutoring time,” Long said.

Reimers, who serves on the UNESCO Commission on the Future of Education, has been brainstorming solutions that can be applied both here and abroad. These include urging wealthier countries to forgive loans, so that poorer countries do not have to cut back on basics such as education, and urging all countries to keep education a priority. The commission and its members are also helping to identify good practices and share them — globally.

Innovative uses of existing technology can also reach beyond traditional schooling. Reimers cites the work of a few former students who, working with Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative,   HundrED , the  OECD Directorate for Education and Skills , and the  World Bank Group Education Global Practice, focused on podcasts to reach poor students in Colombia.

They began airing their math and Spanish lessons via the WhatsApp app, which was widely accessible. “They were so humorous that within a week, everyone was listening,” said Reimers. Soon, radio stations and other platforms began airing the 10-minute lessons, reaching not only children who were not in school, but also their adult relatives.

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Inclusive education: a prerequisite for equity and social justice

• Published: 10 June 2019
• Volume 20 , pages 181–192, ( 2019 )

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• Sheldon Shaeffer 1  

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Whether education fosters equity and social justice, as it is said to do, is a matter of debate. Whatever the outcome of the debate, education has a better chance of succeeding in this process if it is delivered through a national system and through schools which are genuinely inclusive in nature—welcoming difference and diversity; attempting to fulfil the rights for education of good quality; and targeting both out-of-school children and children in school but not learning. But many education systems still have large numbers of children who are not achieving minimum expected levels of learning—usually because of neglect, disinterest, discriminatory policies, and/or a lack of resources and data about who are excluded, where they live, and why they are not in school. The concept of “inclusive education” now has a wider definition encompassing all obstacles to access and learning beyond a focus on children with disabilities and other special needs. It is therefore concerned with increasing enrolment, attendance, and completion; reducing repetition/drop-out/push-out rates; reducing disparities in provision and student; and celebrating diversity and promoting cohesion. This, in turn, requires an analysis of what causes exclusion; “sharing the blame” for failure; and the searching for, and targeted support to, those excluded. Exclusion can be based on many factors: e.g. migration and refugee status, conflict, natural disaster, income, linguistic/cultural status, location (e.g. remoteness), sex, and ability. A range of policies and practices, at both the school and Ministry level, can be put in place to make schools more inclusive: legislative mandates and whole-school reform; targeted responses to excluded groups; pedagogies which strengthen social-emotional learning and celebrate difference and diversity; the promotion of inclusive teaching–learning strategies and practices; and good quality, inclusive early childhood care and development (ECCD) programmes. In the best of worlds (where factors outside of education which sustain inequality are not insurmountable), and assuming that the education provided meets established standards of quality, children leaving an inclusive education system should be able not only to develop themselves to their fullest potential but also to play a useful role in local and national economic, social, and political development leading to a more just, equitable, and cohesive society.

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Success for all re-envisioning new zealand schools and classrooms as places where ‘rights’ replace ‘special’.

Achieving Inclusive Education: Where to Next?

Inclusion from the Classroom to Families and the Community: Global Inclusive Education

Sustainable Development Goal 4, one of 17 endorsed by the United Nations in 2015, demands an inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of “lifelong learning opportunities for all”. In particular, Target 4.1 requires that all children complete primary and secondary education of sufficient quality to ensure that they have “relevant and effective learning outcomes”. To measure progress globally towards this target, the international community has agreed to use the following indicator: Proportion of children and young people: (a) in Grades 2 or 3; (b) at the end of primary education; and (c) at the end of lower secondary education achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics. (United Nations 2015 ). (Italics added).

Education for All (EFA) was proclaimed first at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990 and then reconfirmed and reconfigured at the World Forum on Education in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000.

The current rate of language death is estimated at 9–17 per year; calculated over the 80 years left in this century, the number of dead languages by 2100 could be considerably more than 1075.

Anecdotally, in some cases, this process of “pushing out” becomes more explicit when schools want to demonstrate high achievement (and therefore gain high status) in school-leaving examinations and so proactively encourage low achievers to leave before the examination is given.

In some countries, it is actually the majority of the population discriminated against in regard to language; e.g. where colonial languages, used largely by a small, urban elite, are used in schools dominated by much larger ethnic/indigenous groups.

See, for example, Minster of Education and Sports, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. (2011). National Strategy and Plan of Action on Inclusive Education 2011–2015. Vientiane: Minister of Education and Sports.

Abbreviations

Early childhood care and development

Education for All

Education Management Information System

Laos People’s Democratic Republic

Lower secondary school

Net enrolment rate

Organisation of economic co-operation and development

Primary school

Sustainable Development Goal

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

United National Children’s Fund

Upper secondary school

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An earlier version of this paper was presented at Special Session at the 19th International Conference on Education Research held in the Seoul National University on 17–19 October 2018.

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Shaeffer, S. Inclusive education: a prerequisite for equity and social justice. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 20 , 181–192 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-019-09598-w

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What is Social Justice Education and Why Does It Matter?

Learn about the role DEI training plays in ensuring equity and access for all.

Jessica A. Kent

Everyone wants to be valued at their workplace, understood by those around them, and feel safe and encouraged to make their best contributions.

Yet 82 percent of employees say their workplace lacks fairness, according to research from Gartner, an executive consulting organization .

For many — especially those in minority or underrepresented communities — a workplace may not feel like a place they can do their best work. Failures of leadership, microaggressions, and structural and policy shortcomings impact engagement, productivity and employee well-being.

Leaders need to focus on creating a socially just workplace where everyone has both the opportunity and feels welcome to contribute. A key component of learning how to take action is through social justice education and engaging in courses like Inclusive Leadership for a Diverse Workplace , offered by Harvard Division of Continuing Education Professional & Executive Development.

What is Social Justice and DEI Education?

Social justice is the mission of creating a just society where everyone receives equal rights, opportunities, and access, regardless of race, religious beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, political views, country of birth, class, or any other identity factors. 

Social justice in the workplace efforts work to ensure equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for all employees. It’s a continuous process of listening, learning, and improving.

Nancy L. Forsyth and Andy Bandyopadhyay , faculty from Harvard DCE’s Professional & Executive Development course LGBTQ+ Leadership Program: Leading with Pride , share their insights and guidance.

Bandyopadhyay says inclusive leadership is about kindness, care for others, and cohesive team building. 

“We’re more likely now than any other time before to work with people from all different backgrounds,” he adds. “If we want to build cohesive teams in ways where people feel respected, people feel empowered to do their jobs, people are able to build friendships with their teammates, then we need to understand each other and where we’re coming from.”

One way to build that culture is through education or training about social justice issues. This drives awareness around equity and fairness in the workplace, with the goal of continuing to improve society overall, says Forsyth. 

She emphasizes that to drive change, inclusive leadership models must also be a cornerstone of any organization.  

“Training is only a piece of the pie,” Forsyth says. “If you don’t have leaders who are modeling the behaviors and if you don’t have it built into the processes that you use, it’s a challenge for people to think about it.”

How Injustices Show Up in the Workplace

There are many ways that social injustices can show up in a workplace and impact individuals on a daily basis.  Some are overt, but many are subtle, including the following:

Microaggressions

One of the subtler and more insidious ways injustice shows up at work is through microaggressions, or small comments or actions that make an assumption or contain a bias against a particular person or people group. 

“I do think that in many of the slights that we experience — whether we’re going to call them slights, or microaggressions, or uninformed moments — are not necessarily people trying to cause harm, but just being unaware of the impact of their actions,” says Bandyopadhyay.

For example, asking a coworker about their spouse and assuming that spouse’s gender. Microaggressions and other elements of a negative work environment can impact employees’ psychological safety, leading to new hires losing that sense of safety even after year one in the position.

Hiring practices

Injustices can play out during the hiring process as well. According to Forsyth, bias in hiring practices, promotions, and professional development opportunities can stymie employees’ growth.

“It shows up the most as you develop talent. You think first of these people because they are like you or represent something that you value,” she says.

Ultimately, Forsyth adds, social justice must be built into “your hiring, your promotions, your retention strategies, your way of building talent.”

Injustices can show up in benefits packages as well. It is crucial to implement inclusive and comprehensive healthcare that accounts for the needs of diverse populations. 

“As a Chief Human Rewards Officer or rewards person, for example, if you are unaware of the trans community, you are unaware of the health care issues of the trans community. If you are unaware of the statistics around pregnant Black women in this country, and the mortality rate compared with white women, it shows up in the way you implement policy.” Forsyth also highlights the value of diversity of experience and background in leadership to ensure best practices.

Access and structural issues

Injustices can show up in other ways, from work policies to physical access to spaces. Structural barriers can make it difficult for people to show up and complete their work, as well as to build positive workplace relationships. 

Accessibility encompasses a wide array of accommodations and can include: ramps, spacious elevators, readily available assistive technology, and flexible work arrangements.

Learn more about Inclusive Leadership

Learn more about Authentic Leadership

Benefits of Social Justice and DEI Education

Working to promote social justice in the workplace can result in a number of positive outcomes, from higher engagement and increased productivity.

Increased engagement

Creating an environment where every employee can do their best work and have access to job opportunities and advancement can increase their engagement and morale. Highly-engaged employees help a company earn more profits, are less likely to leave, and even record less product shrinkage and absenteeism.

Enhanced collaboration and productivity

Creating a more just and fair workplace can improve productivity.  Teams  are better able to understand and respect each other and are encouraged to bring their diversity of experiences to the table. Employees who work in a high fairness environment perform at a level that is 26 percent higher than those who don’t.

Improved talent acquisition

The effort of  creating a more just workplace not only benefits workers today, but can draw in new talent tomorrow. Equal opportunity is top of mind for many employees and job seekers. 

According to Glassdoor, 76 percent of job seekers say a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating a new workplace.

Higher employee retention

All these efforts can help lower turnover and increase retention. Nearly half of Black (47 percent) and Hispanic (49 percent) employees have quit a job after witnessing or experiencing discrimination at work, according to Glassdoor. However, employees who work in a high fairness environment are 27 percent less likely to quit than those who don’t.

For Bandyopadhyay and Forsyth, creating a more inclusive environment and increasing well-being is simply the right thing to do.

“There’s the ethical, moral, personal values-driven reason for all of this, so that people actually feel comfortable in their environment,” Forsyth says.

”Isn’t there just value in being a human being and living a life as a human being?” Adds Bandyopadhyay. “Well-being is well-being — it’s a good in and of itself.”

DEI Resources for Leaders

How to build — and improve — company culture.

• Inclusive Language in 4 Easy Steps
• LGBTQ Leadership: How to Honor Your Identity in the Workplace
• What is Ethical Leadership and Why is it Important?
• Why Workplace Culture Matters

How to Take Action as a Leader

Social justice issues in the workplace are everyone’s responsibility, from leadership setting the tone at the top, to middle managers practicing social justice with their teams, to entry-level workers practicing allyship and being secure in their authentic selves. 

Here are some of the actions you can take to start building awareness and creating a more just workplace environment.

Engage in leadership training and implementation

Creating a more inclusive, fair, and aware workplace begins with leadership and  leaders should consider including social justice education as part of their regular professional development. 

“From a strategy point of view, [social justice] needs to be driven from the top, but it needs to live at the managerial level,” Forsyth says. “You insist and ensure, for example, that as your leaders are running meetings, they are using and incorporating the things that they have learned and that they’re applying the techniques. That’s why it takes a big commitment from the top of the organization, because if they don’t model it, it doesn’t happen.”

Involve everyone

It’s not just up to leadership alone; each person at every level has a responsibility to help make their workplace more just. 

”Every person has a role to play within their own networks, within their own scope of influence,” says Bandyopadhyay. “It doesn’t matter what your role is. Ultimately, we’re all humans working together for a shared purpose.”

Encourage self-reflection

Self-reflection of and awareness around personal biases can help people be better allies to those around them by practicing empathy . 

Forsyth says this is particularly important for those in hiring positions and in leadership roles.

“When you are recruiting people, when you are developing people, but when you’re just managing people in general, there are a million biases that play out, and most of them unintentional,” she says.

Build a diverse network

According to Bandyopadhyay, diverse environments and communities help to build deep, meaningful connections with people from a range of backgrounds and prevent bias. 

This also helps to “build up our ally muscles in terms of engaging in allyship and advocating for folks even when they’re not in the room,” he says.

Create employee resource groups

Employee resource groups can build a sense of community and contribute to social justice education and initiatives. 

“If they are effective, they can be wonderful for the individual employees. They can be wonderful places where people can feel comfort and feel supported,” Forsyth explains. These groups also have “opportunities to serve as a sounding board for leadership, and to educate broadly about issues that are relevant to that particular group, but also to provide ongoing feedback to leadership.”

Promote Workplace Social Justice and DEI Today

Everyone wants to feel valued at their workplace, but it’s the responsibility of everyone in that workplace to make sure that happens. It starts with self-awareness, practicing allyship, building diverse networks, and embarking upon social justice education opportunities. But ultimately, it comes down to simply recognizing those around us as individuals. 

“People are, for the most part, trying to be kind to their colleagues or to be  helpful teammates. It’s just a matter of how we adjust to be kind in the way that someone wants to be treated,” Bandyopadhyay says.

Explore all Executive Leadership & Management programs

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

Company culture can make or break the success of any company. Learn how you can turn things around for your team and create a supportive, productive environment.

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Social justice in education: how the function of selection in educational institutions predicts support for (non)egalitarian assessment practices.

• Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale (UNILaPS), Institut de Psychologie, Faculté des Sciences Sociales et Politiques, Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Educational institutions are considered a keystone for the establishment of a meritocratic society. They supposedly serve two functions: an educational function that promotes learning for all, and a selection function that sorts individuals into different programs, and ultimately social positions, based on individual merit. We study how the function of selection relates to support for assessment practices known to harm vs. benefit lower status students, through the perceived justice principles underlying these practices. We study two assessment practices: normative assessment—focused on ranking and social comparison, known to hinder the success of lower status students—and formative assessment—focused on learning and improvement, known to benefit lower status students. Normative assessment is usually perceived as relying on an equity principle, with rewards being allocated based on merit and should thus appear as positively associated with the function of selection. Formative assessment is usually perceived as relying on corrective justice that aims to ensure equality of outcomes by considering students’ needs, which makes it less suitable for the function of selection. A questionnaire measuring these constructs was administered to university students. Results showed that believing that education is intended to select the best students positively predicts support for normative assessment, through increased perception of its reliance on equity, and negatively predicts support for formative assessment, through reduced perception of its ability to establish corrective justice. This study suggests that the belief in the function of selection as inherent to educational institutions can contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities by preventing change from assessment practices known to disadvantage lower-status student, namely normative assessment, to more favorable practices, namely formative assessment, and by promoting matching beliefs in justice principles.

Introduction

In most Western societies, educational institutions are perceived as an engine for social justice. By providing equal opportunities, education is believed to contribute to assign individuals to the academic and social positions that correspond to their aptitudes and motivation, regardless of their family’s wealth, background or social belonging. And yet, international surveys show that education fails to fulfill this role of “equalizer,” as pupils’ and students’ social background still strongly predicts their educational attainment ( OECD, 2013a ). These statistical trends show that the ideal of a meritocratic selection has yet to be reached. We propose that assigning to education the function of selecting the most deserving students could ironically participate in the reproduction of social inequalities. More precisely, in the present research we investigate how the belief that the function of educational institutions is to select students predicts the support for different kinds of assessment practices known to be more or less favorable to the disadvantaged, through corresponding beliefs in justice principles.

The Two Functions of Educational Institutions

Throughout their modernization process, most industrial countries have regularly voiced concerns about establishing a fair society. One central question has been how to reconcile the commitment to equality and the existence of a stratified society. Indeed, as soon as equality of all humans became a fundamental value, the need to find a justifiable way of differentiating between individuals also emerged ( Bisseret, 1974 ; Carson, 2007 ). The solution that was predominantly endorsed in the Western world was to ascribe social positions based on characteristics that seemed naturally distributed between individuals: abilities, ambition and efforts. In this context, educational institutions were given a crucial role. They became the place where these individual differences could be estimated and certified, relying on assessment methods rather than differences in social background. Thus, educational credentials, such as grades, certificates and diplomas, increasingly became a pass to access different social positions. However, several authors noted that, echoing the paradox between equality and differentiation, educational institutions fulfill two main functions, namely an educational and a selection function, whose articulation may need particular attention ( Dornbusch et al., 1996 ; Darnon et al., 2009 ).

The Educational Function

First, mass education, which is a standard in most Western countries, offers equality of opportunity to all individuals, and is intended to develop every student’s potential. Educational institutions thus fulfill an educational function to the extent that they equip all students with knowledge, skills and capacities for learning. As stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to education,” and educational institutions are supposed to safeguard this ideal. In practice, in Western societies, elementary education is compulsory and public schools offer a free access to all. Schools thus ensure that individuals master the basic knowledge and competences deemed necessary to take part in society ( Parsons, 1959 ; Forquin, 1992 ; Dubet, 2004 ). This educational function is perceived as a way to foster social mobility ( Bowen et al., 2005 ; Duru-Bellat, 2008 ): through the democratization of knowledge and increase of competence, education is expected to expand all individuals’ opportunities and warrant that no talent is wasted.

The Selection Function

Beside teaching skills and knowledge, education also serves a function of selection . Compulsory education makes opportunities available to all at first, but then individuals are trained for different social positions. Indeed, in most OECD countries, educational systems are divided into different types of programs, some being more vocational and others more academic. Even though the age at which students are sorted into different career tracks varies across countries, all educational systems carry out a more or less systematic and explicit selection ( OECD, 2013b ). At each successive tracking, only a fraction of the population moves to the most valued steps. Ultimately, only about 30% of adults have access to higher education ( OECD, 2013c ). It is important to note that attributing such a role of filter to educational institutions concords with the meritocratic ideal ( Young, 1958 ). Indeed, it is now accepted that social positions should no longer be inherited but reflect individual merit. In education, merit is mostly defined as ability and motivation, qualities viewed in Western cultural models as intrinsic to the individual ( Plaut and Markus, 2005 ) and educational institutions are perceived as a neutral place where individuals can express their inherent qualities. Then, to provide the most objective gage of individuals’ merit, educational systems rely on assessment procedures such as tests and exams that have become a basis for the selection of the most deserving students ( Carson, 2007 ).

Selection and Education

However, research has long shown that beyond the rhetoric about a meritocratic selection based on individuals’ potentials, the reality is that socio-economic status (SES) is still related to academic outcomes. Indeed, several international surveys pointed to the fact that, compared to their socio-economically advantaged counterparts, disadvantaged students are more likely to underperform, repeat grades, drop out, and attain a lower level of education ( OECD, 2010 , 2013c ). Eventually, disadvantaged individuals end up in lower status occupations and advantaged individuals in higher status positions, thus reproducing the social hierarchy existing prior to undergoing the educational process ( OECD, 2010 ). Some scholars have claimed that, in fact, the functioning of educational institutions itself plays an active role in perpetuating the social hierarchy ( Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977 ; Yosso, 2002 ). In this article, we focus on the perceived functions of educational institutions and the assessment practices enacted in these institutions. We propose that believing that educational institutions should select the best individuals is associated with more support for assessment practices that favor high status students and hinder the success of lower status students, and with less support for an assessment method that has the potential to reduce status-based performance gaps. On the contrary, the belief in the education role of school systems should be associated with less support for forms of assessment that reinforce inequalities and more support for egalitarian assessment practices. We also investigate how the relationship between the two functions of education and assessment practices is partly explained by the perceived justice principles underlying these practices.

Assessment Practices and Social Inequalities

Some scholars suggested that educational institutions transform social inequalities into seemingly natural scholastic inequalities ( Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977 ; Yosso, 2002 ). Indeed, many educational practices are conducive to the unequal treatment of students with differing social backgrounds. One of the most pervasive of these practices is assessment.

Normative Assessment

The most common assessment method in Western educational institutions is, by far, normative assessment, i.e., a form of evaluation based on a quantifiable measure of performance (e.g., numerical grades, letters, percentages or value judgments) that allows comparison to a social standard defining success ( Knight and Yorke, 2003 ). One of the main characteristics of normative assessment is thus to reduce performance to a single indicator that is easily interpretable, which facilitates ranking and social comparison ( Thorndike, 1913 ; Rosenholtz and Simpson, 1984 ), and makes it particularly useful to perform the function of selection ( Dornbusch et al., 1996 ). Beside these structural features, it is also important to review some functional effects in relation to who is selected when using normative assessment.

Some historical and sociological analyses have proposed that normative assessment through testing and competitive examinations is rooted in traditions, methods, conceptions of knowledge and standards that serve the dominant groups ( Wilbrink, 1997 ; Delandshere, 2001 ; Leathwood, 2005 ; Carson, 2007 ). The rankings and competence certification produced by normative assessment would thus participate to maintain the pre-existing social order. These analyses are corroborated by empirical research that (a) documented the deleterious consequences of normative assessment for students, especially from lower status groups and (b) investigated how normative assessment lead agents of the educational institutions to reproduce status-based achievement gaps.

As for the first body of empirical research, several results showed that normative forms of evaluation have deleterious consequences for learners. One consequence is that grades—which are typically used to perform normative assessment—lead students to be motivated by the desire to outperform others and the fear to be outperformed ( Butler, 1987 ; Pulfrey et al., 2011 ). Such performance goals are associated with negative consequences such as self-handicapping (e.g., procrastination; Urdan et al., 1998 ) and superficial learning strategies ( Nolen, 1988 ; Elliot and Harackiewicz, 1996 ; Meece et al., 2006 ). Moreover, students who were led to adopt performance goals by instructions that emphasized high stake performance and ranking experienced distractive outcome concerns that hijacked their cognitive resources and disrupted their performance ( Crouzevialle and Butera, 2013 ).

This deleterious dynamic of performance goals may especially impact lower status students ( Kaplan and Maehr, 1999 ; Jagacinski et al., 2008 ). Nicholls (1979) proposed that competitive contexts emphasizing normative evaluation and the demonstration of relative ability produce inequalities in the motivation necessary to develop skills and perform well. Recently, Smeding et al. (2013) provided a compelling demonstration that assessment practices oriented toward performance-based ranking particularly harm the academic achievement of low SES students. They showed that regular normative assessment (i.e., a final exam) and assessment experimentally emphasizing outperforming others impaired the performance of low-SES students, who then performed worse than high-SES students. The social class achievement gap, however, disappeared when assessment was experimentally presented to students as a way to learn and improve. Similar results were found on the gender-based achievement gap in science ( Souchal et al., 2013 ). This body of research suggests that normative assessment in its usual form leads students to focus on demonstrating their ability and outperforming others and contributes to the lower achievement of lower status students.

A second body of research took the perspective of the agents of the educational system who enact the assessment practices, and set out to question the extent to which normative assessment reflects individual merit. More precisely, several studies revealed that the knowledge of the students’ social background could bias their teachers’ evaluation ( Ouazad, 2008 ; Mechtenberg, 2009 ; Burgess and Greaves, 2013 ; Hinnerich et al., 2014 ). In an experimental study, in particular, German teachers were asked to grade a set of essays ( Sprietsma, 2013 ). In all conditions, the essays were the same but the origin of the pupil’s name was manipulated. Some teachers thought a given essay was written by a native while others thought it was produced by a pupil with a migrant background. The results showed that the essays received lower grades when migrant pupils supposedly wrote them compared to the condition in which native pupils supposedly wrote them. Similar results were found in India where teachers gave lower grades to exams supposedly produced by low castes pupils compared to high castes pupils ( Hanna and Linden, 2009 ).

In summary, normative assessment practices were historically implemented partly to fulfill the function of selection by allowing an objective detection of the most deserving students, notwithstanding their background. However, a growing set of evidence suggests that these assessment practices may backlash and contribute to the social reproduction of inequalities. We have shown how normative assessment may trigger psychological processes, in both students and teachers, that result in hindering the academic success of lower status students.

Formative Assessment

A number of alternative assessment methods have been developed to foster the learning of all students instead of favoring an elite or already advantaged groups. Research in education has long suggested that classroom environments oriented toward learning are more efficient ( Nicholls, 1979 ; O’Neill, 1988 ; Wang et al., 1990 ; Crahay, 2012 ). The practices supporting a learning-oriented climate include cooperative learning, explicit teaching, clear and adapted instruction, maximized learning time and—most relevant for the present contention—alternative forms of evaluation.

Among these alternative forms of evaluation is formative assessment ( Black and Wiliam, 1998 ). It is conducted during the learning process and is specifically intended to be a tool for improvement. The assessment can be conducted by the teachers, the students themselves or their peer and is formative to the extent that it provides a specific and detailed feedback that can be used to adapt the teaching and learning activities to the students’ progress and difficulties. Formative assessment can take various forms but we refer here to qualitative feedbacks provided to students that target specific learning objectives and provide guidance on how to improve ( Torrance and Pryor, 1998 ; Shute, 2008 ; Bennett, 2011 ). Formative feedbacks inform the students about the desired outcome, the quality of their work compared to that standard and ways to attain it ( Sadler, 1989 ). This kind of assessment practices is in line with the educational function of educational institutions because it aims at promoting the skills and knowledge of all students. On the contrary, formative assessment can hardly fulfill a selection purpose, as it is does not allow social comparison and ranking.

A thorough review of the literature showed that formative assessment has a strong, reliable and general positive impact on students’ learning ( Black and Wiliam, 1998 ). For example, giving formative feedbacks to students reduced their fear of negative outcomes for an upcoming task. This relationship was mediated by higher autonomous motivation (i.e., behavior driven by individual’s goals or interest; Pulfrey et al., 2011 ; see also Pulfrey et al., 2013 ). In another study, pupils who received formative comments on previous exercises expressed a higher interest in the task, were ready to work on more extra tasks, and performed at a higher level on the subsequent task than students who received traditional forms of assessment (i.e., grades or praise; Butler, 1987 ).

There are reasons to think that lower status students could be those who benefit the most from formative assessment. Lower status students experience a mismatch with the norms and culture promoted in educational institutions ( Stephens et al., 2012 ). Formative assessment makes the rules more transparent, by clarifying the expectations and how to meet them, which could help lower status students to adjust to the educational requirement. Lower status students also often feel that they “don’t belong here” and doubt their ability to succeed or think that others doubt their ability. Such experience of disqualification is known to impair performance ( Cohen and Garcia, 2008 ; Croizet and Millet, 2012 ). Formative assessment shifts the focus from the evaluation of one’s self-worth as a student to evaluation as a way to improve and learn, which could limit lower status students’ concerns and help them achieve. And indeed, research has shown that, for female students, being oriented toward mastery and learning led in the long run to greater belief that they are capable of understanding the class and doing the required work, and to more use of strategies to monitor and control their learning ( Patrick et al., 1999 ). Two literature reviews also showed that practices oriented toward learning, such as formative assessment, are especially beneficial to lower status students ( O’Neill, 1988 ; Bissonnette et al., 2005 ). Using formative assessment could thus be a tool to reduce achievement inequalities between different social groups.

When comparing the literatures on formative and normative assessment, one may wonder why the latter is still the mostly used form of evaluation. We argue that support for these two assessment methods relates to the two functions of education. Support for normative assessment would be connected to selection purposes while support for the formative assessment would be linked to educational purposes. At the beginning of this theoretical section we have pointed out that much of the research on assessment has been motivated by the cultural belief that educational institutions should be an engine for social justice; thus, it is now time to discuss the justice principles that might underlie normative and formative assessment in educational institutions. Indeed, normative and formative methods imply different ways of allocating educational rewards, and different ways of treating the students during the learning process. These different principles of justice would make them more or less suitable to perform the selection and the educational function.

Justice in Educational Institutions

Normative assessment and equity.

The function of selection relies on a meritocratic ideal, whereby individuals are guided toward the position that corresponds to their dispositions. Historically, testing and graded exams were developed by measurement experts and psychologists to provide quantitative tools to a society based on individual merit ( Lemann, 1999 ; Carson, 2007 ). The meritocratic ideology implies that rewards are allocated equitably, based on individual motivation, talent and hard work ( Son Hing et al., 2011 ). The equity-based principle of justice is highly prevalent in school contexts and in particular in grade allocation ( Sabbagh et al., 2006 ). Investigating teachers’ practices, Resh (2009) showed that they report using mostly equitarian rules to fairly determine grades, considering the student’s ability, success and effort. Interestingly, students share the idea that grade distribution should be guided by an equity principle ( Jasso and Resh, 2002 ; Sabbagh et al., 2004 ). Such a consensus is captured by Deutsch’s (1979) theoretical contention that a fundamental function of normative assessment is to lead students to believe in meritocratic competition and in the fact that equity is the best way to allocate rewards.

The perceived reliance of normative assessment on the equity principle would explain why this method seems highly relevant to enact the function of selection. Because it seems to allocate rewards based on student’s merit, normative assessment appears as the best tool to select the most deserving students. On the contrary, the educational function would discourage the idea that assessment should establish an equity principle of justice. This function implies that all individuals should increase their level of competence, which is incompatible with an allocation of rewards based on the students’ initial input. The discouragement of the equity principle by educational purposes should relate to a perception of normative assessment as being an inadequate method.

Formative Assessment and Equality and Need

By contrast, formative assessment was developed with a view to improving the learning of all students. Reducing the gap between individuals who are unequal at the beginning of the pedagogic action is central to the rationale for implementing formative practices. These are framed as tools to institute a principle of corrective justice that ensures equality ( Perrenoud, 1995 ; Dubet and Duru-Bellat, 2004 ; Crahay, 2012 ). It should be noted that equality in this case is not defined as the exact same treatment of all individuals during the learning process but as the equality of outcomes at the end of the learning process, obtained by a differentiated treatment of individuals as a function of their needs. Formative assessment is thus grounded in two egalitarian principles of justice: equality and need. The need principle implies to give more resources to those who need more ( Deutsch, 1975 ): level, pace, content and methods should be adjusted to meet the students’ needs ( Hallinan, 1988 ; Sabbagh et al., 2006 ). Formative assessment precisely aims at enabling such adjustments ( Black and Wiliam, 1998 ): by giving learning opportunities adapted to each student, formative practices ambition to erase the original disparities in competence. All students should attain a high level of competence, and this level should be unrelated to their initial amount of skills. Ultimately, equality of outcomes would be established.

The equality and need principles of justice established by formative assessment fit the educational function of schools stating that all individuals should attain a certain level of skills and knowledge. On the contrary, the corrective justice inherent to formative assessment makes it incompatible with the function of selection. The need principle implies to identify individual differences but with the purpose of reducing them rather than using them to rank and attribute credentials. The ultimate principle of equality of outcomes is undifferentiating and cannot lead to selection.

Hypotheses and Overview

Previous research has shown that normative and formative assessments contribute to respectively accentuate and attenuate social inequalities. In order to understand the support for these two assessment methods, we investigate how it relates to the selection and educational functions of educational institutions and justice principles. Firstly, we hypothesize that believing in the function of selection should be positively associated to the support for normative assessment practices. We expect this relationship to be mediated by the perception that normative assessment follows an equitarian principle of justice. Secondly, the belief in the function of selection should be negatively associated to the support for formative assessment practices. This lower support should be mediated by the reduced perception that formative assessment allows to meet the students’ need and ensure equality of outcomes. Thirdly, the belief in the educational function of education should relate to more support for formative assessment, this being mediated by a higher perception of its reliance on the need and equality principles of justice. Fourthly, the endorsement of the educational function should be negatively associated with support for normative assessment, through a negative relationship with the equity principle. To test our hypotheses, we administered a questionnaire measuring beliefs in the selection and the educational function of educational institutions, support for the normative and the formative assessment and the extent to which each assessment method follows each of three principles of justice (i.e., equity, equality and need).

Materials and Methods

Participants.

One hundred and forty nine students enrolled in political science at a French-speaking Swiss university took part to the study. They voluntarily completed the questionnaire at the end of a regular class. Nine participants were removed from the analyses because they did not fill most of the questionnaire ( N = 2), were not native French speakers ( N = 3) or always gave the same answer ( N = 4). The final sample included 140 students (mean age = 22.13, SD = 2.56; 73 women, 66 men, 1 unspecified). All data were collected in accordance to the American Psychological Association’s ethical principles and analyzed anonymously. This research was conducted in compliance with the declaration of Helsinki.

Material and Procedure

Participants were first asked to imagine that they were secondary school teachers and, to commit them to this role-play, they had to list their supposed daily activities as a teacher. Then they had to fill in, on seven-point scales, a questionnaire developed to measure the functions of the educational system 1 . Three items referred to its function of selection (e.g., “The role of the educational system should be to deliver the best diplomas to the best students,” see items SelSys1 to SelSys3 in Table 1A ) and three referred to its educational function (e.g., “The role of the educational system should be to help the students to gain solid knowledge,” see items EduSys1 to EduSys3 in Table 1A ). Participants were presented with similar items to assess their perception of the selection vs. educational function of teachers (e.g, “As a teacher, your role is to give academic rewards only to the best students,” see items SelTea1 to SelTea3 and EduTea1 to EduTea3 in Table 1A ).

TABLE 1. Standardized factor loadings.

The second part of the questionnaire started with an explanation of the normative assessment method illustrated with a graded test. Participants read that this method is based on grades that reflect the number of right and wrong answers. Normative assessment was presented as enabling teachers to estimate the students’ learning, judge their performance according to a norm defining success and relatively to their peers. Participants then evaluated this assessment method on seven-point scales. Nine items assessed the justice principles (three items for each principle). Participants rated the fit of the assessment method with the equity principle (e.g., “This method values your students as a function of their merit,” see items Equi1 to Equi3 in Table 1B ), the equality principle (e.g., “This method allows you to take all your students to the same level of attainment,” see items Equa1 to Equa3 in Table 1B ), and the need principle (e.g., “This method values your students even if they struggle,” see items Need1 to Need3 in Table 1B ). Finally, four items estimated the overall support for the method. Participants were asked whether they would use this method and whether they think it is a good, reliable and accurate assessment tool (see items Supp1 to Supp4 in Table 1B ).

In the third part of the questionnaire, the formative assessment method was described and an example of a test with comment-based feedbacks was presented. Participants read that formative assessment is based on formative comments. This method was presented as enabling teachers to estimate the students’ learning, judge their performance according to learning objectives and suggest ways to improve. Participants filled in the same items measuring the three justice principles and the overall support for the method. The order of the second and the third part of the questionnaire was counterbalanced.

Relations between the perceived function of education, the justice principles followed by assessment methods and the support for these methods were estimated using structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses performed with the Lavaan package in R ( Rosseel, 2012 ). First, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were used to identify the best-fitting measurement model. Then SEM examined the relationships among the latent variables and tested the specific hypotheses. The measurement model was identified by fixing the non-standardized factor loading of one of the indicators per latent variable to one. Our data being non-normal and incomplete, we used the Robust Maximum Likelihood (MLR) estimation method ( Yuan and Bentler, 2000 ). The MLR estimator produces maximum likelihood parameter estimates with standard errors and χ 2 test statistics that are robust to non-normality and missing data. Model fit was estimated by a number of convergent indices: the robust Yuan-Bentler scaled chi-square test, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) and the comparative fit index (CFI). Well-fitting model is suggested by a SRMR value below 0.08, a RMSEA close to 0.06 or below and a CFI value over 0.90 ( Bentler, 1990 ; Hu and Bentler, 1999 ).

Measurement Model

The sample size did not allow testing a model including all our variables. Our hypotheses imply that we investigate the relationship between the perceived functions of education and both the perception of the normative assessment, and the perception of the formative assessment. Consequently, we conducted separate analyses on the functions of education, the perception of normative assessment and the perception of formative assessment.

Functions of Education

The expected four-factor model, consisting of the selection and educational function of the educational system and the selection and educational function of teachers, showed a covariance matrix that was not positive definite. Inspection of the data suggested that this was caused by an overlap between two latent variables: the function of selection of the educational system and the function of selection of teachers ( r = 1.12). Considering the similarity between the two sets of items, the two sets were integrated in a single variable referring to the function of selection of education. The reduced three-factor model showed a marginal fit Y-B χ 2 (51, N = 140) = 106.96, p < 0.001, SRMR = 0.06; CFI = 0.90; RMSEA = 0.09 (90% CI of 0.07, 0.11, pclose = 0.003). Examination of modification indexes (MI) revealed correlation among error terms associated with two pairs of items: SelSys1 and SelTea1 (MI = 36.80), EduSys1 and EduTea3 (MI = 15.71). Such covariance can be explained by the substantial content overlap among the items. The correlation between the two pairs of error terms were added to the model one at a time, which significantly improved the fit (i.e., significant Satorra-Bentler-Scaled-χ 2 -difference-test; Δ SBS-χ 2 = 14.69, p < 0.001 and Δ SBS-χ 2 = 18.30, p < 0.001; Satorra and Bentler, 2001 ). The re-specified model showed a good fit Y-B χ 2 (49, N = 140) = 58.97, p = 0.16, SRMR = 0.05; CFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.04 (90% CI of 0.000, 0.07, pclose = 0.69). The factor loadings, presented in Table 1A , were all significant (all p s < 0.001).

We hypothesized four latent variables, referring to the three principles of justice and the support for the assessment method. The four-factor model showed a moderate fit Y-B χ 2 (59, N = 140) = 125, p < 0.001, SRMR = 0.07; CFI = 0.91; RMSEA = 0.09 (90% CI of 0.07, 0.11, pclose = 0.002). We inspected MI to assess whether the fit could be improved. The values indicated residual covariance of the item Equa3 with several other items. Given the multiple covariance, we decided to remove it, which improved the fit (BIC of 5768.75 compared to a BIC of 6245.16 for the original model, Raftery, 1995 ). Modification indices also indicated that the fit could be improved by allowing the errors of item Supp3 and Supp4 to correlate (MI = 20.57) as well as the errors of items Supp1 et Supp2 (MI = 18.39). These items refer to the same dimension of support. Allowing the residuals of these two pairs of items to be correlated further improved the fit (Δ SBS-χ 2 = 10.81, p < 0.002 and Δ SBS- χ 2 = 6.08, p < 0.02). The final re-specified model showed an excellent fit Y-B χ 2 (46, N = 140) = 46.09, p = 0.47, SRMR = 0.05; CFI = 1; RMSEA = 0.004 (90% CI of 0.000, 0.06, pclose = 0.91). As shown in Table 1B , all indicators strongly loaded on the factors (all p s < 0.001).

Formative Assessement

We tested the four-factor model (i.e., three principles of justice and the support for the assessment method) and obtained an acceptable fit Y-B χ 2 (59, N = 140) = 106.51, p < 0.001, SRMR = 0.05; CFI = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.08 (90% CI of 0.06, 0.10, pclose = 0.03). Inspection of the data indicated a high correlation between the equality and the need principle of justice ( r = 0.92) and multiple covariance for the item Equa3. Because of the theoretical closeness of these two principles of justice, we decided to combine them into one latent variable referring to a principle of corrective justice that did not include the item Equa3, successfully improving the fit of the model (Δ BIC = 374). Based on modification indices, we allowed the errors of item Supp3 and Supp4 (that belong to the same theoretical dimension of support) to correlate (MI = 14.17) and the errors of items Equa1 and Equa2 (that refer to the dimension of equality; MI = 7.47). These successive changes improved the fit (Δ SBS-χ 2 = 6.64, p < 0.01 and Δ SBS-χ 2 = 4.92, p < 0.05). The fit of the final re-specified model was good Y-B χ 2 (49, N = 140) = 69.97, p = 0.03, SRMR = 0.05; CFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.06 (90% CI of 0.02, 0.08, pclose = 0.36). Table 1C shows the all-significant factor loadings (all p s < 0.001).

Structural Models

Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations among variables are reported in Table 2A . The correlations are in the expected direction, except for the perceived educational function of school systems and teachers. We observed a ceiling effect and low variances, and therefore no correlation with other factors. This led us to exclude the two variables from the model, which prevented the test of Hypothesis 3. Figure 1 shows the results of the structural equation model testing Hypothesis 1, stating that equity-based justice mediates the positive relation between the function of selection of education and the support for the normative assessment. The model fit the data well, Y-B χ 2 (122, N = 140) = 139.76, p = 0.13, SRMR = 0.05; CFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.03 (90% CI of 0.000, 0.06, pclose = 0.89). In accordance with our hypothesis, the indirect path including equity-based justice was significant ( b = 0.57, z = 3.66, p < 0.001) contrary to the indirect path including equality and need-based justice (respectively b = 0.02, z = 0.90, p = 0.37 and b = -0.001, z = -0.06, p = 0.96). Indicating a full mediation, the direct effect of the function of selection on the support for normative assessment was not significant ( b = -0.08, z = -0.52, p = 0.60). These results indicate that thinking that education’s role is to select students relates to a positive evaluation of the normative assessment. This relation is mediated by beliefs that normative assessment allows to allocate rewards equitably.

TABLE 2. Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations between the variables.

FIGURE 1. Mediation model showing how the function of selection of education positively relates to the support for normative assessment via equity . All values are unstandardized coefficients († p < 0.10; ∗ p < 0.05; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001).

To test whether the links between variables was moderated by the order of presentation of the assessment methods, we performed multi-group SEM analyses. We first tested a model that introduced no equality constraints as a function of order. This unconstrained model was tested against a model in which all factor loadings were constrained to be equal across groups. The comparative fit of the two models indicated that the structure of the latent variables was similar in the two orders of presentation (Δ SBS-χ 2 (13) = 14.45, n.s.). We then tested a model that constrained both factor loadings and all regression paths and covariances between latent variables to be equal across groups. Imposing equality constrains on the regression paths and covariances did not cause significant decrement in model fit (Δ SBS-χ 2 (10) = 6.35, n.s.), suggesting that the structural relationships between the function of education, justice beliefs and support for the normative assessment was similar across order of presentation.

We hypothesized that the support for formative assessment would be negatively related to the function of selection and that this relation would be mediated by the belief that this method follows an equality/need-based justice principle (Hypothesis 2). Table 2B shows the descriptive statistics and the zero-order associations between the variables that are consistent with our hypothesis. Again, the variables referring to the educational function did not correlate with any other variables and were excluded, which prevented the test of Hypothesis 4. Results of the structural equation model are shown in Figure 2 . Despite the significant Y-B chi-square test [χ 2 (126, N = 140) = 182, p = 0.001], other fit indices suggest a good fit, SRMR = 0.06; CFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.06 (90% CI of 0.04, 0.07, pclose = 0.25). The predicted indirect path including equality/need-based justice was marginally significant ( b = -0.29, z = -1.94, p = 0.052) while the indirect path including equity-based justice was not significant ( b = -0.01, z = -0.39, p = 0.69). The direct effect of the function of selection on the support for formative assessment was not significant ( b = -0.04, z = -0.30, p = 0.77). These findings show that the beliefs stressing the role of selection of schools and teachers are negatively associated to the support for formative assessment, which is mediated by the reduced belief that formative assessment follows an equality/need-based justice principle.

FIGURE 2. Mediation model showing how the function of selection of education negatively relates to the support for formative assessment via corrective justice (equality and need) . All values are unstandardized coefficients ( ∗ p < 0.05; ∗∗∗ p < 0.001).

Following the same logic as presented for the normative assessment, we tested the effect of the order of presentation of the assessment methods. The multi-group SEM analyses revealed that the structure of the latent variables was similar in the two orders of presentation [Δ SBS-χ 2 (14) = 11.68, n.s.], as was the structural relationships between the function of education, justice beliefs and support for the formative assessment [Δ SBS- χ 2 (6) = 10.34, n.s.].

The present study intended to uncover the beliefs about the functions of educational institutions, in particular the educational and selection functions, that may predict support for normative and formative assessment methods, since the type of assessment used has been found by previous research to either accentuate or attenuate social inequalities. To this effect, we used a questionnaire that allowed studying the relationships between the perceived function of the educational institution, the support for assessment practices, and the justice principles underlying these practices.

Our first hypothesis was that believing in the schools’ function of selection should be positively associated to the support for normative assessment practices, a relationship that should be mediated by the perception that normative assessment follows an equitarian principle of justice. In support to this hypothesis, we found that believing that the school’s role is to select the best students was positively associated to the support for normative assessment, a method known to be less favorable to lower status students. This relationship was indeed explained by the beliefs that such an assessment relies on an equity principle, one of the principles founding meritocracy ( Son Hing et al., 2011 ). Our second hypothesis was that believing in the function of selection should be negatively associated to the support for formative assessment practices, a relationship that should be mediated by the reduced perception that formative assessment allows to meet the students’ needs and ensures equality of outcomes. The present results supported this hypothesis as well, and showed the expected negative relation between the function of selection and the support for formative assessment, a method favorable to lower status students. This relation was mediated by a reduced perception that formative comments rely on a corrective principle of justice aiming at bringing all the students to a similar level.

Unfortunately, we were unable to test our two hypotheses regarding the educational function of education, due to a ceiling effect and low variance in the variables referring to this construct. This problem is actually quite interesting, to the extent that it is likely to come from the fact that the educational function of school is widely recognized and endorsed, as it corresponds to the official discourse about the role of educational institutions ( Darnon et al., 2009 ). Darnon et al. (2009) investigated the social value of mastery goals, the declared desire to learn and increase knowledge, in an academic context. These authors found that mastery goals are highly valued by students, both in terms of perceived desirability of these goals in the eyes of the teachers and in their perceived utility to succeed in the academic system. Interestingly, Darnon et al. (2009) also found that mastery goals perfectly fit the teachers’ discourse: when teachers were asked what goals they promoted in their class, their answers on mastery goals showed a ceiling effect and low variance. Mastery goals would be widely promoted by teachers precisely because they correspond to the educational function of education. These results and the similarity between the educational function of the educational system (to promote learning and increased knowledge, at the institutional level) and mastery goals (to strive for learning and increased knowledge, at the individual level) lead us to think that explicit questions about educational purposes are infused with social value issues, which will make it difficult for future research to study their link with other variables.

The question of how to partial social value out of the measure of the educational function should be addressed by future research (cf. Dompnier et al., 2013 ), but for the moment the present results on the function of selection represent an important contribution to the literature on the factors hindering and facilitating changes in the way educational agents perform scholastic and academic assessment. In the present research, we focused on two types of assessment practices: normative assessment, which is the most common method, and formative assessment, which is an alternative method. The cognitive and relational benefits of the latter for learners have been known for years ( Black and Wiliam, 1998 ), and indeed in our own research participants even indicated stronger support for formative than for normative assessment [ t (138) = -2.57, p = 0.01]. However, this is likely to be due to the high social desirability of focusing on education, as discussed in the previous paragraph, since the use of formative assessment in regular practices is still extremely limited (e.g., Black and Wiliam, 1998 ). A large body of literature has investigated why changes in assessment practices are difficult ( Tierney, 2006 ). Many studies pointed to technical, political, and structural inhibiting factors, and to the role of teachers’ representation of teaching, assessment, learning and students ( Hargreaves, 2005 ; Inbar-Lourie and Donitsa-Schmidt, 2009 ; Webb and Jones, 2009 ; Brown et al., 2011 ). Some proposed that the use of alternative assessment practices is hampered by institutional requirements, as well as the internalization of the institutional norms by the teachers who themselves succeeded in that system ( Tabachnick et al., 1979 ; Hargreaves et al., 2002 ). Adding to this literature, our research provides empirical evidence that people’s endorsement of the function of selection of educational institutions relates to a greater support for the usual (i.e., normative) assessment practices and lower support for unusual (i.e., formative) assessment practices. Our results contribute to understand why, despite the growing evidence that normative assessment is detrimental for learners, change in practices is slow, by highlighting the role of the widespread idea that educational institutions are meant to select the best students. The difficulty to change assessment practices raises the issue of the benefit of normative and formative assessment for learners in general, but it may also have consequences for lower status students in particular. We have already mentioned the literature suggesting that normative assessment restrains the success of lower status students (e.g., Smeding et al., 2013 ) whereas formative assessment could benefit them (e.g., Bissonnette et al., 2005 ); consequently, the greater support for normative assessment and the lower support for formative assessment associated with the belief in the function of selection might result in perpetuating status-based achievement gaps. A possible extrapolation, and a suggestion for future research, is that the idea of a selection operated by educational institutions maintains social inequalities in the access to scholastic and professional opportunities.

Another contribution of the present research relates to justice beliefs. We found that the principle of equity, corresponding to a meritocratic allocation of rewards, positively relates to the support for an assessment method known to hinder the students from disadvantaged groups, namely normative assessment. On the contrary, the corrective justice, corresponding to an egalitarian principle, relates to more support for an assessment method that could benefit to lower status students, namely formative assessment. These findings are consistent with previous research showing that belief in meritocracy predicts support for organizational selection practices that sustain the status quo whereas egalitarian beliefs predict support for practices that challenge the status quo ( Castilla and Benard, 2010 ; Son Hing et al., 2011 ; Zdaniuk and Bobocel, 2011 ). This body of research also demonstrated that meritocracy, besides being a justice principle, can serve as a hierarchy-legitimizing ideology. A possible extension of the present work could be to investigate whether the adherence to beliefs related to merit is a way to justify and legitimate the use of assessment practices known to disadvantage lower status students. Moreover, our results showed that such justification is positively associated to the extent to which one is convinced that educational institutions have the function of selecting students. A venue for future research could be to test the idea that bringing people to believe in the importance of selection at school leads to increased meritocratic beliefs that legitimize and maintain the current institutional functioning.

Several limitations of this work must be pointed out. First, the correlational nature of the data prevents from drawing any conclusion about the causal direction of the effects. We built our hypothesis on the idea that structural factors (i.e., functions of educational institutions) would affect beliefs about justice that in turn affect behavioral tendencies in the form of support for practices. Even though the observed relations are consistent with our hypothesis, we cannot claim that the function of selection leads to certain beliefs about justice and support for a specific assessment practice. Future research should manipulate the functions of education. We must note, however, that the problem related to the high social desirability of the educational function mentioned above might also curse such an experimental design, requiring subtle ways of inducing the selection and educational role of education. A second limitation relates to the measure of support for practices. We asked participants whether they would use each assessment method and whether they think they are good, reliable, and precise methods. We thus estimated behavioral intention and evaluation. Measuring actual behavior, for example by asking participants to assess a test, would allow investigating the enactment of these practices. Another limitation is the use of a student sample in this research. They were put in the position of a teacher by being asked to list their supposed daily activities as teachers and being reminded of their role in the framing of the questions. Research based on role-playing suggests that people are able to adapt their attitudes to a role they have been assigned to ( Houston and Holmes, 1975 ; Covington and Omelich, 1979 ; Harari and Covington, 1981 ). A replication of this research with teachers would inform about potential differences between naïve conception of the educational institution and the conception of the agents of this system. Finally, our results apply to the Swiss context. In Switzerland, selection is explicit as children are systematically tracked at a young age (11–12 years old) and grades are supposedly the main criteria to make tracking decisions. Yet, we believe that the theoretical reasoning developed in this paper could be transposed to most educational systems in Western societies. Indeed, even if the function of selection of schools might be less explicit and practices may vary in different socio-cultural contexts, some form of selection is operated by most educational institutions ( OECD, 2013b ). For example, students can be grouped by ability, be granted/refused access to honor courses, have to pass competitive exams or selection might be operated at the admission stage (e.g., Sommet et al., 2013 ). Future research should investigate how various forms of assessment practices relate to justice principles and functions of education in contexts in which the function of selection is less explicit and systematic.

Modern educational institutions have developed to become the warrant of a meritocratic society. Generalized access to education, and the implementation of supposedly objective measures of individuals’ motivations and abilities, were intended to lead to a fair society where desirable outcomes are distributed based on merit ( Lemann, 1999 ; Carson, 2007 ). Adding to an abundant literature that demonstrated that this ideal is far from being achieved ( Goldthorpe, 2003 ; Duru-Bellat, 2008 ; OECD, 2010 ; Walton et al., 2013 ), our results suggest that people’s beliefs in the importance of meritocratic selection relate to a willingness to sustain an institutional functioning, namely normative assessment, that is known to harm underprivileged students.

Author Contributions

FA, AB, and FB conceived and designed the study. FA and AB collected the data and analyzed it under the supervision of FB. FA drafted the manuscript and AB and FB provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgment

This research was funded by a Sinergia grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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Keywords : educational institutions, institutional practices, normative assessment, formative assessment, selection, social inequalities, justice beliefs, meritocracy

Citation: Autin F, Batruch A and Butera F (2015) Social justice in education: how the function of selection in educational institutions predicts support for (non)egalitarian assessment practices. Front. Psychol. 6:707. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00707

Received: 08 January 2015; Accepted: 12 May 2015; Published online: 04 June 2015.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2015 Autin, Batruch and Butera. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Frédérique Autin, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale (UNILaPS), Institut de Psychologie, Faculté des Sciences Sociales et Politiques, Université de Lausanne, Géopolis 5532, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

What is Social Justice in Education?  

The phrase “social justice” has become more mainstream in recent times, but it’s existed for hundreds of years. As a concept, social justice gained more importance during the 19th century due to the Industrial Revolution and civil unrest in Europe. People started standing up to dangerous labor conditions, exploitation, and other unfair systems. At its core, social justice is about the fair distribution of opportunities and privileges as they apply to individuals within a society. While at first social justice centered mostly on wealth and property, it now encompasses more areas such as the environment, race, gender, and education.

Why social justice in education matters

Social justice in education takes two forms. The first is social justice in action and the level of equality within the actual education system. When factors like wealth, gender and/or race determine what kind of education an individual can receive, that’s an example of social injustice. Students not privileged enough to receive an education on par with more privileged students are given a poor foundation for the rest of their lives. Their ability to earn a certain income can suffer, which in turn affects access to healthcare, good housing, and safety. When the education system isn’t committed to providing equal opportunities and privileges, it negatively impacts a society both culturally and economically.

The second form of social justice in education is how social justice is taught within the school system. In a social justice framework, curriculum is specifically chosen to broaden students’ worldviews through incorporating different ideas and challenging opinions. Instead of ignoring very real-world issues such as sexism, racism, poverty, and more, a social justice education framework addresses it and encourages students to exercise analytical thinking. Schools committed to social justice in education pay close attention to their choice of curriculum and how it can be used to expand their students’ minds.

Criticisms of teaching social justice

Many believe schools should take a fairly passive stance when it comes to more political issues, but according to educators like Zachary Wright (a national finalist for the United States Department of Education’s School Ambassador Fellowship), the education system has always been political. In a system that punishes poor schools with a lack of funding, outdated books, and decaying buildings while rewarding the wealthy, it’s impossible for education to be a politically-neutral environment. Within this system, choices about curriculum, school fees, and sources of funding are all political choices.

Another common criticism is that teaching social justice in education is a form of indoctrination. J. Martin Rochester, a professor of political science, wrote in a commentary piece for the Fordham Institute that social justice educators “seem to promote only a politically correct, left-leaning perspective.” There are many who feel that a social justice framework is too blatantly one-sided. However, in his rebuttal to Rochester, Zachary Wright explains that in his classes, he always gives students both sides of an issue. Social justice in education done right doesn’t force kids to believe in something specific, but rather to think for themselves and nurture their analytical skills.

How to promote social justice in education systemically

Since social justice in education takes two forms – within educational structure and within the classroom – there are two ways to promote it. The first is to build a school system that promotes equality. This can be done using methods such as better tracking to find out what the economic makeup of students is. When schools collect more knowledge of the inequalities within their system, they’re better equipped to deal with it. Tracking is also important when it comes to identifying struggling students at risk of dropping out. Resources for these students should be a priority, while tracking can help inform schools of how practices are helping or hindering.

Resources for parents can also help implement social justice within the educational system. Programs like after-school homework clubs and extracurriculars can help parents who work long days or speak different languages. Programs also help students who simply lack good home support. Educational systems can also strongly-consider scholarships and financial aid, so income doesn’t become a barrier when accessing certain schools.

How to promote social justice in education within the classroom

As for adopting a social justice framework within the classroom, the responsibility falls on the administration and the teachers. Schools that commit to social justice must also commit to frequent self-reflection. This can include regular workshops and conferences, but there should also be an understanding that there is no finish line. It’s a continuous process.

Teachers can promote social justice in a variety of ways, such as making sure to provide students with multiple perspectives and encouraging them to think beyond themselves. Bringing in current event stories and making history relevant to the present are both great ways for students to exercise their analytical thinking skills and expand their minds. Teachers should be cognizant of their own bias and be sure that the materials allow students to develop their own opinions. Outside the classroom, teachers should also commit to continuously researching and studying the best ways to incorporate social justice.

Benefits of social justice in education

The goals of social justice in education include more empathy, more justice, and more equality. Students taught with this framework will ideally have a stronger sense of what’s just and fair, and choose careers and lifestyles that support their communities. Since social justice in education is relatively new, there isn’t a lot of research into the benefits, but what there is is very promising.

A recent Pennsylvania State University study examined transformative social-justice education looked at the long-term impact that a social justice course had on black adolescents. The study revealed that even after many years post-graduation, former students expressed that the class changed their sense of justice and even their own identity. 11 out of the 13 said that as a result, they began exploring careers that would help their community . While the sample size was small, it’s compelling evidence in support of the benefits of social justice in education.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

OYCR is Leading California’s County-Based Positive Youth Justice Transformation

Oct 16, 2023 | News

Following decades of on-the-ground advocacy work, research, and policy change, California passed Senate Bill 823 in 2020 — committing to the transformation of our youth justice system from one that focuses on punishment to one that prioritizes health, healing, and accountability. That legislation established the Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR) to guide the transition as counties geared up for youth to return to their communities and to be committed to county facilities rather than state run facilities. After two years of preparation, on June 30, 2023, California closed its state-run youth prisons — a move that Governor Gavin Newsom referred to as “the beginning of the end of juvenile imprisonment as we know it.”

Before my time as Director of OYCR, I spent over two decades as a Superior Court Judge in Santa Clara County — specializing in court settings involving youth and families in crisis. I know firsthand that youth who are court-involved need accountability and support, not punishment. When youth stay connected to their communities, have access to education and job training, and when counties have the knowledge and resources to provide the care that youth need, our youth and our communities are better for it. Youth accountability for harm done does not get lost in the positive youth justice model. Restorative justice that includes developmentally appropriate interventions while allowing second chances does strike the balance of accountability and compassion needed for youth offenders.

Transitioning Youth Back to Their Communities

Research shows that when youth who are court-involved stay close to home and can remain connected to their families, they are more prepared to transition back into their communities and have lower recidivism rates . For decades, communities have advocated for a youth justice system that prioritizes the health and well-being of our children. And the US Supreme Court has acknowledged that youth are different than adults and have a diminished culpability and a heightened capacity for change. This is why California decided to close its state youth facilities and return the responsibility of care for youth who are court-involved to their local jurisdictions.

OYCR promotes the Stepping Home Model , developed by researchers at UCLA, to guide the process of transitioning youth from secure youth treatment facilities (SYTFs) back to their communities. While SYTFs provide maximum security and supervision, less-restrictive programs gradually increase engagement in the community while decreasing supervision. These programs include camps and ranches, group living, and community living (with their families or in college dormitories) with county supervision.

At the less-restrictive Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp , youth are offered paid experiences to develop employable skills and work habits through community environmental projects like wildfire and flood prevention, while receiving education, individualized rehabilitation, and re-entry support. Working to keep communities safe from natural disasters expands youths’ personal growth and creates a sense of accomplishment and self-worth.

Technical Assistance and Local Grants

Over the past year and a half, OYCR has supported California counties with technical assistance and best practices for youth development, as well as grants to help counties execute their plans, develop innovative less- restrictive programs, and improve data collection. OYCR reviewed and provided guidance as all 58 counties developed plans for the care of youth who would previously have been sent to state-run youth prisons.

OYCR also provides ongoing technical assistance to improve conditions for youth in county care. For example, my team is currently working with substance use disorder treatment experts to develop workshops for county probation departments and behavioral health professionals on treating youth who are court-involved who have substance use disorder.

Working With Partners

We know that partnership is at the heart of driving change. OYCR intentionally works closely with partners including probation departments, higher education providers, behavioral health providers, and community-based organizations — those who are closest to the work and best understand the needs of both systems and youth. These are the kinds of transformative partnerships that would have been impossible at scale before the statewide transformation of youth justice.

California recently made an unprecedented investment in improving access to higher education for youth who are court-involved. The Rising Scholars program allows them to receive a community college education at a college campus with specialized resources. Project Rebound connects youth who were formerly incarcerated to higher education at participating California State Universities. Project Rebound students had an astounding 0% recidivism rate, proving that the power of higher education helps them successfully reintegrate into their communities. Our University of California system similarly supports youth who are justice-impacted through the Underground Scholars program.

Through the Ending Girls Incarceration initiative, OYCR provides funding and Vera provides technical assistance to Imperial, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego Counties — selected because of their bold plans to transform their youth justice systems. Through their participation in this program, the selected counties are committing to implementing equitable policies and gender-responsive programming to immediately reduce girls’ incarceration in their counties. OYCR plans to continue this work of assisting counties to eventually eliminate all girls’ incarceration in California.

The Future of Youth Justice

Following the closure of the statewide youth carceral system, in addition to our direct support and assistance to on-the ground organizations, we are using research and science to reframe youth who commit a law violation as adolescents, humans in process — not as fully formed adult criminals who need to be punished or stigmatized for the rest of their lives.

Counties are stepping into an era where they will be raising kids in custody for potentially years at a time. Together with collective courage, agreed commitment, and partners across the care system, we are changing the status quo and creating a world where our most vulnerable youth have a chance to not only be held accountable for their error, but are also cared for by professionals and communities who will make sure that they go to college, engage in careers, support their families, and grow into healthy adults. Just as we hope for our own children.

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Juvenile Justice

California’s juvenile justice system seeks to end the incarceration of girls and young women

Four counties will receive funding and research support, following success of initiative in santa clara county.

Betty Márquez Rosales

March 3, 2023.

Four California counties will soon be offering girls and young women in youth jails more community-based alternatives to being detained.

The initiative follows a pilot in Santa Clara County, established in 2018, which found that most incarcerated youth in girls’ units were in jails for lack of somewhere safe to go. Even when probation officials recommended their release, the girls stayed in county jails because of a lack of appropriate alternatives, such as safe temporary housing in a foster home or financial support to avoid returning to an abusive relationship.

“Ultimately, there was no place to have them be other than juvenile hall,” said Katherine Lucero, referring to her time as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge prior to joining the new state agency overseeing the state’s juvenile justice system. “That was hard for me to digest because I always thought we were only putting youth in detention facilities for public safety reasons.”

The pilot resulted in a partnership between local courts, the county Probation Department, researchers and community organizations to ensure those girls would be released and any others with low-level offenses kept from being locked up.

Within the program’s first two years, the detention of girls declined 58% countywide. They also averaged no more than one girl per month for a full year. This changed only after youth adjudicated for violent offenses, who typically were sent to state youth facilities, began staying at the county juvenile hall given that state facilities are closing .

This type of partnership is what the new state agency overseeing the juvenile justice system in California, the Office of Youth and Community Restoration, and the research nonprofit they have collaborated with, the Vera Institute of Justice , are looking to replicate by hosting a competitive application process after which four new counties will be chosen to mirror the initiative in Santa Clara County. There is no set time frame for statewide expansion, but that is the goal, according to Lucero.

“Systems are really set up not to be disrupted. … If the people at the top show an interest and make it important, and you stick with it, and then eventually the systems catch up,” said Nicholas Birchard, Santa Clara County’s chief probation officer. Birchard worked closely with Lucero to bring the initiative to the county years ago and has been a part of ensuring its implementation within the Probation department.

Nationally, the rate of detention has consistently declined in recent decades. In 2019, there were 41,000 girls and young women in detention — down by over 55% from 92,100 in 2005.

In California, the low number of detained girls is part of what sparked the interest in eliminating them altogether. In 2021, the most recent year for which this data is available, there were 1,400 girls and young women detained across the state for low-level offenses. They can be as young as 12 and up to 21.

Further research by the Vera Institute found ongoing statewide trends : The majority of girls’ arrests, adjudications and detentions in 2020 were for misdemeanor or status offense charges, such as chronic disobedience, truancy or violating curfew.

“That really tracks with what we know nationally, which is that girls and gender-expansive youth are often entering detention or being confined not because of public safety concerns, but because of concerns for their individual safety, or in an effort to connect them to treatment or services and ensure compliance or connection to those services,” said Hannah Green, a Vera Institute program associate leading research for the initiative in California. “And we know that that’s really out of step with best practice and is not what the juvenile justice system is intended to be doing.”

What Santa Clara County has achieved is part of the national trend, according to Green. New York City, for example, did not incarcerate any girls in 2021, and there were no more than two youth in girls’ units for most of 2022.

Last year, Hawaii announced the girls’ units in their juvenile system were empty. Instead, they developed community-based alternatives, which included a campus with a homeless shelter and a vocational program for youth ages 15 to 24.

Vermont provides a warning of what could occur without such alternatives: With no juvenile facilities in the state, a 15-year-old girl was placed in an adult women’s prison in 2020.

Due to the high number of girls who remain incarcerated because they lack permanent, safe housing, securing that has become the Santa Clara County Probation Department’s starting point in ensuring each girl’s release — or preventing them from entering detention at all. After all, a reduction in detention numbers will be futile if the youth remain unsupported once they are released back into the community, said Green.

Then, probation officials move on to address other factors in that girl’s life, such as access to education.

Joy Hernandez is one of the people who receive notice from the Probation Department when a girl needs educational support. Hernandez, a senior program manager with the National Center for Youth Law , works as a liaison between the students and their school, while also coaching and encouraging the students to remain in school.

Her job includes making sure all students are immediately enrolled in their local school, have secured any necessary tutoring, have created a high school graduation plan, and receive help applying for financial aid if they are attending college.

What’s unique about education liaisons like Hernandez in Santa Clara County is that any young person who has come into contact with the juvenile justice system can be referred to work with her.

Typically, students go through their court procedure and are incarcerated before receiving this type of service. But in this county, even youth who have not yet attended their initial court date can be referred to a liaison like Hernandez.

“For some young people it takes a pretty long time to go through the whole court process, and then by that time the disconnection from education just becomes compounded — they’ve been waiting a year or more to access services,” Hernandez said.

Additional Santa Clara County research in 2017 also found that the majority of girls in detention had been transferred, expelled or suspended from their school prior to their arrest or citation, with 80% having a history of multiple referrals to the child welfare system indicating potential child abuse or neglect, and 80% experiencing bouts of homelessness before entering the juvenile justice system.

This is the level of information that the four additional counties chosen for the initiative can expect to help gather. They will be announced by the end of March. Each will receive up to $125,000 in funding with the potential for up to $250,000 in additional funding after the first year.

The new counties will also receive research and programming support from the Vera Institute of Justice, a national advocacy and research organization that seeks to end mass incarceration, to analyze local juvenile justice data in support of this initiative.

While each county’s process for reducing the number of girls they detain will be dependent on their existing infrastructure, the research and results from Santa Clara County show what might be possible.

“We’ll be able to leverage all of the knowledge that we’ve built there to help inform what’s the data that’s most important to collect. How do we make sure it’s being shared out? What does meaningful collaboration look like with the community and with directly impacted young people?” said Green, who will also be leading program management for the new counties. “What are some of the solutions that we’ve seen that have been most impactful? And then how might that need to be adjusted for the local context in these new local counties who will hopefully be excited to apply and participate and go on this journey with us.”

Part of the success will lie in each county’s willingness to change a deeply rooted system, said Birchard.

“In an effort to change systems, you sometimes have to look at yourself and your system and be willing and open to change,” said Birchard. “Through that process, positive outcomes are certainly going to happen.”

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Rich Emmet 2 years ago 2 years ago

According to what I am reading the uptick in carjackings nationally - and other juvenile crime - is linked to juvenile halls being closed. Same with the rampant shoplifting going on, juveniles can't be put in jail now. You can be a juvenile, commit crimes, and there is no consequence. Increasingly there is this belief that 16 and 17 year olds aren't really criminals, they are just wayward children that can be saved. … Read More

According to what I am reading the uptick in carjackings nationally – and other juvenile crime – is linked to juvenile halls being closed. Same with the rampant shoplifting going on, juveniles can’t be put in jail now. You can be a juvenile, commit crimes, and there is no consequence. Increasingly there is this belief that 16 and 17 year olds aren’t really criminals, they are just wayward children that can be saved.

Is that really true? My step daughter worked at one of these half-way homes they have now, for profit operations that have emerged to take in juvenile offenders; it was a home for girls. She said when she had that job she was getting jumped by the girls a couple times a month, two teenagers would attack her at the same time for no reason. The people that ran the home told her not to call the cops when these incidents happen.

If kids can commit crimes, and nothing happens, then they learn crime pays. These reforms you re seeing, no bail, closing prisons, juvenile jail facilities being closed – these things are leading to crime waves all over the country.

The Democrats should leave crime to the GOP members. Democrats don’t have one good idea on crime. These big shot Democratic legislators and people in Congress who favor being soft on crime – they live in the fancy neighborhoods, send kids to private schools, they are insulated from their dumb “reform efforts.

Greg Millard 2 years ago 2 years ago

Brenda Lebsack basically covered my issue in her comment, but in overview why have girls and young women been singled out for this treatment? Has a separate control study covering the balance of the population been conducted?

Brenda Lebsack 2 years ago 2 years ago

I have a question about the phrase, “Girls and Gender Expansive Youth.” Since the California Department of Education recognizes 11 expansive gender identities under the umbrella term “non-binary”, is it possible street smart boys might abuse this policy and identify as gender expansive in order to avoid incarceration? Teacher friends tell me this is already going on in schools, which to me, is no surprise.

tom sharp 2 years ago 2 years ago

Any objective figures on the recidivism rate? Any limit on the crimes that are included in this project, e.g., violent crimes, grand theft auto…?

EdSource Special Reports

California School Dashboard lacks pandemic focus, earns a D grade in report

The California School Dashboard makes it hard for the public to see how schools and districts are performing over multiple years, concludes the report’s lead author.

Communication with parents is key to addressing chronic absenteeism, panel says

Low-cost, scalable engagement through texting and post cards can make a huge difference in getting students back in the habit of attending classes.

Helping students with mental health struggles may help them return to school

In California, 1 in 4 students are chronically absent putting them academically behind. A new USC study finds links between absenteeism and mental health struggles.

Millions of kids are still skipping school. Could the answer be recess — and a little cash?

Data gathered from over 40 states shows absenteeism improved slightly but remains above pre-pandemic levels. School leaders are trying various strategies to get students back to school.

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Abortion Took Center Stage at the Debate, but Queering Reproductive Justice Must Be the Goal

If LGBTQIA+ communities are not centered in the fight for justice, our communities will never be free.

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during the first presidential debate at National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on September 10, 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris was the only presidential candidate on the debate stage on Tuesday night who presented accurate facts about abortion. Harris reminded voters that currently “in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life.” She added that these bans “make no exception even for rape and incest.” And while she vowed only to “reinstat[e] the protections of Roe v. Wade ,” rather than echoing advocates who have made it clear that the 1973 Supreme Court decision did not go far enough to protect abortion access, she pointed to recent cases in which people facing pregnancy complications were forced to seek abortions to make her argument that no one should be told what to do with their own body.

When asked about abortion, Donald Trump made claims that are not based in reality. Vice President Harris (and debate moderator Linsey Davis) quickly fact-checked his ridiculous lie that a former West Virginia governor said that “[when] a baby [is] born, [then] we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.” States do not legally allow the execution of newborn babies. To be crystal clear, there is no such thing as abortion after birth, and there is no state in this country that allows this scenario.

But the moderators’ questions, the candidates’ answers, and the public response to all of it serve as an important reminder that this election will be a pivotal moment in history for reproductive rights—and will likely bring large numbers of people out to vote in order to support and protect the right to abortion. It’s not just the top of the ticket either. Voters in 10 states will have the chance to vote on abortion ballot measures.

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For me, personally, as a queering reproductive justice advocate—and someone who has had to explain my own needs to doctors and legislators alike—Tuesday night’s debate reminded me that there is still so much work to do at the intersection of reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ liberation. For one, there was no mention of the reality that people who do not identify as women, such as transgender men and gender-nonconforming people, also have—and need access to—abortion. Instead, the conversation solely focused on “her” body and “her” decision.

Yes, abortion is a women’s rights issue. Importantly, one in four women have had an abortion. Women need access to abortion— and so do all people who can get pregnant who want to have an abortion.

I popularized the term “queering reproductive justice”—and even wrote a book about it —to shine a light on how different fundamental issues intersect with LGBTQIA+ rights and justice, such as the role safe and healthy environments play in ensuring that LGBTQIA+ individuals can live without barriers or discrimination and absent state violence. I also emphasize the importance of religious pluralism and ensuring that religious exemptions do not harm anyone trying to access healthcare, housing, or institutions like marriage.

In my book, I present queering reproductive justice as an approachable framework aimed at building community across social movements—including those promoting voting rights and those fighting for a living wage for workers and the ability to accumulate wealth. This framework is centered around the lived experiences and reproductive needs of LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities so that their rights and needs are prioritized in all progressive spaces, when that has not always been the case. This theory’s ultimate goal is to ensure that LGBTQIA+ liberation occurs as all other rights and freedoms are achieved. If LGBTQIA+ communities are not seen as stakeholders in all fights for justice, our communities will never be free.

The queering reproductive justice framework merges reproductive justice and LGBTQIA+ liberation, and ultimately “demands that all people have (1) the right to not partner with others and to not have a child ; (2) the right to create a family of one’s choosing and to partner with one or more consenting persons, regardless of one’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or sexual expression; as well as the right to have a child and build a family without regard to traditional forms of conception, pregnancy, birthing, or two-parent childrearing, and (3) the right to raise oneself , and to raise one’s family , in safe and healthy environments absent stigma, discrimination, and systemic institutional oppression.”

Repro Nation

Put simply, the queering reproductive justice framework aims to guarantee that everyone has the ability to love and to create the families of one’s choosing, and has the resources and support to do so. In addition to having children, or not having children, this framework supports all forms of consensual partnership including marriage, non-marital partnerships, romantic partnerships, non-romantic companionship, and even families of one. All family dynamics deserve to be equitably resourced by the government, and through law and policy, without the need for traditional marriage.

Reproductive justice will only be achieved if the needs of LGBTQIA+ folks are centered and considered to be a vital piece of the advocacy puzzle, because our rights are tied up with one another. When a trans man is able to receive unimpeded access to birth control, so will a cisgender woman. When a queer couple is able to adopt a child, then adoption for all families will be easier to access. And when a queer person is able to work in an office without sexual or gender discrimination, all people in that workplace benefit. Similarly, LGBTQIA+ liberation will only occur if reproductive justice—and access to basic healthcare needs like abortion, contraception, and in vitro fertilization—is included in the fight for LGBTQIA+ freedom.

The presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump cemented into history the vital role that reproductive rights play in people’s lives. But the fight doesn’t end there. Until there is unfettered access to abortion for anyone who wants one, sexual and reproductive rights will continue to be in jeopardy for everyone.

In case you were waiting for one, this is your invitation to join this fight with other queering reproductive justice advocates. It is my deepest hope that you do. After all, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

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Candace Bond-Theriault

Candace Bond-Theriault (she/her/hers) is a Black queer feminist lawyer, professor, author, and social justice advocate working at the intersections of law, policy, reproductive health, rights and justice, racial justice, economic justice, mental wellness, and LGBTQ+ liberation. Bond-Theriault is the author of  Queering Reproductive Justice: An Invitation  (Stanford University Press).

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Justice Department Issues New Guidance on Federal Law Regarding Voter Registration

The Justice Department announced today that it has published a new guidance  addressing limits on when and how jurisdictions may remove voters from their voter lists. The guidance document reflects the department’s commitment to ensuring that every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote free of discrimination or voter intimidation.

“Ensuring that every eligible voter is able to vote and have that vote counted is a critical aspect of sustaining a robust democracy, and it is a top priority for the Justice Department,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “As we approach Election Day, it is important that states adhere to all aspects of federal law that safeguard the rights of eligible voters to remain on the active voter lists and to vote free from discrimination and intimidation.”

In its guidance, the department reminds states that efforts to ensure accurate and current voting rolls must be accomplished in compliance with federal law and in a nondiscriminatory manner. Specifically, the department explains important limits imposed by federal law on the rules and procedures states may adopt regarding their voter registration lists. For example, list maintenance efforts must be uniform and nondiscriminatory, and a program to systematically remove ineligible voters must not be done within 90 days of a federal election. There also are specific rules about how to remove registered voters because they have moved. Importantly, these federal protections apply whether the process is initiated by the state or is responsive to third-party submissions.

The department also released a fact sheet as a resource for jurisdictions and provides information on certain civil provisions of federal law that protect the right to vote.

• Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act: Federal law broadly prohibits intimidation, threats and coercion — or attempts to do so — throughout every stage of the voting process, including registering to vote, casting a ballot and counting votes.
• Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: Federal law also prohibits discrimination in voting because of race, color or membership in a minority language group, defined to include American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Native and Spanish heritage citizens.
• Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act: For voters with disabilities and those unable to read or write, federal law guarantees voting assistance in all aspects of the voting process by a person of the voter’s choice subject to only two exceptions barring assistance by the voter’s employer or union. And, under the Americans with Disabilities Act , state and local governments must ensure people with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to vote.
• Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act: The fact sheet explains that some jurisdictions , as determined by the Census Bureau, are required to provide all election information that is available in English in the covered minority language.

In April, the department announced an updated website, www.justice.gov/voting , a one-stop resource for information on voting and elections. This website includes guides on a range of topics to inform voters and state and local election officials. It includes, among other topics, information about Voting Protections for Language Minority Citizens under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act , state-by-state rules regarding voting after a criminal conviction , the voting rights of members of the armed services and U.S. citizens living overseas , and information related to post-election audits , including the requirements under federal law that state and local election officials “retain and preserve” voting-related records.

More information about voting and elections is available on the Justice Department’s website at  www.justice.gov/voting . Learn more about the Voting Rights Act and other federal voting laws at  www.justice.gov/crt/voting-section . Complaints about possible violations of federal voting rights laws can be submitted through the Civil Rights Division’s website at  civilrights.justice.gov  or by telephone at 1-800-253-3931.

The  www.justice.gov/voting  website also provides information on the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which leads the department’s efforts to address violence against election workers and to ensure that all election workers — whether elected, appointed or volunteer — are able to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation. 

You can report suspected criminal activity regarding voting to the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or by filing an online complaint at  tips.fbi.gov . You can also contact local law enforcement. If at any time you are in imminent danger, call 911. 

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Attorney General Warns Against Politicizing the Justice Department

Merrick Garland told the department’s staff that there “is not one rule for friends and another for foes,” amid threats from former President Donald Trump to go after enemies if he is elected.

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By Eileen Sullivan

Reporting from Washington

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland warned on Thursday against allowing the Justice Department to be politicized, saying “there is not one rule for friends and another for foes.”

His remarks, delivered at the agency’s headquarters, came amid regular suggestions from former President Donald J. Trump that he would seek to use law enforcement to punish perceived enemies if elected and turn the tables on Democrats after years of what he portrays as baseless and politically motivated investigations of him.

Mr. Garland said the department had to remain focused on its principles even as its employees face threats of violence and are increasingly operating in a storm of misinformation.

“We will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” Mr. Garland said. “We will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.”

Speaking to a gathering of U.S. attorneys from around the country, Mr. Garland said he chose to break with the tradition of delivering remarks to them in a small, windowless room. Instead, he addressed them in the building’s Great Hall, an open space where hundreds of people can gather.

“In short, we must treat like cases alike,” he said. “There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans.”

Mr. Trump has regularly accused the Biden administration, without any evidence , of orchestrating criminal cases against him for political gain.

And in the past month, he has stepped up his threats to prosecute people who have crossed him should he be elected in November.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Mr. Trump wrote on his website Truth Social on Saturday , referring to anyone he believes improperly seeks to meddle against him in the electoral system.

Throughout President Biden’s term, Republican lawmakers have sought to portray the Justice Department as having been weaponized against Mr. Trump and the Republican Party even as Mr. Garland has appointed special counsels to investigate both the president and his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty last week to tax evasion charges.

Mr. Garland’s remarks echoed those he made on his first day as attorney general in 2021, when he promised to restore independence to the Justice Department. During both speeches, he spoke of the agency’s “norms,” centered around preventing political influence.

On Thursday, he said, “I continue to believe deeply that our norms matter now more than ever to our department and to our democracy.”

Eileen Sullivan covers breaking news, the Justice Department, the trials against Donald J. Trump and the Biden administration. More about Eileen Sullivan

Attorney General Merrick Garland denounces 'dangerous' and 'outrageous' attacks on DOJ prosecutors and personnel

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday denounced "dangerous" and "outrageous" attacks on Justice Department prosecutors and personnel and sought to reassure them that he has their backs.

The speech to his employees, at times emotional and forceful, appeared to allude to the kinds of accusations and threats made by former President Donald Trump, his allies and supporters, though Garland didn’t explicitly name Trump in his remarks. 

Garland thanked DOJ workers for their dedication in the face of “an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents and other personnel” over the last three-and-a-half years.

"These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence," Garland said. "It is dangerous and outrageous that you have to endure them."

"It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this department simply for doing their jobs." Garland added. "And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law."

Garland received heavy applause when he said: “The way you do that work makes clear that the public servants of the Department of Justice do not bend to politics. And that they will not break under pressure.”

A main thrust of his remarks was that every American is equal under the law: “There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.”

“To the contrary, we have only one rule: We follow the facts and apply the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties,” he said. 

The attorney general said he and other department officials will "fiercely protect" the DOJ's independence from "political interference in our criminal investigations," will not allow the department to be used "as a political weapon" and will not allow law enforcement to be "treated as an apparatus of politics."

Garland listed steps that the department has already taken to protect the DOJ's criminal and civil decisions, such as reinstating policies regulating communication between DOJ employees and Congress and the White House. Other actions have included improving and clarifying guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations and publishing new policies to guide "prosecutorial discretion with respect to charging, pleas and sentencing."

He said of the attacks on prosecutors: "You deserve better. You deserve gratitude for the noble and difficult work you do. You deserve recognition for the integrity and skill with which you do that work."

"You also have my promise, that nothing will ever stop me from defending this Department, and the extraordinary people who work here," Garland said.

Since leaving office in 2021, Trump has continually lashed out at the Department of Justice over its investigations into him as well as the indictments. Trump and his lawyers have claimed the DOJ has been weaponized to target him largely in an effort to prevent him from being elected to another term as president.

Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment on Garland's remarks.

The former president has called DOJ employees derogatory names, for example, calling special counsel Jack Smith, who has charged Trump in separate cases, "deranged." He has also threatened prosecutors, saying in a Truth Social post last year when alluding to the federal 2020 election interference charges against him, "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" As a result, judges have instituted gag orders to block Trump from speaking about certain officials in various cases.

Smith has even been targeted in a swatting incident , as have judges involved in Trump's cases.

During the six-week New York hush money trial this year, Trump said in remarks outside the courtroom on a near daily basis that Biden's Justice Department was being weaponized against him. The case, however, wasn't federal; it was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump was eventually convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records .

One of Trump's proposals if he wins the election is to reimpose an order known as "Schedule F" that would make it easier for the president to fire government workers, with a policy focus on overhauling federal agencies and removing what his plan refers to "corrupt actors" in the national security and intelligence communities.

In recent weeks, Trump has doubled down on threats to use t he DOJ to t o prosecute people he believes have gone after him while he's been out of office.

After a recent rally, Trump wrote on social media: "“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences. Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”

Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.

Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.

Curriculum and Instruction

Critical Practices: • Critical Engagement with Materials • Supporting All Learners Through Differentiation • Supporting Student Action • Cooperative and Collaborative Learning • Social Justice-Based Assessment, Evaluation and Grading

Educator and author Lee Anne Bell, Ed.D., provides an excellent analysis of social justice in the Learning for Justice article “ What Is Social Justice Education? ” Bell defines the critical role of social justice education as: “[providing] tools to examine the structural features of oppression and our own socialization within unjust systems. It helps us develop awareness of injustice in our personal lives, communities, institutions and the broader society. Such an education enables us to develop empathy and commitment, as well as skills and tools for acting with others to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviors in ourselves and the institutions and communities of which we are a part. Understanding the dynamics of oppression is important for developing effective strategies to counteract it.”

That understanding of social justice can inform the selection or development of curriculum (what is taught) and the practice of instruction (how the content is taught). The topics and strategies in this section provide educators with tools to build students’ understanding of justice and help them develop skills to take action and participate in a diverse democracy.

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