Equity and Diversity

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is one of ten regional laboratories and has a mission to help pre-K–16 educators use the best available evidence to make decisions leading to improved student achievement and reduced performance gaps. REL-NEI places a special emphasis on helping states, districts, and schools build capacity to use their data effectively; forming and conducting high-quality research and evaluation through new “research alliances”; and helping regional education stakeholders incorporate data-based inquiry practices into their decision-making.

The Somali Interactive Radio Instruction Program (SIRIP) provides high-quality interactive audio programs to Somali children attending formal, non-governmental, Quranic and community schools. With the assistance of the audio programs, teachers lead the classes and are thus trained in interactive teaching methods which include stories, activities, educational songs and other forms of active learning pedagogy. Supplemental materials accompany the programs, providing schools with the resources to support sound, primary-level instruction.

As part of an effort to increase the participation of South Sudanese in the peace process and now the civic life of their new nation, the Sudan Radio Service provides access to balanced and useful information through radio-based education, news, and entertainment programs presented by local presenters in nine languages. Independent research found that Sudan Radio Service has approximately one million listeners.

Sudan Radio Service also builds the capacity of Sudanese journalists through its Certificate in Broadcast Journalism program and through on-the-job training.

The Technology Tools for Teaching and Training (dot-EDU T4) project seeks to assist the education departments in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Delhi, for quality teaching and learning for the primary education sector. To this end, dot-EDU T4 has created interactive, multimedia tools in audio, video, and software formats that established new standards for education quality while delivering education services on a large scale and reaching out to girls and other vulnerable populations.

EQuALLS2 increases access to quality basic education and livelihood skills in areas most affected by conflict and poverty in the Philippines (primarily the Muslim areas in the Mindanao island group in the south). EQuALLS2 is a large-scale project that seeks to benefit 345,000 children and youth in 37 municipalities and four cities by training 37,238 educators and school officials, building the capacity of 850 local education stakeholder groups, and expanding local education resources through public-private partnerships.

USAID’s Decentralized Basic Education (DBE) Program Objective 2 seeks to improve the quality of teaching and learning in Indonesia’s public and private sector primary schools. DBE 2 builds upon successful aspects of recent initiatives in Indonesia to improve educational quality through new attention to strengthening teacher training and improving school learning environments. The DBE 2 Partnership works with public and private sector partners to develop a more comprehensive system of teacher professional development.

The ITEST Learning Resource Center at EDC held a convening designed to develop a theoretical framework to guide future research on youth motivation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) with a particular emphasis on populations most underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Two guiding questions were the focus of the event: 1) What is currently known about motivation in STEM for underrepresented youth? 2) What can be done to cultivate new research around STEM motivation for underrepresented youth?

More than a Dream Teen Pregnancy Prevention for Latino Youth is a collaboration between Education Development Center, the University of Michigan School of Nursing, and the League of United Latin American Citizens’ National Educational Service Centers (LNESC), to find developmentally appropriate and culturally and linguistically relevant youth and parent interventions that address sexual health and pregnancy prevention among Latino youth.

The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU), located at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, is identifying practices and policies that make some high schools more successful than others at improving outcomes for low-income and minority students. Once researchers identify these effective practices, they will develop ways to transfer them to other schools in the same systems. The center is working with district leaders and teachers in the Dallas (Texas) Independent School District and Broward County (Florida) Public Schools.

The Dental Therapist Project (DTP) will improve the oral health of underserved children and families by transforming the dental workforce and establishing dental therapist providers as standard members of the dental health team in the United States. Dental therapists receive two years of intensive training to provide preventive oral health care and commonly needed services such as fillings and uncomplicated extractions. They work under the general supervision of an offsite dentist who pre-approves the procedures they perform and reviews their work via phone, fax, and the Internet.