Pelton on Systemic Inequalities in Schools: NBC Boston
President Lee Pelton joined a round table conversation for NBC Boston’s “An Education in Equity” from classroom to career program, joined by fellow Bostonian leaders Linda Dorcena Forry, Danielson Tavares, and Michael Holley, hosted by alum Latoyia Edwards ’98.
The participants discussed systemic racial inequities in Boston schools, and how we move forward. Nativity Prep, a Jesuit middle school in Jamaica Plain, is highlighted as a school getting it right in terms of fostering a culture of success in academics and life for young men of color.
Language matters. I do not use the phrase achievement gap, because I don’t think the achievement gap really exists. What it should be termed is the opportunity gap, because the problem is not the abilities of students, but it’s the disparate opportunities they are afforded. It’s rooted in a history of oppression from colonization and slavery to separate but equal and redlining; it is sustained by systemic and structural racism in this country, and our ever-growing economic inequality.
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