Our Story

Color of Education is a partnership between the Public School Forum of North Carolina, the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, and the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Sandra Wilcox Conway of Conway and Associates also provided key partnership design for Color of Education. The partnership seeks to build bridges across the fields of research, policy, and practice and bring together the knowledge and perspectives of communities, educators, policymakers, experts and other key stakeholders focused on achieving racial equity and dismantling systemic racism in education across the state of North Carolina.

The activities of the Color of Education partnership include: producing, reviewing, and translating academic research; conducting evidence-based policy analysis; and connecting, engaging, and learning from communities and stakeholders to inform best practices to address racial inequity within and outside of schools. Our annual summit brings together people from across the state and across sectors to share, connect, and collaborate with one another.

In October 2016, the Public School Forum of North Carolina published the final report from their Committee on Racial Equity, a central focus of the Forum’s Study Group XVI: Expanding Education Opportunity in North Carolina research. The Study Group’s Committee on Racial Equity report highlighted seven domains of racial inequity in education: school resegregation, the opportunity gap, teacher diversity, culturally responsive pedagogy, discipline disparities, overrepresentation of students of color in special education, and lack of access to advanced coursework for students of color. With the issue domains identified, the Forum began creating a pathway to move this work and the report’s findings forward in North Carolina.

Valuing the role of unbiased, evidence-based information in their theory of change model, in August 2017, the Public School Forum of North Carolina partnered with Policy Bridge at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy to seek ways to continue highlighting the seven domains by forming connections with Duke scholars working on issues of race, education and equity. With the hope that Duke’s scholarly insight would inform and strengthen the potential for improving policy and practice in the state, Policy Bridge began convening regular meetings between the Public School Forum and researchers from the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity, and other entities at Duke.

These research discussions continued into early 2018 by which there seemed to be a natural synergy between Public School Forum’s racial equity goals and the Cook Center’s mission to expand quality education by offering policy solutions that address inequality and its effects. In May 2018, the joint group agreed to pursue a long-term, shared initiative to combine their missions to create change on the seven domains in North Carolina, and Color of Education partnership was born. In 2020, the Center for Child and Family Policy at Sanford replaced Policy Bridge as a Color of Education partner organization.

About the Public School Forum of North Carolina

Since 1986, the Public School Forum of North Carolina has been an indispensable and nonpartisan champion of better schools and the most trusted source in the state for research and analysis on vital education issues. We bring together leaders from business, education and government to study education issues, develop ideas, seek consensus, and ultimately inform and shape education policy. We do that through research, policy work, innovative programs, advocacy, and continuing education for educators and policymakers. Follow the Forum on Twitter @theNCForum and visit our website at http://www.ncforum.org/.

About the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity

The Duke Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity is a scholarly collaborative engaged in the study of the causes and consequences of inequality and in the assessment and redesign of remedies for inequality and its adverse effects. Concerned with the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of uneven and inequitable access to resources, opportunity and capabilities, Cook Center researchers take a cross-national comparative approach to the study of human difference and disparity. Ranging from the global to the local, Cook Center scholars not only address the overarching social problem of general inequality, but they also explore social problems associated with gender, race, ethnicity and religious affiliation. Follow the Cook Center on Twitter @DUSocialEquity and visit our website at https://socialequity.duke.edu/

About the Center for Child and Family Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy

The Center for Child and Family Policy pursues science-based solutions to important problems affecting today’s children and families. The Center emphasizes the bridge from research to policy and practice through an integrated system of research, teaching, service and policy engagement.

Center research has grown to include an array of projects that touch on critical child and family policy issues. Center faculty fellows include a trio of scholars who focus on the effect of economic distress on child development. Other fellows study early childhood, the development of risky behaviors, childhood mental illness and a wide range of education policy issues including school truancy, charter schools, teacher training and education reform efforts. Follow the Center for Child and Family Policy on Twitter @DukeChildPol and visit our website at https://childandfamilypolicy.duke.edu/.