In this week’s episode, we are joined by Dr. Sonya Douglas Horsford of Teachers College at Columbia University to discuss rising inequities for Black and Latinx communities and the role of reform and policy in public education. We discuss education reform since the Reagan Administration and the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983) and what it has meant for the direction of public education since. Discussions of neoliberalism lead us into topics like school choice and learning pods in the Covid era.

Dr. Sonya Douglass Horsford currently serves as Associate Professor of Education Leadership in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on the politics of race in education leadership, policy, and reform. She is the Founding Director of the Black Education Research Collective (BERC) and Co-Director of the Urban Education Leaders Program (UELP) at Teachers College – an Ed.D. program for aspiring urban district leaders.

Prior to joining Teachers College, she served on the educational leadership faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her latest book, The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling (with Janelle T. Scott and Gary L. Anderson offer a critical analysis of education policy amid widening social inequality, ideological polarization, and the dismantling of public institutions in the U.S.A.

Resources

A Nation at Risk (1983)

President Reagan’s Radio Address to the Nation on Education on April 30, 1983. 

Secretary Betsy DeVos Prepared Remarks National Alliance of Charter School

“The Huge Problem with Education Pandemic Pods Suddenly Popping Up,”

The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling RTE