New Article: Returning to ‘Normal’ in Education is Not Good Enough

Posted by The Imprint on August 31, 2021

Bob Moses, a renowned civil rights leader of the 1960s and founder of The Algebra Project, passed away on July 25. Moses was among the key activists working on voter education and registration in the south, and later in life devoted his efforts to helping low-income students and students of color achieve the mathematical skills necessary for postsecondary success. The Imprint is honored to publish this previously unpublished column, shared with us by his colleagues at The Algebra Project.

As a nation, we stand with bated breath — waiting for public schools to reopen and for “a return to normal” while ignoring that for many, normal is not only not good enough, it was also never really good.

Historical inequities and disparities in our public schools, as across all our public systems, operate along a constitutional fault line — an embedded caste system — that we need to find our way across. It is a fault line that is not only about race: class, identity and disabilities also block the path to equal educational opportunity for millions of students. Just like the right to vote in the 20th century, the lack of equal access to a quality education in the 21st century threatens to limit the future life choices for too many young people.

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