Antiracism Colloquium: Mini-grant progress report

* In addition to mid-point progress reports from our anti-racism mini-grant recipients, we will have space for invited student presentations. If you are interested in presenting email Dr. Maisie Gholson at mgholson@umich.edu.

Safety for whom?
Critical Spatial and Qualitative Exploration of Campus Policing, Racial Geographies, Surveillance, and Institutional Rhetoric

This mixed-methods study critically examines the implications of campus and city policing at the University of Michigan on marginalized students and the ways in which institutional rhetoric regarding policing lessens or furthers this marginalization. Through spatial analysis, discourse analysis, and semi-structured interviews, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the relationships between campus/city police department's jurisdiction and on-/off-campus arrests?; 2) Are there “hot spot” areas of arrests by race/ethnicity, specifically for Black and Brown students?; 3) How does institutional rhetoric regarding campus policing support or disrupt larger patterns of racism, power, and privilege?; 4) How do students’ perceptions of police presence inform our understanding of racial safety? Given the ways in which campus policing has been and continues to be racialized, this study contributes to the dearth of empirical research on this topic by using spatial and qualitative analyses, particularly through an anti-racist lens.

Teacher Evaluation Systems: Measures of Instructional Effectiveness or Mechanisms of Structural Bias?

As the prevalence of teacher accountability measures has risen over the past decade since the introduction of Race to the Top, so too has the evidence base about their potential bias against teachers of color. We therefore propose a study titled “Teacher Evaluation Systems: Measures of Instructional Effectiveness or Mechanisms of Structural Bias?” that seeks to contribute to this growing literature by investigating the potential bias of one state’s evaluation system against teachers with minoritized racial and ethnic as well as gender identities. Employing data from the roughly 40,000 teachers across one state starting from the 2011-12 school year, we propose to use item response theory (IRT) to assess whether teachers of different identities but comparable teaching expertise receive systematically biased observation ratings on specific items across the continuum of instructional effectiveness. Given the use of these measures in high-stakes decisions around educators’ careers, the repercussions of structural bias in teacher evaluations not only are of direct harm to teachers (and students) of marginalized identities but also reinforce the dominant cultural hegemony in our educational system.

About the Antiracism Colloquium
The dije Office and the Race and Justice Institute invite you to participate in the Inaugural Antiracism Colloquium. The goal of the antiracism colloquium is to support the building of critical literacies of race and settler colonialism to support research and teaching centered on educational justice.

This year, Dr. Leigh Patel, Associate Dean of Equity and Justice and Professor of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy in the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, will do a 1-week virtual residency that will include a keynote, sessions with students, sessions with faculty, and will culminate with presentations from student recipients of our Anti-Racism Min-grants.