Center Director: Jorge Hernandez-Perez (jfh2157@columbia.edu)

The Education Center is hoping to make accessible an awareness of the policies enabling educational disparities and provide effective advocacy strategies through a series of workshops. Often, courses, lectures series, or even workshops examining the roots of educational disparities are institutionalized within inaccessible graduate programs. In response, we will create an "Education Equity Bootcamp" specifically designed for parents and K-12 educators aspiring to become advocates in the education space. Our members will compile briefs addressing key drivers of the opportunity gap, such as school funding formulas, teacher experience, external economic disadvantages, and school districting, to help create the core curriculum for these workshops. We will reach out to professors and researchers from departments across Columbia, including Teachers’ College, to serve as guest experts for certain workshop days and be integrated into the designed curriculum. By the end of spring, we will, hopefully, have our first cohort of parents and K-12 educators – who will be equipped with the relevant skills to advocate and a general understanding of the opportunity gap.