Features

What will it take to ensure every child in Washington gets a strong start in life? On March 28, nine early learning researchers and practitioners will discuss how the state can improve early childhood education and care for all during EDU Talks: Raising Washington, presented by the University of Washington College of Education.

Researchers at the University of Washington's Haring Center for Research and Training in Inclusive Education spent 2017 like most years: asking critical questions about inclusive education, researching and testing new strategies, and broadly sharing their research findings to add new knowledge and advance the field of inclusive education and early intervention.

While visiting two high schools on opposite sides of Chicago, Rhoan Garnett (PhD ‘18) experienced first-hand the detrimental effects of the college information gap.

Garnett, then assistant dean of admissions for Bowdoin College, started his day visiting a well-resourced school in north Chicago. He remembers students at the school being respectful and interested in speaking with him.

Growing up, Adaurennaya Onyewuenyi was a straight A student. She knew early on that college was in her future.

Yet navigating school didn’t come nearly as easy for her brothers and cousins, even though they were close in age and attended the same schools.

“From elementary school all the way through high school, they were getting punitive punishments that were more racialized,” Onyewuenyi said. “I wondered, ‘Why are the educational pathways and experiences so different between myself and my brothers and cousins?’”