Research

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.

For African-American students, data, alongside societal attitudes and stereotypes, often present a negative picture: a wide academic achievement gap separating them from their white peers. Higher rates of discipline and absenteeism. Discrimination by other students, teachers and the larger community. And just last summer, a study indicated that black girls, from an early age, are perceived as more aggressive and sexual – less innocent – than white girls.

Just two years into Seattle’s trial effort to close the kindergarten readiness gap, there are promising signs that children of color and those from low-income households are making gains.

In the coming year, Kristin Percy Calaff will be hiring up to 20 teachers who can speak Spanish or Vietnamese to staff the growing number of dual language classrooms in Highline Public Schools.

That is, if she can find them.

As an elementary school student, Caroline Black remembers being invited to a classmate’s house, where the group decided to play school. Black’s all-female peers told her to pretend to be a child with special needs who needed a walker to cross the room, then suddenly began kicking and pushing her while yelling derogatory comments about her mental and physical abilities.

At Prime Time Extended Learning Center in Tacoma, Gemma Stephani recalls welcoming a student who had been expelled from a private elementary school due to behavioral issues.

The student began attending Prime Time after enrolling in a public elementary school, and as the staff grew to know him better, Stephani witnessed a transformation as the child learned to verbalize his feelings more effectively.

All young children possess gifts and talents, Nancy Hertzog says, and a new book by the University of Washington College of Education professor offers insights into how parents, teachers and administrators can help early learners develop their talents.

Sustaining ongoing improvement in instruction is a persistent challenge for schools and districts, but Washington state’s adoption of a new teacher and principal evaluation system earlier this decade is contributing to more collaborative improvement efforts, a new study by University of Washington College of Education researchers finds.

Wade Washington was just 15 years old when he got a phone call that changed his life: He was going to receive a kidney transplant. At birth, Washington was diagnosed with bilateral cystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder that caused one kidney not to function properly and prevented the other one from growing.

While schools have too often reproduced inequalities in society, Django Paris believes in their potential to create a more equal and pluralist society.

This January, Paris will join the University of Washington College of Education as the inaugural holder of the James A. and Cherry A. Banks Professorship in Multicultural Education and incoming director of the Banks Center for Educational Justice, which will formally launch in fall 2018.