November 1996 Equity Center Awarded Three-Year Contract
The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's desegregation assistance center has been awarded a new three-year contract to provide technical assistance on issues of national origin, race, and gender equity to school personnel, students, parents, and communities.
With the new contract, which began August 1, the Center for National Origin, Race, and Sex Equity continues its work of equipping schools and communities with strategies that provide equitable educational opportunities for all students. The center will focus efforts on building on the strength, creativity, and resiliency inherent in children, families, schools, and communities.
Research indicates that young people have a significantly better chance to succeed academically and lead productive lives when they have high self-esteem, control over their environments, a sense of inclusion, orientation toward success, hope for their futures, desire for achievement, aspiration for education, communication skills, respect for themselves and others, senses of humor, and persistence.
"Schools and communities must provide a bias-free, positive, and nondiscriminatory learning environment for students to achieve these attributes," notes Joyce Harris, Director of the desegregationa assistance center. "The center is committed to helping schools and communities provide equal access to participation in the educational system and society." The center is one of 10 desegregation assistance centers in the country. It provides services that promote equity and excellence in workplaces and classrooms in Alaska, American Somoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, the Trust Territory of the Pacific, Oregon, Hawaii, Washington, and Idaho. The center:
- Assists with the preparation and implementation of desegregation plans
- Assists in identifying and promoting awareness of biased and discriminatory actions
- Serves as a resource and provides support to assist staff in eliminating the use of biased textbooks, instructional strategies, testing materials, and other curricular materials
- Provides skills and information necessary to develop nondiscriminatory instructional programs
- Assists in developing procedures for nondiscriminatory student placement within the school
- Helps identify and resolve educational and human relations problems arising from desegregation requirements
"Healthy, competent, and effective learning institutions offer the protection and conditions that create and strengthen communities they serve," Harris notes. "Equitable and enriched schools help to foster resiliency in each student, and therefore encourage their productivity." Funding for the first year of the three-year grant was set at $780,000.
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