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Robert D. Montoya, UCLA assistant professor of information studies and director of the California Rare Book School, will launch the CalRBS Speaker Series with his virtual talk on “Global Justice and an Ethical Imperative: CalRBS at a Social Crossroad,” on Wednesday, Aug. 11, at 5:30 p.m., PST.

Professor Montoya, who this year assumed leadership of CalRBS, will examine the role of a continuing education program such as CalRBS and the ways it could situate itself as a proponent of positive social change, authentic democratic activity, and global justice, in the face of diminished funding to libraries and rare book repositories, reduction of services, and the resulting declines in voter participation, literacy levels, and an understanding of science and knowledge output. 

“The result of this is an uninformed and passive citizenry, a decline in public and individual health, and the degradation of our ecological surroundings,” he notes. “As the social and political circumstances of our daily lives continue to shift radically from day-to-day—manifesting in conflict, ideological polarization, climate catastrophe, and widening income inequality, to name a few—our public memory institutions find themselves in impossible roles: they not only must preserve the documentary outputs of our society and make them available for use, but they must also augment the failing social infrastructures that should otherwise provide adequate food, education, shelter, and epistemic empowerment.”

Professor Montoya is also the director of the Library, Ethics, and Justice Lab. His research focuses on information representation and positionality, critical, ethical, and justice-oriented LIS work, public libraries, and international library development. He received his PhD from the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, his MLIS with a specialization in rare books, print and visual culture from UCLA, and his MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

More information on the series can be found on the CalRBS website.

Other upcoming lectures in the speaker series include:

“Global Book History and the Library,” 
by Devin Fitzgerald, Curator of Rare Books and History of Printing, UCLA Library Special Collections. 
Wednesday, Aug. 4, 5:30 p.m., PST

“Prison libraries, indigenous typography, and experimental publishing: reflections on #RadPubCDMX,” 
by T-Kay Sangwand, Librarian for Digital Collection Development, UCLA. 
Wednesday, Aug. 18, 5:30 p.m., PST

New CalRBS director shares perspectives on the continuing education program and its goals of positive social change, authentic democratic activity, and global justice.

California Rare Book School Speaker Series Launched with Talk by Robert D. Montoya

The Spring 2021 issue of the Social Sciences and Comparative Education Newsletter showcases perspectives from students, faculty and alumni of the division.

The issue includes contributions by Andrea Gambino, 3rd year candidate and editor-in-chief; Brooke Bách-Tãng Phan, 4th year doctoral student; Alejandra Magaña Gamero, 2nd year doctoral student; and Marisol Sánchez Castillo, 2nd year doctoral student. Professors Edith Mukudi Omwami, Daniel Solórzano, and Carlos Alberto Torres offer their reflections on COVID-19 and its impact on higher education, and a message from Amy Gershon, Ph.D., director of the Office of Student Services and Harmeet Singh, graduate advisor and credential counselor, share resources for students navigating graduate school in the pandemic. 

In addition, Jason Nunzio Dorio, Ph.D., lecturer, shares his message for the SSCE Class of ’21, and Hughlin Rodcliff Boyd, III, M.S. PPM, J.D., ABD, offers a student reflection. SSCE alumni Melissa Rae Goodnight, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Robin Shields, Ph.D., also contributed their perspectives to the newsletter.

To read the Spring 2021 issue of the SSCE Newsletter, click here.

Social Sciences and Comparative Education: Newsletter Examines Pandemic, Forges Solidarity

UCLA Associate Professor of Education Jennie Grammer is the 2021 recipient of the Harold A. and Lois Haytin Faculty Award, given to recognize innovative research at UCLA Lab School that will positively impact classroom practices there and at other schools as well. 

Grammer, who also won the Haytin Award in 2017, has recently been conducting a study on the effects of context on the neural correlates of attention in classrooms, using portable electroencephalography (EEG) to take measurements of neural oscillations in order to evaluate the effects of learning context on student attention. 

A similar study conducted by Grammer in college classrooms, was recently featured in the journal, Nature’s Science of Learning.

The results of Professor Grammer’s studies suggest that attention, as indexed by lower alpha power as well as higher beta and gamma power, is stronger during student-initiated activities than teacher-initiated activities. EEG data revealed different patterns in student attention as compared to standardized coding of attentional behaviors. Grammer and her research team concluded that EEG signals are a powerful tool for understanding differences in student cognitive states as a function of classroom instruction that are unobservable from behavior alone.

The Latest had a conversation with Grammer on working around the limits that the COVID-19 pandemic imposes upon hands-on research; attention and motivation among students from kindergarten to college; and helping teachers to keep the attention of a wide range of learners.

In our initial study at UCLA Lab School, we were looking at the relations to executive functions and motivation using EEG methods. But what was different is that historically, we have pulled kids out of class and set up a lab in the school. But the more recent work we were doing pre-COVID was involving collecting EEG data directly in classrooms. We would set up mock lessons and activities and kids [had] their brains recorded while learning in real time.

Unfortunately, the study had to be delayed because of COVID-19 regulations, but we were interested in were to know how kids’ attention and executive functions operated with and around other people. It’s one thing when you're just with me [as] an experimenter and we're doing something very controlled in a lab. It’s another thing you're trying to use those same skills, but you've got a bunch of other kids around you and something exciting is happening. So, the whole idea was that we were looking at these processes in groups, which is unique, but then COVID prevented us.

How will you be able to continue the study with the limitations imposed by the pandemic?

The study we've been working on is actually funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Because it's a federally funded grant, we had to find a way to continue the project, even though we didn't want to impact schools. One of the one of the challenges of COVID is that I might have this brilliant design of a study, but schools are just getting back into the swing of things. They’ve got a lot of things to overcome, and classroom-based research is definitely secondary at the moment.

What we’ve done is we’ve pivoted the project and now we’re focusing on children's learning and what is the current real world for many kids - learning online. We’ve taken the same paradigm and the same approach and we're looking at how kids learn when they're doing interactive instruction online, [watching] video lectures, or learning from someone right next to them, like a tutor or a parent. This simulates in a lot of ways the same types of experiences that kids have had for the past year during remote schooling. 

We’re allowed to work in our lab now. Because of COVID, it’s obviously quite scaled down. Part of the project is we're interested in how kids with attentional difficulties are doing in these scenarios. It's a little bit more controlled than what we were doing in schools so in a way, it's easier. But when we went to the NIMH and our program officer with our new design, they were really excited because this is still an open question: how does this look [and] how do we talk to educators about how to engage kids online?

How does EEG measure attention and motivation?

It turns out we actually don't know a lot about how people [pay attention] in real time because it is hard to measure reliably by watching people’s behavior. But now, with advances in mobile EEG equipment, we're able to look at some of these processes using EEG measures in real settings. This way we can see in real time what is happening in student’s brains – and examine features in the EEG data that are known to be associated with attention.

This advancement allows us to answer basic questions like how long can students sit and pay attention. When does their attention start to decline? We have a lot of anecdotes – for example, at 15 minutes and students are maxed out - but we don't have any data to support many of the claims. If I'm a teacher and I'm trying to structure my lesson, how do I know how often to break that up? How do I know how often to use group work? We don't have a lot of data on that, so that’s what we’ve been trying to hit. 

Do you think the current environment of online teaching and learning – with its higher levels of distraction – is going to result in shorter attention spans? 

That’s a great question because I taught online all year. But I also had an undergraduate class which I turned fully asynchronous to meet the needs of students learning remotely. This means that my students were watching videos of my lectures. And I talked with a lot of my students about how online learning was going for them.

A lot of students had two tales of experience. Students are reporting in some cases, that they couldn't focus - that they just couldn't sit there. All of my lectures were in seven to 15-minute intervals of time, to kind of keep that pace and momentum so you could have a break, and then you get back into it. Other students were saying the opposite, which is that while they couldn't attend [in real time], they were trying to do other work to compensate, which they wouldn’t do normally. If you're in a lecture, you're just sitting and listening and then it's over. That's it, you're done.

But a lot of my students were watching again and again and again, and you would hear this about their other classes too. This meant that many students were spending three times as much time watching lectures as they would in real time, but not feeling like they were getting as much out of it. So, you could see students trying to create new strategies for how they were going to focus and learn, but they weren't really able to figure out things that really worked for them.

We think in a lot of ways that students, especially in college, but even K-12, are constantly learning new strategies for how to orient [themselves] in an academic environment. They described feeling really tired, feeling really stressed. A lot of that directly impacts or can be impacted by having to really engage attentionally in a different way.

Do multiple intelligences play into looking at attentional studies?

In our work, we think about the kind of cognitive skills that students have a little bit differently. You might have a profile or a set [of skills]. You may be really strong at attending to particular types of information or you have good strategies for that. Or maybe you have difficulties - maybe it's just really hard for you regardless of the environment, but you've figured out a way that works. 

That’s been more our focus: what is the fit between characteristics of the  learner and their learning environments. And by types of learners, I don't mean types of intelligence. I mean the profile of cognitive skills and strategies that you bring to the table.

How are you helping teachers – both in K-12 and college - to use this thinking in their classrooms?

I was working with teachers at Lab School while we were developing the study to figure out how do they think about student attention and what they are already doing in their classrooms to support the development of these skills, what are they already doing; what are the moves that they're making. We’re trying to take what we're doing in our mock lessons and our experiment is modeled off what might be happening in regular classrooms. 

It’s tricky, but part of our goal of studying attention is to figure out, , what teacher moves drive student attention. For example, is it the transitions that they’re making or are those problematic for some learners? We know that time spent in elementary school in transition can be really hard for students with lower attention skills. But we also are encouraging teachers to mix up what they're doing in the classroom – so how can we make specific recommendations that reconcile those ideas, and help teachers continue to develop their understanding of the environments that work best for individual students?

In our Lab School experiment and also in the college student experiment, what we have are lessons that are 15 minutes of traditional didactic lecture and a similar amount of time of viewing an educational video - students report loving videos. Then, we have group work and individual work. 

And, at least with our college students, what we’re finding when we look at our EEG data is that group work is really where they're paying the greatest amount of attention, which makes sense because they're interested in what the other person is saying. They’re focused, they're listening. And it doesn't look like it behaviorally, but that's what they're doing. 

I will say in terms of talking with  instructors in higher education that people are really interested, in part because [attention] just hasn't been empirically tested.  We make a lot of suggestions about how to teach but we don't necessarily have some of the background for some of these suggestions. The idea that attention lasts for 15 minutes is a great example of this – it was published many years ago in a higher education textbook but was never actually examined. Recently someone did a review about this – asking where this idea came from – and no one seems to know!

There is a whole movement in the cognitive sciences around that is beginning to be infused in higher education. For example [in] how we set up instructional tasks, how we structure learning opportunities, the frequency and type of testing we use. All of this evidence has been growing people are starting to realize, “When I do this in my classroom it helps students learn.” 

There are a lot of other questions that we can begin to answer now that can collect EEG in real-world settings. We’re going to continue to do it with college students because there are a lot of studies of learning in this developmental period on which to base our work. We can also ask this developmental question: how does what college students do versus high school versus middle school versus elementary school, and what are the variations there?

Former UCLA undergrads Annika Daug ('20, B.S., Psychobiology) and Riley Fox ('21, B.S., Psychology) took part in a study on student attention, led by UCLA Associate Professor of Education Jennie Grammer. Courtesy of Jennie Grammer

What are the variations that you’ve uncovered so far?

One of my colleagues, (UCLA Professor of Psychological Studies in Education of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine) Connie Kasari, often says to take a child’s age, and that's the number of minutes, they can sit still and pay attention – and that’s probably really close to the truth, but it is also testable!

There are questions about that - some kids just know how to sit still and look like they're paying attention. So, can we disentangle that [and] help educators understand the behavioral cues of engagement and attention a little bit better?

One of the things that motivates this work is recent evidence that teachers’ ratings of kids’ executive functions and skills like attention can be biased. Large-scale studies have shown that teachers rate kids as having lower skills in this domain on dimensions of gender, race, ethnicity, and their own perceptions of children’s socioeconomic status.

All of that is really intriguing to us. Take, for example, if I have a six-year-old boy in my classroom, I might have a stereotype about his behavior in advance, as that relates to his learning. But the bigger concern is that if those stereotypes persist, I might do something different instructurally with that child if I don't think he's paying attention or because I don’t think he's as cognitively engaged. Maybe you don't spend as much time working academically with that child because you perceive that he has a behavior issue and you can't really change that.  

Other teachers would take a different tact. They may say, “Well, here's a kid who I need to restructure things for. I need to find a way to engage them and maybe set up my lessons differently.” Promoting opportunities for success. We're hoping that some of the work that we're doing now, by bringing biological science and neuroscience into it, will help teachers understand and disentangle these kinds of associations they have between behavior in the classroom - especially from little kids - and cognition. 

As students get older, the dynamics change. In college classrooms, a lot of my students know how to look like a student. They come in, they sit down, they know how to hide if they're looking at their phone and not listening to me. They know how to look like they're not like using their laptop to search Google and not take notes.

These are behaviors that we’re socialized to, but they also impact me as the instructor [in that] I think that student knows what they're doing. If I'm going to just look at that student’s behavior, I’m going to potentially miss something.

How will the pandemic learning environment affect your study of students’ attention?

I think we've learned a lot. It allowed us to have this break so we can go back with more targeted questions when schools are back  to business as usual. We have also had a lot of time to dig into the technical specifications of the work. This is the silver lining of COVID: we can answer these online learning questions which are really important. Regardless of whether or not we want it to be the case, we’ll be doing remote instruction for a long time, and even if it's not at the K-12 level, it will be at the higher education level. I think people have realized this is an alternative modality we can use, and we need to understand it better before we continue to use it.

Studying cognition is hard because you can't see it. I can measure how many words you know or know your behavior when you're sitting down to do a task, or how fast or accurate you are at something, but I can never really see that process in real time. And so having these types of methods, electrophysiology and other methods, helps us with that. Hopefully, once everybody's happy for us to come back, we can continue to ask these questions because we're really excited about them. Researchers are [excited], but I think educators are too because it's a new way of thinking about [students’] cognition.

1) Jennie Grammer, UCLA associate professor of education. Courtesy of Jennie Grammer

2) Former UCLA undergrads Annika Daug ('20, B.S., Psychobiology) and Riley Fox ('21, B.A., Psychology) took part in a study on student attention, led by UCLA Associate Professor of Education Jennie Grammer. Courtesy of Jennie Grammer

Research at UCLA Lab School aimed at neuroscience and its role in real-life and remote teaching and learning. 

Jennie Grammer Honored with the Harold A. and Lois Haytin Faculty Award

The UCLA Community Archives Internship Project, led by Associate Professor of Information Studies Michelle Caswell, has been awarded a renewal grant of $340,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue funding paid internships at community archives for UCLA MLIS students and to conceptualize an expansion of the paid community archives internship program to MLIS programs across the United States.

“I'm really excited to see what the next three years has in store for this project,” says Caswell, who serves as principal investigator for the UCLA Community Archives Lab’s research projects. “The students in our MLIS program do the most amazing community-engaged work. I was completely in awe of the work that they managed to do, even remotely - deeply community engaged work that ran the gamut from the most highly conceptual theoretical [work] to the most nuts-and-bolts necessary work that community archives need. Every single student in the internship program has made themselves useful to a community-based archive in incredible ways: writing grant proposals, creating digital preservation plans, assembling bookshelves, compiling mailing lists, doing video interviews with community elders, and creating interactive finding aids to provide context to collections.  

“This grant from The Mellon Foundation will enable those students to continue to get paid to do this kind of work. Payment is absolutely essential. If we don't enable our students to get paid internships, it perpetuates inequality in the field, because it means only the most wealthy students can afford to do internships, which provide experience that  is necessary for employment after graduation.”

With the support of the Mellon Foundation over the past three years, the Community Archives Internship Project has placed 26 students at 15 community archives sites, where they have accomplished crucial work processing and digitizing collections, enacting participatory description projects, organizing exhibitions and other outreach activities, fundraising, and building digital asset management systems. The project has been instrumental in helping preserve and make accessible the unknown histories of marginalized communities in Los Angeles, while at the same time increasing the capacity of community archives and providing MLIS students with paid opportunities to gain practical skills. 

Professor Caswell notes that the project not only provides professional skills for UCLA MLIS students, but that the networking opportunities within the internships have resulted in valuable connections and even employment for students. 

“After three years of running the program, we have a lineage where students are getting hired by the sites where they have interned,” she says. “We have two former students who are now archivists at the Skid Row History Museum, one former intern who just graduated who was hired at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, and another student who was hired to work at the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive. That speaks volumes to the work that the students are doing, that the sites themselves are so excited about working with the students that they're finding ways to fund them in ongoing positions.”

Other graduates of the program have reported the importance of the skills they acquired at their community sites to their current work in libraries and archives, including positions at UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Archives, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Santa Barbara Library Foundation.

The next proposed phase of the Community Archives Internship Project will place 21 student interns at seven sites over three years. The sites are: La Historia Society; the Skid Row History Museum and Archive; the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives; the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive; Visual Communications; the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California; and The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).

Given the success of the Community Archives Internship Project at UCLA, the next phase will also develop plans to convene a group of archival studies faculty from iSchools across the country to design a paid community archives internship program for MLIS students nationwide. 

Professor Caswell says that in the wake of national debates over the teaching of critical race theory, the work of the Community Archives Internship Project and UCLA Community Archives Lab is all the more important. 

“Community archives build archival systems, practices, and theories that are designed to support the needs of minoritized communities rather than oppress them,” she says. “Critical race theory asserts that white supremacy is baked into dominant institutions in the U.S.. Rather than trying to change dominant archival institutions that were designed to oppress, community archives enable minoritized communities to create their own theories and practices that liberate rather than harm. As a field, archival studies needs to take these theories and practices very seriously if we are going to remain relevant and contribute to transformative justice in our society.

Professor Caswell says that while UCLA has led the charge nationwide in preparing a workforce of community archives professionals, she hopes that the establishment of a nationwide program of paid internships for MLIS students will be instrumental in shaping community-engaged archival practices both in the United States and globally.

“The new component is to figure out how we can increase the impact of the program by working with faculty at other iSchools who teach community engaged archives and community engaged practices,” she says. “We’ll be looking at MLIS curricula to see how the curriculum at the iSchools is being transformed to reflect community-based theories and practices as well, so that the students are properly trained before they go into community archives sites.

“The idea is really to transform the MLIS curriculum nationally [and] hopefully eventually internationally … looking at these community centered practices that have developed in minoritized communities and taking those theories and practices really seriously and pushing back against the [current] archival studies core, which is based on dominant Western values, and fully take seriously and incorporate values and practices from minoritized communities, BIPOC communities, and/or LGBTQ + communities.”

Caswell, who has been recently appointed chair of the UCLA Department of Information Studies, observes that the field of archival studies is now in “a transformative period.”

“The field has completely changed, I would say, in the past 10 years,” she says.  “We’re really in an exciting time to be within archival studies. We have a lot of work to do, and a lot of catching up because the field has been really conservative and holding on to those dominant Western practices for so long. But there are so many signs that those practices are dissipating, being chipped away at, and being replaced with values and practices that really respond to the needs of minoritized communities.

“I was just looking at the schedule for AERI, the Archival Education and Research Initiative that, which is an annual conference and workshop, and the schedule for this year, 10 years ago, would not have been possible. The kinds of conversations that are happening in the field have completely shifted in really exciting ways in the past decade. Support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for community archives is certainly a part of that as well.”

UCLA IS will seek to establish a nationwide community archives internship program that provides students with both professional training and financial support.

Michelle Caswell: Renewal of Mellon Foundation Grant to Support Community Archives Internships

At some schools in California, nearly 1 in 5 students say they have either carried a weapon or been injured or threatened with one, according to a new study co-authored by UCLA Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor that examines the presence of weapons in the state’s public middle and high schools and recommends focusing on campus-level conditions that could serve as warning signs for violence.

“Although tragic incidents of shootings in schools are rare and directly affect only a small number of students, tens of thousands of students report bringing weapons to school, and many more see other students in their school carrying weapons,” said Astor, who holds joint appointments at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and UCLA School of Education and Information Studies.

The study, co-authored with Rami Benbenishty of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was published recently in the Journal of School Violence.

Based on surveys of nearly 890,000 California students in grades 7, 9 and 11, the research focuses on all types of weapons — not only guns — and assesses how factors such as the level of crime in a school’s surrounding neighborhood, students’ feelings of belongingness or victimization at school, their relationships with teachers and staff, and their perceptions about whether disciplinary practices are fair can heighten or lower the potential for weapons-carrying and violence.

This holistic or school-wide approach represents a significant departure from previous school-violence studies, which have typically sought to identify risk factors around individual students who might pose a threat, Astor noted.

“A major limitation of current ‘shooter’ studies is that they tend to maintain a narrow focus on individual perpetrators,” the authors write. “Although it is very difficult to detect students who perpetrate school shootings, it is possible to identify schools that have many students who are involved with weapons.”

“It is imperative to develop a monitoring system to identify such schools and channel resources to this vulnerable group of students, educators and parents,” said Astor, who teaches a UCLA undergraduate course on ways to improve school safety. “We must create opportunities to hear their voices and explore local solutions that make their schools safer.”

Fostering a warm, supportive school environment is key to reducing the presence of weapons and creating a truly safe campus, according to the authors, whose previous research has demonstrated that prioritizing a culture of care, funneling more resources to vulnerable schools and elevating the voices of students, teachers and students leads to a drop in the number of weapons at schools.

In this new study, Astor and Benbenishty also focus on the unintended negative consequences of past efforts to deter individual shooters by “hardening” schools with metal detectors, security cameras and armed staff, as well as “active shooter” drills and harsh mandatory punishments that research shows often demonstrated bias against students of color.

These measures, they noted, frequently created fortress-like campuses that greatly diminished students’ well-being, heightened the fear of violence on school grounds and sent more of the nation’s children into the school-to-prison pipeline.

For the full story and for a link to the report, “School- and Student-Level Prevalence and Predictors of Weapon-Related Behaviors and Experiences among Secondary Schools in California,” visit the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs website.

For media coverage of Professor Astor’s report, visit these links:

Co-authored study published in the Journal of School Violence gauges prevalence of weapons on campuses, looks at factors that put schools at risk.

Ron Astor: New Study Reveals 1 in 5 California Students Have Carried or Been Threatened with a Weapon

As founding director of the Black Male Institute at UCLA, Tyrone Howard has examined the complex issues of education for young males of color and led his undergraduate researchers in projects that seek to improve the trajectories for these youth. However, as a father of four, the professor of education has had to teach his children to face some hard truths about race relations.

A recent Los Angeles Times article focused on the ways that parents explain to their children the racial dynamics behind events such as the violent deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five police officers in Dallas. In it, Professor Howard shares how he spoke to his children about race when they were very young, and taught them to be proud to be Black. He also let them know that they would be held to a higher standard than their non-Black peers and about societal fear and institutionalized violence against Black people.

“The conversation is continually reinforcing the strengths, gifts, and accomplishments that each one of them possesses,” says Howard. “It is an ongoing conversation, that despite the negative stereotypes that exist about various groups, they are not defined by those depictions. I think that this is an approach many parents of color use to combat the societal stereotypes that are not always positive.”

In the article, Howard says that he contacts his three sons – who are now between the ages of 17 and 24 – whenever there is a police shooting and reminds them to comply if approached by officers, although his oldest son reminds him that even Black men who respond peacefully to police are still treated with brutality or are killed. He describes the challenge that parents of young men of color have in protecting their children with caution.

“Many parents of color, and parents of young Black males in particular, can share stories of their children being profiled, stopped, or questioned by law enforcement and in schools,” notes Howard. “There is always a difference across racial boundaries, in terms or how they are treated in schools and in communities. It is frightening, because you cannot always be present with them, so you just reinforce what you have always told them about such situations.”.

Professor Howard is currently analyzing data from a project funded by The California Endowment on counternarratives of high-achieving young males of color in Los Angeles County schools. Howard, who serves as principal investigator, led a team of BMI researchers in identifying and interviewing young men between the ages of 14-18 who live and attend schools in Los Angeles County, and have demonstrated academic achievement, family and community engagement, or leadership skills. The results will be published this fall.

“For me, the issues happening across the country are real, because me, my sons, and other men of color, can easily find ourselves in an uncomfortable position around these issues,” says Howard. “So my work is intimately connected to how young men make meaning out of situations in their schools and communities.”

Last year, Professor Howard was recognized with two UCLA awards – the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award and the Harvey L. Elby Art of Teaching Award. He has also been honored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) with the Dr. Carlos J. Vallejo Memorial Award for Lifetime Scholarship (2015).

To read, “Why are people mad at each other?: Explaining another shocking week of violence to your kids” in The Los Angeles Times, click here.

As founding director of the Black Male Institute at UCLA, Tyrone Howard has examined the complex issues of education for…

Tyrone Howard: Explaining Racial Violence to Children

The Digital Resource Development Initiative was established in March 2020 by the UCLA Department of Information Studies, with the goal of developing digital resources that would be relevant to different communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, in support of the department’s mission and vision.

The initiative showcases the professional expertise of UCLA IS students, while providing a wide range of applied experiences. Undergraduate, MLIS and Ph.D. students submitted project proposals for funding awards to support the development of their individual proposals between March and September 2020. Several students also partnered with local repositories to assist them in developing their digital presence during the pandemic.

Projects include “Work and Wellness LA,” a resource designed to help workers in Los Angeles County who have lost their job or employment hours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; “The Resources for Southeast Asian Communities Handbook compiles and highlights resources and services for Southeast Asian community members facing hardships brought on by COVID-19; “Cross-generational Engagement: Sustaining Community Archives’ Futures,” which is designed to foster healthy intergenerational co communication in community-based archival spaces; “Mur Murs: Murals, Chicanas, and the Female Gaze,” a digital exhibit created in collaboration with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and Google Arts and Culture, uncovering the hidden stories behind the murals created by 20 Century Chicana artists in Los Angeles; and “Rebel Archives in the Golden Gulag,” which details the history of revolutionary Black freedom struggles inside prison walls, and the transformative organizing of incarcerated people. 

Visit this link to view projects from the UCLA IS Digital Resource Development Initiative.

The Digital Resource Development Initiative was established in March 2020 by the UCLA Department of Information Studies, with the goal…

UCLA IS Expertise Serves Communities in the Pandemic with the Digital Resource Development Initiative

UCLA Community School has a strong partnership with the Fulfillment Fund, a Los Angeles-based organization that provides one-on-one college counseling support for students in educationally and economically under-resourced communities.

To honor the Class of 2021, the Fulfillment Fund worked with FOX 11’s morning show, “Good Day LA” to highlight six students from UCLA Community School and their college plans.

To learn more about UCLA Community School, visit this link.

Above: UCLA Community School is on the RFK Community Schools campus in the Koreatown-Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles.

UCLA Community School has a strong partnership with the Fulfillment Fund, a Los Angeles-based organization that provides one-on-one college counseling…

UCLA Community School Highlighted on "Good Day LA"

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools today released a new report examining the relationship between educational outcomes and social, health and environmental factors of Black students in 14 school districts, serving 800 Black students or more in Los Angeles County. Together, these school districts serve more than two-thirds of Black students in the region. The findings spanned neighborhoods from the northern reaches of the Antelope Valley to Long Beach.

Detailing a shrinking and shifting Black student population long beset by low levels of academic achievement, the research makes it clear that a disproportionate number of Black children in L.A. County reside in neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated, educational enrichment opportunities are limited,  environmental hazards are severe, and resources are lacking. In many of these communities, the challenges facing Black children in school are exacerbated by adverse environmental and social conditions related to concentrated poverty, impacting student learning. And given the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 virus on low-income communities, the researchers contend that the challenges facing Black students have likely worsened.

“The impact of the global pandemic on the education of Black students may potentially be devastating,” said UCLA Professor of Education Tyrone C. Howard, faculty director of the Center for the Transformation of Schools.“This new research can inform the strategic use of resources to address inequalities, racism, and historical disadvantage, and guide decision making to better serve Black students. 

“The long and persistent presence of systemic racism inside and outside of schools continues to affect the educational experiences and outcomes of Black students. The report also offers examples of successful efforts and specific recommendations to assist educators and policymakers.”

“Our hope is that this research will generate intense attention on the needs of Black students in the County,” adds UCLA researcher Stanley L. Johnson Jr., lead author of the study, “and spur innovative and meaningful actions to address the economic, social, emotional and environmental challenges that shape and hinder their educational opportunities. We can and must act boldly.”

The report includes a detailed table of funding made available to school districts in the report by the recently passed federal American Rescue Plan. The 14 districts examined in the research are in line to receive $6 billion in COVID-19 relief funding to support learning recovery efforts.

“Black student sand families have been impacted by multigenerational roadblocks to learning opportunities prior to the pandemic. As school districts make plans to use these new resources as they reopen in COVID’s wake, it is urgent key decisionmakers at the local, state and federal level      pay close attention to the needs of Black students and act to address their needs,” said Joseph Bishop, co-author of the report and the director of the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.      

The report, Beyond the Schoolhouse: Digging Deeper analyzes data from the 14 school districts in LA County with a substantial number of Black students.  These districts include: ABC Unified, Antelope Valley Union High School, Bellflower Unified, Centinela Valley Union High School, Compton Unified, Culver City Unified, Inglewood Unified, Long Beach Unified, Los Angeles Unified, Paramount Unified, Pasadena Unified, Pomona Unified, Torrance Unified, and William S. Hart Union High School.  The report includes an interactive map of Black student educational outcomes. http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/interactive-map/

The research makes clear that Black students in the districts included in the studylive in neighborhoods challenged by concentrated poverty and inequality. In 10 out of 14 school districts where Black students attend school and their surrounding neighborhoods, more than 40 percent of these families live two times below the federal poverty line.

Black student enrollment has also declined across Los Angeles County by 42 percent over the past 20 years.  But some districts, including Antelope Valley and William S. Hart High School District, have seen significant growth in enrollment of Black students, raising concerning academic and discipline challenges. 

In this context, the report digs deeper into the academic achievement and school climate and policing data,  and explores the health and neighborhood conditions of the focus districts.  Key among the findings:

Black students have historically trailed their student peers on California’s measurements of academic achievement. In many of the school districts in the study, the performance of Black students on standardized assessments and graduation rates is significantly lower than is observed for other groups. For example, in 10 of 14 of the districts, more than half of Black students failed to meet state standards in mathematics in 2018-19. In three of those districts, more than eight in ten students failed to meet the state’s standards in mathematics.

Black students also trailed their peers on such measurements as graduation rates and completion of courses for UC/CSU eligibility. Black students continue to graduate at a lower rate compared to their counterparts and there is a great deal of variation in graduation rates.  For example, only 76 percent of Black students in the Antelope Valley Unified School District graduated in four years compared to 97 percent of Black students in the Torrance Unified School District.

The research highlights important findings regarding school policing, student suspensions, and chronic absenteeism.  School policing has a disproportionate impact on Black students. Every district in the report’s sample has some form of police involvement on high school campuses  and arrests, and other involvement with school police in Los Angeles County falls especially hard on Black students. A recent UCLA report analyzing 2014-2017 arrest, citation and diversion data, found that although Black student enrollment during this period was just 8 percent in LAUSD, Black students accounted for 25 percent of serious interactions with school police. 

The report also finds agreat deal of variation in suspension rates for both Black male and female students.  In Antelope Valley, Bellflower and Pasadena Unified, Black male and female students are suspended at higher rates far greater than the County average. Black students also exhibit higher rates of chronic absence (defined as missing more than 10 percent of the school year), with 24 percent of Black students in L.A. County chronically absent, a rate significantly higher than other student groups.  There is also significant variation in absence rates among the 14 districts studied, with Black students in Antelope Valley and Centinela school districts absent for three or more weeks per year, while more affluent districts such as Culver City have much lower absence rates for Black students (7 percent). 

Previous research has shown that Black students in L.A. County are more likely to experience economic and social hardships. The new research finds that in 10 of the 14 focus districts, there are significant poverty disparities between Black and White students. For example, a Black student in Long Beach Unified is three times more likely to receive free or reduced lunch than a white student in that district.  The research also provides analysis of Black youth in foster care, Black students experiencing homelessness, and those challenged by disabilities, raising concerning questions about suspensions, absence and graduation rates in some of the school districts in the study.  For example, 12 of the 14 focus districts have chronic absenteeism rates of 20 percent or higher for Black students in foster care, and in eight of the 14 focus districts, Black students are twice as likely to experience homelessness as other groups

The CDC has said that structural racism poses a serious threat to public health.  The new report examines indicators of the environmental and health contexts of Black students in the fourteen focus districts, connecting data from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (Enviroscan) to specific census tracts with residential concentrations of Black people. In Census tracts for these districts, both Black and White residents are exposed to diesel emissions, yet in neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Black residents have significantly higher rates of exposure than White residents. Groundwater pollutants can also have a significant impact on health. In Los Angeles and Torrance Unified school districts, Blacks reside in census tracts with the worst levels of groundwater pollution while Whites in those districts generally reside in areas with among the lowest levels of groundwater threats. Asthma and low birth weight are two health conditions that have been causally linked to air and water pollution, and that have been shown to disproportionately impact Black students and their families.     

“The impact of social, health and environmental conditions on  academic performance has too often been overlooked, said Johnson. “Our schools are not separate from our communities. As we return to campus, we need to look beyond the schoolhouse to develop strategies and innovations to  address the challenges facing our communities and engage them in ways fuel the success of Black students.” 

To further that effort, the report identifies examples of school and community efforts where Black students are well served. The researchers also offer specific recommendations for educators, community members and policy makers at the local, state and federal levels.  Those recommendations are focused in three key areas: COVID-19 and reopening schools, in-school policies, and out-of-school policies. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored the challenges facing Black students in Los Angeles County, our state and our nation,” concludes Professor Howard. “But it has also provided an opportunity for real change. We hope this report will be a catalyst for that effort.”

Beyond the Schoolhouse: Digging Deeper, Overcoming Challenges & Expanding Opportunity for Black Youth in Los Angeles is a project of the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.

For a briefing on “Beyond the Schoolhouse” presented by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools on April 14, visit the CTS YouTube channel.

To learn more about “Beyond the Schoolhouse” and for the full report, visit the Sudikoff Institute Public Forum website.

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools today released a new report examining the relationship between educational outcomes and social, health and environmental…

New UCLA Research Digs Deeper into Social Challenges Facing Black Students in LA County to Inform COVID-19 Recovery

A new report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, Disabling Inequity: The Urgent Need for Race Conscious Remedies, highlights the inequitable conditions of learning faced by students with disabilities and underscores a lack of awareness and action that threatens to deepen the disparate impact the pandemic has had on children of color with disabilities.

The research makes clear that pre-pandemic, there was a rise in students exposed to trauma, and a growing number of students with disabilities who are entitled to mental and behavioral supports. School districts are legally obligated to identify these students and address their needs under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.  Today, students eligible to benefit from the Rehabilitation Act now account for less than three percent of all enrolled students (1.4 million students). Yet, the new analysis finds more than 300 large districts that don’t recognize even one such student among their student body. 

In particular, students of color with disabilities are unlikely to have their needs recognized and met, raising concerns that some districts may continue to fail to recognize these students and that such failure will further entrench the racially disparate harm caused by the pandemic. The report raises similar concerns about the larger group of approximately seven million students that have been deemed eligible for special education and related support and services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

“The focus on the experiences of students with disabilities reveals profound racial disparities and stark losses of instructional time and raises the possibility that in many districts, educators are failing to meet their obligations to address the mental and behavioral health needs of children,” said Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies and the lead researcher on the report.  

The report recommends increases in race-conscious funding to address inequities and major improvements to the monitoring and enforcement of federal civil rights law. Without these, the report concludes that the continued failure to meet the needs of children with disabilities, and those who have experienced trauma, will mean that the deepest and most sustained harms from the pandemic will be experienced by children of color with disabilities.

Disabling Inequity: The Urgent Need for Race Conscious Remedies is a research project of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, an initiative of the UCLA Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. The research was led by Daniel J. Losen, Paul Martinez and Grace Shin.  The report, including an executive summary and specific recommendations is available online. 

A new report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, Disabling Inequity: The Urgent Need for Race Conscious Remedies, highlights the inequitable conditions…

New Report by UCLA Civil Rights Project Details Educational Inequity for Students with Disabilities

This week represents our collective hope for a better future. On Monday we honored the life and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.—our nation’s revered social and racial justice leader. Yesterday, amid the continuation of this historic pandemic, and just two weeks after the horrible violence in our nation’s Capitol, America once again demonstrated its ongoing commitment to democracy with the inauguration of our new President. We witnessed a Black, South Asian woman sworn in as Vice President by a female, Latino, Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Adding a brilliant light to the events was the recitation of a poem “The Hill We Climb” by the 22-year-old African American woman and Southern California native, Amanda Gorman—the first National Youth Poet Laureate, who herself dreams of becoming president. We are witnessing progress towards Dr. King’s vision. 

This new administration will bring changes in policy that will guide our approach to the urgent challenges of education and information. These changes will impact our schools, communities and nation, and require renewed energies and fresh research from our faculty and students. The pandemic has wrought real damage on schools and students and made clear the need to address the racial and economic divisions that undermine opportunities to learn. From efforts to address civil rights to strengthening teaching and learning, our UCLA Education faculty have begun to address these issues. For example, at a time when the need for civic understanding and a renewed commitment to democracy has perhaps never been more urgent, Professor John Rogers’ work examines strengthening civic education across California and the nation. If you have not seen it already, I urge you to read his recent research with colleagues at UC Riverside “Reclaiming the Purpose of Democratic Education in California’s Public Schools.”

Another urgent issue facing America is the growing danger from social media disinformation. Our UCLA Information Studies faculty are already working at the forefront of these issues. If you have not done so, I strongly suggest exploring Professors Safiya Noble’s and Sarah Roberts’ work and their UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, as well as Professor Ramesh Srinivasan’s research, which critically analyzes the role of social media in politics and policy and in our communities. Be sure to read his interview with UCLA Newsroom: “Are we using technology or are we being used?”

Today is a new beginning. There is so much we are doing but so much more needs to be done. The hill that we climb is steep. My hope is that this week we turn a new page and begin to heal as we move towards real change that is based on dialogue, harmony and unity, and focused on achieving the promise of education, health and economic well-being—not just for some, but for all. As the talented Ms. Gorman recited in her stanzas, “We are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man. And, so we lift our gaze to not what stands between us but to what stands before us.”

What stands before us is nothing less than Dr. King’s ever-present vision of a Beloved Community, and all that it stands for. In his aspirations for realizing this community he had hoped that the right kind of spirit and the right kind of love would “transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age.” My hope is that together we can move closer to this noble and exuberant vision of peace, unity and harmony amongst all people through real and lasting social change.

This week represents our collective hope for a better future. On Monday we honored the life and vision of Martin Luther…

A Message from Christina Christie, Wasserman Dean on MLK Day

Sarah T. Roberts, UCLA associate professor of information studies, is featured on The Guardian’s list of “10 ideas to fix our broken internet – by experts” In the wake of violent uprisings in the nation’s Capitol due to misuse of social media.

“What, then, is my grand solution going forward?” writes Roberts, who is co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. “That platforms enforce the rules, transparently and with immediacy for all users, and hold them accountable for their behavior online. 

“Do this even more so, and not less, when the person on the other end of the tweet holds the world hostage to his mercurial, dangerous whims. To have offered Trump a lesser standard, to have refused to hold him to account until the 11th hour, has put American democracy and the stability of the globe on the line and made social media firms complicit in the destabilization from which we have yet to emerge.”

Professor Roberts is the author of “Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media,” recently re-released in France by La Découverte.

Visit Tech Policy Press for Professor Roberts’ unabridged response to The Guardian.

To read, “Banning Trump won’t fix social media: 10 ideas to fix our broken internet – by experts,” visit The Guardian.

Sarah T. Roberts, UCLA associate professor of information studies, is featured on The Guardian’s list of “10 ideas to fix…

Sarah T. Roberts: How to Really Fix a Broken Internet

The UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry has received a gift from the Archewell Foundation, supporting the center’s research and programs, which are focused on the harm that vulnerable communities face from internet technologies.

The collaboration will build on the center’s existing network of scholars, practitioners, activists and artists, who are working on reimagining technology, championing racial and economic justice in the tech sector, and strengthening democracy through culture-making and public policy work.

“The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are deeply committed to using their light to illuminate the problems of inequality and structural racism,” said Safiya U. Noble, who co-founded and co-directs the center with Sarah T. Roberts. “We have a shared commitment and sense of urgency in making a more compassionate world, much of which is undermined by internet platforms. I know what they stand for and share in their mission. We look forward to lending our research expertise and networks to our mutual work on the most pressing issues of internet policy and culture that are accelerating racial, gender and economic inequity.”

Noble is an associate professor in the departments of information studies and African American studies. Her research focuses on digital media and its impact on society, as well as how digital technology and artificial intelligence intersect with issues of race, gender, culture and power. She is the author of the bestselling book “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” which examines racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines.

Roberts, an associate professor of information studies, is a leading authority on commercial content moderation, a term she coined to describe the work of those who ensure photos, videos and stories on commercial websites fit within legal and ethical guidelines and standards.

The Archewell Foundation, a nonprofit created by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, works to uplift and unite local and global communities. The foundation supports a community of partner organizations that are working toward systemic cultural change, including the World Central Kitchen, The Loveland Foundation, the Center for Humane Technology and Stanford Medicine’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

The UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry has received a gift from the Archewell Foundation, supporting the center’s research and…

UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry Collaborates with Archewell Foundation

Ron Avi Astor, professor of social welfare at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, has published a research brief on “Opening Schools Safely in the COVID-19 Era: School Social Workers’ Experiences and Recommendations,” in collaboration with partners from Loyola University Chicago, CSU Fullerton and Hebrew University.

The brief includes findings from a survey of 1,275 social workers across the United States, and calls for quick and timely action and investment by elected officials and other leaders to support the nation’s schools. 

Along with concerns about remote learning platforms and physical distancing on campuses, the social workers reported that students and families are struggling to meet their most basic needs during the pandemic, including food, housing, and health care.

“The national dialogue on reopening schools is not focused on this right now, but the social workers are telling us loud and clear that meeting basic human needs for a large number of students is the big issue schools face in the fall,” says Professor Astor in an article on the UCLA Luskin School’s website.

The brief calls for the creation of a national rapid-response team including teachers, administrators, medical professionals, counselors, psychologists and social workers to guide schools as they make decisions regarding in-person, online, or hybrid learning models. The report also recommends that a national technical assistance center be created to help any school adjust its procedures if needed, and that a large workforce of social workers, nurses, psychologists and other professionals is needed in schools that serve low-income and minority students.

The report’s authors noted that their findings come amid calls for systemic change spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement, and that school professionals need to locate and reengage the large number of students nationwide who rarely checked in to virtual classrooms this spring. 

Professor Astor will participate in two webinars by the National Center for School Safety at the University of Michigan. These sessions are part of a series of three webinars to foster a holistically positive school climate for the 2020-2021 school year while addressing concerns related to COVID-19 and racial unrest, and aimed to inform and support parents, teachers, principals, superintendents, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. For more information, visit this link.

To read the full article, visit the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs website.

To read the research brief on, “Opening Schools Safely in the COVID-19 Era: School Social Workers’ Experiences and Recommendations,” visit this link.

Ron Avi Astor, professor of social welfare at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and at the UCLA Luskin School…

Ron Avi Astor: Reopening Schools in the COVID-19 Era

A three-year award of $1.5 million will help Jane Margolis and Jean Ryoo, researchers at the UCLA Graduate School of…

Jane Margolis: Gates Foundation Grant Will Advance Research on Educational Inclusion in Computer Science

In his former career as a freelance photojournalist, Jeff Share has documented issues such as poverty and social activism, including his award-winning coverage of The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament of 1986. Today, the faculty advisor in UCLA’s Teacher Education Program turns his lens upon two critical issues facing educators and students: climate change and ultimately, the need for critical thinking skills to decipher the barrage of real and alternative facts in the media.

Share, whose photos once appeared in The Washington Post, was recently interviewed by the Post on his critical media literacy courses at UCLA, where he prepares current and future teachers (K-12) to show their students how to deconstruct media, create their own alternative messages, and even separate “fake news” from facts. His upcoming book, “Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference” (With R. Beach and A. Webb. New York: Routledge. 2017) takes a look at using the urgent challenges facing life on Earth as a conduit for teaching English Language Arts in middle and high school.

Share, who taught in bilingual classrooms at Leo Politi Elementary School in L.A.’s Pico-Union community, says that using a timely issue like climate change fulfills a dual purpose.

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