Education policy in Washington is shaped by data. The question is whose data, disaggregated how, and held to what standard of analytical specificity.For decades education research produced education reports that used sweeping equity language — "underserved students," "historically marginalized communities," "students of color." That language enabled report on equity in the aggregate while remaining unaccountable …
Education policy in Washington is shaped by data. The question is whose data, disaggregated how, and held to what standard of analytical specificity.
For decades education research produced education reports that used sweeping equity language — “underserved students,” “historically marginalized communities,” “students of color.” That language enabled report on equity in the aggregate while remaining unaccountable to any specific community desegregated across meaningful intersectional categories to the give material snapshots into the needs of Black communities. Such methodological choices suppress disparities of our community and erect barriers to hold the systems designed to serve our students accountable.
When data is reported only at the level of broad demographic categories, the intersectional identities and experiences of Black students are absorbed into composite reports that obscure the specific scale of disparate impacts. The result is a public conversation that can describe the problem but cannot locate it. Policymakers can point to disparities without being accountable to any specific group. Districts can report progress on “students of color” while Black students continue to lose ground inside the same average.
BESR exists, in part, to correct this. The AMPLIFY pillar of our work is built on a methodological commitment we name plainly: race-explicit specificity. Black students in Washington State are not interchangeable with broader categories. Their educational outcomes have a particular history, a particular shape, and a particular set of policy implications. Naming them, explicitly, repeatedly, in data, is the prerequisite for substantive accountability and Black student success.
Without that specificity, equity is a slogan. With it, equity is a measurement.
BESR builds the evidence base that makes race-explicit accountability possible in Washington. Our data and research work runs across five streams.
Washington’s collection of students data tells one consistent story. At nearly every stage of public education, from early reading to college, our state’s public education system produces worse outcomes for Black students than nearly anyone else. And these are statewide figures, which means they are averages. Averages flatten the worst of the disparities. Up close, at the district, the campus, and the single program, the gaps are sharper still. So read what follows as a floor, not a ceiling.
For Families
You are entitled to specificity. Ask your district for its discipline, assessment, and graduation data disaggregated for Black students, not “students of color.” If the district says the numbers are too small to report, ask what it is doing for the students inside those numbers. Your questions are part of the accountability this page describes.
Get Involved
This is one of the issues BESR leads on now, part of our current agenda. We stand with partners on the issues we have not named here.
