The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning

This concise and compelling book outlines the key civil rights conditions that are essential to deeper learning—the skills and knowledge that students need to succeed in 21st-century jobs and life. It describes schools that enable young people, including those traditionally furthest from opportunity, to develop into caring and critical problem solvers, effective communicators, collaborators, and scholars. The book also describes the community and school inequities that have created persistent obstacles to these goals and the civil rights actions that have been and continue to be needed to remove them. These include policies and practices that ensure safe and healthy communities, equitable investments in public schools, supports for competent teachers, strategies for welcoming and nurturing school climates, and innovative curricula. The authors examine the civil-rights–based pathways that lead to these goals, highlighting examples of exemplary schools that offer the kind of deeper learning that engages and empowers students. This successor to Linda Darling-Hammond’s Grawemeyer Award–winner, The Flat World and Education, is a big-picture view of what constitutes deeper learning―where it is found and what enables it―and what must be done to address the learning needs of all children.

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Book Features:

• Offers a concise treatment written in a voice that will be accessible to a wide range of readers.
• Pulls together three key strands of the learning needs of children (civil rights, educational opportunity, and deeper learning), the distinct inequalities in their delivery, past efforts at combating inequality, and legal and educational paths forward.
• Examines neighborhood and environmental inequities that can compromise learning, along with inadequate school funding and segregation.
• Looks at the professional teaching quality imbalance between rich and poor districts and the inferior curriculum offerings for marginalized populations.
• Includes numerous examples of schools that succeed at deeper learning and equity and explains how they do so.

Kia Darling-Hammond is author of the Bridge to Thriving Framework(c) and CEO of Wise Chipmunk, through which she offers learning opportunities and advising to educators, organizations, and other entities, including the Congressional Black Mental Health Brain Trust. Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, founding president of the Learning Policy Institute, past-president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and author of The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, which received the 2012 Grawemeyer Award in Education.

“These times cry out for reinvestment in our future, despite the headwinds we face. The good news is that there is clear evidence of what works, and the approaches worth fighting for. We can afford nothing less when it comes to our schools.”
—From the Foreword by Eliza Byard, senior advisor, Campaign for Our Shared Future

“Equity is at the heart of almost every educational innovation, and ‘deeper learning’ as a concept is no different. Linda and Kia Darling-Hammond help us trace the way civil rights places us on the path to equitable, just, and deeper learning. This is a timely educational tour de force. It belongs on every educator's bookshelf!”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin–Madison

“Encyclopedic in its description of inequitable schooling in the United States, this book is a thought-provoking must-read for policymakers, educators, and researchers who are committed to social justice. The breadth of the scholarship collected here pushes our understanding of the challenges surrounding the education of vulnerable populations and points to new possibilities and future directions. I recommend it highly.”
—Guadalupe Valdés, professor emerita, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University

“This insightful book makes the case for why providing equitable access to deep learning is a critical issue for our time. It traces the connections between the right to learn and legislative and policy actions that have been utilized in the service of providing equitable opportunities for deep learning, illustrating the long history of the civil rights battle for education. Most importantly, it offers a concise vision and prescription for how schools can support deep learning for all students, and for the kinds of policy solutions we need to bring that vision to fruition. It is a must-read for teachers, school and district leaders, and state and federal policymakers. Peppered with concrete examples, The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning provides much-needed wisdom and clarity about how we strive for access to learning, and why it is imperative that we do so.”
—Na'ilah Suad Nasir, president, Spencer Foundation

“This book by Kia Darling-Hammond and Linda Darling-Hammond lays out an empirically informed blueprint for what we can do as a nation to build robust public schools that provide deep learning experiences for all students, where race/ethnicity, family income, gender, language repertoires, and presumed statuses regarding ability are not predictors of outcomes. The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning is unique, as it lays out research-informed actions to accomplish equity in education alongside detailed legal histories of civil rights efforts to create pathways for progress. A must-read for policymakers, educators, civil rights activists, and the public. We learn from this history that we can make a difference.”
—Carol D. Lee, Edwina S. Tarry Professor Emerita, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University

“This book is a must-read for all those interested in the proposition that access to deeper learning opportunities is the right of all students. Coauthored by daughter-mother team Kia Darling-Hammond and Linda Darling-Hammond, the book combines a compelling civil rights argument with a revealing analysis of the schools and teachers that make deeper learning possible.”
—Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Cawthorne Professor of Teacher Education for Urban Schools, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College