Nearly Half a Million Dollar Study of Race-Conscious Education Policies

January 23, 2023

The Regents of the University of California at Berkeley announced a Spencer Foundation $499,075 grant for “Race-conscious education policies and adaptive anti-discrimination in a divided, multiracial democracy” to a team of principal investigators, which includes Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Educational Leadership, VCU School of Education.

The Spencer Foundation is a prestigious national foundation with a track record of improving educational outcomes, research, and knowledge around education issues (through its foundation work and several funding programs).

“We are honored by this significant investment in better understanding adaptive anti-discrimination,” said Siegel-Hawley.  “We define this as the strategies, collaborations, and policy formation to resist civil rights rollbacks and racist backlash in education. This work will deepen our understanding about how adaptive anti-discrimination strategies unfold, and how these strategies might manifest in policies and practices that disrupt racism in public education.”

Dr. Siegel-Hawley’s research examines the scope and dynamics of school segregation and resegregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, along with policies for promoting intentionally integrated schools and communities. Siegel-Hawley has published numerous articles dealing with these topics in journals like Teachers College Record, the Harvard Educational Review, Educational Researcher and the Urban Review. She is also the author of two books, When the Fences Come Down: 21st Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (UNC Press, 2016) and A Single Garment: Creating Intentionally Diverse Schools that Benefit All Children (Harvard Education Press, 2020). Siegel-Hawley teaches courses examining how and why equal educational opportunity is distributed so unequally across urban, suburban and exurban districts. She is a native of Richmond and a proud graduate of and former teacher in Richmond Public Schools.

About Dr. Genevieve Siegel-Hawley
https://soe.vcu.edu/.../first--last-name-301656-en.html

Spencer Foundation
https://www.spencer.org/

Spencer Foundation Large Research Grants
https://www.spencer.org/grant_types/large-research-grant