A Seat at the Table With Education Week: Leading for Racial Equity

Jennifer Cheatham is a senior lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and co-chair of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) where she focuses on leading for equity and transformational change in urban school districts. Before joining the faculty at HGSE, she served for six years as the superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin. Previously, she served as the chief of instruction and a chief area officer for Chicago Public Schools and the executive director of curriculum and instruction for San Diego City schools. She began her career as an 8th grade English teacher.

John B. Diamond is the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education and a professor of education in educational leadership and policy analysis and a faculty affiliate in Afro-American studies and educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. A sociologist of education, he studies the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, including how educational leadership, policies, and practices shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes. In his most recent book, Despite the Best Intentions (Oxford University Press, 2015), which he co-authored with Amanda E. Lewis, he explores how racial inequality is perpetuated even in a well-resourced, racially diverse high school. Diamond is currently writing a new book, Defending the Color Line (Harvard Education Press), on race, white supremacy, opportunity hoarding, and Black education.