At the biennial International Conference on Urban Education (ICUE) Dr. Chance W. Lewis offered just one directive to the more than 500 participants who gathered in Cancun from Wednesday through Saturday. Every workshop, presentation, plenary session, he said, must include some solutions-based outcomes.
That's been a requirement for Lewis, the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the executive director of the university's Urban Education Collaborative, since the conference first launched in 2014.
Dr. Chance W. Lewis
Over 270 sessions were offered at the conference, including a keynote address by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, one of the world's most prolific educational researchers. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The widening racial disparities between Blacks and whites is dramatic, noted Ladson-Billings, who pointed out that in 2019, about 30% of Black children lived in poverty, with 1 and 4 Black children facing severe food insecurity. With regard to public schools, she noted that 45% of Black students attend high-poverty schools compared to 8% of white children.
During the COVID pandemic, a number of Black children were only able to access the internet through their smart phones.
"Think about remote learning," she said, adding that children struggled to receive their lessons via a small phone screen. "But that's the reality."
