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Explore our Youth Storyteller’s Poem “I Can’t Breathe”

The Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity at Georgetown Law is excited to share a new animated video that brings to life the poignant poem “I Can’t Breathe” by Makayla Rivera, our esteemed Youth Storyteller in Residence.  Makayla’s poem focuses on young people’s experiences navigating the presence of police in schools, offering a compelling narrative on the realities faced by students of

Yet Unfulfilled, the Promise of Title IX: Let Girls Learn

Title IX was enacted over 50 years ago, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Recently, the Biden administration proposed changes to the Title IX regulations, which could strengthen protections against sex discrimination in education. Yet, girls still learn in environments that are not safe or affirming, and student survivors are too often

‘A Battle for the Souls of Black Girls’

Black girls are viewed by educators as more suspicious, mature, provocative and aggressive than their white peers, said Rebecca Epstein, the executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and an author of the first robust study of “adultification bias” against Black girls. The study found that Black girls as young as 5

Schools Get Graded on Racial Equity

Holding districts accountable and closing the racial achievement gap is the long game, but the first step is proving the problem’s scale. “People want to hear about the evidence,” says Rebecca Epstein, executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, noting that raw DoE data isn’t adequately disaggregated by race and gender.

Why the approval of the JCPS Females of Color STEAM Academy brought me to tears

In a 2017 research article from the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law, “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls Childhood,” authors Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake and Thalia Gonzalez wrote that often times black girls are seen as being older, louder and more difficult…I can speak from personal experience. I was always

Protect Black Girls Before It’s Too Late

From a young age, adults hypersexualize and adultify black girls; they’re seen as more mature than their white counterparts and, because of this, adults fail to protect them. The lack of protection allows us to become an ignored demographic; this leads to a world of danger for growing black girls. Read the Full Article at