IU professors awarded grant to study equality

With his famous line in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," Thomas Jefferson highlighted America's early devotion to the ideal of equality. Equality has also been an intriguing issue for three IU professors who plan to use the $612,160 four-year grant they recently received from the Spencer Foundation to study equality in education and the public discourse surrounding it. \n"One of the things we know is that Americans place a very high value on equality," said Pam Walters, a sociology professor who will be working alongside Julia Lamber, a professor at the School of Law, and Jean Robinson, a political science professor.\nThe three will focus on the debate surrounding both race and gender equality in the educational reforms of Title IX, school vouchers, and school funding equalization in California, Florida, Kentucky, and Ohio. Lamber says that they chose those states to study because there were interesting differences in the way each approached the search for equality in education. \nFor example, a referendum to allow statewide vouchers was defeated in California while Florida has a statewide voucher system. Meanwhile, Cleveland has one of only two publicly funded voucher programs in the country even though vouchers are not a statewide program in Ohio, and Kentucky has no vouchers at all. \nThe grant does not start until August, but that is not slowing down these motivated professors who have already begun going through archives, oral histories and newspapers to review the public debate surrounding educational equality in the early 1970s and mid-90s.\nThe idea for their researched was spurred by a conversation amongst the three, who were already long time golf buddies, around the time of the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. \n"(We) began musing about how separate but equal was definitely unacceptable in terms of race and education, but how it seemed to be acceptable for making decisions about funding and availability for women and men in athletics and in education," Robinson said. \nThe study, titled "Political Culture, Equality Talk and Educational Policy Making", does not aim to decide which is the best way to fix inequality in the education system; however, it hopes to focus on what the public and policy makers really want in terms of equality. \n"What do we even mean when we say we are looking for educational equality? If we don't all agree on what the goal is, we will never get there," Lamber said. "We are particularly interested in the process of getting there."\nWhen asked to define equality, senior Vicki Kirby responded, "Equality is everybody being treated fair, the same." \nFellow senior Sean Davis replied to the same question saying that equality means "Everyone creating equal chances for each other." The subtle differences between those two responses from IU students demonstrate the point the three researchers want to make. \n"Equality takes on different meanings at different times and means different things to different groups," Walters said. "Specifics of the meanings that equality takes on in the public debate are really consequential in the policy making."\nIf their research does find greater clarity in the meaning behind the often vague characterizations of equality, Robinson envisions a positive impact for society. \n"If we can do that, then we might have a better chance of working out differences and coming up with policies that maximize equality for all different kinds of people"