Equity & Engagement in Education

This article was updated on February 24, 2026 to include new resources from an Education Law Center webinar "Practical Steps to Protect Immigrant Students' Rights in Pennsylvania Schools" held on February 20, 2026.  In recent weeks there has been a confirmed increase in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in our region impacting the [...]

The following piece was written by Tonya A. Burgess, M.Ed., a world language teacher at Butler Senior High School, following a year of professional development and coaching with the Consortium, focused on implementing human-centered design (HCD) in her classroom to support personalized learning and the district's Portrait of a Graduate competencies. Learn more about our [...]

I had the opportunity to talk with Greg Donnellan the other day about working with students with learning differences. Greg has spent 16 years working in various roles at the Lawrence School, a school dedicated to the service of students with learning differences including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and executive dysfunction challenges, such as ADHD. We [...]

At CPE, our focus is on how to best prepare students for life after high school. All of our partnerships, programming, and initiatives focus on how to help educators help their students answer our three questions: Who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I get there? (I’m sure this is not [...]

I acknowledge that what I am about to say is awkward, but I’m going to say it anyway. I have never felt the need to exclusively be around people who look like me or come from my background. I gave up on that early on in life. Growing up in the racially segregated Pittsburgh region, [...]

As we approach Martin Luther King Day (January 15th), it is important to reflect on how we share our country’s history with our students. Frequently, a few days (maybe even only a lesson) are spent celebrating the accomplishments of a person or the historical impacts of an event. The information that is shared is factual [...]

Introduction As we approach the much-anticipated holiday break, many of us in the education community are feeling a mix of excitement and dread. For me, just this month alone, my three-year-old twins have been sick four times (once with an 8-hour visit to the ER). On top of that, the extra load of planning for [...]

The term social-emotional learning (SEL) comes with a lot of preconceptions and misconceptions. Over time, we have heard people dismiss it as “warm fuzzy stuff” or “that’s just character education repackaged.” We’ve heard it used to help many, many students and educators. And we’ve heard it used as a weapon against students and educators as [...]

A number of worthy causes and celebrations are highlighted in the month of October. For example there is “International Day of the Girl'' and “National Coming Out Day” (both held on October 11). For the science geeks in the front row, where would we be without Avogadaro’s number and the subsequent “National Mole Day'' (October [...]

As the new school year begins, we are excited to kick off our first Culture of Belonging cohort! This work came about out of a need that district leaders have expressed over the past few years. Educators are seeing that the divides and misperceptions expressed in their communities are also showing up in the schools [...]