We Can Do Better: There Is No Equity in Cognitive Red Lining

“How can we be surgical enough to make sure our children are doing math, science, reading, and thinking beyond grade level?”

Listen to The 180 Podcast: Zaretta Hammond: What is Culturally-Responsive Teaching? https://turnaround.medium.com/the-180-podcast-zaretta-hammond-what-is-culturally-responsive-teaching-1756d9129f38


By Don Allen, Editorial Opinion - Journal of A Black Teacher (2024)

We all hear a lot about the importance of educating kids in an equitable and inclusive environment. But despite those aspirations, far too many educators and policymakers engage in practices that foster inequity, beginning with what Zaretta Hammond calls Cognitive Red Lining (2021). In her 180 Podcast, Zaretta Hammond: What is Culturally-Responsive Teaching?, Hammond inferred, “We know what physical housing red lining is. In schools, we have cognitive red lining, which, on its surface, doesn't look racialized.”

I'm not here to cause any problems, and if I were, I would want to be the whole problem, so I ask, how can we be surgical enough to make sure our children are reading at grade level? If school site 'A' has proficiencies in math, science, and reading under 70%, this means organizational communication at the school site is not proficient. Radical innovations might not include a new 'act' but more of a return to nuanced leadership, looking into the blind spots, and talking about the data to create an intentional reset. 

Dr. Hammond, in her seminal work "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain" (2015), uses the term Cognitive Red Lining to refer to subtle yet pervasive ways through which educators and educational systems systemically deny certain groups of students the intellectual engagement and rigorous learning opportunities they deserve. Like redlining in housing, a pejorative practice whereby communities of color are denied access to certain neighborhoods through housing discrimination, cognitive redlining does the same in terms of marginalizing students by limiting them to areas of access that provide low-quality educational experiences. It usually targets students of color, poor, and English language learners, putting them on a path of underachievement and disengagement.

Cognitive Red Lining emanates from low expectations and deficit thinking. There exists bias, often subconscious, by teachers towards certain students whom they believe will never reach high levels of academic achievement. Such students are placed in lower-level classes and provided with a less challenging curriculum with non-stimulating coursework. This perpetuates a self-fulfilling prophecy in which students take in these low expectations and become disconnected from their schooling because they really do feel incapable of more.

Author Herb Kohl, in his powerful essay "I Won't Learn from You" (1995), calls this "not-learning," defining it as a conscious act on the part of students to resist learning when they feel undervalued or oppressed by the environment. Much of Kohl's work highlights how cognitive redlining exacts a psychological and emotional toll on students. When the students get the feeling that the teachers do not believe in their potential or respect the culture from which they come, they will opt to disengage as a way to resist. This is not a failure on the learner's part but a failure of the education system in creating an inclusive and conducive learning environment.

Kohl expounds on this point by introducing his idea of "when did you quit?" to show that students certainly do not start their educational career alienated. In fact, they arrive in school curious, enthusiastic, and full of desire to learn. It is the accumulated, manifold experiences of cognitive redlining that slowly chip away at their motivation and cause them to withdraw. This question, "When did you quit?" requires us to begin to understand how our educational practices have failed our students to begin to understand what we might do to re-engage them.

The first step to successfully fighting this is to recognize cognitive redlining for what it is and understand its impacts. Every educator should engage in self-reflection about personal biases and work toward the establishment of a culturally responsive classroom environment. Culturally responsive teaching practices, as asserted by Dr. Hammond, entail recognition of and value for students' cultural backgrounds, the integration of diverse perspectives into the curriculum, and instructional strategies that engage all students in rigorous learning with higher-order thinking.

Kohl and Hammond both focus much on cultural relevance and responsiveness in learning. While Kohl directs attention toward the resistant responses to oppressive systems, Hammond does so toward integration at neurological and cultural levels for the process of real learning. Together, therefore, they detail a whole vision of the difficulties against learning and how to get through those obstacles effectively.

Beyond this, schools and their districts must be committed to guaranteeing that all students have equal resources and opportunities for participation, including challenging coursework and extracurricular opportunities, and access to support services focused on tackling diversity issues. It further calls for the professional development of teachers in terms of skills and knowledge for culturally responsive teaching practices and challenging personal biases.

Parents and communities are also crucial in this. This can include advocating for policies and practices that treat students more equitably, supporting students throughout their education journey, and making sure schools are held responsible for delivering rigorous education that helps to end cognitive redlining.

Cognitive Red Lining is so pervasive it dims the potential of our students and entrenches educational inequality. We can start by discovering it, fighting it, and shifting the practice with culturally relevant teaching practices and equity in resources toward a schooling system that genuinely serves and uplifts our students. We at least owe it to our children to do better: to believe in their potential and to give them the opportunities to grow.