MMEP works with communities, school districts, colleges and universities as well as departments of education on a local and national level to bring conscious awareness regarding educational inequities to challenge, renew, and transform systems and structures that provide education to students of color, American Indian and new immigrant students. Our research, convening, and policy analysis aims to transform paradigms of knowing and engaging these historic and new minority populations through a process of inquiry, new knowledge creation, and social action – all leading to transformation in delivery of instruction, education leadership thinking, and associated practices.

MMEP views its charge as producing some of the most innovative work in education equity, and thus, its research addresses important gaps in scholarship and policy about the subject. It seeks to provide comprehensive analysis of education equity measures and the difficult contexts in which practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders engage one another. Clearly, the field of education equity bridges several disciplines including: law, education, public policy, economics, demography, intercultural communications, sociology, and psychology.

Considering this, MMEP works to develop a more robust and nuanced understanding of the nexus of these fields as they relate to fostering durable education equity. We identify issues in each of these fields that shed ample light on different dimensions of education equity, and as such merit in depth inquiry and analysis.

We collaborate with colleagues around the state and nation-wide to help broaden the pool of expertise that we bring to bear on questions under scrutiny. Our primary goal is to build the capacity of policymakers, practitioners, and parents/parent surrogates and the larger community to address challenges posed by the persistent educational disparities that exist between students of color, American Indian and new immigrant students of color on the one hand, and their white counterparts on the other. We believe that if policymakers are to design measures to redress or remedy the massive inequities that are the underlying causes of achievement disparities, their work ought to be informed by evidence; and we seek to contribute to that effort.

Moreover, because policymaking occurs in a complicated and fluid environment, policymakers can only make informed judgments when they are equipped with both research-based knowledge and tools that distinguish competing priorities, while at the same time providing the reasoning behind those choices. Our research produces a variety of shorter publications that are narrowly targeted on specific aspects of education equity and integration. These periodic papers aim to shed ample light on issues, which are typically not addressed elsewhere.