Thrust onto the front lines of the desegregation battles of the 1960s as a teenager, Virginia Walden Ford took the lessons she learned early in life and carried them to decades of impact in the U.S. education system.

In his 50 years as an educator, Dr. Michael Lomax, president and CEO of UNCF, has witnessed expectations — and results — increase for Black, Latino, and low-income students. And while No Child Left Behind served as a catalyst for these expectations, we still have work to do.

While it's important that we tend to the immediate needs of our students and focus on how to reopen schools safely, we can't lose track of the need to improve our national education performance, writes Bush Institute Executive Director Holly Kuzmich.

Education policy — from school choice to funding to assessments — can help unlock access to opportunity for all, explains Derrell Bradford, Executive Vice President of 50CAN, in a conversation with Anne Wicks, the Ann Kimball Johnson Director of the Education Reform Initiative at the Bush Institute.

Presidential Leadership Scholar Jamila Thomas turned an initiative to increase academic achievement for Black students to an institutional program adopted statewide in Texas. But that win is only a first step in bringing equity.