About IRRPP
The Institute for Research on Race & Public Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago promotes and coordinates engaged research on racial and ethnic justice in the U.S.
Our Mission
Our mission is to increase society’s understanding of the root causes of racial and ethnic inequality and to provide the public, organizers, practitioners, and policymakers with research-based policy solutions. To fulfill that mission, IRRPP funds research on race and ethnicity, trains scholars to participate in policy discussions, collaborates on social justice projects with community organizations, and holds events exploring the link between policy and racial and ethnic injustice.
Support IRRPP’s work by making an online gift
Event Calendar
Writing Beyond the Academy: Understanding Trade Publishing
Moya Bailey: Misogynoir in Medicine
Engineered Conflict: Structural Violence and the Future of Black Life in Chicago
Less is More: How to Scale Back Our Manuscript Goals & Still Do Good Work
The Three Rs of Education Across Chicagoland: Racism, Resistance, & Reform
From the federal government’s stated goal of dismantling the Department of Education and the movement for school choice with its push towards vouchers to the language of parental rights, the language of public education has shifted dramatically in recent years. School policies at the local, state, and federal level have been critical in shaping the landscape of public education; yet, analysis and debates about public education often focus on the achievement gaps of Black, Brown, and other minority students when compared to white students. While important, the focus on inequality in educational outcomes obscures the inequitable inputs that lay the foundation for these outcomes in the first place. In this report, we shift the focus to education policies and our school funding structure, two critical inputs of education, and assess their role as primary drivers of inequity in public schools in Chicago and Illinois.
