The Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity (Flood Center) will serve as a hub to identify and connect organizations, networks, and leaders to address issues of equity, access, and opportunity in education across North Carolina. The Flood Center is born out of the findings and recommendations of the Forum’s Study Group XVI: Expanding Educational Opportunity (2016), co-chaired by Dr. Flood, as well as the Forum’s Color of Education partnership, which aims to achieve racial equity in education across North Carolina through building connections and engagement across fields of research, policy and practice. The Flood Center aims to continue this work by informing discussions on policies impacting equity & social justice, supporting and advancing equity-focused educator programming, and promote discussions around how schools are funded at the local and state levels, in hopes of achieving equity, access, and opportunity for each and every young person in North Carolina.
Vision
The Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity & Opportunity envisions an education system that provides every student in North Carolina with access to equitable, culturally responsive, and high-quality educational opportunities that lead to success in college, career, and citizenship.
Mission
The Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity & Opportunity strives to work collaboratively to take action toward addressing issues of systemic racism by advocating for structural changes in policy and practice to build an equitable education system that meets the social, emotional, and academic needs of NC’s diverse student population.
Background
To expand, deepen, and elevate our policy and programmatic work centered on educational equity, in October 2020, the Forum launched the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity (Flood Center) through a catalytic grant provided by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Sandra and Peter Conway to operationalize the Center. The Flood Center’s namesake is Dr. Dudley Flood, an educator and champion of school integration in North Carolina. In the years following the Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated school desegregation in the United States, Dr. Flood and his long time colleague, Dr. Gene Causby (1934 – 2014), traveled to every corner of the state to unite divided communities and work toward integrating our public schools. His legendary commitment to school integration and his belief that every child deserves an equitable educational opportunity will serve as the foundation and beacon for the work of the Flood Center. Dr. Flood is a long-time Board member of the Forum.
The work of the Flood Center will leverage our strengths and knowledge gained from the Forum’s Study Group XVI Report: Expanding Educational Opportunity in North Carolina and the Color of Education Initiative to partner with schools and districts to make tangible progress toward educational equity and opportunity. We seek to build on these ongoing efforts and our role as a statewide convener of diverse stakeholders to create opportunities for system-wide changes that will help to advance equity for communities and populations directly impacted by systemic inequities.
About Dr. Dudley Flood
Dr. Dudley Flood is an educator and champion of school integration in North Carolina. In the years following the Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated school desegregation in the United States, Dr. Flood traveled to every corner of the state to unite divided communities and work toward integrating our public schools. His legendary commitment to school integration and his belief that every child deserves an equitable educational opportunity will serve as the foundation and beacon for the work of the Forum’s new Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity.