Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute

Call Directions Website Contact the organization

Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute Advancing Educational and Economic Equity in Silicon Valley

District averages cannot excuse gaps this large. In San Lorenzo, chronic absence reaches 39.0% for African American stud...
10/07/2026

District averages cannot excuse gaps this large. In San Lorenzo, chronic absence reaches 39.0% for African American students and 37.4% for Pacific Islander students, compared with 23.3% for White students. In that same region, 81% of Native students do not meet the math standard, alongside 61% of Black students and 59% of Hispanic students, compared with 34% of White students.

San Lorenzo needs to explain how it will bring these absence rates down and what it will change so more students meet the math standard. Families deserve to know what support their children will receive and whether it is working.

If housing instability, financial strain, or unreliable transportation help explain these outcomes, those explanations should shape how districts respond. Recognizing the barriers creates a responsibility to address them. Our State of Opportunity report will take this conversation further, examining Silicon Valley’s housing and affordability pressures and what they mean for students trying to attend school, keep up, and build a future in this region.

Join us at https://ow.ly/pyCW50ZVwxx

Across Santa Clara and Alameda counties, the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) has documented a consi...
09/16/2026

Across Santa Clara and Alameda counties, the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) has documented a consistent pattern: math outcomes weaken as students move into later grades, particularly in schools serving larger shares of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. In San Lorenzo, the share of students not meeting the math standard rises from 44.6% in third grade to 63.7% in eighth grade. In San Leandro, it reaches 66% in eighth grade and 73% by eleventh grade, while Edendale Middle School reaches 85.9% in seventh grade, the same education region most well-documented in our State of Opportunity report.

The next question is what sits behind these outcomes. Over the course of the coming weeks, we are examining the crisis more closely, grade by grade, school by school, and district by district. Our newly released State of Opportunity report documents the housing pressures shaping these communities. In addition, we will turn to teacher data, including the shrinking educator pipeline and the staffing conditions schools are being asked to operate under.

No single statistic explains a crisis this broad. At the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI), our role is to bring the data together and give the public a clearer picture of the conditions surrounding student outcomes. The evidence is there. What should change is a question for communities, educators, and policymakers to confront.

Read more at https://ow.ly/bKpB50ZO9re.

The affordability crisis plaguing our region is reaching our classrooms. At Edendale Middle in San Lorenzo, 92.4% of unh...
08/27/2026

The affordability crisis plaguing our region is reaching our classrooms. At Edendale Middle in San Lorenzo, 92.4% of unhoused students do not meet California’s Math standard. Across San Lorenzo Unified, that figure is 78.6%, compared with 54% of students overall. In San Leandro, 81% of unhoused students miss the standard. Alameda County has a crisis that it must confront.

It is telling that students already bearing the consequences of a system largely outside their control, those without a stable roof over their heads, are then falling this far behind in the classroom. Schools cannot treat housing instability as separate from the academic crisis facing Silicon Valley, especially when students living through it often lack the resources and stability their classmates can rely on. If we are serious about closing these gaps, we have to confront the conditions producing them. Our forthcoming SVEEI report will go much deeper into the region’s affordability crisis and what it is doing to educational opportunity.

When we began analyzing East Side Union High School District, some of the most troubling results came from James Lick Hi...
08/06/2026

When we began analyzing East Side Union High School District, some of the most troubling results came from James Lick High School, which raised a question that district-level averages rarely answer: where were these students coming from, and how long had they already been behind before they reached high school?

James Lick sits in the heart of the Alum Rock community, and the data from Alum Rock Union helps trace that story backward. Just 49.7 percent of students meet the English language arts standard, while 49.9 percent meet the mathematics standard. Alum Rock also serves a student population that is 77.5 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. By the time many of these students enter East Side Union, they are not beginning from the same foundation as students elsewhere in the county. They are carrying years of missed instruction and institutional failure with them.

Across the city, Saratoga Elementary reports 95 percent proficiency in English language arts and 95.7 percent in mathematics, while serving a population that is only 3.8 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. Students there begin with the academic momentum that makes later success far more likely.

It matters where a child begins. When students receive a strong foundation from their first years in school, each grade can build on the last. When that foundation is absent, the gap follows them from elementary school into middle school, then into high school.

We know the outcomes at James Lick did not begin at James Lick. They reflect a generation of students who entered school with fewer resources, who received less effective support, and who were allowed to fall further behind at every stage of the pipeline.

As such, SVEEI follows the data beyond district boundaries to understand where students first fall behind and why those gaps persist. Our work is about confronting those failures before another generation of East San José students inherits the same outcome.

In our latest analysis of college eligibility across the East Side Union High School District, we found that the charter...
07/27/2026

In our latest analysis of college eligibility across the East Side Union High School District, we found that the charter schools ESUHSD itself authorizes are sending low-income Hispanic students toward UC and CSU eligibility at nearly double the rate of many traditional campuses serving similar communities.

The district reviews and renews these schools, and sees their results come before its own board, so they must know what these schools are doing differently. The question that comes to mind is why it has not brought those same expectations, and academic outcomes to every student in East San José across its public schools. Read the full analysis at: https://ow.ly/BU4u50ZtzfZ

Over the past several months, our team examined two of the districts that sit at the sharpest socioeconomic fault lines ...
07/22/2026

Over the past several months, our team examined two of the districts that sit at the sharpest socioeconomic fault lines in Silicon Valley, Oakland Unified and East Side Union in San José, both serving communities pressed against some of the largest concentrations of private wealth anywhere in the country. What we found across enrollment, achievement, attendance, discipline, graduation, and college readiness is that this wealth passes almost entirely over the students sitting in these classrooms.

Among eleventh-grade Latino students, math proficiency stands at just 9.05 percent in Oakland Unified and 10.22 percent in East Side Union, while reading proficiency reaches only 27.91 percent in Oakland and 37.50 percent in East Side. These figures come from data points gathered through our own research, yet the outcomes they capture did not begin in eleventh grade.

As we examined the numbers more closely, it became clear that district-wide data can show the scale of the crisis without explaining where it began. The gaps appear in the earliest grades, grow throughout middle school, and eventually become the outcomes we see in high school, where too many students reach graduation without equal access to the college and career pathways that shape their futures.

That is where the next phase of this work begins. We are moving beyond district averages and looking more closely at the specific elementary and middle schools that feed into these high schools, particularly the schools where students appear to fall behind long before they arrive in ninth grade. We will examine the leadership inside those schools, the funding they receive, the staffing they maintain, and the intervention systems they use, because the source of these disparities will not be found in a district-wide average. It will be found in the schools where the gaps first take hold. The school-level investigation will identify the specific feeder schools where these gaps first take hold before students reach high school.

Swipe through the findings, and follow the full story at https://ow.ly/ICb950Zrzpf

At first glance, Evergreen Valley High School appears to prove that the East Side Union High School District knows how t...
07/15/2026

At first glance, Evergreen Valley High School appears to prove that the East Side Union High School District knows how to produce success. But once the school-wide averages are broken apart, the story changes. Asian students meet ELA standards at 87%, while Hispanic students do so at 43%. A campus celebrated as the district’s strongest is still producing an outcome for Hispanic students that ESUHSD would likely call a crisis if it represented the entire school.

Our latest data release examines what happens when a district mistakes the success of its highest-performing students for proof that every student is being served. The result is a version of success that looks impressive from a distance while racial academic separation continues inside the same school.

Read our full article now on Substack through the link in our bio.

The Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute is proud to welcome Aitanna Parker, MS, as an Equity Research Fellow.Ai...
07/06/2026

The Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute is proud to welcome Aitanna Parker, MS, as an Equity Research Fellow.

Aitanna brings a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach to equity research, with training in Technology and Information Management, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Information Systems. Her work focuses on how data, technology, and institutional systems shape the way students are understood and supported.

At SVEEI, Aitanna will assist with equity-centered research, data analysis, and storytelling that make educational barriers clearer and more actionable. Her perspective will strengthen our growing research capacity as we continue examining student access, institutional accountability, and long-term academic and economic mobility.

We are excited to have Aitanna join our team and contribute to SVEEI’s work across education, research, policy, and community impact.

Welcome to SVEEI, Aitanna. We are so glad you are here!

SVEEI is proud to welcome LaToya Williams, MBA, as Conference Director, joining the Silicon Valley Equity in Education I...
06/25/2026

SVEEI is proud to welcome LaToya Williams, MBA, as Conference Director, joining the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) at a moment when our work is expanding from research, analysis, and public advocacy into a larger convening strategy for Silicon Valley.

LaToya brings more than 25 years of experience in event strategy and hospitality, along with over a decade of community engagement, to the work of building spaces where education leaders, workforce partners, researchers, policymakers, funders, advocates, and community voices can move from conversation into coordinated action.

As Founder and CEO of LNW Enterprises, a woman- and minority-owned small business, LaToya has led events from concept through ex*****on, with deep experience in operational planning, client experience, stakeholder coordination, and the detailed work required to make high-impact gatherings feel purposeful, organized, and lasting.

At SVEEI, LaToya will help lead the planning and ex*****on of our 2027 SVEEI Disruption Conference, our inaugural convening focused on the educational and economic inequities affecting socioeconomically disadvantaged students and communities. LaToya’s leadership will help SVEEI build the public infrastructure for that work, turning our 2027 conference into a platform for visibility, strategy, accountability, and long-term systems change.

Welcome to SVEEI, LaToya. We are proud to have your leadership helping shape this next chapter.

SVEEI is proud to introduce Dr. Marina Luz Corrales, who joins the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) ...
06/22/2026

SVEEI is proud to introduce Dr. Marina Luz Corrales, who joins the Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute (SVEEI) as an Equity Research Fellow.

Dr. Corrales is an equity-centered researcher, educator, and librarian whose work focuses on first-generation, low-income students of color and the institutional practices that shape belonging, agency, and educational access.

With more than 15 years of experience in higher education, including teaching Chicana and Chicano Studies at San José State University, coordinating student success initiatives, and supporting research and instruction in academic libraries, Dr. Corrales brings deep expertise in qualitative inquiry, data-informed decision-making, and accessible learning resources.

At SVEEI, Dr. Corrales will support equity-centered research, assist in analysis, strengthen data storytelling, and contribute to future research releases examining student access, institutional barriers, educational opportunity, and the systems that shape long-term academic and economic mobility.

Welcome to SVEEI, Dr. Corrales!

Address

161 Mission Falls Lane
Fremont, CA
94539

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+14086202547

Website

, ,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Silicon Valley Equity in Education Institute:

Shortcuts

Share

Category