Edquity Collective Team

For educators and school leaders, conversations about equity often focus on student outcomes, staffing diversity, or curriculum reform. But the work of Dr. Tom Drake asks practitioners to examine a deeper and often less visible question: How do racialized perceptions shape who is viewed as legitimate leadership inside schools? Drawing from his experiences as a teacher and leader in Detroit, New York City, and Massachusetts, Dr. Drake’s research explores the relationship between race,...

For Dr. Omar Hakeem, education has always been rooted in a simple but transformative belief: students should not merely experience school—they should help shape it. In Episode 8 of Coffee with the Doctors, Dr. Hakeem reflected on a career that has stretched from high school English classrooms to international fellowships and now into educational public media through Detroit Public Television and the Michigan Learning Channel. Across each role, one thread has remained constant: honoring...

Dr. Shayla Young’s work offers a powerful lens on what it means to build an education system that actually supports students—not just in theory, but across the full span of their lives. Her path into education didn’t begin in a classroom, but in social work and youth development, where the goal was simple: help people. That grounding continues to shape how she understands systems today—not as abstract structures, but as lived experiences that either support or fail the young people moving...