The National Latino/a Education Research Agenda Project (NLERAP) an organization of experienced education researchers with an emphasis on Latino/a education. The project is a collaborative effort with people from several universities across the United States. NLERAP conducted focus groups nationwide to determine the issues Latino/a families face and the implications for education.
In 2000, a national network of educators, community activists, university scholars, and other educational stakeholders within the broader Latino/a community joined to form the National Latino Education Research Agenda Project (NLERAP). The purpose was to engage in a consensus‐building dialogue concerning the educational crisis confronting our communities across this nation and, in particular, an actionable research agenda that would address this reality. After a series of regional meetings, NLERAP’s National Advisory Board developed and published a research agenda (NLERAP, 2003) that outlines the framework for the use of participatory and collaborative research approaches focused on influencing the experiences, progress, and outcomes of schooling for Latino/a youth. In addition to the research agenda document, the project also produced an academic volume (Pedraza and Rivera, 2005) that outlines a community approach to the investigation of schooling for Latinos/as. In conjunction with the release of this volume, a press conference was held in Washington, D.C. that addressed an array of concerns related to Latino/a educational outcomes (Viadero, 2005). All of this prior work culminates and finds expression in a decision made by NLERAP’s National Advisory Board on January 31, 2009, to pursue a national‐level initiative termed the Teacher Education Institute (TEI) initiative. Since Fall 2009 the Texas Center for Educational Policy, under the direction of Dr. Angela Valenzuela, has housed the NLERAP national office. Regional work is underway that is centered around the following six states: Texas, Arizona, California, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York.
This blog is developed by, and for, participants in NLERAP’s Northeast Regional (NLERAP-NE) group. Our regional director is Pedro Pedraza (ppedraza@hunter.cuny.edu), from Hunter College, City University of New York and the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños
Relevant Sources:
- Pedro Pedraza, Melissa Rivera, and National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project, Latino education: An agenda for community action research (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005). Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780805849875/
I am grateful to Dr. Angela Valenzuela who told me about your most important organization. I am an elder, and was just admitted to CU Denver Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in Latina@ Communities. Anything to do with educational policies and Latinx and Native Americans…I want to learn more about