Tanishia Lavette Williams

Forging a pathway in education stratification, Tanishia fuses social science methods to examine the causes, consequences, and remedies of racial, gender, and class inequality in public schools. Her current research exposes the varied tensions, contradictions, inclusions, and exclusions that coexist in public education, focusing on policy interventions meant to increase student achievement among the marginalized. Her scholarship and practice, as well as her experience as a teacher, principal, executive director, and superintendent in school systems undergoing extensive reform, underscore her ability to elevate education research by connecting praxis and theory. Her contributions to school-based pedagogues and contemporary literature leverage the historicity of race relations within the law with modern policy and infrastructures that impact public education. Advancing the literature at the intersections of education, stratification, and policy, her scholarship examines how biases can permeate systems via sociocultural norms and laws, resulting in the subordination of minorities through racialized hierarchies.