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For nearly six years, Reid Setzer has been at Young Invincibles, where he most recently served as director of public policy. Now, this one-time Jeopardy! runner-up is Ed Trust’s director of government affairs

Tucked away in the back of a dilapidated, blue and gray building in downtown Washington lies DC Central Kitchen. It may not look like much, but the bustling social venture that operates inside not only feeds thousands of needy people in the nation’s capital but it gives adults with high barriers to employment a second chance

It all started when a Catholic mother of four sons wrote a letter to the editor of the University of Notre Dame newspaper criticizing a group of young women who were wearing leggings to mass, claiming that the form-fitting pants are too much of a distraction for young men. In a report that my Ed Trust colleague Kayla Patrick co-authored, the National Women’s Law Center looked closely at dress code policies in schools in the nation’s capital and found, “[p]lain and simple, D. C. dress codes promote race and sex discrimination and pull students out of the classroom for no good reason — often through illegal suspensions. Where’s the outrage for Ayiana Davis, who was 16 when she was told by school officials that she couldn’t take off her jean jacket while waiting for the bus in the sweltering summer in D. C. because her top was strapless? The silence is deafening — but not surprising to Nicolle Grayson, Ed Trust’s director of communications , who wisely reminded me that “the media is more adapt [at telling] stories of injustice for rich White folk than people of color.

As I reflect on my role as an education equity advocate, I return to my educational and spiritual mentors who asked that I write or talk through my own schooling experience as an entry point to advance education equity. We can address this challenge by focused review of data on parent and student engagement, and by ensuring that school districts and the state are providing accurate and useable data for families to ask questions and take action on solution-based activities. In the last three years, Stockton Schools Initiative has worked closely with students, parents, and community advocates to understand the local funding formula and developed targeted solutions that will fund students equitably. Using educational data and a community-informed analysis, we approach our local, state, and national educational system to regain power and shift deficit ideology about historically underrepresented students in pre-K through college.