Victoria Kim is dedicated to addressing the systemic challenges that lead to racial achievement gaps in K-12 education. Research has long supported the idea that these inequities yield devastating consequences such as lower graduation rates, higher justice system involvement, and billions of dollars in economic losses annually. This is especially true in our nation’s capital, where longstanding systemic barriers have led to dramatic achievement gaps between underrepresented minorities—specifically Black and Latino students—and their white peers.  

Through her work with the Mayor’s Office of Racial Equity in Washington, D.C., Victoria provided research-based recommendations to promote equitable outcomes for Black and Latino students in the district. Victoria recommended a culturally responsive framework rooted in racial equity that makes learning more relevant and effective for students by centering their lived experiences and unique backgrounds. This approach can help narrow racial achievement gaps by ensuring that curriculum and instruction resonate with students’ lives, increasing engagement and promoting equitable outcomes.  

Both low in cost and highly adaptable across contexts, culturally responsive frameworks utilize the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning more relevant and effective. By ensuring teachers and other personnel have the same core understanding of culturally responsive teaching while still retaining enough autonomy to deliver curriculum in a way that is tailored to meet the needs of specific students, Victoria’s recommendation acknowledges the power of centering affected populations throughout policy development and implementation.  

Victoria offered insight into how her time at the Batten School influenced her work. “Since middle school, I knew that I wanted to work with youth in some capacity, but throughout my time at UVA, I started to understand more about the role that education for young people has to play in their ability to achieve socio-economic mobility.” Noting the value of diverse perspectives, Victoria spoke about the support she received from Batten professors. “My goal for this APP was for it to be a starting point about what it means to fight for racial equity. Professor Michele Claibourn was able to make that space for Batten students in a way that was extremely thoughtful and uplifting... And then in communicating my ideas with my APP instructor Professor Gerard Robinson, I was able to fill in gaps about where my argument was lacking, and he was able to talk me through some of the roadblocks and coming up with solutions to mitigate them.”  

Building upon that faculty support and her own lived experiences, Victoria’s work with the D.C. Office of Racial Equity highlights the adaptability and importance of culturally responsive frameworks across diverse educational contexts, contributing to a growing body of evidence on the importance of supporting educators to promote both equity and excellence.  

Like Victoria, Quinn Feeney centered both long-term impact and equity throughout her APP. Working with the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), Quinn tackled the pressing issue of high teacher turnover rates in Virginia’s subsidized childcare centers.  

Driven by inadequate compensation, insufficient benefits, and lack of professional support, high rates of teacher turnover can jeopardize the stable, high-quality teacher-child relationships that are crucial for positive student outcomes. These challenges mirror those faced by educators throughout the K-12 system, where teacher shortages and high attrition rates undermine student learning, exacerbate existing inequities, and perpetuate cycles of poverty and disadvantage.  

To address the complex challenge of teacher turnover in Virginia’s subsidized childcare centers, Quinn proposed a grant program that would increase their leaders’ access to existing professional development training provided by the state, which would enable them to better assist teachers. With administrative feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and fundability in mind, Quinn also recommended revisions to existing regulations to provide teachers with additional time off and facilitate ease in aligning practices with K-12 standards. She cited the support of Batten professor Dan Player, along with EdPolicyWorks’ Kate Miller-Bains, as a critical driver of the positive experience she had throughout her APP. “It was really a group effort, and the collaboration is what helped me the most. They were willing to meet with me and talk through what I was thinking, and I could rely on them to have genuine conversations about how to refine my work while I drove the process.” 

Quinn first became passionate about education policy through an assignment in her 12th grade Spanish class, where she began to realize the complexities that lead to educational disparities in the U.S.  That experience led her to UVA’s Youth and Social Innovation program, and later, to Batten’s MPP program. Building upon her passions and the foundation she developed at UVA, one of Quinn’s main takeaways was the importance of developing clear causal chains from problems to solutions. She considered the inputs of high-quality childcare and ultimately leaned into a growing body of evidence that demonstrates the benefits of state-level supports for teachers.  

“It’s apparent that teachers are the heart of education, and while there’s great work being done at the federal and local levels, state policy helps to bridge the gap.” By advocating for evidence-based policies that prioritize the well-being and retention of early childhood educators, Quinn’s work contributes to the advancement of a more sustainable childcare system and provides insights into challenges facing education more broadly. 

For her APP, Torie Foss focused on approaches to combatting chronic absenteeism in Richmond Public Schools (RPS). In 2022, one in four RPS students were absent for more than 10% of the school year, resulting in dramatic social and educational consequences for affected students. Despite significant progress made by RPS, students continue to be chronically absent, threatening both the success of the students and the accreditation of schools in the area.  

Supported by the research expertise and deep political knowledge of Batten's faculty members Annie Rorem and Craig Volden, Torie’s work built upon the successes of RPS staff in promoting equity, excellence, and engagement amongst the division’s students. Torie leaned into evidence showing that unexcused absences quadruple between 8th and 9th grade as students begin to make decisions about their attendance on their own, focusing her APP on this pivotal timeframe in student attendance.  

By delving deeper into exploration of chronic absenteeism research and the specific challenges facing RPS, Torie recommended a “Check-in, Check-out” program that can boost student attendance while offering insights into student learning outcomes across contexts. “I recommended this program because it fits really well within their current administrative procedures, it provides more data on when students are missing classes, and it distributes the burden of responsibility to teachers, families, and administrators. It’s more of a community-based effort, which Richmond really leans into.”  

She also spoke to the importance of ensuring policy solutions are tailored to local contexts. “Data can increasingly tell us what works, and why people are absent, but that varies frequently across counties and even schools within counties. You have to meet schools where they are in terms of time, space, available resources, and the external factors impacting their students.” 

Guided by Batten’s curriculum focused on rigorous research methods and data analysis, Torie’s work demonstrates an acute understanding of the considerations necessary for determining how policies specific to individual localities might be applied elsewhere. “I’m a big believer that education provides opportunities, especially for disadvantaged communities, to grow and thrive and break out of some of the systemic cycles of poverty that they often find themselves in. If I can make the world a better place by helping others make the world a better place, then I can only see a positive cycle of change where all those little things keep building on each other. Teachers are the ones starting these cycles and putting the work in, and I think that’s true in any context.”