Gloria Ladson-Billings

Who is Gloria Ladson-Billings?

Gloria J. Ladson-Billings is an American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education and researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She is currently Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs. Ladson-Billings is known for her groundbreaking work in the fields of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Critical Race Theory. Ladson-Billings work The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children is a significant text in the field of education. She was born in Philadelphia, Pa., and was educated in the Philadelphia public school system. Ladson-Billings was the president of the American Educational Research Association in 2005. During the 2005 AERA annual meeting in San Francisco, Ladson-Billings delivered her presidential address, "From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools," in which she outlined what she called the "education debt", highlighting the combination of historical, moral, socio-political, and economic factors that have disproportionately affected African-American, Latino, Asian, and other non-white students.