Educators As “Equity Warriors”

American ideals venerate equal opportunity in education, implicitly tasking teachers with reducing structural disparities in student achievement based on characteristics like race and income. However, we have limited insight into how educators think about educational inequality, and prior evidence suggests that teacher biases contribute to unequal learning opportunities and outcomes. This article presents a conceptual framework and novel survey data from approximately 2,000 teachers to test whether teachers who place higher value on reducing inequality and feel more empowered to close structural gaps are more willing to make trade-offs in pursuit of equity goals. We find that although most teachers believe addressing inequality is important and feel empowered to do so, many teachers prefer strategies aligned with helping low-achieving students over targeting racial and income-based gaps. This presents a barrier to reducing structural inequalities, which we situate within contemporary understandings of the persistence of racial and socioeconomic inequality.