Dirk Tillotson

Sadly, Dirk was killed by an intruder in his home on October 1, 2021. The educators and educator communities he worked with over the years were beset with grief and sadness in response to this senseless event. He will always be remembered for his dedication and commitment to changing the educational possibilities for all youth, particularly in the communities he worked in. Indeed, a very sad event where the life of a "warrier for equity" was taken from us far too early. Here, below, is what Dirk wrote for this page prior to this death:
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My parents moved to a high-performing school district and we were the first Black family on the block—one of the few flies in the buttermilk in the school. This embedded in me a desire to create academically high-quality schools where students don’t have to check their identities at the door.
Fast forward to the present day. I have an adult son. I’ve helped start or run dozens of schools. I’ve lived around the country and the world, advocated for countless families, and seen the good bad and the ugly in public education. This started with my own education, where I did receive strong academic skills, and the doors that opened for me as I struggled through my own drama.

Inequity is the hallmark of American education. The best and worst schools can sit miles apart, often separated by artificial district boundaries. And students who need and deserve the most tend to get the least, while the privileged magnify their advantages. That’s the system, I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

This was crystal clear when I worked in the 80’s at group homes and the schools associated with them. These children were being trained for institutions. And I don’t mean universities.
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Since then I have been working for over 30 years supporting communities and families in developing their own schools and holding accountable and changing school systems. We support communities in telling their own stories and finding their own answers. That can mean helping develop community schools in Oakland, New Orleans, NYC or Doha. It also means working with community to change systems and get more resources for our most underserved families, such as our State of Black Education in Oakland work or our more recent digital divide success. Solutions come from the community, we need to listen, support, translate into policy, coalition build, and change systems and outcomes.

Great School Voices
State of Black Education
Citizen Education - Access Denied Podcast Series