SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Parent Teacher Home Visits Executive Director Gina Martinez-Keddy issued the following statement on the Supreme Court affirmative action decision:

We are profoundly disappointed and disheartened by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The decision effectively guts affirmative action and seizes an arrow from our collective quiver to advance equity in education in the United States.

In a ruling divided sharply along ideological lines, the conservative majority found that the universities discriminated against White and Asian American applicants by applying race-conscious policies to benefit applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.

At Parent Teacher Home Visits, we work with K-12 school districts around the nation, most of which have high-need and Title I schools. Our work is to strengthen the relationship between those schools and their communities – in service of student success. For 25 years, we’ve witnessed the academic and whole-school benefits reaped where our model of home visits is practiced. One outcome we’ve been particularly proud of is that high school students who receive home visits engage in more college-seeking behaviors, such as applying to two- and four-year schools, taking college entrance exams, and working with school counselors to prepare for higher education. The Supreme Court’s tone-deaf decision is an attempt to slam the door on that progress, but we must not lose hope.

Affirmative action policies have been instrumental in addressing the historical and systemic inequities that persist in our institutions, including education. But it’s never been enough to eliminate the disparities that persist to this day. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, this decision “cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

In K-12 education, we continue to grapple with underfunded schools, criminalization of students, pushout, and dividing walls that prevent healthy collaboration with families and community resources. These issues place unnecessary barriers along the path to higher education for students. Moreover, this ruling could derail efforts to diversify the teacher workforce—a factor critical to motivating K-12 students of color to aspire to a college education. If fewer students of color are able to pursue the educator profession, the effects of this decision could ripple for decades to come.

Although this ruling applies largely to college admissions, we’re concerned that other institutions will take cues from it and effectively turn back the clock on racial progress by 60 years. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted, “Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

We are better as a nation when our communities and schools reflect all of us. Increased access to college widens the path to a more prosperous future for students and their families. The implications of this decision are numerous and create an imperative for us and our partners to stay the course of crafting a more inclusive, collaborative, and just education system. We call on our friends in the advocacy and policy spaces in education to double down and use all the tools at our disposal to dispel misconceptions about affirmative action, make alternative paths more visible, and keep up the good fight for education equity in all its forms.