Tag: Equity

West Wind Education Policy and the Creative Corridor Center for Equity Announce the Iowa Conference on Diversity Trainings

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West Wind Education Policy and the Creative Corridor Center for Equity (C3E) will host the virtual Iowa Conference on Diversity Trainings on July 14, 2021, from 12:30-4:30 pm. The conference will engage participants in discussions of ways to provide trainings and lead systemic change initiatives, in light of the new state law that addresses the scope of diversity trainings.

The conference is not designed to provide legal advice but rather is an opportunity for colleagues from PK-12 education, higher education, human and social services, public health and health care, philanthropy, nonprofits, government agencies — truly anyone who sponsors, delivers, or researches diversity trainings — to share insights, strategize, and collaborate to keep equity at the center of our work.

Continue reading “West Wind Education Policy and the Creative Corridor Center for Equity Announce the Iowa Conference on Diversity Trainings”

Equity Considerations for Social and Emotional Learning

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by Mandi Bozarth and Isaiah McGee

During the past several years, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has grown as a topic of educational programming and planning. Evidence shows us that implementing SEL can result in improvements to classroom academic success and school culture and climate. As we return to class this fall, many districts and buildings are considering a new emphasis on SEL practices as early as the first weeks of school to support students who have experienced disruptions to their education due to the pandemic. With the growth of SEL programming and implementation, we are also aware of challenges some systems face when SEL is implemented without considering equity. If implemented in a color evasive way, without considering differences in the experiences of students of color or without taking into account the impacts of implicit racial bias, SEL can have negative impacts on marginalized student populations.

Continue reading “Equity Considerations for Social and Emotional Learning”

19 Essential Books to Understand Race and Equity in Schools

Reading Time: 3 minutesBy Isaiah McGee

Many educators have been asking what they can read to better understand race, racism, and its impact on schools and the classroom. I compiled a list of 19 essential books that can help educators not only better understand the elusive, pervasive, and persistent impact of race on schools, but also provide them with skills to challenge and mitigate its influence and provide marginalized students, especially Black students, the best learning environment and experience.
Continue reading “19 Essential Books to Understand Race and Equity in Schools”

Racial Equity, COVID-19, and Our Schools

Reading Time: 5 minutesMany thanks to all our educators and education leaders who are doing everything you can to help your students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are pleased that equity is a primary consideration as K-12 systems across the country are pivoting to provide learning opportunities, food, and social connections to support students and their families during this crisis.

While many aspects of educational equity seem self-evident among the considerations that schools and school personnel are weighing, we have been asked many times,

How do we keep racial equity front of mind?

We will be offering a series of blog posts about equity considerations during this pandemic. What we offer here, in our first post on the subject, is what we consider to be the most important consideration when it comes to racial equity:

Do everything you can to avoid conflating race, poverty, and trauma.

Given the speed by which big decisions are being made in conditions of tremendous uncertainty, we ALL are going to be making assumptions about who is most vulnerable right now. This is inevitable. What research tells us about implicit bias is that our assumptions are informed by and they reinforce bias.

Those of us motivated to overcome bias in our everyday lives will want to regularly ask ourselves — whether reflecting on our own thinking, the decisions we are making, or the ways we are communicating — several questions:

  • “What assumptions am I making about my students of color?”

For example, consider that the upper middle class white student whose single parent is not handling the stress of the economic downturn may struggle to focus on school work, while the black student who has both parents working from home may be energized by new ideas they are encountering while following the curriculum their parents put together during the school closures.

  • “How do I know how my decisions will impact students of color?”

What evidence do I have that my students of color need something or can’t do something or will struggle with something? Who am I relying on for current information about my students? There is tremendous diversity among students of color and just because we think we know the family situation of one student does not mean we know it for all students. It is better to be modest and to recognize we have to make decisions with limited information.

  • “How can I ensure I am not reinforcing stereotypes and implicit biases about my students and their families in the ways I communicate about my decisions and actions?”

One of the most insidious problems with race in America is that we do not have to explicitly announce the race of students and their families when we are talking about helping marginalized community members for the message to trigger and reinforce implicit racial biases. It can be helpful to identify who the community LIKELY will assume a solution is targeted to and to be very careful in public communications that we do not reinforce these assumptions about who is at risk. Offer counterstories as much as possible. This helps us just as much as it helps our communities.

We absolutely must be prepared to support the students who are the most vulnerable and who will suffer during this pandemic. However, the national narratives about race and poverty in America feed assumptions that our vulnerable students are universally black or that our students in poverty are universally in harm’s way. These tendencies to lump students into categories will seep out in surprising ways among well-meaning educators and education leaders. While the correlation between poverty and race is too steep, it is not perfect. There are many people of color who are not poor; the conflation of the two is seriously problematic.

Similarly, many in the middle class in the US tend to think that students in poverty are universally facing trauma in their homes and communities. However, the original research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) did not indicate a difference in the prevalence of ACEs by family income. Thousands of students in poverty are highly motivated, work hard, and want to succeed in mainstream society. Thousands are in family units where a parent is home with them all of the time. Thousands have families keeping them intellectually stimulated during the school closures–often in more productive ways than working parents of wealthier students.

Absolutely, we need to think about systemic and personal challenges our students and their families will face during these unprecedented school closures. It helps to recognize, however, that we are very likely to fall into various “equity traps” in the assumptions we make regarding vulnerability.

Some things we might do to avoid these traps:

  • Talk openly about who we assume is likely to suffer and who might thrive in this time away from school. Ideally, have these conversations with a small team of colleagues and/or partners able to provide honest feedback to you and to others. Name race, poverty, and gender as we are talking about it seems a solution is targeted to. Do everything we can to problematize assumptions that inevitably will accompany our conversations and planning. Use that information to ensure we are solving real problems and that we are supporting EVERYONE who may face those problems, not just the ones we are conditioned to think about.
  • Be very careful in our public communications not to reinforce biased ideas about who is at risk. Actively provide counterstories when we are thinking and communicating about these topics. Seek out real examples of families of color who are leading the way and actively imagine others. (Research tells us that even just imagining counterstereotypes or counterstories can reduce the impact of implicit bias.) While scenario building requires us to imagine students who are suffering, we also must imagine students of color who are thriving. Keep reminding ourselves that we do not know what is happening for every student at home, and that we are here to support them all, no matter what.
  • Be prepared to ask and to be asked about the equity implications of the ideas we offer. Find a critical friend who can help catch us when we get caught in the cycle of deficit thinking, or when our actions or words perpetuate that cycle. This work is best done with people we already trust. Shared goals and norms also can pave the way for productive collaborative reflection on race.
  • Extend grace to one another and to yourself. You are doing the right work. If someone points out a potential concern with how we are articulating our thoughts, they do this because they assume positive intent and are taking responsibility for impact. (This is one of West Wind’s norms for engaging in racial equity work.) Thank them, pause to consider their perspectives, push back if we need (“silence breakers” can help with this), but work hard to not get bogged down in shame, guilt, or anger at our critical friends for bringing up something we feel is unflattering or incorrect.

Research on implicit bias tells us that it is important to vet our assumptions with others and to imagine counterstories to counteract the stories and images we have been bombarded with over the course of our lifetimes. This is vital to the process of inoculating our decision making against bias.

It is especially important during this pandemic.

References

Biernat, M., Manis, M., & Nelson, T.E. (1991). Stereotypes and standards of judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60. 4, 485–499.

Blair, I.V., Ma, J.e. & Lenton, A.P. (2001). Imagining Stereotypes Away: The moderation of implicit stereotypes through mental imagery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 81, No. 5, p. 828-841.

Boser, U., Wilhelm, M., & Hanna, R. (October 2014). The power of the Pygmalion Effect: Teachers expectations strongly predict college completion. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Devine, P.G., Forscher, P.S., Austin, A.J., & Cox, W.T. L. (2012). Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 48(6): 1267–1278.

DiAngelo, R. (N.D.). White Fragility Reader’s Guide. Penguin Random House: New York, NY. Accessed February 19, 2020, from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566247/white-fragility-by-robin-diangelo/9780807047415/readers-guide/

Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. (2015). Implicit Bias: State of the Science. Retrieved from http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/.

Lopez, Gerardo. (2001). The Value of Hard Work: Lessons on Parent Involvement from an (Im)migrant Household. Harvard Educational Review 71(3):417-437.

*This was originally posted on West Wind’s Educational Equity Resources Portal.

Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Racial Justice Advocates Through the Years

Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Racial Justice Advocates Through the Years

Reading Time: 3 minutesMLK quotation and nine pics of racial equity activists.

To honor Dr. King’s place in history and to acknowledge those who have worked and who continue to work toward racial justice, we are pleased to share these images of activists who inspire us. 

You will notice that some of these images are of leaders who clashed with Dr. King; others are of leaders who never met him. It is important to acknowledge the diversity of philosophies that have guided actions across the years toward the pursuit of racial justice, just as it is important to find ourselves within the legacy of struggle for civil and human rights. We have so much to learn!  Continue reading “Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., and Racial Justice Advocates Through the Years”

Equity in Personalized Learning

Equity in Personalized Learning

Reading Time: 2 minutesThis summer the International Association for Online Learning (iNACOL) and CompetencyWorks invited me to the 2017 National Summit on K-12 Competency-based Education to explore personalized learning and CBE. The Summit brought together experts and leaders from across the country to focus on 4 key areas: 1) quality, 2) equity, 3) meeting students where they are, and 4) systems and policies. Continue reading “Equity in Personalized Learning”

West Wind and Diversity Focus to Partner for Educational Equity

West Wind and Diversity Focus to Partner for Educational Equity

Reading Time: 2 minutesWest Wind Education Policy and Diversity Focus announce a new partnership, The Creative Corridor Center for Equity.

We invite you to collaborate with us!

Our communities have experienced tumultuous change in the past decade as our population has diversified, we weathered the 500-year flood, and we strive to bring 21st century practices to an effective 20th century education system. The Creative Corridor Center for Equity was created to develop a systematic, collaborative approach to overcoming challenges in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City corridor. Through partnerships that extend north to the Cedar Valley region and on to Minneapolis, MN, we expand the networks, time, talent, and treasure to support our youth here at home. Continue reading “West Wind and Diversity Focus to Partner for Educational Equity”

The Burden

The Burden

Reading Time: 4 minutesLast weekend I was reminded of the care and caution needed with raising young Black men.

My sons have been involved with a local Boy Scout troop for the last five years.  My eldest joined the scout troop at the beginning of sixth grade and my younger two sons followed suit.  Up to this point, I’ve never felt they were looked at or treated differently based on their race.  Until last Sunday. Continue reading “The Burden”

Recognizing Talent

Recognizing Talent

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis year, my youngest son was admitted into the district Extended Learning Program (ELP), a program for students identified as gifted and talented.  Almost immediately upon hearing the news, he remarked, “Wow…I’m the smartest Nyberg, besides you and Dad, of course.”  Ever since then, I’ve wondered about the messages we send students in some cases as early as second grade about talent and what it means for those who are not deemed “talented” what that may imply? Continue reading “Recognizing Talent”

Creating Risk

Creating Risk

Reading Time: 4 minutesMinnesota state officials recently released the Minnesota Readiness Study showing that children of color and children who live in poverty are “less likely to be considered ready for kindergarten”[1] than their White and middle class counterparts.  As we try to understand, I want to focus attention on the notion of what it means to be “ready” for kindergarten.

According to a 2010 report[2] summary, the Minnesota Department of Education defines readiness as:

The skills, knowledge, behaviors, and accomplishments that children should know and be able to do as they enter kindergarten in the following areas of child development: personal and social development; language and literacy; mathematical thinking; physical development; the arts.[3]

Although I understand given the pressure to produce a highly educated and qualified citizenry that there is such emphasis of skill and knowledge development for five year olds; I do believe that these indicators, don’t tell the full story.  Not only that, but I am even more alarmed when last year’s summary goes on to “[c]onclud[e] that the result of the School Readiness Study are predictive of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) proficiency outcomes at grade three, especially in reading and math…”[4]

Essentially this report, like so many others like it, indicates that poor children and children of color not only enter school behind, but are more likely not to catch up to their White and middle class peers even by third grade.  To go further, many education reports like these and the subsequent media coverage contribute to a narrative and mental model that lead people to believe that it is the fault of the parents, the home environment, the culture, or circumstances that no one can control that leads to such disparate outcomes.  This is implied due to the emphasis that these kids are behind even before they enter school.  However, for a moment, let’s suppose we take this at face value and agree children enter into kindergarten at different levels of “readiness” in terms of their skills and knowledge.  So what?  To me, the obvious solution is to teach them the skills they need to be “ready” for kindergarten.  Is that such a radical notion?  It is true that learning accumulates with some skills building from others, but does that mean that once behind, always behind?  I would guess that in a country like our own that prides itself on upward mobility and the self-making of each citizen, the rather obvious conclusion should be no.  Yet, that’s exactly what happens.  Why?

To answer this, I go back to one of the first texts I read as a graduate student, Shirley Brice Heath’s Ways with Words (1983)[5].  She studied three communities, Roadville, a predominantly White working class community; Trackton, a predominantly Black working class community; and the Townspeople, a more racially mixed middle-class community.  She examined the orientation and use of language that each community exhibited in their day-to-day interactions amongst each other, and especially with their young children and looked at how their relationship with literacy and language related to their children’s degrees of success in school.  Heath found that each set of students entered with different relationships, understanding, skills, and knowledge of literacy and that school heavily favored the orientation and skills that the Townspeople’s children brought with them to the detriment to the other students.  It wasn’t that children from Trackton and Roadville didn’t know, but that they had different ways with words.  Specifically Heath (1983) says, “The school’s approach to reading and learning establishes decontextualized skills as foundational in the hierarchy of academic skills,” (p. 353) which indicates the need to reassess how school approaches such skills and knowledge and examines who is privileged in this process and who is marginalized.  Without this understanding and without taking the time to examine the taken-for-granted knowledge and skills teachers bring from their own homes and then perpetuate in the classroom, the achievement gap will continue to exist.  As she says,

The school is not a neutral objective arena; it is an institution which has the goal of changing people’s values, skills, and knowledge bases.  Yet some portions of the population, such as the townspeople, bring with them to school linguistic and cultural capital accumulated through hundreds of thousands of occasions for practicing the skills and espousing the values the schools transmit…

In any case, unless the boundaries between classrooms and communities can be broken, and the flow of cultural patterns between them encouraged, the schools will continue to legitimate and reproduce communities of townspeople who control and limit the potential progress of other communities and who themselves remain untouched by other values and ways of life (p. 367-369).

My point is that such reports, while sounding the alarm are indicating all the wrong sources for the achievement gap.  It is not that students enter kindergarten deficit of skills, it’s that kindergarten in its current form is not created to recognize and honor the skills children bring with them and utilize those skills as a means of learning others.  It’s a lack of knowledge, interest, and skills built into the institution itself that fails to welcome all its citizenry with the same equitable embrace as those who best exhibit the institution’s own ideologies and ways of knowing and being.  Until we change that, I believe we will continue to create risk where none actually exists.


[1] See Tom Weber, “Achievement gap exists for kids even before kindergartenMinnesota Public Radio.

[2] Due to technical errors, the report from this year is inaccessible online; therefore, I used the summaries and results from last year’s report, which makes many of the same points.

[3] See School Readiness Study Summary found HERE.

[4] Also see the School Readiness Study Summary.

[5] Heath, Ways with Words Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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