A while back, we were conducting an qualitative listening assessment for a school district. During a listening group session — we did the listening, and community members did the talking — one parent offered a perspective that has stuck with us:
Teachers are working really hard already, she said, “I’m afraid they’re going to have to start learning how to teach Black kids and not have enough time and energy left over to teach my kid.”
This parent was expressing a concern about the teacher’s capacity to deliver on the public promise of a good education for her child. In the same breath, though, she was insinuating an utter disregard for “Black kids,” casting them aside as nothing more than impediments to her daughter’s opportunities for success.
Do we appreciate that she named her fear out loud? Absolutely. Fears can be confronted and overcome only after they’re brought to light. When we at APC Leadership Collaborative do our job well, we help people surface and challenge their fears.
That includes us, too. Equity work is more than a checklist of learnings to complete. Every project we complete requires fresh introspection. Humans develop patterned ways of responding to situations, and to alter those patterns takes hard work. Because the work is hard, we constantly have to examine (and potentially even disrupt) the ways we’ve conducted our work in the past.
Out of all the reexamining, we’ve arrived at a set of guiding beliefs to ensure the larger goal of safe, positive and effective learning environments always stays in sight. They’ve arisen organically from our work in schools. As we work with more and more educators across the country, we see the same story unfold everywhere. Teachers are dedicated to teaching kids (almost without exception), yet the same gaps in student engagement and success nevertheless persist. In bridging those gaps, we must also bridge the gap between our intentions of equitable education and the reality of the conditions we create.
These guiding beliefs keep us pointed at that ever-present north star of truly safe, positive and effective learning environments. They also help ensure we’re prepared to dig into people’s fears and discover their core concerns. That includes the mother mentioned above. Clothed as it is in bald-faced indignation, hers is a deceptively complex fear. We ourselves can’t be afraid to engage her fears.
Five Guiding Beliefs To Achieving Equity in Education
Belief #1: The fundamental opportunity in equity work is helping adults to grow and change so that they can better support students to learn, grow and develop.
As adults, we can get wrapped up in the idea that learning new things is scary. Taking risks is scary. And yet we ask our kids to raise their hands, ask questions, seek out guidance, and own up to their mistakes. In other words, we ask them to show up ready to learn. Creating spaces where adults can do the same is part and parcel of conducting equity work.
Belief #2: No educator entered the field with the desire to create inequity, but inequitable systems persist because of gaps between our intentions and the actions we take and conditions we provide.
Student success data is good at revealing gaps, but it doesn’t necessarily reveal the systemic challenges at play.
Too often, achievement gaps get blamed on the student or the family: The child just isn’t showing up, and the parents just aren’t doing x, y, and z.
Also too often, the full weight of the solution gets placed on the teacher: English scores are just fine, so you math teachers need to fix whatever’s wrong with the school’s math scores.
Almost without fail, pairing quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis reveals underlying issues that we all can work to mend. Quantitative analysis tells us there is a problem. The qualitative analysis provides deeper understanding of the challenges, giving those affected the opportunity to talk about their experiences, shaping the way we respond.
Belief #3: Systemic change requires active engagement of all levels of a system, and the most powerful change is possible when people work across levels of hierarchy and across differences.
The education system is full of different vantage points and responsibilities. Change doesn’t have to come exclusively from the top down. Nor does it have to be presented as a leap of faith or a cure-all. It requires all parties to come together and find common ground on which to build. You start the work wherever there’s a spark. You start with listening to and valuing all these unique vantage points. That’s the surest path to gaining greater understanding of the problem and devising a more robust means of addressing it.
Belief #4: All change requires practice. Systems change when the people in that system choose something to shift, practice it, and engage in feedback loops to reflect and adjust their change efforts.
Creating safe, positive and effective learning environments is a process, not a single calendar appointment. It’s a practice, not a thought exercise. True learning, as opposed to mere knowledge acquisition, is about being persistent in adopting new ways of approaching problems. Like implicit biases, old habits die hard. It takes practice to change them.
Too often we implement a change and then move on to the next challenge. For a change to result in tangible good, the change must be regularly reexamined. Follow-up quantitative data, experiential surveys, and qualitative interviews must play a role. This is the feedback loop.
Belief #5: The single most fundamental change that schools can make to create safe, positive and effective learning environments is to base decisions on the needs of students rather than the desires of adults.
Many educators feel ill-equipped to talk about race. Many feel uncomfortable for fear of “saying the wrong thing.” The fact of the matter is that you will say the wrong thing. You will make a mistake. It’s imperative that we push ourselves to sit with that discomfort, because a child’s future is more important than an adult’s comfort. Never is that truer than when we’re talking about education. Why? Because educators are meant to provide an education for all students. We need to be able to talk frankly about who is succeeding, and we need to be able to listen and respond to the experiences of those who aren’t.
Creating equitable and inclusive learning environments
Educators don’t set out not to reach all students. They don’t set out to make a difference in the lives of only a subset of their students. When school and district leaders put in the work, and when the necessary supports are in place, consciously working toward equity in education is a win for all.
Guiding beliefs like the ones presented here can be every bit as powerful as the most insidious of fears. It’s a matter of making our efforts and goals every bit as transparent as the fears. That’s the only way we can truly work together to create safe, positive and effective learning environments.
As we continued to engage with the mother I mentioned above, we listened to what she valued about her daughter’s educational experiences. What stood out in that focus group — it’s the same thing that stands out in every group of parents we speak with, regardless of race, gender identity, ethnicity, or socio-economic status — was what every parent had in common. They each wanted their child to feel safe, both physically and emotionally, and to feel supported as they learn and grow.
That’s it. That’s the goal of equity in education.
We work to ensure that school systems are aligned to create environments where each and every student is able to succeed. The beliefs laid out here help us stay focused on the hard work of examining our biases and interrupting the practices that get in the way of achieving that outcome.