I’m in one of those tight spots where I don’t have a ton of time to write something out. I’m in that spot for a couple of reasons, the main one is that I spent three hours on a Zoom call talking about equity in schools. It was time really well spent and I’m glad I did it, it just means that this blog post is going to be short and about equitable systems.
We didn’t spend a ton of time talking about this, but we did keep circling back to the question, how would you know a school system is equitable. It made me think, how would you know if what you created was equitable. Would the outcomes be based be expected to be equal for all kids or would a family’s “starting point” be accounted for. Like, if a child has two upper middle class parents that both have phd’s would we expect the same outcome for a student of the same age and ability if the second student lives in poverty with a single parent that recently earned his/her GED.
I don’t like comparing and contrasting two extremes to prove a point, because that rarely leads anywhere constructive. I guess a better way to think about this would be what additional supports or structures would the second child need in order to realistically have the same chances of success as the first student? The problem is, if we can’t answer the question what does equity look like, then we will struggle to move toward a more equitable system. I don’t have any conclusion or additional thoughts right now, it’s just something that was on my mind. I do think that if we start to think critically about the promotion of equity and identify areas of injustice or inequity then the expected outcomes might become more clearer.