Identifying and Addressing Inequities and Their Causes
To rid education of barriers to equity, states, districts, and schools must identify and address systemwide inequities and their root causes, while also identifying and leveraging current equity-related strengths that lead to transformative change.
Our work builds the capacity of state and local agencies, and other education organizations, to implement culturally responsive data literacy that centers the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and other students of color, as well as students whose identities are intersectional.
Our equity specialists help you to develop the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, and Practices (KSAPs) necessary for impactful leading and coaching. We do so by evaluating systemic policies, practices, and procedures, and the underlying beliefs they reflect, to determine opportunities for advancing cultural responsiveness and equity.
Three phases to our Systemic Equity Reviews (SERs) include:
- Culturally Responsive Data Collection
- Assess district commitment and readiness
- Develop and/or leverage existing district equity team to support the SER
- Co-identify relevant research questions
- Collect, organize, and analyze available and relevant data to create data workbooks that include quantitative and qualitative findings
- Culturally Responsive Data Literacy and Root Cause Analysis
- Build capacity of district equity team to analyze SER findings through an equity mindset
- Co-develop equity-based solutions to address the beliefs, policies, practices, and procedures identified through the review and planning sessions
- Sustainability, Planning, and Tool Development
- Develop tools to support equity goals and to monitor impact
- Finalize SER Report that includes data findings and co-developed equity goals
- Present SER findings
Our Work in Action
We appreciate this transformative partnership with WestEd. This is work that changes classrooms and changes lives—children’s lives. And it can lead us all to great joy.
Kristan Small Grimes, Lansing School District, Michigan
This is hard information to hear. But it’s important for us to know where we are failing a large number of our students because we need to correct course and we need to be better and I know that we will be.
Gabrielle Lawrence, President for the Lansing Board of Education, as quoted in Lansing State Journal
Our Transformative Partnerships
Professional Learning
Build capacity around culturally responsive data literacy, Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education, and research-based root causes and solutions to inequities.
Collaborative Root Cause Analysis
Co-identify the beliefs, policies, and practices contributing to inequities in your educational system.
SER Report With Co-Constructed Recommendations
Improve support for strategic planning and changes to policies and practices contributing to inequities.
Communication Support for Presenting Findings
Provide co-presenting support with our equity team to share findings of the SER with your community members (e.g., the Board of Education).
Leading Voices at WestEd
Dismantling Disproportionality: A Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Systems Approach
By David Lopez, Maria G. Hernandez, and Reed Swier
Dismantling Disproportionality, co-authored by WestEd Senior Technical Assistance Specialist David Lopez, positions disproportionality as not solely a special education issue but, rather, a broader issue of educational inequality. Disproportionality in special education parallels a persistent history of chronic socioeconomic and racial inequalities relating to the country’s history of denying educational opportunities to students of color, multilingual students, students with disabilities, and those at the intersections of these identities.
This book is part of the Disability, Culture, and Equity Series by Teachers College Press.
