Day 234, November 5, 2020
Notes from From Equity Talk to Equity Walk by Tia Brown-McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux
Tonight's soundtrack: The Robert Grasper Experiment, 2015
"What are specific examples of how equity is a value for you and your instiution?"
"Educators with an equity talk and an equity walk critically examine institutional policies, practices, and structures through a lens that questions why inequities exist to change the educational environment to support the success of students--especially students who have been historically and continuously marginalized in our educational systems. These educators don't just talk about equity, but it is evident in their inquiry-process, decision-making, interactions, and reflections."
"...having an equity talk that will lead to change calls for a comprehensive understanding of what the term mean in relation to current and past experiences and institutional contexts."
(When colleagues lack a shared understanding of the historical and social contexts) "This makes it difficult to believe that equity is a pervasive institutional value, especially when campus practitioners have limited knowledge of the multifaceted contexts surrounding the examination of equity."
"Educators who fall into this category are not willing to acknowledge that a longstanding belief in a hierarchy of human values has fueled systemic and structural inequities in our country. In addition, they often challenge us by saying we are advocating for students to no be active participants in their education."
"To ignore how structures were designed is to ignore the necessary processes for eliminating inequities."
"To make excellence inclusive, institutions should have. widely shared and commonly understood definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion that reflect the institutional context and values."
"Being equity-minded requires examine why inequities exist and understanding how the radicalization of institutional practices sustains this inequities."
"...the Center for Urban Education coined the term equity-mindedness to refer to the mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners who are wiling to asses their own racialized assumptions, to acknowledge their lack of knowledge in the history of race and racism, to take responsibility for the success of historically underserved and minorities student groups, and tho critically assess racialization in their own practices as educators and/or administrators."
"What does 'equity' mean? Equity for whom?"
"Equity is a means of corrective justice."
"Equity is an antiracist project."
Equity lets practitioners see whiteness as a norm that operates, unperceived, through structures, policies, and practices that racialize the culture and outcomes of higher education institutions."
"Equity-minded practitioners do not blame students for the their lack of success (a deficit-minded approach), nor do they rely on racial stereotypes or biases to justify or disregard inequitable outcomes. Equity-minded practitioners accept the race and racism are endemic in higher education."
(Response to claiming not to see race) "By considering that faculty may lack the expertise to help Black and Latnix students be successful."
(Saying no to racially coded language) Leaders at the college "had to unlearn discursive tactics to talk about race without actually talking about it."
(URMs) "They also understand that lumping all minorities populations into a single category is another way of avoiding honest race talk."
"The inclination toward avoiding direct race talk shows that 'not talking about race' is the prevailing norm within higher education, and it will require consistency reinforcement and self-correction to make race-consciousness the preferred norm."
"Adopting a definition of equity that is centered on racial justice does not preclude adopting definitions of other kinds of equity related to gender, income, or sexual orientation; however, these other forms of equity need to be treated separately because inequities based on race and ethnicity originate from unique historical, sociocultural, and sociopolitical circumstances, including enslavement, colonization, appropriation of territories, and linguistic hegemony."
"...the continued use of URM was a form of malpractice that obfuscates inequalities between specific racial and ethnic groups."
"...minoritized students pay a cultural tax."
"First, race--unlike income--is visible to the eye. And whether we like it or not, we make judgements--consciously or unconsciously--based on what we see."
"For all people of color, racial inequity was born from policies and practices that were not designed for their benefit but for the dominant population of whites."
"We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equity as a right and a theory but equality as a face and equality as a result." (Pres. Johnson)
"Most white administrators lack the knowledge, experience, or awareness to consider the incident above as a reflection of veiled racism and white privilege."
"Even though higher education is no longer for whites and males only, their imprint lives on in our traditions as well as our definitions of collegiality, merit, and fit."
"Most higher education leaders are white, and noticing the pervasiveness of whiteness is not normally expected of them."
"...the dismantlement of whiteness and institutionalized racism requires white people to feel anger, distress, and outrage with a system that unfairly advantages them."
"...the most pernicious form of racism is routinely created and reinforced through everyday practices."
"...we are not taught to see how the privileges accused by whiteness produce advantages."
"Inequity in educational outcomes for minoritized students is a disadvantage they accrue as a consequence of a system based on conceptions of academic achievement that advantage white students and impose a cultural tax on minoritized students."
"...well-meaning innovators who don't realize that their way of understanding student success is not the universal understanding."
"Universalism is a prominent characteristic of whiteness based on the assumption that a white person's view of the way things are is objective and representative of reality."
"Universalism functions to deny the significance of race and the advantages of being white." (Robin DiAngelo)
(Deficit-mindedness) "...these shortcomings are a 'natural' outcome of these students' backgrounds, and addressing attendant inequities requires compensatory programs that 'fix' students and teach them how to assimilate into the dominant college culture."
"The framing of these questions encourage 'solutions' that aim to fix minoritized students by providing them with add-on, compensatory services such as intrusive counseling and remediation."
(Equity-minded) "What courses contribute to the lower GPAs of black students? What causes these courses to underperform for black students? How many section of college-level math are offered? Which among these sections perform well or underperform for Latinx students? Why do they have differences in performance?"
"It requires that we (particularly those of us who posses the privileges of whiteness) realize that our actions--despite our commitment to treating everyone equally--may still be harmful to minoritized students."
"Indeed, it is crucial that institutions gather and analyze qualitative and quantitative data in order to understand student experiences, learning, and outcomes. Equally important, however, is the process during which practitioners reflect on and make sense of data to inform their actions."
"When examining quantitative data, equity is operationalized as 'parity in representation and outcomes for racially minoritized groups."
"The goal of the 'equity as parity' standards is that all racial/ethnic groups achieve an outcome rate equal to that of the highest-performing group."
"...an expectation that institutions should serve all racial/ethnic groups at the same level as the group who, as shown by data, is best served by the structures, processes, and peoples represented by each metric."
"...purposefully disaggregating top-level and fine-grained outcome measures by race as an organizational routine is not as common as it needs to be to make progress on the equity challenges faced by the nation's higher education system."
"...the value of data depends on how they are used."
"Equity-minded sensemaking."
"...equity-minded sensemaking aims to foster a culture of inquiry so that institutional and practitioner action is guided by evidence and directed at those practices that contribute to or exacerbate inequities."
"...identify those specific departments or courses that act as barriers to equitable degree completion."
"The process of moving from high-level indicators to finer-grained quantitative measure and other qualitative data close to practice is central to practitioner learning and change. It enables practitioners to 'find the actionable N,' or where they can make changes in their own practices to improve outcomes for students with whom they interact in order to move the needle and close equity gaps."
"Given that both time and resources are finite, the math faculty can first focus on those courses most 'at-risk,' maximizing the return on their efforts."
"...the department chair might provide Math 010 instructors with their own section-level course success data disaggregated by race. Doing so would allow faculty members to see what inequities exist within their own classes and set specific goals to close those equity gaps."
"...using data in the classroom can uncover racialized patterns that occur within our classrooms and cause practitioners to think more critically about taken-for-granted assumptions that can have a disproportionately negative impact on racially minoritized students."
"Simply ensuring practitioners can access data is not enough. Equally important is the nature of the language used to talk about data and frame the gaps that might emerge when disaggregating data by race. Characterizing disparities in outcomes as 'achievement gaps' is very different from describing these disparities as 'equity gaps.'"
"Instead of dwelling on the differences in institutional capacity, CUE researchers and AAC&U staff emphasized the ways in which disaggregated data can reveal inequities, spark conversations, and raise equity-minded questions that can be pursued using a variety of inquiry tools and methods."
"Though these teams began by disaggregating data by race, they subsequently added additional student characteristics to their analysis in order to more precisely identify those subpopulations that were experiencing the largest equity gaps."
"Focusing on the student in this way may de-emphasize the responsibility that institutions hold in creating racial equity."
"Predictive analytics can also unintentionally further educational inequity if used inappropriately or in isolation."
Take care, but take it,
Leo
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| The cross section of a 129 year old American Elm at GCC. |
From Our Friends:
From EducationAdminWebAdvisor:
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From the Northampton Jazz Workshop:
Virtual Performance Premiere on YouTube Friday, November 6 at 4 p.m. ET >> https://youtu.be/yaD12DihpLA
If you miss the Premiere, you can watch the Online Event Friday, November 6 through Thursday November 12, 2020: https://youtu.be/yaD12DihpLA
Layaali's FREE event site is www.fineartscenter.com/Layaali
From FranklinCovey Education:
Unconscious Bias: Enabling Leaders in Higher Education to Unleash Potential |
November 18, 2020 @ 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. EST |
When asked how their institution can improve, both employees and students point to “unfair treatment,” as a common issue. Very few in leadership and student-focused roles intentionally display biased behavior. But that doesn’t mean their impressions are necessarily off-base. Research shows that inclusive classrooms and organizations are more engaging, innovative, and more collaborative. Attend this live-online leadership workshop to learn how you can identify your own biases as a leader, cultivate meaningful connections, and choose courage to drive culture change across your institution. |
From Inside Higher Ed:
Community Colleges
Community Colleges and the Path Toward Racial Healing
They are distinctly situated to become spaces for the growth and restructuring that this society needs, especially in the areas of police reform and race relations, argues Mark Dennis. »
From Higher Ed Jobs:
by Dr. Gina Ann Garcia
In several of her blog posts as Author in Residence for HigherEdJobs, Dr. Gina Ann Garcia has referred to "white normative standards." Here, she briefly defines what she means by white normative standards, and offers a reminder that we will not achieve racial justice in higher education if we allow white normativity to remain intact, as it transcends our curriculum, co-curricular programming, hiring practices, and mission.
From the Poetry Center at Smith College:
A Reading by Carmen Giménez Smith
Tuesday, November 17 at 7:30 PMThe timely, searing poems of Carmen Giménez Smith insist on confronting America’s xenophobia and systemic racism. Describing Giménez Smith’s most recent collection, Be Recorder (Graywolf, 2019), the National Book Awards committee praised the ways in which her poetry “turns the increasingly pressing urge to cry out into a dream of rebellion—against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our complacency in an America that depends on it.” Giménez Smith is the author of five additional collections of poetry, including Milk and Filth, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and celebrated by Publishers Weekly for the way that its images “challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism." Giménez Smith teaches English at Virginia Tech. She also co-directs CantoMundo, serves as publisher of Noemi Press, and is poetry editor (alongside Stephanie Burt) for The Nation.
Registration Link:
https://smith.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SJhQwvUvTQaHi1fDbhcQlQ
From Complete College America:
We’ve added recordings of every session to our website, so you catch any that you missed, revisit those you loved, and share favorites with your colleagues.
From Academic Impressions:
Article | Ed Source
A new law requiring an ethnic studies class in order to graduate from the California State University will likely have far-reaching implications for the state’s 115 degree-granting community colleges. Read more.
Improving developmental and college-level mathematics: Prominent reforms and the need to address equity In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that the traditional system of college mathematics remediation that relies on high-stakes placement tests and prerequisite, multi-level course sequences is associated with lowered chances of students completing developmental requirements and increased rates of student attrition. Read more. |
Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From CT News Update:
Kahoot to Add Zoom Integration
Learning quiz program company Kahoot! has announced an integration with Zoom, allowing users to access, host and play Kahoot games directly in Zoom meetings.
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