Equitable School Improvement

Promoting equity and improvement science have seen increased attention over the last several years as educators seek to expand the experiences, opportunities, and outcomes for marginalized students. This book shows school and district leaders how to create the conditions needed to use improvement science—with its robust collection of tools, resources, and processes—to achieve equity. Readers will find information about equity, continuous improvement, and the psychology of change that can be used to productively and respectfully engage all stakeholders. Chapters include the rationale for employing improvement science to pursue equity; advice for developing the dispositions of an equity-focused leader who thinks differently about power, possibility, and measurement; and guidance for facilitating conversations in the service of equitable improvement. Equitable School Improvement is important reading for teachers, coaches, principals, central office leaders, and any educator who wants to be part of creating a more socially just educational system for our children.

Book Features:

• Elaborates on the habits and practices that need to be developed if educators are to overcome significant barriers and talk about transformation in the service of equity.
• Focuses on the human side of change, including honoring people and their stories and dismantling power structures that interfere with change.
• Provides guidance to leaders at all levels for creating the conditions for equity-focused improvement work.
• Moves beyond deficit perspectives and outmoded tropes, such as goals have agency, teachers are resistant, and race correlates to low achievement.
• Makes the tools contained in improvement science more accessible to today’s equity leaders.

Rydell Harrison and Isobel Stevenson are program coordinators at Partners for Educational Leadership in West Hartford, CT.

Contents (Tentative)

Preface

Acknowledgments

1.  Iterative Justice
Why Read This Book
Mental Models and Institutional Logics
Improving Together
What Do We Mean by Equity and Why Do We Want It?
Why Improvement and Science and Equity Have More in Common Than You Might Think
Values That Run Through This Book

2.  Centering the Experiences of Students
Student Centered vs. Centering Students
Belonging and Identity
Marginalized Group Identity
Social Homelessness
Empathy and Empathy Interviews
Focus Groups
At Your Desk or In the Halls

3.  Dispositions of the Liberatory Improver
Background on Dispositions
Dispositions in Improvement Science
Dispositions of Equity Leaders in Education
Dispositions of Liberatory Improvers
At Your Desk or In the Halls

4.  The Adjacent Possible
Limitations of Traditional Mental Models
Leveraging the Adjacent Possible
At Your Desk or In the Halls

5.  Beliefs About Change and About People
Attribution
Defensive Routines
Bias and Psychological Distance
Mindsets
Self-Efficacy and Stereotype Threat
Identity
Motivation
Goals and Accountability
Psychological Safety
At Your Desk or In the Halls

6.  Dismantling Traditional Power Structures
Traditional Power Structures
Rationalization of Power
Power and the Perception of Rightness
Infantilization and Blame
Interrogating the Status Quo
Renegotiating Power
Embracing Transformative Change
Time as a Tool of Power
Liberatory Power Sharing
At Your Desk or In the Halls

7.  Broadening Our Concept of Data
Data Contaminated by History
A Test-Based Theory of Action
Poor Assumptions and Unintended Consequences
Reconfiguring Data Teams to Make Better Use of Data and Empower Teachers
A Word on Equity Audits
At Your Desk or In the Halls

8.  The Absolute Necessity of Conversation
Why Conversations About Race Are So Difficult
The Privilege of Comfort
Conversation Skills
Conversation: Where the Big Ideas Come Together
At Your Desk or in the Halls

Epilogue

References

Index

About the Author