Context

I’ve attended most of the school committee’s equity subcommittee meetings since February. On October 22, I sent an email to the equity subcommittee with some concerns that what had been described early in the process was not obviously what we were seeing in the implementation. I also wanted to share some goal thoughts for discussion, because that had been a topic at the October 19 meeting and few concrete goal ideas had been shared.

I’m sharing the body of the email I sent so that you can know my thoughts on the audit at that time. My hope is that some of the things I brought up will be addressed at the next equity subcommittee meeting.

Body of email sent on October 22

I’m writing to follow up on our Tuesday conversation to share some thoughts about the equity audit and to provide some thoughts on goal setting. I’m writing, because I haven’t found the opportunity to express this full set of thoughts in one of our meetings, and because it’s easier for me to put the complete set of thoughts into writing.

For framing purposes, my own belief of what the schools ought to aim for in terms of equity is making sure each student has opportunities to achieve their potential, recognizing that students each have different backgrounds, abilities, interests, etc. This is an aspirational goal that is necessary to qualify by a reasonableness standard, because resource-limitations mean the schools will not be able to provide a fully tailored experience to each student.

One indicator that the schools may be falling short of the above goal is the observation of disparities between groups (e.g., between races), where reasonable explanations for the disparities are not readily available.

My hope for the equity audit has been that it would involve investigating issues of disparity, to help us generate insights into what the causes might be, which ultimately would help us to know where the schools might be able to make a difference and how. And that this work in turn would turn into an action plan with goals.

For example, I had imagined the equity auditors might look into disparities in the BPS disciplinary data. Given that the numbers are so low, I figured they could review particular cases and try to determine whether bias is a reason for disparities, whether there are other explanatory factors, etc. and the results would translate into an action plan of interventions, as appropriate.

Similarly, I hoped and believed based on prior discussions that the equity auditors would assess the racial disparity in special education placement by investigating cases, the mechanism of assignment, etc. and form theories about the reasons for observed disparities and again this would translate into an action plan of interventions, as appropriate.

I continue to feel unclear about the method and expectations of the audit, but it seems like the audit is doing something different than what I had imagined or hoped. The high level special education recommendations we saw recently seem based in an analysis of policy and policy-language, as opposed to analyzing the implementation of the assignment mechanism and the students being assigned.

The reason I highlight the above is that I worry that without a deeper analysis of the causes of disparities in the schools that we’re unlikely to identify interventions that will meaningfully address the causes and reduce disparities. That said, I don’t want to say the changes that have been and will be proposed as a result of the audit are without merit or that they won’t make a difference. There may be independent evidence that we haven’t seen that suggests the changes proposed can be expected to make a difference, and my recollection is that the proposed changes made conceptual and intuitive sense at least.

I mention these thoughts in the context of equity goal setting, because I think if we want to enact meaningfully impactful changes we may need to prepare ourselves to set goals for more and deeper analyses to be done. My hope is that the current equity audit will identify some important changes to be made and will help point us at priority areas for deeper analysis.

I’ve been so keen to get more information on the contracted audit and agreed upon deliverables because I’ve wanted to understand better what to expect as outcomes, and also so that I wouldn’t be unfairly critical of it by criticizing it for failing to do something it was never expected to do. Also, the description of what the equity audit would encompass has changed since I started attending equity subcommittee meetings in February - an example is whether it would include a focus on LGBTQ students.

Even ahead of further information from the audit, there are two areas I propose we can preliminarily discuss goals around. I would propose the following as some suggested goals for the upcoming year.

Math-related (Recommended because it’s received substantial attention and some analysis by BPS and the community in the last few years.)

• Study and propose a plan for addressing the disproportionately low participation of Black and brown students in Compacted Math in seventh grade. (Potential plans might include: hiring more math specialists or deploying them in different ways, revisiting elementary school math curricula, creating more opportunities for math advancement beyond seventh grade - all depending on what causes of the disparity are determined and where opportunities for intervention are found.)
• Study and propose a plan for adding algebra back in seventh grade and geometry in eighth grade. (There is very strong interest and capability apparent in the student population, and this seems like an important area for helping a large number of students reach their potential.)

Making hiring more inclusive (Recommendation based on my experience)

• Review and adjust hiring policies that may be disadvantaging candidates from less privileged and with less traditional backgrounds.
  • For example: determine whether BPS ads and job descriptions include job requirements that are not strictly necessary and may be dissuading applicants from applying; in particular, remove unnecessary educational credential requirements from job ads; ensure that candidates don’t get special reach-outs or advancement in hiring processes based on connections to administration or hiring committee members; etc. I’m happy to provide conceptual and empirical evidence for these and other recommendations.

Thanks for bearing with my long note. I share these thoughts to contribute to our addressing the goal of providing each student with opportunities to reach their potential.