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Seeking the Truth: Making Equity a Reality

Carol Ann Paul, Educational Improvement Consultant

Ashara Shepard-Lance, Educational Improvement Consultant

Kevin Siefker, Educational Improvement Consultant

October 19, 2021

MDE Continuous Improvement Conference

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Welcome!

Ashara Shepard-Lance

Educational Improvement Consultant

The Wayne RESA Team

Kevin Siefker

Educational Improvement Consultant

Carol Ann Paul

Educational Improvement Consultant

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Shift I: Adopting a Transformational Mindshift��Shift II: Bringing an Equity Lens into Improvement��Shift III: Identifying Root Cause Through Inquiry

Agenda

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SHIFT I

Adopting a Transformational Mindset

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A MICIP Mindset

Let’s talk about the mindset . The way we approach the work will impact how we do the work.

With the MICIP process the cycle of improvement is continuous. We move from one annual cycle to ongoing cycles of improvement at both the building and the district level.

District and building goals are aligned with a district-wide mindset of a community of improvement. The district supports buildings equally and equitably with the implementation of the aligned goals.

The whole child is always at the center of this mindset. How do we keep students challenged, healthy, engaged, safe, and supported?

The past 18 months have shown us we must consider and include whole child needs to see positive outcomes.

The whole child model also includes the community and educators, as we must also support those who are on the front lines working and interacting with our students.

We then have to look at the cycles of improvement and include whole child components within our district systems.

Then we must examine our systems.

Are our current systems best servicing those who use the system? Are students, family, and the community benefiting from the district systems. Are the systems working for those who are part of the system such as our teachers, transportation workers, food service and other vital school support services.

An equity mindset must be used as you ask these key questions in each part of MICIP.

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What is Educational Equity?�

Share in the chat, in your own words, how you think equity is currently defined in your school or district.

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EQUITY

Educational equity - when educational policies, practices, interactions, and resources, are representative of, constructed by, and responsive to all people such that each individual has access to, can meaningfully participate, and make progress in high-quality learning experiences that empowers them towards self-determination and reduces disparities in outcomes regardless of individual characteristics and cultural identities (Fraiser, 2000; Great Lakes Equity Center, 2011).

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"Educational equity means that each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential."

EQUITY

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Does your Team Have an Equity Mindset for Continuous Improvement?

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Continuous Improvement with an Equity Lens

Whole School Child Community

Challenged
Healthy
Engaged
Safe
Supported

Equity

Access

1

Representation

2

Meaningful Participation

3

Positive Outcomes

4

To borrow an acronym from one of my colleagues to address the whole child you need to play CHESS.

Like chess you need to look at the entire board or system to determine how individual moves can impact the outcome.

You want to be intentional in your planning to impact student achievement and graduation rates as well as support students in their physical and mental well being.

Part of the work is to determine if each area of the WSCC model is supported with equity in its policies, processes and practices.

According to Dr. Seena Skelton, Director of Operations for the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center there are 4 areas that need to be present to determine if equity is being implemented: Access, Representation, Meaningful Participation, and Positive Outcomes.

Do students have

Access: to a challenged academic experience? Are courses available to ALL students and if not why not?

Representation: Are all students represented in those challenging activities? An equity mindset does not accept the assumption that members of that group are not interested or never show. An equity mindset seeks to find out root causes.

Meaningful Participation: Are underrepresented groups able to meaningfully participate? Are the girls in the coding and robotics team able to demonstrate leadership, what is the culture? Are they fully immersed in the activity or on the fringes.

Positive Outcomes: What does the data show for ALL students. If we are not getting the positive outcomes for the 30% how will you proactively work to find the root causes in those cycles to make changes.

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Vision, Mission, and Beliefs

Vision: The direction and goal of your school.

Mission: The actions you are taking as a collective staff to make the vision a reality.

Beliefs: What will guide your actions?

This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC.

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Reflect, Think and Ink

What is the why of your school?
To what extent does the staff understand equity and what is their attitude toward equity?
Is equity part of the lived culture?
Are student and adult relationships priority?
What is your evidence?
How are you quantifying/qualifying this evidence?

Is the why of your school-vision mission and beliefs tied to equity?

Is there a common language of what equity means or does everyone have their own definition. Need to be on the same page. Staff needs to be reflective about their own beliefs and attitudes about equity.

How can you support teachers that struggle with the school vision, mission and beliefs. How can you plant seeds and provide space for feedback.

Everyone will not be there at the same time ( a moving car can be steered but one that stands still without being nudged will stay put) it takes a collective to develop a culture just as it takes more than one person to get a stalled car to move.

Lived culture-not for show. Develop relationships with students and community to understand what is need to provide and environment for student learning and growth. Strength based on their assets not deficit focus.

How do you know you are using a lens of equity? What data are you examining to tell you? Focus groups, surveys, attendance, participation and achievement data.

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SHIFT II

Bringing an Equity Lens into Improvement

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Equity Check

What data do we need to look at? Who decides?

What is the purpose of looking at this data? (To identify gaps, to check progress, to identify bright spots, etc.)

Who needs to be in the room to ensure multiple perspectives are considered and movement is made?

We want to make sure to include the equity lens in everything we do...not just at the end of a process or as an afterthought. In this case, we can stop and ask ourselves some key questions before we even do the gathering and analyzing of data.

For example: What data do we need to look at? Who decides what data is gathered and put in front of the team for analysis...what is important...and what becomes priority? Although these questions seem basic, be prepared; your thoughtful and honest answers to them informs your path of inquiry, what you choose to explore, perhaps one that hasn't been examined before.

What is the purpose of looking at this data? Why are we going to spend our valuable time looking at it together? Are we clearly communicating this to the team?

When we look at the data, who should be there to do so? Are we inclusive? How inclusive is our process and our team?

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Who's NOT in the room?

Access

Representation

Meaningful Participation

Positive Outcomes

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4 Types of Data

Achievement Data

Describes our students’ performance on local, state, and federal assessments

Demographic Data

Describes our students, staff, building and community

Process Data

The policies, procedures, and systems we have in place that define how we do business

Perception Data

Opinions of students, staff, parents and community regarding our school

When we are selecting data to analyze, we need to consider the four types:

Demographic: Descriptive information about the school community, which may be gathered as enrollment patterns, attendance, participation in extracurricular activities or other programming, for example.

Achievement: Student learning results of our educational system in terms of standardized test results, grade point averages, standards assessments, classroom work, dropout rates

Process: Processes include programs, instructional strategies, and classroom practices. It also includes attendance, homework, and grading policies. The policies and procedures that are inherent in this data frequently get overlooked or aren't documented in a systematic way.

Perception: Data that help us understand what students, parents, teachers, and others think about the learning environment. Even the gathering of this information can benefit from an equity lens: for example, we want the results to be accurate and representative of the participants' perceptions. In order for this to occur, access to any survey instruments should be available in multiple languages and in PLAIN language, free from academic jargon.

We want to make sure we look at more than just the academic data that is the go-to for many school teams, based on years of accountability measures emphasizing this.

The data that helps paint the full picture is key to an equitable process.

�

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Tells us student participation in different programs and processes

Tells us what processes/programs work best for different groups of students with respect to student learning

Allows the prediction of actions, processes, and programs that best meet the learning

needs of all students.

Adapted from V. Bernhardt, 1998

When we look at intersections of these four types of data, we can get a better indication of what is happening.

Again, if we look at demographic data, we can see who we have in our school.

When we look at the intersection of demographic data and process data, it may tell us who is participating in different programs and processes.

When we add the achievement or student learning data to this, it can tell us what programs or processes are resulting in positive outcomes for different groups of students.

When we add the perception data to these other data types, we find the impact of a program on student learning and the learning environment. Then, we can dig into the why, as Carol Ann is going to show you in a few minutes. This intersection of four data types allows us to apply our learning to be more proactive and responsive to our students' and communities' needs.

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Data Story:�What does the data say?

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Data Story: What Does the Data Say?

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Equity Check

How can we display the data to illuminate and understand disproportionate experiences and/or outcomes?

What are the data’s blind spots? What/whose perspectives are missing?

What additional data points might you consider?

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Data Story: What Does the Data Say?

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Create Norms or Agreements

Suggestions:

Share the air
Lean into discomfort
Own your intent and impact
Stick to the protocol

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SHIFT III

Identifying Root Cause through Inquiry

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What is Root Cause Analysis?

Data Story

ROOT CAUSE

Challenge Statement

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Why Identify Root Cause?

Root cause analysis is an instrument often used to examine the causes of high-level problems. It is a precursory tool leveraged when creating the challenge statement. When you apply an equity lens to root cause analysis it means that you focus on the issues that affect all students. While you should never ignore large issues within a school system, using an equity lens acknowledges and builds upon on those particular issues that affect different demographics within your system. The key to a robust root cause analysis is to ensure that the data summary statement was developed with disaggregated and varied data sources, just as Kevin had mentioned earlier. Here’s one example, a Continuous Improvement Team noticed that many students were entirely disengaged from school. If the team noted the problem as "chronic absenteeism," they might not get to the cause of the barrier if they stopped there. To extend their thinking, the group might ask, “Who is chronically absent?” “Who is this system not working for?”

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Mindshift - Ladder of Inference

Reference: Systems Thinker

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Tools to Determine Root Cause

FISHBONE

5 WHYS

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As I had mentioned before, one tool is called a fishbone diagram. It is called a fishbone diagram because it can look like the skeleton of a fish. It was created as a quality control tool and has been adapted for many other fields, including education. You can use this tool to find the root cause of a problem or identify where and why something is not working. To use the device, you first identify a problem, also known as a summary statement. You will place the situation in the "head" of the fish. The blue arrow is where you would place your problem. Next, you work out the possible drivers. These are located on the outside of the diagram. The drivers are circled in red. The drivers are factors that might be part of the problem. Drivers are usually factors you can control.

After you list the possible causes that are influencing the problem.

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Steps to Create a Fishbone Diagram

IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM

IDENTIFY DRIVERS

IDENTIFY POSSIBLE CAUSES

ANALYZE YOUR DIAGRAM

Now we are going to tackle a problem that affects many people in the United States. Let's pretend that you go to the doctor's office for an annual checkup, and she runs some blood tests. Findings conclude that you have increased levels of cholesterol and high blood pressure. The doctor could treat these two symptoms with medication, but first, your doctor wants to get the root of the problem and find out why you have increased cholesterol. Let's brainstorm in the chat our drivers. In the chat, write possible factors that go into increased levels of cholesterol and high blood pressure. Remember, DRIVERS, are factors that we can control. https://youtu.be/JJ0cV0V4WGU

So now that we have identified some factors let's hop on one idea and identify possible causes. So someone put in the chat lack of exercise could be a factor. What could be the reason someone does not exercise? Brainstorm that in the chat. You would continue to identify possible causes for each driver.

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So basically we have complete a rung of the fishbone diagram. Now let’s look at some of the other drivers and causes. Smoking, diet, and genetics also plays a role! Notice that genetics has zero causes listed, that’s because it is not something that we can necessarily control. This does not mean that we do not place it on the diagram, but instead we acknowledge that it is a factor.

The doctors would bring the fishbone back to you for feedback. Why? Because if he determined the root cause without further feedback, he might spin his wheels and start working on the wrong driver and causes! If conducting a root cause analysis and using an equity lens, you must make sure that you gather diverse perspectives and input by going back to the population in which the gap statement was about. Try to gather feedback from key stakeholders in which the problem is directly affecting. So using our example, the doctor would come back to you and continue to ask questions...

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Modified Root Cause

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Setting the Stage - Fishbone

To address the need for adults to hear directly from students about how the pandemic is affecting students’ experiences, a second report in the Students Weigh In series explores survey findings from more than half a million secondary students in 952 schools across 37 states during three time periods: pre-pandemic, spring 2020, and fall 2020.

The data, which includes the responses of 62,996 secondary and 22,174 upper elementary students surveyed between September and December 2020, was gathered through a 15-minute online survey, administered in English and Spanish.

Reference: YouthTruth Study Survey, Student Weigh In: Learning & Well-Being During COVID-19

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Students Report on Sense of Belonging

Fall 2019

43%

Spring 2020

30%

Fall 2020

49%

Reference: YouthTruth Study Survey, Student Weigh In: Learning & Well-Being During COVID-19

https://youthtruthsurvey.org/student-weigh-in/

When schools shifted to emergency distance learning in spring 2020, students' sense of belonging suffered, with 30 percent of students saying they felt like a part of their school's community, compared to 43 percent in fall 2019.

In the fall 2020 however, as students and schools adjusted to a new and ever-changing reality, students' sense of belonging rebounded to pre-pandemic levels and then some — with 49 percent of students reporting they feel like a part of their school's community. So our question is why? With all the struggles school faced (hybrid teaching, in-school, out-of-school learning, shifts and changes), why was there an increase in students feeling connect to the school’s community.

'I feel like part of my school's community.'

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Quick Brainstorm

Why did students report an increase in feeling connected to their community? Use the Chat feature to respond

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Fishbone Suggestions�

2. Use predetermined Causal Categories

Infrastructure

Leaders

Curriculum

Instruction

Teachers

Students

1. Collaboratively decide on the drivers through a brainstorming session

OR

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Modified Fishbone Activity

Link to Padlet

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Tools to Determine Root Cause

FISHBONE

5 WHYS

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5 Whys Activity

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The 5 Whys

Review the Data

What is it showing? Why

Why is that?

Why is that? Root Cause

Why is that?

Reference: MDE, School Performance & Supports, MICIP

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The 5 Whys

If you do not find the root cause:

1. It could be costly (time, money, resources)

2. You could be treating a symptom

3. It could delay future success

4. You will continue to experience the same problem

Washington Monument was deteriorating

Use of harsh chemicals

Cleaning up after pigeons

Gnats are attracted to the lights at dusk, timing of lights doesn't change with seasons

Pigeons hanging around to eat all the spiders

Spiders finding lots of gnats near monument

Reference: Eureka Institute, California Government Operation

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Resources

https://thesystemsthinker.com/the-ladder-of-inference/

1. Wayne RESA Continuous Improvement Site

2. MICIP Collaboration Series Resources Spring of 2021

3. MDE MICIP Site

4. Google Folder

5. Great Lakes Equity Center

6. The Systems Thinker

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Contact Information

Carol Ann Paul

Paulc@resa.net

Ashara Shepard-Lance SheparA@resa.net
Kevin Siefker�SiefkeK@resa.net

Wayne RESA Continuous Improvement Site

Tinyurl.com/WayneCI�

Follow us on Twitter!

@WRESA_EdImprove

Thank you!

THE WAYNE COUNTY REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY

Board of Education • James S. Beri • Mary E. Blackmon • Danielle Funderburg •

Lynda S. Jackson • James Petrie • Daveda J. Colbert, Ph.D., Superintendent