Equity Principles Adapted from ‘Six Critical Paradigm Shifts for Equity in Education” by Paul C. Gorski

Equity Principle #1 A shift from Equality-based principles to Equity- based principles

Equality Equal treatment Equal access Equal opportunity

Educational Equity A strategy designed to provide differentiated educational responses to students who are different in important ways so that comparable outcomes may be achieved. “All learners cannot be treated the same because their different learning, social, cultural, emotional, psychological and physical needs or characteristics naturally give rise to varying interventions for them to achieve comparability.” Bradley Scott, 1995

Shift A focus on comparable outcomes, Intentional strategies to level the playing field, and Unequal treatment of unequals

Are we ready for the shift? Ultimately, the key question for us is not just whether students and teachers can appreciate differences, though we know that tremendous individual learning opportunities can emerge from a process of education that facilitates this sort of appreciation. The key question,instead, is whether every student who walks into our schools has an opportunity to achieve to her or his fullest, to have access to an equitably validating, supportive learning environment, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, home language, (dis)ability, and any other dimension of her or his identity.

Equity Principle # 2 A shift from identifying “at-risk” students to acknowledging a broken system

Who are we problematizing? Does the problem lie with the students and their families? Are we operating within a deficit framework where we have to “fix” the kids based on who they are?

Causes of “the gap”? Do we recognize that the inequities (student academic performance- “the gap”) are actually symptoms, not root problems, of an inherently racist, classist, sexist, etc, system? There are institutional practices and polices that contribute to the gap.

We can and will create schools where equity and excellence is attained. A place to start: Conduct equity audits; Confront our beliefs about the achievement gap; Focus on the assets of other cultures- what the children bring to school; Develop strategies that build upon student strengths.

We are aiming for schools in which there are no persistent patterns of differences in academic success or treatment among students grouped by race, ethnicity, culture, neighborhood, income of parents, or home language.

There still continues today...to be just an incredible array of negative stereotypes about native people...We have in this country way too many negative stereotypes about black people, and about Latin people, and all kinds of people; it’s just an incredible problem we deal with...Everybody’s sitting around this table, and they’re all looking at each other with stereotypes, and they can’t get past that. It’s like everybody’s sitting there and they have some kind of veil over their face, and they look at each other through this veil that makes them see each other through some stereotypical kind of viewpoint. If we’re ever gonna collectively begin to grapple with the problems that we have collectively, we’re gonna have to move back the veil and deal with each other on a more human level. Wilma Mankiller (1993), former chief of the Cherokee Nation