Role of Policy in Education Equity: Critiques and Fixes

We need to hold students back. Especially in elementary school because if they’re not getting the basics, then they certainly won’t get the basics in high school.

I definitely feel like this tracks with what we've been focused on during PD for the last several years. Behavior problems are #1, and even those years where you have a well-behaved class, chnaces are at least some of your colleagues don't.

I teach newcomers and I have one eighth grader who has absolutely REFUSED to engage with anything in class. He tries to use the excuse over and over that he can’t learn English because he doesn’t already know English which is a ridiculous claim that kids normally only use on me once but he won’t even copy down stuff off the board, won’t click play on Edpuzzles, etc. I tried reaching out to everyone I could with no help. He has an F in all of his classes. He will just go along merrily to high school where I am sure they will wonder why no one has bothered to teach him English yet, bleh. It’s like what are we doing here? What’s the point?

I keep saying that our entire board sends their kid to the private school where none of their policies are followed. They KNOW it doesn't work and that's the point.

Because they're all privileged enough to be living in the world of should instead of working in the world that is.

1) Competitive college track. AP. Honors. High expectations. Put the damned phone away.

2) state college / community college. Access to AP/Honors if they demonstrate competency.

3) trade school / military / community college.

4) certificate of completion (no diploma).

I think equity has failed in 3 ways.

The first is the widespread adoption of Equity Based Grading practices. This pushes no homework, no late penalties, unlimited retests for full credit, offering "alternative ways to demonstrate learning," where those alternate ways are always much less rigorous than the test or essay other students do), and most infamously, giving 50% minimum for all work, including missing work or tests where they scored lower. The effect of these policies is to lower standards and inflate grades. Our worst students still pass, because everyone can pass if you take the test enough times, and our best students quickly learn they don't need to study for tests or turn in work on time, destroying their academic habits.

The second is the not as widespread but still fairly common practice of eliminating honors classes because not enough [demographic X, Y or Z] students take them. The harm caused by this is self-evident.

The third failure is that the equity crowd erroneously attributes all demographic disparities to racism by the school. For example, in my high school, Latino students have lower test scores on average than white students. Equity true believers say this achievement gap is proof of racism, and therefore, anti-racism efforts are the solution. Diversity Days, Affinity Groups, anti-racist assemblies and lesson plans, etc. However, none of these things will close the achievement gap if in reality that gap is not caused by racism. It turns out that many of the Latino students at my school are not fluent in English. Many are first generation immigrants. Many speak Spanish at home, even if they were born and raised in the US. Most do not have college educated parents. A higher percentage are low income, which brings many more challenges to education. None of these problems are "racism at my school." So programs to address racism do nothing to help their education, and in fact may hurt in by taking time away from actual teaching and learning.

The solutions?

Teach teachers the science of learning and ensure they apply it in the classroom (few do).

A massive ad campaign to parents explaining why good attendance (95% +) is vital to learning.

Stop blaming schools for the academic perfomance of students who have a) terrible attendance, b) terrible work completion, or both. That's the vast majority of failing students at my school. If you come to my class and do what I ask you to do most of the time, you will learn. If you don't, you won't.

The solution to reducing the small amount of racism that actually exists in my school?

Try to get every kid involved in an extracurricular where they will work with people from different races over an extended period of time, so they get to know them as people and form bonds. Don't segregate extracurriculars like my school does!

My pet peeve is getting PD on a cure all when you are working with autonomous beings that have their own motivations. The most egregious in recent memory was saying that "circles," would solve all class behavioral issues and implementing them was very rewarding. The students in my school mostly hated them. We would pass around the talking stick and kids would go, "pass," "pass," "pass," because no one is forced to talk - which is a positive thing, and a few kids would thoughtfully respond to the question. I would answer the question on my turn and... Everyone usually ended up no better than they started, although some of the kids would get super pissed that they had to do it at all. So it was a net negative. I prefer a tool box of methods and approaches so I can figure out how to best address the issue. Sure, tell me about circles, but don't force everyone into it.

1. The PhD process is partially to blame. Candidates are required to find a novel take on an issue to write their dissertation. This often becomes a future focus for them as a professor for quite some time. In the last decade or so when looking at the exhaustive research that had already been done vs. what was novel, these sort of race, equity, inclusion, restorative justice, areas were wide open. They became easy go-to PhD / Ed. D topics of reseach. And as they become new and trendy universities pushed candidates that direction because it offerred new sellable packages to get schools on board. But now we’re missing critical data on other research areas with modern students in modern times.

2. Historical context here… When I was a kid in school things were different. Teachers could physically beat you with paddles, yell at you, tell you that you were stupid, make you stand in the corner, expel you from school for what we would consider minor infractions today. Students with problems of any kind were put into special classes that had few if any expectations. It was perfectly acceptable in any class for a teacher to sit at their desk and read from the book. Sitting in rows quietly listening for a whole class was a normal expectation. Failing to do so was punishable disobedience. As a result of that you had order and discipline. It was based on fear, but you had it. Then any time a teacher did something remotely interesting it was the best day ever and we were gracious.

But that method hurt alot of people. It excluded alot of people. It did not achieve the best academic outcomes that it could. So they started doing research to find alternatives that might work better. And when you hunt for things, you find them.

We jumped on board with inclusion, sheltered instruction, differentiation, multimodal learning, banning corporal punishment. We completely changed how everything worked. But then we didnt really give teachers meaningful alternatives.

Cant hit them. Cant berate them. Cant send them to the office. Cant suspend them. Cant expel them. Cant shame them. So what can they do? During the transition years nobody knew. So they invented stuff.

Most of it was bribery. Just be more entertaining. Give out candy. Use more tech. Be more hands on. Be positive. But a few distruptive kids in every class still caused hell because they needed discipline and recognized the opportunity of its absence. And society didn’t like that either. Graduates that cant follow rules, need constant praise, demand to be entertained. It wasnt going well for the work force.

But education policy started looking at well how to we get those disruptors on board? How do we address the root cause of the problem. They found a bunch of socioeconomic and pyschology problems and they said hmmm what if we just get teachers to take on the community responsibility of fixing those. And good teachers started quitting because the job duties got ridiculous.

But all along side this, the race issue was a problem. Again our old teachers from back in my day were legitimately overtly racist. History was heavily propagandized. Teachers genuinely did not treat students of color as equals. They disrespected and punished cultural differences. Students of color were getting disciplined at higher rates for the same infractions. Lower grades for equal work. LGBT students were bullied by teachers themselves and forbidden to exist openly. So there was a major effort in education research to try to prove this and show that alternatives were better. That not being racist led to better behavior and academic outcomes. It seems almost stupid now but even 20 or 30 years ago it was what some people needed to hear.

So how we arrived here was offen founded in good intentions. But now is a good time to pivot into something else to fix the real problems of the moment.

1. Research sample sizes are abysmal. A handful of classrooms at one or two schools is meaningless. But nonetheless these studies get published all the time. They’re not good data practices. Most administrators are not science or math teachers. They just see “research-based” and often presume the research is done well. It’s peer-reviewed. It’s published in sometjing reputable. But…. A closer review will show rhe research is deeply flawed. And alot of researchers will cherry pick classes and schools and demographics where the data will support their narrative. Rarely ever are the published findings counter to the prediction. Which tells us the research standards are severely lacking scientific efficacy. There is often too much emotion going into it that clouds it with bias. But these bad studies get grouped together with other bad studies and become sellable packages that teachers then have to endure.

2. Tech isnt helping us its killing us. Schools that locked up the phones and ditched the laptops are having fewer behavior problems, better academic outcomes, improved social skills, better mental health, etc. The focus of future education research needs to be on how we combat the overstimulation and garbage culture of the internet in schools. Our students behave like a comment section that became real people. We need to find a way to integrate technology courses where technology is the purpose, and learn to take our other things back to pencil, paper, doing the real thing, reading real books, and actually talking again. Otherwise, they will stew in apathy, behave badly for the content creation, and cheat on every assignment without understanding it. The next wave of education research needs to fit itself to that narrative of our current reality.

3. Charter schools are a scam. We’re reducing valuable peer connections by dividing students using classism. We’re defunding our highest need schools, forcing parents to either pay more for a good education, or send their kids to a stuggling underfunded campus. The academic outcomes of public school only look worse because charter schools get to be selective. But they exist primarily to line the pockets of the charter school’s direcrors, shareholders, investors, etc. Public dollaes should fund public schools only. End of story. Private schools can do what they want but they can pay their own way. That puts the foundations back in public schools. Then public schools can actually function like a normal education system again. Instead of a social services factory. But unfortunately the trend is getting worse there not better.

Rich people went to charters, private schools, or suburbs way before IEPs, PBIS, equity eduation, etc.

I am middle class. Grew up middle class. I see the dire state of public education and chose not to enroll my child in his neighborhood school.

I wish schools were better. I'll vote to fund them. I'll support the unions. But I can't send my kid to that right now. 

Recently my school became a 4-star school on our report card! Yay! (whatever that means, and does anyone actually care?) From the conversations we've had at various leadership meetings, essentially the metric that moved over the past couple of years was "gap closing", and specifically it was a piece that the state does in evaluating "equity" and one of the data points is how many [insert whatever nich group you want to look at] is having access to classes.

On paper it looks like students are being excluded from certain classes. On paper when you have a "teacher recommendation" and/or a prior grade requirement (say nothing lower than a C+ ...) to take a course, it is considered "exclusion" under the state rubric. While I can agree that "teacher recommendation" is not necessarily valid and potentially susceptible to unintentional bias, I cannot agree that achievement in certain classes as a baseline gateway into a course is exclusionary, and I think it's bad for kids.

Essentially what this has created is we've gotten rid of "levels" courses. While we still have "Honors" (because there was essentially a riot of parents), anyone can sign up for it at anytime. In chemistry however we used to have two levels of chem; a College-Prep (Pre-AP essentially without the name) and a regular conceptual chem. The major difference was that CP-Chem was geared towards students who were preparing for science in college, and planning on taking AP-Environmental or AP-Chemistry or AP-Bio; where as Conceptual Chem was geared towards those who struggled more in math, but made chemistry accessible. Naturally CP-Chem came with a math requirement of having completed a certain math course with a C or better, which we later lowered to just having completed the math course in general. Whereas Conceptual Chem had no math requirement.

To meet the standard of the state "equitability" rubric, Conceptual chem was eliminated. The philosophy was all kids should be allowed to "try their luck" at a more difficult course. As a department, the "Chemistry" course is simply that College-Prep chemistry course because we would be negligent not to be preparing students for those capstone courses.

Guess whose being left behind? The conceptual kids. As I sit here grading their tests, I can clearly identify who my Conceptual Chem kids where and who my CP-Chem kids are. And it's not because they are lesser people, the math skills just aren't there. The state says this is "equitable" but is it? Is this actually equity? Because now these kids who would have thrived in a different style class, where they had the ability to access a difficult subject at their level of current academic exposure, are now just being left in the dust. And there is absolutely a level of defeatism and learned helplessness (yes, this is a psychologically observable thing) that starts to happen where it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But the state considers this "equitable" and "gap closing". Is it? Is it actually? Because it just looks like it is on paper.

I am a teacher looking to get into education policy. I have taught math for 8 years. I graduated with a master's in education policy in 2021 and have since been applying for jobs and not getting much further in the hiring process than a phone screening interview.

Since my window for getting a internship is slowly closing (90% of opportunities I will be barred from since I am not a student or recent grad), I am not sure where I can get experience even for an entry level position. I have asked my professors if they have any research opportunities but the one that replied back to me does not.

Sometimes I will see on LinkedIn someone who was hired for the position I applied for and their experience doesn't seem to match the job at all...so I am just wondering that if you in education policy (policy analysis, data analysis, etc), how did you get to your position? What was the education or career path you took?

Thank you for responses.

This post primarily concerns the utilization and creation of equitable policies made with poor research. I've been seeing a lot of posts about it lately and I kind of just need to vent.

I am not inherently against equitable policies, however, the amount of material provided to justify them is largely anecdotal. The overuse of anecdotal evidence to justify various poor policies in education is far-reaching and about half the posts on this subreddit are based around poor admin policies that have resulted from such "research". Whenever one of these topics came up during professional development or my teacher education, I felt like I was being gaslit, as there is no way an idea so profoundly stupid was not only thought up but put into practice.

Here are some examples

• AA students get away with saying the N-word constantly because of "culture", but other students are not allowed to say slurs related to their demographics. Ae Gay kids can't call each other the Fa word. Girls can't call each other the B word. It really should be none at all.
• AA students are allowed to wear durags because it is "as culturally significant as a turban or a yamaka". (No, no they are not.)
• Female students should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever they want due to menstrual cycles. (I'm okay with this one, it just gets abused and there isn't anything we can do about it.)
• Supports for ELL and SPED students don't count as support if I do them for all students. "That's equality, not equity".
• AA students are more likely to disrupt class because of "culture" and you shouldn't intrude because students of color are disproportionately more likely to be reprimanded.
• ELL and SPED students can not receive below 50% on any assignment, even those that have not been turned in.
• All students should be allowed to eat food (99% of the time it is hot chips) during class because they may not have eaten at home. (Once again, I'm okay with this one, but it gets abused.)
• Student behavior is being blamed on everyone but the students. (The amount of felonies I have seen.)

I dealt with both of these often when I was doing my student teaching and first year, and honestly, this is one of the major reasons I moved to the private sector. My new school is much more intelligent with how we implement our policies and it just comes down to focusing on student needs rather than lumping them into groups. I'm not against equity, but I am against these idiotic policies made by people who don't actually work at the schools.

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Hey all,

I am studying to be a teacher, and we just finished a class in a unit about about inclusion. The class finished with a human continuum activity with the following provocation:

*'Which comes first: attitudes, or laws and policy?* in terms of inclusion for students in school (disability, race, gender, sexuality, etc).

I think it is important to note that this is in Australia, where there are laws that are meant to prevent exclusion and segregation. Emphasis on 'meant to', there is a lot of places that don't uphold it.

Anyway, almost everyone moved to the attitudes side, except for one student who stayed on the law side of the room. His reasoning was something along the lines of 'laws can be used in such a way to make a kid to engage with the learning content' i.e. making a kid with ADHD stay back after class to finish their work. The tutor, to her credit, did a very good job of trying to explain why punishing that student could only be destructive for both parties. Another student chimed in and said that he had a teacher who did that, and he threw a chair at him - the teacher ended up being the one fired because of how he treated him (the student).

I am still quite shaken, because I know those opinions persist in education. I also had a teacher who held similar views, and my undiagnosed ADHD was seen as an attitude problem. That was more than 15 years ago, but it still affects me to this day, and I have cptsd stemming from that experience.

I also think it's kind of ironic, because I don't think the guy was paying attention to the actual question.

How am I meant to deal with this as a future teacher? I feel so helpless that this is still an attitude.

I really have nothing to add to this, other than to say that (in my district at least) these policies are adopted without any real understanding of how to apply them.

I guess the Department of Education may be different now but I wonder how people work there and impact education policy issues or how you can even become the Secretary of Education

I have been a teacher and counselor across K-12 and higher ed for 20 years but how do I work at a higher or broader level

Do I need a PhD?

Do I need to run for some local office on an education platform and become a politician

Do I need to actually be some Dean/VP and actually be a business manager who just happens to work in an education organization

So, I am a trainee getting trained on technical and trade skill teaching and assessing with 4 years of teaching experience in this teaching profession; going through the Competency Based Learning Materials of Promoting Inclusivity in a Technical Education. While reading, I came across this chapter which felt very counter-intuitive to me.

According to the CBLM,
To enhance equity

we need to implement policies for fee reduction

To enhance access
we need ensure the selection criteria do not discriminate against learners

To me it seems totally the opposite in reality. To enhance equity should we not ensure that selection criteria is not discriminatory and to enhance access should we not reduce fee so that more people can get trained?

Am I misinterpreting the author? Or is it something else?

I like that you came with examples. So often rants don’t have details

1) time and place restrictions. Completely reasonable.

2) Black people had their culture stolen from them. They made another one. Then white people stole it again, sold it, now charge them for it. Tie goes to the runner on this one.

3) people should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever. The restrictions we place are due to shortages. Let’s not tax students on our problems.

4) this one has always bothered me. The reason that phrasing exists is because IEPs are so poorly written. An accommodation shouldn’t be a good teaching practice. Again, taxing students due to our shortages.

5) the soft discrimination of low expectations. Ref #4

6) like the bathroom, I don’t care. But if the school wanted all kids to eat when they want then the school should provide healthy snacks all day. Some states won’t feed poor kids, so here we are. But my 5th period (after lunch) all snack on oranges and apples - or at least an abundance of students do. Please, continue.

7) again, this is made argument is made from a place of managing in a shortage. If the school wants operant conditions, they need to triple staff and have extensive PDs. We need prison funding for this effort. And board students as well. We need people with PhDs in psychology running the place, not former teachers with an ED.