Leading for Equity
Content area leadership teams focus on providing equity for all in implementing standards
“Of all the things that keep me up at night, the opportunity and achievement gaps that exist in Iowa are some of the most troubling,” said Iowa Department of Education Director Ryan Wise.
“We have gaps among low-income students, students from diverse backgrounds, and students with disabilities across several measures of achievement," he said. "While we do see success stories in Iowa schools, these gaps are unacceptable and we’re working to address them as an education system."
Wise said the gaps are especially disconcerting given the growing diversity in Iowa. He points out that the number of English Language Learners has tripled in the past 20 years and that one in four students in Iowa is a student of color. “We want to ensure that our schools are supporting learners from diverse backgrounds in the best way possible,” he said. “Equity is a priority and should be infused in all of our work at the Department,” he said.
Educational
equity means that every student has access to the resources and educational
rigor they need at the right moment in their education, despite race, gender,
ethnicity, language, disability, family background, or family income.
According to Erika Cook, bureau chief of Standards and
Curriculum, equity is a top priority for the team with which she works. “When students feel a connection to their lives and futures, learning comes alive," she said. .
The Bureau has taken up the charge of supporting equity
through the implementation of standards, the design of professional learning, and
distribution of instructional resources.
Equity through the standards
“In
mathematics, it’s the design of the standards themselves that promotes equity,”
said April Pforts, mathematics consultant. She points to the elementary
standards, which require all students to develop a strong foundation in
mathematics. This foundation, she said, is key to success in the secondary
grades and post-high school.
“The
standards articulate what students need to be focusing on each year to have the
deep conceptual understanding to do the higher-level problem solving,
mathematical modeling, and communicating their reasoning and data analysis that
the high school standards require,” she said. “The K-8 grade level standards
are for all and we need to focus on all students learning those standards.”
Pforts said that this means the end of practices like tracking. “We would like to see high schools discontinue the
practice of tracking students and teachers into dead-end course pathways or
qualitatively different coursework. Double dosing, the practice of
putting struggling students in a second period of algebra is preferred to
making Algebra I a two-year course. “The brain needs multiple exposures, but
stretching it out over two years is not beneficial,” she said. "Students who learn the standards connected to Algebra II are far more prepared and more likely to succeed in taking college mathematics without a remedial course."
Emphasis on equity in
instructional resources
For
the science leadership team, equity is a critical issue. “We’re holding equity
to a high standard for us and saying that in everything we do, we’re looking at
it through an equity lens,” said Kris Kilibarda, science consultant. One area
that demonstrates this commitment to equity is the resources the science
leadership team has developed to support districts in accessing instructional
materials. They have created two different tools: an innovation configuration
(IC) map built around four criteria including equitable access to
culturally relevant pedagogy, and a self-directed training for districts to use
in selecting instructional materials. “Equity has a very strong focus in that
training,” Kilbarda said.
Supporting curriculum designed with equitable
teaching practices
Several
content leadership teams are focusing on assisting teachers with implementing
teaching practices designed to improve equity.
Free
curriculum materials in English/language arts, mathematics, and science have
been developed and will be supported by statewide leadership teams in
mathematics and science. Called OpenUp Resources in mathematicsand English/language arts and OpenSciEd
in science, these comprehensive curricula cover the grade spans of 6-8. In
mathematics some schools in Iowa are piloting the 9-12 materials. Chief in the
design of these curricular is the equitable teaching practices that make it
appropriate for all students.
The Fine Arts leadership team is set to release five
professional learning modules this fall, and Module 1, according to Angela
Matsuoka, consultant for the Fine Arts, has a section devoted to access and equity in fine arts for all
students. “It’s an important piece. The standards lend themselves to equity
because they are centered around four artistic processes – creating,
performing/presenting/producing/, responding, and connecting – each process
soliciting the student’s point of view.” There are so many entry points to
communicate through the arts, no matter
what the student’s background,” Matsuoka said.
In
addition, the Advanced Learner Multi-Tiered System of Support Guide was created
to assist classroom teachers in ensuring all students are appropriately
challenged. According to Rosanne Malek, consultant for talented and gifted programming, the document shows how there can be hierarchy of teaching strategies
that creates more independent learning and thinking by the student with
guidance from the teacher. “If students are not offered these opportunities, you
can’t see what their possibilities are,” Malek said. “Students might have the
potential and it the teacher might not see it.”
Building equity literacy into the social
studies classroom
Equity
literacy is the topic under discussion for social studies consultant Stefanie
Wager. She said the professional development her leadership team is working on
discourages teachers from having a false sense of equity. They replace it with a
deep understanding of biases and inequities and knowing how to respond and
redress biases and inequities in our classroom.
An
example of building the false sense of equity, according to Wager, is teachers
who believe they are promoting diversity through culture fairs or having students dress up in native clothing or eat food from different countries. “So
instead, we try to build conversations into our instruction about race and
inequity from a historical viewpoint and ask students to connect it to the
inequities and biases that exist today,” she said.
Building equity in assessment
For
Jennifer Reidemann, assessment consultant, accessibility and accommodations in relationship to required statewide assessments is the focus. “This is one
of our big ticket items,” Reidemann said. “We will have to speak to this during the peer review phase of our federal approval process for our new statewide
annual assessment.” Reidemann said that the plan is to develop a manual
articulating accessibility and accommodation strategies and provide teachers
support in knowing how to implement them appropriately.
Reidemann also said she is working with the Bureau of Information and Analysis Service and Pam McDowell, the consultant
for English Learner Programs, on issues with English Learners (EL) whose
access to instruction is interrupted because they move from one district to
another. “Just because they are identified as EL in one district doesn’t mean
that information necessarily follows them to the next. We’re working on a new
report for EdInsight, our state data warehouse, that will be accessible to districts and provide information about a students’ EL status. We’re hoping the result will be better data flow,
giving the right people access to information about students’ instructional
needs in a timely fashion so those services are not disrupted when students
move,” Reidemann said.
“I think proving seamless support is critically important because ELs are such a vulnerable
population,” Reidemann said, “So if we can intervene early and provide the
appropriate supports to ensure that the system doesn’t get in the way of good
instruction, that’s what we need to do.”
Iowa Core: game
changer for students with disabilities?
Emily Thatcher, consultant for Students with
Significant Disabilities, said the implementation of the Iowa Core through the
Essential Elements has been a “game changer” for the students with whom she
works. It has been an ongoing effort that has taken over 10 years, according to
Thatcher. “Once it was decided that the Iowa Core was best for all students,
people understood that it meant giving all students access to the general
education curriculum.”
This meant that the required statewide alternate assessment had to be revised to align to the Iowa Core. To do this, Iowa joined
the Dynamic Learning Maps assessment consortium, a partnership of multiple
states that had all adopted the same general education standards. The work of
Dynamic Learning Maps produced the Essential Elements, which contain the
expectation of the standard, but reduces
the depth and complexity.
“No longer are there separate standards for students
with significant disabilities,” Thatcher said. New standards have
resulted in significant changes in curriculum. “Curriculum has gone through so
much – now we’re moving from access to participation to performance,” she said.
Much of the work going on now is driven through the
State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) and has focused on the implementation
of Specially Designed Instruction (SDI). “The SDI Framework gives students
access to the Iowa Core. It is a common set of understandings and knowledge and
common process on how we do it,” Thatcher said. It allows
equity and opportunity to learn, through it we’re developing professional
development and a coaching network, and we’re working on systems support at the
AEA and LEA level, Thatcher said. “It’s hard work, but
it is so exciting to see teachers fall in love with teaching again and see the
differences that are being made in kids.”
For more information,
contact Erika Cook at erika.cook@iowa.gov
or (515) 240-3103.
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