Introduction

A fair shot—that's what parents and students expect from their schools. Of course, some would not mind a little special treatment, but they believe that, at the core, schools have to be fair.

What it means for schools to be fair has changed over the decades. At one point in history, it was deemed fair to exclude girls from science classes. It was once considered fair to segregate students based on their race or ethnicity. Today, we think of fair as being not just equal but equitable. That's an important distinction. Whereas equal means everyone gets the same treatment and services as everyone else, equitable means each person gets what he or she needs to succeed. For example, in an equal situation, everyone running the race has shoes; in an equitable one, everyone has shoes that fit and are meant for running, as opposed to some having track shoes and others having shoes that are too small, boots, or high heels. In an equal school situation, we build staircases that learners can ascend to higher levels of achievement; in an equitable one, we make sure to build ramps alongside those staircases.

Equity in education is an important concern because schools are essential in the maintenance of democracy. Our founding fathers had two plans in place to ensure that the democracy continued. First was the three branches of government, and second was the need and commitment to educate citizens so that they would be sufficiently informed to participate in decision making. Our system of government is based on the idea that all people are created equal and have the same rights under the law. These are principles we teach our students, and they are principles we honor by working to ensure every student develops the skills and knowledge necessary to pursue his or her dreams.

School Equity

Imagine a school in which

• The student body truly represents the diversity of human experience and each member is being prepared to interact, survive, and thrive as 21st century learners and world citizens.
• The culture, educational program, and support services are informed by and sensitive to the student body's social and emotional needs such that each student is fully present and engaged in learning.
• The kind of opportunity roadblocks that cause the "haves" to receive more of what education has to offer and the "have-nots" to receive less have been identified and eliminated, and all doors are open to opportunities to engage each student in challenging learning experiences.
• Instructional excellence is the norm, and each member of the instructional team is not just committed to professional mastery but also supported in a way that allows for its development and demonstration.
• The student body is motivated and supported to discover their passions and advance toward positive personal, familial, social, civil, and vocational goals and opportunities.

Now imagine transforming your school into one that is fully aligned with these principles and pursuing this overall vision. To that end, we have developed an organizational structure called the Building Equity Taxonomy (BET) and a set of aligned data-collecting tools—the Building Equity Review (BER) and Building Equity Audit (BEA). Our work to date in over 200 schools in Southern California and hundreds more throughout the United States encourages us to believe that this structure and these tools, applied in tandem, will help you clarify the equity concerns you have about your school and respond by initiating responsive equity-building practices. We offer this book to support your work to map a vision of equity for your school and promote concrete action to achieve it.

The Building Equity Taxonomy

The Building Equity Taxonomy (see Figure I.1) focuses on the equitable practices and outcomes that support critical standards of equity in a school or district.

Figure I.1. The Building Equity Taxonomy

As illustrated in the figure, the taxonomy has five levels, each of which will be explored further in the chapters to come:

1. Physical Integration. Equitable schools are diverse ones, and they value their students' differences and unique experiences with the world. In Chapter 1, we focus on integration efforts and broaden the lens from a focus on race and ethnicity to include class, gender, language, ability, religion, and sexual orientation.
2. Social-Emotional Engagement. Equitable schools address the needs of the whole child. In Chapter 2, we explore social aspects of the learning environment, including the creation of a welcoming climate as well as the value of restorative practices and efforts to improve student attendance.
3. Opportunity to Learn. Equitable schools analyze and challenge the structural aspects of the curriculum and identify areas that hinder students' opportunities to engage in deep learning. In Chapter 3, we focus on human and social capital within schools as well as compensatory and adaptive approaches to learning. We explore the ways in which school systems can provide students with opportunities based on their needs, which may differ from the needs of peers in the same class or school.
4. Instructional Excellence. Equitable schools provide all students with an excellent education that allows them to collaborate with other learners. In Chapter 4, we review the types of learning environments that students deserve—ones that include clearly articulated learning targets, well-defined measures of success, and tasks that are rigorous and aligned. We focus on the implementation of the gradual release of responsibility as a framework to ensure that students develop confidence and competence.
5. Engaged and Inspired Learners. Equitable schools see all students as capable and accomplished learners who are constantly building and reinforcing their identity and agency. Students are empowered to use their education to pursue new interests, skills, and aspirations, and the school provides support in the form of viable action plans and opportunities. In Chapter 5, we look at how students can learn to direct their own learning and identify what else they must learn to reach their dreams.

Each level in this taxonomy is an integral component of an equitable and excellent schooling experience. Unless all are addressed, schools will fall short of providing students with the education they deserve. For example, many schools have achieved physical integration but have neglected to change the learning environment to a degree sufficient to promote the achievement of all students. Other schools have done admirable work to promote social and emotional learning but have not addressed curriculum and instruction or student engagement and inspiration. Still others have focused on providing quality instruction but not on ensuring this instruction is accessible to all students and that every child has the opportunity to learn.

This piecemeal approach to school equity has not resulted in outcomes that we can all be proud of. There are still far too many students whose aspirations are not realized, with dreams deferred or destroyed. We advocate for a much more comprehensive approach to equity work, one in which school systems consider every level of the Building Equity Taxonomy. It's a way to see equity not as "one more thing" but as the thing that drives a school's collective efforts.

A Means of Organizing Equity Concerns and Responsive Practices

Taxonomies have long been used in science to explain the world around us. A taxonomy identifies and separates things into groups and communicates the structural relationships that exist among these groups. Readers are undoubtedly familiar with Bloom's taxonomy and its 21st century update, which was proposed as a means of classifying educational learning objectives and then establishing and differentiating the relationship's among the groups of learning objectives based on relative complexity (Krathwohl, 2002). These groups of learning objectives were subsequently placed at different levels to indicate a hierarchical relationship.

Similar to Bloom's taxonomy, the Building Equity Taxonomy—with its five standards of equality and associated equity concerns and responsive practices—is organized into levels set in a hierarchical order. The order of the levels does not argue for the importance of one set of concerns and practices over another, nor does it imply that a school needs to completely address all issues located within the first level before attending to concerns and practices at the next. Rather, each BET level is presented in the order that we believe will promote practical progress toward equity. In other words, a school attempting to address concerns at the upper levels of BET will find limited success if it is ignoring many of the concerns at the taxonomy's lower levels. For example, BET Level 2 addresses the social and emotional needs of students, which is an equity concern based on the assumption that learners disengage when their social and emotional needs are unmet. BET Level 4 addresses access to excellent instruction, which is an equity concern under the assumption that educational achievement depends on quality instruction. Level 2 is a foundation for Level 4 in that students' ability to benefit from quality instruction will be magnified as they are socially and emotionally prepared to engage in their learning.

Even as we recognize the Building Equity Taxonomy as hierarchical, with each level providing an optimal foundation for the one above it, we caution against viewing the levels as a simple linear progression. For example, no school can afford to delay action to ensure quality instruction (Level 4) due to the fact that many students' emotional needs still require significant attention (Level 2). A trauma-informed school is still responsible for delivering quality instruction, and rather than seeing these initiatives as competing, effective schools work out the symbiotic relationships between responsive academic and nonacademic practices.

BET Level 5 (Engaged and Inspired Learners) does deserve a bit of special attention in this introduction. Levels 1 to 4 address equity concerns and practices that schools should consider when designing school equity plans. They focus largely on inputs—that is, on things the school might choose to do in order to promote a more equitable learning environment and experience. Level 5, in contrast, is much more focused on student outcomes—that is, on what educators hope to achieve as a result of their efforts to promote equity and excellence. Level 5 is about determining the effect of those inputs on the overall development and achievement of a student body. It's about asking, "How do we know whether our students have been affected by our responsive practices to further equity? Is our mission and vision for our school and student body truly being realized? What does a student demonstrate in skill, knowledge, and disposition that tells us our attention to school equity is approaching a quality educational experience?"

In order to conceptualize a response to these Level 5 questions, we looked to another taxonomy: Maslow's (1954) Hierarchy of Needs. In it, Maslow listed levels of needs that are foundational for the ability to realize and even transcend one's potential. He labeled his top level self-actualization and implied that meeting the four levels of more basic needs below it was the way to enhance one's ability to realize potential (i.e., to self-actualize) and then create new goals (i.e., to self-transcend). The analogy to education and to Building Equity Taxonomy was obvious to us, and we hope that as you read and discuss this book, it will become clear to you as well. Where Maslow's hierarchy is a psychological model that addresses conditions of a self-actualized person, our taxonomy is an educational model that addresses conditions necessary to foster an engaged and inspired student body. Maslow focused on four levels of basic human needs foundational to creating motivational drive and accomplishment; the Building Equity Taxonomy focuses on four levels of equity concerns foundational to fostering a self-actualized student body that is engaged and inspired to learn.

The Building Equity Review and Full Audit

As we have described, the taxonomy is a way of organizing equity concerns and responsive practices in a manner that promotes a school's ability to address them effectively. The Building Equity Review is a practical means to get that action under way. This 25-item, survey-driven tool gives school teams an entry point for their equity initiative (see Figure I.2). The statements, which are associated with specific levels of the Building Equity Taxonomy, target core, foundational equity concerns. Based on our experience, asking staff to explore agree/disagree responses to these statements is a good starting place for equity work. We hope that these 25 items, discussed in the chapters ahead, will help your school gather data on your strengths, generate a list of areas for potential growth, and engage in powerful and enlightening conversations.

Figure I.2. Components of the Building Equity Review

A longer and more expansive tool—the full Building Equity Audit—is available for schools looking to move from inquiry to action. The audit consists of targeted surveys for staff and students. We've seen schools adapt these to provide a parent-focused survey as well, and we are working on developing a formal parent version of our own. You can find a copy of the staff and student versions of the Building Equity Audit in this book's Appendixes, along with links to download them. Like the shorter Building Equity Review, the survey items in the Building Equity Audit are organized by guiding statements that align with each of the Building Equity Taxonomy levels—from Level 1: Physical Integration through Level 5: Engaged and Inspired Learners. In addition, 25 key items from the full Building Equity Audit are discussed in Chapter 6 to provide further insight into the percentage of students who perceive themselves to be engaged and inspired learners.

When developing our equity audit tools, we borrowed from a progressive human resources employee evaluation practice called 360-degree feedback, in which one's performance is evaluated not just by a supervisor but also by peers, subordinates, and customers. Imagine a group of people standing in a circle and looking into the middle at the same event. Each of their perspectives on the event will be somewhat different, based on where they are positioned. The Building Equity Audit provides a way to solicit and combine the perspectives of various stakeholders (i.e., students, staff, and parents) into a full picture of equity concerns and responsive equity practices. In short, it can show you where the strengths and vulnerabilities lie so that you can move forward with better, smarter action.

The Building Equity Audit's greatest value is its ability to mine the perspectives and experiences that exist within your school right now in relation to each level of the Building Equity Taxonomy and identify which students are more prepared to benefit from current practice and which need additional support. To speak in metaphor, it can show you where a ramp should be provided alongside the stairs you've already put in place. The audit statements selected for inclusion in the Building Equity Review and discussed in this book are offered to provoke conversations, and the associated actions we propose focus on adding the right type of ramps so that more students can reach higher levels of attainment. A school's commitment to building those ramps, in essence, becomes its equity plan.

Conclusion

Progress toward a society in which all people recognize themselves as equals and respect one another's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness requires all of us to reexamine the distinction and relationship between equity and equality. It requires educators to challenge the institutional discrimination that still exists in our schools.

The pursuit of equity is not an easy path, and in many cases, it is realized as a "two steps forward, one step backward" process. But in order to move forward, even in fits and starts, we must understand where education as a field has been and what it might become.

Educational policymakers, researchers, leaders, and practitioners most often engage in this work by asking, "How are we going to ensure all students receive an equitable education?" In his brilliant 2004 book on community building, Peter Block points out that asking how is the wrong essential question. Before people can conceive of the how, he explains, they must first understand the why. That is, in order to figure out how to address inequity, we must understand why inequity exists—what we're doing or not doing that keeps it alive.

Why would anyone write a book about creating an equitable school without first addressing why equitable schools are important and what they might achieve? Why would we, who understand the importance of having a well-stated purpose for every lesson (Fisher & Frey, 2011), write this book without clarifying our intention? We know very well that the practice of communicating learning expectations and success criteria is highly correlated with instructional effectiveness and student learning (Hattie, 2009). Therefore, we chose to begin this book by clearly stating our purpose: To extend the conversation about equity for all students and to provide educators with a comprehensive model for evaluating their current systems while providing a blueprint for improvement. Our students deserve no less than a high-quality, inclusive, equitable learning experience.

Just imagine how different the world will be when children brought up to value individual differences grow up to run it.