Getting Mindful About Race in Schools

"I don't know what else to do!" Kia exclaimed as she paced around her office. "We see the same results, year after year." She pointed at student performance data and a culture and climate survey, which showed that the outcomes and experiences for students of color hadn't improved in her school in years.

Kia was the experienced principal of Woodmont High,¹  a public high school in the San Francisco Bay Area whose student population was fairly equally divided between African American, Latino, Asian, and white students. I'd just begun working with Kia as her leadership coach. Despite implementing a number of new programs aimed at closing opportunity (and achievement) gaps, the school's students of color were still underperforming academically. Male black and Latino students were still sent to the office in numbers far greater than their counterparts.