Practical Tools for Improving Equity and Dismantling Racism in Schools

• Published in: The learning professional 2021-06, Vol.42 (3), p.33-39
• Main Authors: Teitel, Lee, Antón, Mary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communities of Practice; Educational Change; Educational Improvement; Educational leadership; Equal Education; Equality; Learning; Principals; Professional Training; Race; Racial Differences; Racial Discrimination; Racism; School principals; Self Evaluation (Groups); Stakeholders; Student Surveys; Students; Teams; Trust (Psychology); Vision
• ISSN: 2476-194X

Racial equity is a deep-seated value for principals Andrea Steele of Tucson, Arizona, Samuel Etienne of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Eliza Loyola of Austin, Texas. As they strive to fulfill these values in their schools, each of these principals has found valuable tools and approaches, as well as a supportive virtual network, as they engaged in an equity improvement process developed at the Reimagining Integration: Diverse and Equitable Schools (RIDES) Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The goal of the RIDES Project is to disrupt systemic inequity in America's schools by building individual and team capacity to tackle race and racism. Author Mary Antón worked with RIDES when she was a school principal and later as a RIDES coach; Lee Teitel was the founding director of RIDES and co-creator (with Darnisa Amante Jackson) of the Equity Improvement Cycle. Antón and Teitel's experiences point to powerful ways that dismantling institutional racism in schools requires five interconnected components: (1) Vision; (2) Personal and team equity culture; (3) Improvement processes; (4) Shared ownership; and (5) Connectedness. To bring the pieces together and work as a professional learning accelerator, Antón and Teitel recommend a sixth component: (6) Networking across schools. In this article, they elaborate on each of these approaches and provide examples of how to apply them, drawing on the experiences of Steele, Etienne, and Loyola -- principals who are one, two, and three years, respectively, into their engagement with the equity improvement process developed by Antón and Teitel and their colleagues at RIDES. Antón and Teitel also provide sample tools that can be used to put these equity actions into practice. These are just a few of the dozens of assessments, curated articles and books, webinars, and how-to videos they have created.