Equity – NewSchools Venture Fund

Trends Emerging From Our First 62 Investments in 2021

eramirez — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 10:00:15 +0000

Here at NewSchools, we kicked off 2021 with the launch of a new three-year strategy, focused on four investment areas: Innovative Public Schools, Learning Solutions, Diverse Leaders, and Racial Equity. Our team is energized by the tremendous response from education innovators and leaders across the country. As we analyzed data from the first six months of investing, we see positive signs that we are on the right track. We are excited to share this update with you, which highlights three promising trends emerging from our first 62 investments.

We have increased diversity across our applicant pipeline, with a record-breaking response from diverse leaders and innovators.

In the past six months, we have reviewed 980 applications across our investment areas, which represents a 40% increase in applications over 2019, and there is more investment activity to come. This story is about more than just how many applications we received. It’s about who the applicants are and how they are finding us.

The team continues to spend countless hours deepening and broadening our pipeline and designing more inclusive and affirming processes for engaging with potential grantees. And it’s paying off. Our pool includes more Latino leadership, district representation and geographic diversity. Of the applications we received, 68% came from people of color. More than 80% of applicants were applying to NewSchools for the first time. In our innovative schools portfolio, close to 30% of applicants and funded school teams were from traditional public school districts, more than any previous year.

We are investing more intentionally in racial equity and diverse leaders to ensure students of color have equal access to a high-quality education.

The disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people of color and the compounding effects of racially motivated violence have made deeply rooted and systemic inequities in our country hard to ignore. Bringing about real change requires schools and support organizations to do more than say they are committed to social justice. They must adopt new practices and approaches that meet the unique needs of students and leaders of color.

That’s why we made two important pivots as part of our new investment strategy: We created a Racial Equity investment area and expanded our Diverse Leaders work to include supporting parent advocacy organizations. Over 300 innovators of colors responded to our Racial Equity open funding opportunity. Now a council of educators, parents, and students is deciding which ideas to fund. It’s the first time our organization has experimented with participatory grantmaking, and we’re excited to see how the council’s investments will improve and equalize the educational experience for children of color in this country.

We are investing in ideas focused on meeting this moment and reimagining education today.

Our portfolio of innovators this year offers a glimpse into what could be the future of learning, one in which all students receive a strong academic preparation, robust social-emotional and mental health supports, and culturally rich and relevant learning experiences. The 39 teams opening schools this fall and next year are embracing an expanded definition of student success and building schools that center students’ identities, expose them to diverse content and teachers, and equip them with the academic and social emotional skills they need in life.

This focus on equity is also shared by the innovators in our learning solutions portfolio, where we have invested in 17 organizations who are either developing interventions to improve literacy education or creating comprehensive, equity-based solutions to meet the needs of school system leaders today.

Across both of these portfolios, we also saw more innovations targeting the specific needs of students who continue to be overlooked by the education system such as English language learners, students who recently arrived in the U.S., LGBTQIA students, and students with learning differences. These innovations will not only tell us how to support these specific student groups better, but also how to serve all students more effectively, lessons that can inform and reshape education and improve outcomes for every child.

Across our investment areas, we are excited about the momentum, passion, and fresh thinking our ventures are bringing at a time when we need innovation more than ever. We look forward to learning and sharing the lessons from these innovators as their organizations grow and have an impact over time. Stay with us on this journey.

EXPLORE OUR CURRENT VENTURES

My First and Only Latina Teacher: Why Teacher Diversity Matters

eramirez — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 10:00:53 +0000

Katiusca Moreno, Senior Partner

Most of us remember the teachers who made a powerful difference in our lives. I remember the ones who felt like family.

For me, Ms. Heyward was one of those teachers. She was my seventh grade social studies teacher who kept a small Puerto Rican flag on her desk, gave instructions in Spanglish and often said, “but you need to know that’s not the full story,” while teaching U.S. history. (In case you’re wondering, that’s me on the top row, first from the left, on Picture Day.)

Being Latina and the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, I felt connected to Ms. Heyward because she too was Latina. She spoke Spanish, like me and mami, who until then had relied on me to be her interpreter at parent-teacher conferences. I still remember the smile of relief that came over mami’s face when Ms. Heyward said, “No te preocupes. Hablo español tambien” “Don’t worry, I speak Spanish too.”

A few months later, Ms. Heyward was gone. I don’t know if she took a job at a different school or if she left teaching. All I know is that mami never came back for a parent-teacher conference and my connections to teachers from then on were few and far between. She was the first, and only, Latina teacher I had throughout my K-12 public school experience.

Teachers of color like Ms. Heyward are still few and far between these days.

Only about one in five educators in public schools are teachers of color. Meanwhile, students of color account for more than half of the PreK-12 student population. In some communities, students go all 14 years of their schooling without having a single teacher who looks like them.

Now more than ever, as the education sector plans for recovery from an unprecedented year, we must prioritize teacher diversity in our public schools. Hiring and retaining effective teachers of color is one of the ways that we can reimagine education to work better for all children, especially those most affected by racial and economic inequities.

Today, NewSchools, with lead funding from the Walton Family Foundation, is opening a $2.5 million funding opportunity focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining educators of color.

Today, NewSchools, with lead funding from the Walton Family Foundation, is opening a $2.5 million funding opportunity focused on recruiting, developing, and retaining educators of color. A significant body of research shows greater teacher diversity within a school yields higher expectations, fewer discipline referrals, richer curricula, less bias, and better academic results for all students, especially students of color and Black boys in particular.

As the new Senior Partner leading the Diverse Leaders investment area, I am excited to work in partnership with innovators to launch bold ideas to diversify our nation’s public schools. I am also looking forward to supporting our existing ventures as they move from early stage planning to sustaining and scaling their ideas for increasing teacher diversity.

In 2019, our funding and customized support helped 14 organizations develop, pilot and scale their ideas. Our ventures are currently cultivating and sustaining teachers through a variety of efforts, including through teacher residency programs, fellowships, and experiences focused on providing affinity spaces, mentorship, resources, and support.

Aside from grooming and sustaining teachers of color, these organizations are preparing teachers to lead in a different way. And in doing so they are causing schools to rethink how they engage and support students. Robert Hendricks III, one of our grantees, is the founder and executive director of He Is Me Institute, an organization working to grow the number of Black male educators. For him, teacher diversity is a means to a larger goal. “It is not just about the face of education being different but also about bringing in a difference of perspective and different impact, so that kids can grow up with a different relationship with school,” he tells us.

“It is not just about the face of education being different but also about bringing in a difference of perspective and different impact, so that kids can grow up with a different relationship with school.” —Robert Hendricks III, NewSchools grantee and founder of He Is Me Institute.

This brings me back to Ms. Heyward, the first teacher of color I had. Although she was my teacher for only a brief time, she connected with me and mami. I felt seen — we felt seen. It’s past time for all students, especially students of color to be seen and to see themselves reflected in the adults responsible for their learning.

If you’re an innovator focused on recruiting and supporting teachers of color like Ms. Heyward, we want to partner with you and help you achieve your vision. Learn more here.

Students Assessments Aren’t Delivering on Their Promise for Accountability or Equity

Jason Weeby — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 01:00:00 +0000

Now is the Time to Reassess our Student Assessment Policies

By Erin Harless, Manager of Research and Learning, NewSchools Venture Fund

The education sector is in the midst of an overdue reckoning about its role in perpetuating systemic racism in this country, from curricula that perpetuates a Eurocentric worldview to an educator workforce that does not reflect the student population. Yet the assessment community, those responsible for creating and analyzing the tools that “reveal” inequity in our public school system, has been mostly absent from the conversation about racial justice. Why? My hunch is that the (flawed) perception of statistics and assessment as objective are inoculating the assessment community from engaging in racial injustice conversations. But assessments are created and interpreted by people, and therefore they are inherently subjective. Moreover, the methodology and framing used to label schools and students as “good” or “bad,” “basic,” “proficient,” or “advanced” have very real implications.

There is a wide range of perspectives about the role that assessment should play in accountability, even among my colleagues here at NewSchools. My hope here is to share my personal lessons and perspective about the issues I believe are inherent in our current accountability system, as well as potential paths forward.

“I was taught that you cannot fix what you don’t measure. But in recent months, my thinking has been challenged by researchers and activists who have brought forward compelling arguments to remake our accountability framework.”

As a white researcher working in a mostly white field, I have always viewed standardized assessment as an equity tool — that by publicly reporting on school and sub-group performance, we can hold schools and policymakers accountable. I was taught that you cannot fix what you don’t measure. But in recent months, my thinking has been challenged by researchers and activists who have brought forward compelling arguments to remake our accountability framework.

End-of-year standardized achievement tests provide little valuable information to teachers, parents, or school leaders. Because of their widespread use and high-stakes nature, standardized tests consist primarily of multiple-choice or short-answer items that are less expensive to score. These item types limit the type of skills that students are asked to demonstrate and limit the quality of feedback or information gleaned to inform future instruction. A study conducted by NWEA in 2016 underscored standardized assessments’ lack of instructional value finding only 37% of surveyed principals found results from state accountability tests to be useful, and 60% of teachers rated their state accountability system as “poor” or “fair,” rather than “good” or “excellent.” And while some might argue that summative assessments do not necessarily need to inform instruction, my response would be, “why not?” It is time to reflect on why we ask educators and students to spend significant energy and instructional time on an assessment that provides no actionable information to support students’ growth.

Ostensibly, the purpose of standardized assessment is to capture whether students have met grade-level standards. However, these assessments are designed in a way that rank orders students, creating an unnecessary zero-sum game. Many standardized assessments used in education measure student achievement on a unidimensional scale. Companies design assessments explicitly to ensure a wide distribution of scores by selecting items that create the greatest spread of scores. As Susan Lyons wrote in her recent article for the Center for Assessment, “The most valued items for estimating [achievement scales] are those that are best at discriminating among examinees… The unidimensional scale is used because it is an excellent tool for doing exactly what it was developed to do, reliably rank-order individuals along a continuum.”

It’s important to note that the statistical tools Lyons describes are accepted practice in the assessment community; in this context, “discrimination” means distinguishing between test-takers rather than suggesting prejudice. And, norm-referenced assessments are useful in specific contexts. For example, assessments that measure student growth, like NWEA’s MAP assessment, compare students to a national norm to contextualize how quickly students progress towards learning goals.

But does the education sector need to sort or rank students to capture whether they have met grade-level standards in a given year? I’m not convinced that we do, because proficiency is not a zero-sum game. In theory, my ability to demonstrate proficiency as a third grader should have no bearing on your ability to do the same. So this design principle appears at odds with the stated purpose of proficiency assessment in public schools.

“The ability to predict student achievement by socioeconomic status raises serious doubt about whether the assessments actually measure student learning.”

Despite questions about their validity, standardized assessments have real, negative consequences for students and schools. Research suggests that standardized achievement measures are better indicators of students’ socioeconomic status than of their school’s ability to provide high-quality instruction. For example, a recent study by NWEA found that half of a school’s achievement can be accounted for by the percentage of low-income students in that school. The ability to predict student achievement by socioeconomic status raises serious doubt about whether the assessments actually measure student learning — what researchers call “construct validity” — or if they measure access to economic resources. Interestingly, NWEA’s study did not find the same association between school-level poverty and growth, suggesting that growth may be a much more accurate and meaningful measure for accountability systems. Another common criticism of standardized assessment is that test designers rely on items that assume background knowledge most often held by higher-income and white students. Infamously, an old version of the SAT used the word “regatta” as the correct answer in a multiple-choice item, privileging students who had access to the world of boat racing.

And yet, standardized assessment results have significant implications for school governance and funding. Schools designated as “failing” can be taken over by the state or even (albeit rarely) closed. And since we know that proficiency results are strongly correlated with poverty, we effectively punish schools that serve populations of mostly low-income students while rewarding schools that serve mostly affluent students. In a system that judges schools primarily by state test scores, standardized assessments may contribute to racial segregation in American public schools. When parents with resources choose a school or district based on their perception of school quality (meaning test scores), they are more likely to select a whiter and more affluent school. High-stakes testing may also incentivize a narrowing of the curriculum. As a result, teachers spend less time on untested subjects like art or history and more time on remedial skills that multiple-choice format can assess. This phenomenon disproportionally disadvantages Black, Latino, and low-income students.

And finally, our relentless focus on achievement and outcomes contributes to a deficit-based discourse that blames historically marginalized students and families for their perceived underperformance, rather than focusing on the drivers of inequity: systemic racism, unequal access to high-quality teachers, and inequitable school funding policies, among many others. In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram Kendi writes, “The acceptance of an academic-achievement gap is just the latest method of reinforcing the oldest racist idea: Black intellectual inferiority” (p. 101). For this reason, Gloria Ladson-Billings has advocated for a shift from a narrative about the “achievement gap” towards “education debt,” which acknowledges generations of inequitable resource allocation and reorients public policy solutions towards the systemic forces that have produced disparities.

Where do we go from here?
At this moment, I believe the assessment community has both the opportunity and the obligation to reflect on the purpose and consequences of our current policies. School closures last spring meant that states were unable to administer end-of-year standardized tests. Many organizations are now calling for a return to standardized assessment without using results for high-stakes accountability.

“It has become increasingly clear to me that our current accountability framework does little to remedy systemic inequity, and at worst, may be actively harming low-income students and students of color.”

But this forced pause creates an opportunity to deeply reexamine the current paradigm, rather than defaulting back to business as usual. Now more than ever, school leaders and teachers need accurate and actionable assessments to ensure that students are getting relevant and high-quality instruction in a tremendously stressful and uncertain time. And, it has become increasingly clear to me that our current accountability framework does little to remedy systemic inequity, and at worst, may be actively harming low-income students and students of color.

Several promising commitments across the field are giving me hope. The Assessment for Learning Project is a grant-making and field-building initiative aimed at redesigning educational assessments with equity at the forefront. In Massachusetts, a group of districts has created a better and fairer accountability system via the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment. What I’ve learned from these organizations and other leaders in the field have shaped a few recommendations for how we can collectively change our accountability frameworks for the better:

Bring students, families, and teachers into the conversation. The current system is not providing actionable information to the most critical stakeholders. Policymakers and researchers should be leveraging the expertise that teachers, students, and their families bring to develop measures that accurately assess progress and provide useful feedback on growth areas.
Anchor more heavily on growth than proficiency. Growth is a more sensitive metric than the blunt instrument of proficiency. It more accurately measures schools’ success serving students who enter far below grade level but make significant progress over the year. Unlike proficiency, measures of growth are not strongly correlated with school-level poverty.
Focus on measuring inputs, access, and learning conditions (the “opportunity gap”). We know that the “achievement gap” discourse puts the onus on students to improve rather than focusing on the inequitable distribution of resources that drives disparate outcomes. If we can only fix what we measure, let’s measure opportunity — access to highly qualified teachers, advanced coursework, mental health supports, and equitable school funding (e.g., this 2019 report from EdBuild).
Use multiple measures to paint a more holistic picture of student achievement and school quality. No Child Left Behind’s successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), allows for each state to include multiple measures in their school accountability and improvement frameworks. States can take advantage of this provision to ensure that their accountability system provides teachers and school leaders with valuable information that informs instruction, such as performance assessment and student portfolios, student GPA (which is a more predictive metric of first-year success in college than SAT scores), and student attendance. States can also expand their definition of student success to include students’ perceptions of their social-emotional development and the school culture and climate. These student voice metrics are predictive of student achievement and can provide school leaders with important information about students’ experiences in school — like whether they feel physically and emotionally safe at school, and whether they feel valued and respected by teachers.
Expand the accountability paradigm. When evaluating schools, researchers and policymakers focus almost exclusively on traditional achievement measures, such as graduation rates, proficiency results, and college matriculation. But how can we expect the system to change without changing the incentives? I have been compelled by the work of Dr. Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, who developed a framework of equity that includes the “dominant axis” (the traditional measures of achievement and access), as well as the “critical axis” (which includes student power and identity development) (Gutierrez, 2009). Through this framework, Gutierrez advocates for a system in which students are encouraged to both “play the game” and to “change the game.”

Together, these recommendations would move the sector towards a more equitable assessment approach that provides valid and actionable information about students and policies and resource allocation. And while these recommendations reflect systems-level changes, I know that we cannot leave all the work to policymakers and politicians. As individuals, we must reflect on received wisdom — the lessons we have been taught, explicitly or implicitly — and let our lessons either confirm or challenge the status quo. No one is immune from this responsibility. I certainly am not, and I will continue to grapple with these questions in my work as an education researcher committed to equitable opportunities for all kids and all communities.

Do Black Lives Matter in Education Reform?

Natalie Wilson — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 16:50:18 +0000

By Natalie Wilson, Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund

I have spent the past five years searching for a public school that I am not certain exists.

I am a single mom to a lively, brilliant, rising fifth grader, Gabrielle, who embodies the phrase #BlackGirlMagic. Over the last five years, we’ve moved from Chicago to Philadelphia to Oakland, all while I attended graduate school, completed an education fellowship, and chased after my dream job in education philanthropy. Before each move, I searched for racially diverse, high-performing schools that were serving Black children well. As a data geek, I downloaded performance data on the schools that each district touted as “high-performing.” I noticed that while students were outpacing district performance on average, there were significant gaps between Black students and other students. Gabrielle attended a National Blue Ribbon school in Philadelphia, for example, and the difference between Black and white students scoring proficient or advanced on state exams was over 30 percentage points across all subjects.

City after city, my search disproved my misguided and naive childhood belief that the key to accessing quality educational opportunities was accumulating wealth and living in more affluent neighborhoods where the schools are better resourced.

I recognize that my experience navigating multiple school systems is full of middle-class privilege and the resources, supports, and choices that come with it. And still.

My story is not unique. Black families have been seeking and advocating for high-quality education options for their children for years, with limited progress. My parents were Brooklyn-born first-generation college graduates who chased the American dream and settled in an affluent NJ suburb with the promise of good schools. In those same Blue Ribbon schools where I excelled, Black students were four times as likely to be suspended as white students. They were academically 1.8 grades behind white students on average, despite having higher median household incomes.

In part, these disparities persist because the national education reform narrative often lumps together the experiences of all people of color and focuses heavily on socioeconomic status, even though Black children across various income levels are negatively affected by education systems that were not designed for them to thrive.

Systemic racism manifests itself in lowered expectations, tracking, inadequate support for students experiencing racial stress and trauma, inequitable funding, culturally insensitive curricula, disproportionate discipline, and persistent opportunity and achievement gaps. Black high school students are twice as likely to be suspended as white or Latino high school students. They are disproportionately disciplined for the same behaviors and are more likely to be arrested than other students. Black students are much less likely to graduate from high school and attend college than white students with the same family income. And despite ample research outlining the positive impacts of a same-race teacher on student outcomes, less than 7% of American public school teachers are Black, a number that has fallen over the years.

While these national data are not new nor surprising, it debunks the myth that Black families can earn their way out of racism. I do not want to downplay the impact of poverty on students’ educational outcomes but rather explicitly advocate for a deeper focus on the unique challenges Black children face within schools that cannot and should not be reduced to their socioeconomic status.

What would happen if we evaluated schools only by how their Black students were doing? If those evaluations informed funding allocation and accountability decisions? What if we stopped lumping the experiences of all students of color and using their socioeconomic status or circumstances to explain away their experiences? What if we took a Black Lives Matter approach to focus our education reform efforts on Black students’ unique experiences and needs, recognizing that they continue to be oppressed by a system that was not designed for them to thrive? What would our policies, programs, and schools look like if we finally acknowledged and focused on addressing how systemic racism affects all Black children?

We are in a unique moment when the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our education systems, and there is a growing national movement in support of Black lives. How might we use this as an opportunity to challenge the status quo rather than seeking a return to normalcy, knowing that our “normal” is failing Black children?

I don’t have all the answers, but I am fortunate to be in a position to support education entrepreneurs with bold visions for reimagining public education. For example, Randy Seriguchi and Urban Ed Academy’s Man the Bay Initiative addresses the Black male teacher shortage through their intensive four-year residency. Man the Bay aims for every student in the Bay Area to have one male teacher of color before 6th grade. In Washington D.C., Maya Martin Cadogan’s organization DC PAVE is empowering parent leaders and advocating for schools, policymakers, and elected officials to make collaborative decisions that ensure all students have access to an excellent education. These leaders are changing the face of the teaching workforce and education leadership, and, in turn, molding a better future for Black children.

My push to our field is to think beyond rolling out #BLM statements. Invest in diversifying the education workforce, but do not stop there. Consider how you are supporting and listening to Black staff. Think deeply about who holds power and influence within your organizations and systems. Who is advocating for Black children? What systems and structures are disproportionately affecting Black children and need to be redesigned?

Recenter the conversation to focus explicitly on Black children’s experiences and needs and invest time, capital, expertise, and resources into building a public education system where Black children thrive.

Eight Reasons I’m Hopeful for Racial Justice and Equity

Antonio Tapia — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 20:53:51 +0000

By Antonio Tapia, Senior Associate Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund

Image via KPFA

My daughter, Samira, and hundreds of other young people were protesting the death of George Floyd at Oakland Technical High School some weeks ago. Despite the risk of contracting COVID-19, she ultimately decided that she needed to have her presence felt, and her voice heard, so she marched. I was worried about the virus and the possibilities of her being physically hurt, but I knew what motivated her. I had the same motivation when I was her age.

My own journey in activism started when I was in high school. By that point, I had already had my first interaction with the police. When I was 13-years-old, two policemen stopped my 12-year-old cousin in our South Bronx neighborhood. They frisked my cousin, cursed at me, and threatened to beat me. It was the first of numerous, unprovoked interactions with the police.

So in high school and afterward, I marched in protests against police brutality, led protests against racism on campus, spoke out against entrenched racism, and protested in New York City while helicopters circled overhead.

Somewhere along the way, I lost hope. I got tired of having the same conversations around race and racial injustice with just incremental change ever on the horizon.

But now, while I am experiencing the pain, anguish, and fear alongside so many others, I’m hopeful because there are actual, real signs of change out there. The recent events and my conversations with Samira have brought out a sense of possibility for me. These are the things that came to me that bring me hope.

. . .

I’m hopeful because young people are fired up. They’re being confronted with repressive police forces in many places, yet they keep coming out in force. They shouldn’t have to put their safety on the line, but their courage and fight are raw, genuine, and uncompromising. Perhaps because my own kids are teenagers, or because I’m thinking of the students I’ve taught before, or just because I’ve always believed in the power of youth, I’m deeply moved by the intensity and commitment of how young people are now engaging.

I’m hopeful because teenagers and young adults are not taking for granted that “things don’t need to be the way they’ve been.” Samira recently shared this point of view with me. Her group of friends, like many teenagers, are much more open to different ways of thinking and accepting of differences than ever before. Moreover, they’re not hampered by the status quo. Whether they’re protesting a hate rally through social media resistance or pushing back against long-held views in society, they’re destroying boundaries and taking names.

I’m hopeful because it’s not just people of color anymore. I remember the Rodney King beating and the officers’ acquittals, clearly. Young white folks were not showing up then. Now, they’re standing side by side (and sometimes in front). Even white celebrities have put out some next-level stuff. I couldn’t name a Taylor Swift song to save my life, but I will say she used her platform powerfully on these issues recently. At my old high school, white alumni have drafted a list of demands (demands that are pretty damn near revolutionary for any school, let alone a prep school) and are pushing those forward. Young white folks are helping to lead the change in a real way I haven’t experienced before.

I’m hopeful because there are a group of very loud, highly fired-up conservatives that have called out the confederate flag and monuments as symbols of treason and oppression. They’ve made it part of their mission to remove them- and face the racial reckoning- rather than placate vocal constituencies.

I’m hopeful because the language of racism is becoming well-known, and we’ve seen that the response to racist behavior can be quick and unforgiving. I followed the Amy Cooper story as it was happening and was, frankly, surprised at how quickly — from a Sunday to a Monday — her company determined her dangerously racist behavior was not in line with their values and took action. Whether it was truly a values-based decision or a P.R. response, the message was clear: it wouldn’t be tolerated.

I’m hopeful because the American citizenry has shown that they will shut things down if cops keep murdering Black people. All 50 states have been involved in the protests against police brutality and for Black lives. We’ve had regional upheaval before, but now, it’s the whole country.

I’m hopeful because the rest of the world supports the protests. In the 1990s, apartheid was brought to heel partly because of the countries that pressured the South African government. With a recent U.N. HRC condemnation and the rest of the world watching, the outside pressure on our government will matter. Millions of people around the world are literally putting their own lives and health at risk amidst a pandemic to show solidarity for Black lives in the U.S.

And I’m hopeful because Black lives are now very visibly intertwined with the life of this country. Police reform and police brutality are not the core issue. They are the current manifestation of white supremacy and the state’s antipathy towards Black people. And white supremacy isn’t a side note in this country’s history; it is what the country was built on. Without entrenched racism, this country would not exist. For the country to survive and thrive, we’ll need to deal with entrenched racism.

. . .

So, I’m hopeful that this reckoning around Black lives is real, but I’m not naive about the challenges ahead. Black authors and activists have already shared apprehension that white allies are out in the streets because it’s the trendy thing to do. I hope that’s not the case and, of course, only time will tell. Even if this time is different, hundreds of years of intentional and systematic subjugation won’t go away easily. The new phase of this fight has only just begun.

As I continue to support my daughter’s protests, I’ll also continue to listen and learn from an intelligent young woman as she shares her thoughts and feelings about what’s going on in our country. Besides gaining a deep appreciation for who she’s become, I also learned a final key lesson from our conversations. Young people realize, maybe earlier than many of us did, that things don’t need to be the way they are.

As Barack Obama recently shared with 2020 graduates, “all those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? It turns out they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions.” Samira and her peers are starting to ask all the right questions.

Our Moral Imperative: Racial Equity and the Public School System

Frances Messano — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 04:34:27 +0000

Educators are preparing for a fall as their school communities — and the rest of the world — grapple with the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic anti-Black racial injustice. As a national nonprofit that supports and invests in promising teams of educators and innovators who want to reimagine learning, NewSchools is well-situated to help educators cope with the onrushing wave of change. To help educators prepare to reopen their schools this fall, we have launched the Distance Learning Lessons webinar series. The webinars and accompanying resources share creative, effective, and actionable solutions from our school leaders and other experts.

We decided to launch our series with a webinar entitled, “Our Moral Imperative: Racial Equity and the Public School System.” We believe that designing and redesigning schools for equity is an essential step in addressing systemic inequities. As one of our school leaders, Shawn Hardnett, said, “His school is his protest.” We wanted to consider what it would look like if we designed schools that truly met the needs of all students — schools where learning outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, income, gender, language or ability, and where educators work closely with families to design schools that embody their aspirations.

In this first webinar, Caroline Hill, founder of 228 Accelerator and Thaly Germain, founder and CEO of Onward, led participants in a discussion of the challenges and the opportunities that schools are currently facing. They grounded the conversation in the compounding adverse effects of four centuries of systemic racism coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately sickens and kills Black people. Hill and Germain then asked participants to consider three provocative design questions related to the purpose of school, space, and healing. Those questions are explored below with examples from the webinar and schools in our portfolio.

“How might we resource the public school to become a catalyst for America’s Healing and Reconciliation?”

The long legacy of racism in America’s education system is well known, and the pandemic has made learning even more difficult for our most vulnerable students. Shuttered schools and the subsequently well-intentioned but hastily-made plans for distance learning have harmed low-income students, students with special needs, and students of color the most. To be clear, schools were not working well for Black and brown students before COVID-19. As one participant wrote in the webinar’s chat, “The differences are being magnified and laid bare.” Simply re-creating the same systems in a new context won’t result in progress toward equity.

So how do you give all students access to the opportunities once reserved for the privileged? Webinar participants mentioned bringing more Black teachers into schools, ensuring equitable resources, moving beyond technical answers to the root causes of inequities present in schools, providing historically informed and accurate instruction, combining social-emotional learning with rigorous academic work, and a broadening of academic standards. As one said, “Stop solely focusing on narrow academic standards that do not address our nation’s true history.” Webinar participants also pointed out that leaders in education need to advocate for children and their families outside of school systems to achieve real equity.

“How might we design a pedagogical approach that creates spiritual and emotional intimacy while respecting the need to be physically distant?”

COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing separation between people from different backgrounds, which has contributed to racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, among other forms of hate. Shelter-in-place orders have added physical distance to the emotional and spiritual gap that already existed. Hill and Germain suggested that creating an equitable society and learning environments requires radical inclusion, enabling us to become more proximate to the experiences of others.

Participants shared ideas for creating more connected learning environments. One participant pointed out that students will be meeting in smaller groups when school restarts in the fall. Others suggested that educators group students to prioritize diversity and deliberately celebrate differences. In this way, they can create intentionally diverse learning communities. Scott Bess, the CEO of one of our ventures Purdue Polytechnic High School (PPHS), provides a good example of prioritizing this. The school is an intentionally diverse school that strategically groups students for complex, problem-based learning. In addition, Scott believes that schools need to step into the role of teaching history accurately and dismantling white supremacy. At PPHS, there is a commitment to rejecting the narrowing of the academic curriculum.

“How might we create an aligned curriculum that comforts the spirit, heals the body, develops the mind, and soothes the soul?”

COVID-19 has elevated the importance of staying physically and mentally healthy, yet that’s proven difficult under such extreme circumstances. Many essential workers don’t have the privilege of working from home. Others face the stressors of job and economic insecurity while juggling increased child or eldercare responsibilities. The ongoing violence against Black Americans has surfaced how many members of our community do not feel safe simply living life because of the color of their skin. As a result, mental health needs have only increased for families, students, and educators. As Hill and Germain shared, there is a need “to heal and think about the ways we can attend to the traumas of the physical body, the emotional body, and the universal body of the community.”

Links between schools and communities can strengthen healing in both places. At Statesman Preparatory Academy for Boys, establishing warm, caring and trusted relationships is central to their model so that students feel emotionally safe and know that they belong. When Statesmen moved to distance learning in March, the team immediately focused on maintaining strong relationships with students. They mapped which staff member had the strongest connection with each student and assigned every staff member five students to check in with during planned advisory sessions and by phone. Every student had at least two daily touchpoints from a staff member. The full school community continued to come together twice each day online, just as they did before the pandemic, during a morning meeting and an end of day check-in. Ninety-five percent of their boys logged in to learn every day. The school also provides mental health support for its teaching staff, predominantly Black men, through Georgetown University so that they can process their own trauma and better support students. CEO and Founder, Shawn Hardnett, says that the school emphasizes “physical distancing” rather than “social distancing,” a distinction that is important for maintaining a focus on healing and community even when students are not in school.

Where do we go from here?

“Truth-telling, reconciliation, and healing in schools will look different than they have in the past,” Hill observed. Schools and other organizations will need to acknowledge how they have upheld inequitable environments. And as Germain pointed out, “Black educators cannot carry the full burden of the work to be done. Everyone needs to own the change in schools.” If you are interested in learning more about how to redesign your school to put equity at the center, please see this list of resources Hill and Germain shared.

We also hope that you will participate in the Distance Learning Lessons series, including the upcoming webinars that will occur throughout June and July:

June 24th: What Will Learning Look Like This Fall: Scenario Planning for an Uncertain Future
July 8th: Grade-Level Instruction or Personalized Pathways: Is It Possible to Prioritize Both in Distance Learning?
July 15th: Meeting the Social-Emotional Needs of Our Students: Spotlight on a School Model
July 22nd: Meeting the Needs of All Learners: Spotlight on English Language Learners

If you’re a school leader or a school system leader, check out our #DistanceLearningLessons webinar series for lessons and resources that can inform the decisions you’re making now to reopen schools safely in the fall.