001well i'm going to assume that we're live unless unless mr rittenhouse is going to tell me otherwise oh here we go all right all right well well greetings everybody welcome to uh the april 8th edition of the aps uh equity uh committee and um we're gonna go ahead and get started i'm gonna ask uh our our chief diversity equity inclusion officer um ms chapman to uh to uh get us rolling today ms chapman thank you i think uh the meeting minutes were shared in the agenda so you can look at those at your leisure we do have a presentation today but i do want to give just a couple of updates and conversations with superintendent james over the past couple of weeks we have an upcoming touch base meeting to outline some of the possibilities
002for what an internal equity design team design and support team could look like within the district and identifying those necessary resources and or people to support all the work ahead of us so that conversation is going to be taking place during our touch base meetings coming up over the next couple of weeks we are moving forward with the equity audit the rfq to choose the external consultants for audits that will be conducted for business affairs community engagement and human resources divisions i believe those close on april 12th right deborah folk so you'll be hearing more about that work next up will be deborah in june once that has closed and the committee has had a chance to convene around which of those responses to the rfq meet the needs of those particular department audits we've
003started some really insightful conversations across the district in various divisions using an equity self-assessment tool developed by beloved community and these are opportunities for us to just start the conversations around equity goals strengths and diversity equity and inclusion our data-driven practices as they relate to specific departmental functions we're hosting debriefing sessions with department heads after results are received from those equity self-assessments to discuss those key takeaways what might need to be further explored and then how those insights translate to action they have been very insightful and you'll hear more about those in the coming meetings as well as many of those takeaways are actually resulting in actionable items for departments deborah folk and i recently had a discussion that you'll hear more about in the later meeting on tier 1 tier 2 supplier diversity supports
004that are taking place with the state of ohio and they really provide us some opportunities to examine our supplier practices our vendor purchasing work and so that has started and then one of the things that we're really encouraged about is the work taking place in our data division around what type of equity metrics we need to be looking at as we work with buildings on their 90-day plans this is being led by kenya harrington within our school improvement department and so these data visualizations he calls them helps us to better understand student access to opportunities resources tailored professional development opportunities or discipline practices how we use our family and community engagement resources and can even in my opinion connect to how community in indicators around health and employment and housing and access to resources might
005intersect with the data that we examine within our district and then uh personally i'm looking forward to having my own coaching sessions with ryan pendleton our treasurer of the year just to better understand more about equity and funding and resource allocations as his team considers to considers how those resource allocations are taking place within our district and all of the questions related to how schools are funded where funding goes why allocations are made in the ways that they are and then finally today i'm going to turn it over to karen giegic in teaching and learning who's going to share more about what is happening in her division especially on the curriculum audit work alignment of curriculum professional development consulting opportunities and then the work that will be coming forward with our dei learning specialist so
006i i am excited um you know everything that i read about where you have to begin as it relates to creating this racial equity approach this racial equity culture within our district speaks to how we work to share a vocabulary and so the training work that we're doing the racial equity series with our senior staff all focused around developing that shared vocabulary identifying those race equity champions at the board and senior staff level i mean check the box we are doing that um naming this equity work as a strategic initiative in our district check the box we are doing that we have our advanced aps we have our racial equity policy all guiding this work and then just continuing the dialogue and then finally ending with how do we disaggregate our data so i am
007encouraged that we are definitely doing the right things um with uh our eyes on where we need to go and understanding that this is ongoing work it is certainly not not a sprint but a marathon but keeping our eyes on the road and understanding that we are doing many of the things we need to be doing to better understand this work so with that said i'm going to turn it over to mrs karangic thank you carla and i will present uh i have a powerpoint that i'd like to talk through if that meets the pleasure of this board so let me pull that please and thank you mr egg please and thank you okay so i am pleased to be able to provide an equity update to the committee from the lens of teaching and
008learning and everything that we do in teaching and learning really falls under the direction of dr mcwilliams woods and the leadership of superintendent james so when we look at the history of where we've been it started in 1999 with a multicultural education policy and then it it kind of stayed steady until 2017 when under the leadership of mr bruce alexander he pushed the committee forward with a racial equity policy and then some working definitions and in the slide show all of those are active links for uh for reference that brought us up to january of this year with a new and revised equity policy and if you look side by side with mr alexander's work and then the work of this board there are some definite walkovers from his early work to this work and
009it certainly is dramatically different from the 1999 multicultural work so the progress of the board under this superintendent and this board has been dramatic when we look at the role of curriculum and instruction with the work around equity we believe that there have been some accomplishments but our goal is to continuously deepen the work around equity so what we've done today is we've taken the policy statements and we tried to walk them over to give you some evidence of where we are and what we're doing to continuously deepen the work so new faculty orientation that is a mandatory onboarding of all of our teaching staff and this superintendent and this diversity director carla have instituted a program of six hours of mandatory training over three separate sessions that every new teacher must go through it
010sets the stage for our expectations in a teaching career in akron we also have leveraged the integration of teaching and learning for our college and career academy we did a four-day training at the beginning of this year for every high school teacher to look at the collaboration across teachers between teachers in order to increase the collective competency to address the needs of learners facing history is a program that you may be aware of and we reached out to them to help our teachers with the current events to address what's happening in our community and across communities in the in the country today to make sure that we were aware of multiple perspectives and to equip teachers with the ability to have those conversations and to effectively teach a racially and ethnic ethnically diverse student population
011just as the board policy directs we're also examining our current teaching tools start with a self-examination we always had a checklist that we would use whenever we brought in new teaching tools but now we're re-examining those checklists to make sure that they really are on point and as current as they possibly can be to make sure that they reflect the student voice and choice of our community we also are looking at the collaboration of teachers and administer administrators i don't know why i'm not speaking very well today but we're looking at how we collaborate in order to bring culturally responsive practices to our students this past year we changed our assessment program to illuminate and it just so happens that during a pandemic the way that we assess students had to change too and our
012end of course exams and the pacing and the content had to change so the new system allowed us to deliver this new assessment protocol with teachers actively building the assessments to match the current academic delivery we also have experimented and moved forward with artificial intelligence in a program called my access that this board and this leadership team has approved it allows for multiple writing prompts so the students write to the prompt and they're scored with ai capability and then rescored on rewrites so it takes some of that personal point of view and knowledge of who that individual student is out of the scoring process so with that experiment with artificial intelligence it allowed us to get multiple readings multiple writings and rewrites of a student's prompt of students writing so that we could in fact
013increase our writing competency and production we also have the individualized learning paths that are reliant upon artificial intelligence for scoring and setting a pathway my access iready and exact path are all those protocols that we're using we also are going to make sure that our curriculum adoption process has clear targets related to dei so that we are including diversity equity and inclusion at every level of the adoption review selection and training process so we have an expanded focus thank goodness that we are a one-to-one district with a superintendent and board that believed in the vision and agreed that all of our students should have access 24 7 to rich learning resources so that during a pandemic which we just are in the middle of our students were not disadvantaged because of a lack of technology
014so that assumes a level of rigor for all students we also have participated annually in the local equitable access plan they call it leap that we get a rating from the state around that looks at a few indicators inexperienced teachers teaching out a field the ratings of principals and of teachers to get a cumulative equity index to promote equitable access to excellent educators and we we meet regular quarterly to review that plan and submit an annual plan to the ohio department of education around that our next level of work is to eliminate practices as our board has charged us to eliminate practices that lead to the over and under representation of any student racial group compared to peers so we are in the process of auditing and reviewing internally our processes our curriculum our offerings
015to see where we have uh gaps we've met with every high school principal to ask their capacity to meet the honors diploma if they have three years of one foreign language two years of two what staffing would need to be in place to allow that to be realized across every school with rigorous prepared for success standards so we're in the midst of that moving that work forward we may have staffing requests we do have a few staffing requests that will come forward from that to make sure that we have equitable access across campuses to rigorous curriculum and then of course this board supported the employment at the direction of the superintendent of a dei learning specialist to help focus and bring that view across curriculum so that we are ensuring equitable access and addressing underrepresentation
016in our curriculum with our curriculum and with our tools we also know that our curriculum in and of itself may need to change some of that change will be additional courses but throughout each course there should be inclusive practices that change the delivery within our courses so as we start that next level of work and continue that audit and that pressing forward we will again rely on the newest member of the teaching and learning team [Music] to help check and calibrate our work across content areas to support our schools this is not in the area of teaching and learning but it's an ongoing area of support for teaching and learning and that is the direct walk over to human resources around recruiting employing supporting retaining continuously developing that rich support team of teachers tutors counselors
017so we do that in teaching and learning with strong university partnerships there's a program that this board and this superintendent has endorsed called great teachers great leaders and we recruit and support that program we participate in mock interviews and on-site interviews to make sure that there is a rich pipeline between our local universities and our classrooms our interns and student teachers are evidence of this at the direction of dr mcwilliams woods and with the full support of this superintendent we were one of the few student teacher locations that was open across the state across the the city we had more student teachers than we've ever had before during the pandemic because we welcome them promote that experience for our staff and value the energy that they bring and as dr mcwilliams woods and dr james
018always remind me it gives us a full year or at least a six-month on-the-job interview with aspiring teachers to make sure that the candidates who step into our schools are familiar with our schools to the most to the highest level that they can be so that rich relationship with our university partners has has helped us i believe and of course the ability to actually offer university courses on our campuses we've been able with deborah folk support we've been able to set up universities who come and teach on our campuses university courses and then the university students step right into our classrooms at cyberling and vorus and conduct field support so what they're being taught by the university translates immediately into instructional practice to support our kids so we we look forward to deepening those university
019partnerships we have university partnerships with the ib cluster so that our teachers are teaching university courses and our principals danielle henderson was a a university professor by night for the ib pyp program so carla said to me so karen what will success look like so if you think about the three by three initiative or three and three initiative it looks like increasing our graduation rate it looks like improving our attendance rate but it really looks like valuing the students in our schools and equipping them to step forward into the workforce in our city i mean if that's not what our mission is in teaching and learning then i think we're misdirected we really do have to value the students who are in our classrooms value our teachers expertise and help to develop that expertise so
020that we can provide the best future for every student who crosses our door so with that i ask if you have anything that you're wondering about what i've shared in any way i can answer questions for you because i would expect dr hall that you would have a few for me and i will be very disappointed if you do not you know mr i love that you take the bull by the horns on that one uh i i love that um i do have a number of questions um i probably have seven or eight um that i've written down along the way but but first um i want to um i respect everybody else that's here on the call um i i want to first refer to the rest of you um because you may
021ask questions that i already have and so uh you know again i want to give you a chance to kind of get in here as well so before i start talking um you know uh who else on the on on this call or uh has uh questions from mr jack and please don't be shy please miss audrey thank you so much i appreciate it and i'm so happy to be here i've had so many schedule conflicts so i haven't this is my first equity meeting um so again i'm thrilled to be here uh my question specifically about any connections we've made and i apologize this has been discussed previously i keep thinking about our teacher academy at book though and just the fact that we have that there and just wondering if there's been any
022um any thoughts on you know connecting that to our pipeline especially with its you know relationship to our college and career academies and diversity efforts and staffing teachers that look like our students so my question is just surrounding any uh progress and and connecting that in a more strategic audrey way can answer that um because today i was on i serve on a committee with the lebron james uh i want to say college of education but department of education now at university of akron school of education i'm sorry and um one of the topics that came up is about the pipeline and really deepening the relationship between akron public schools and that particular academy and the university of akron they're very interested in doing that but um i also want to kind of take advantage
023of uh you know the lebron james school of education and see if i can work out some other partnerships that can help improve that pipeline the other thing i want to say is i uh served as a moderator for a session at the black male summit and i was really disappointed kathy mcveigh that i had three african-american young men who went through the university of akron college at some point in their careers one even student taught at ellet and they didn't work here so we we have some work to do but i really think the future for us and getting these diverse candidates is to really grow our own and it seems like right now the university is very interested um in working with us on that the other thing i want to bring up
024is i did have a conversation with rachel teca and we are going to have to do some outreach and that's where i can rely on board members to help me in really talking to parents and students to have a real interest in the field of education and teaching when i look at the numbers that my review with rachel the numbers for that particular pathway are are smaller and we need to really do some work and boosting them up so i want to try and put some you know i don't have another term other than some value-added pieces into that pathway and some relationships that we can have with some outside organizations to really try and boost that up ms hughes and then uh dr glover please good afternoon everyone and then ms mckittrick good afternoon
025karen this question is for you i appreciate so much what your department does one of the key differences between multicultural education that you've described and then the culturally responsive pedagogy that we're striving for is ensuring instructional rigor so how will the teaching and learning department continue to build teacher capacity to develop rigorous instruction for all students at all grade levels so i'm so glad you asked that question because as we work with our prepared for success indicator that is one of our key findings that we've got in our audit that i mentioned and you know when we came out and met at brookdale where are we what courses where are we where do we have gaps and so we have asked for teachers to attend rigorous ap like training even though they may not be
026a senior ap teacher so that we can build in the capacity of our teachers to see what that rigor needs to be what they need to teach toward at that final level and build it in in sixth grade and seventh grade in eighth grade not just ap teachers but the rigor along the way does that answer miss hughes thank you yes ma'am mrs g jack i would also just throw in real quickly here the expansion now that um this board has approved of avid into all of our high schools and middle schools where that the whole purpose of that is working with underrepresented students to take higher level courses but the key is they do get an elective course that they get support and that social network to be successful in higher level courses but
027the key of avid is the training for all the staff and it's all about the higher level expectations the level of rigor and classes pushing that students all students level of rigor and success within that rigor and so that's why we love avid it's not just about students needing support and having a cohort but it's about training the faculty and staff to to boost all students ability to be successful in those higher level rigorous courses yeah it came out and maybe can you all hear me it came out in our discussion with our local uh equity planning team as well in addition to the avid and those type of instructional coaching supports how we use our instructional coaches and the consulting teachers and giving more time for those uh teachers who need that level of
028support to have that one-on-one time with a coach to help support their instruction it was probably one of the i don't know karen rich's discussions we've had in that committee in a while as we talked about the strategies that we'd like to uh implement to support teachers to be more effective in their practice it's some really good things on the table and dr mick williams woods hit it completely on on target because we we can't just put kids into ap courses without the supports that whole hanover research that maybe ap isn't the final end game but the support along the way to address and embrace the rigor that has to be in each course is our critical need to establish to support to grow the expectation of our teachers and the belief the mindset in
029our students so thank you dr mcwilliams woods for that dr glover uh good early evening everyone so i'm going back to uh mrs patrick's question because i feel like i was supporting some of the work around the teacher academy program um so there's two different things that are happening within my role first um we have a place on the ohio dean's compact and that is work that is centered around diversifying the workforce in education for the state of ohio so we have folks from ode that has on us call other superintendents human resources folk people and um what we're doing is talking about different strategies and hearing different perspectives of what's going on in terms of recruitment and retention across um the state of ohio and our findings are going to be used as a
030for a policy brief and then um for suggestions for ode in terms of you know developing different legislation and policy around recruitment retention as it relates to diversifying the workforce uh of educators secondly prior to kovit um i know um nicole and her team of teachers um and folks i think her instructional or her academy coach we all met with kent state and so our conversation was centered around okay yes we have teacher academy at brookdale for the high school students but we have to reach them a lot earlier and we might want to think about the language that we're using to frame the conversations about bringing our students into those academies and so our conversation went into how do we develop summer opportunities um to tap into our middle school students and maybe our
031fifth and sixth graders so that they are working across the book the cluster towards becoming coaches and leaders and educators so by the time they get to book though they kind of funnel into the teacher academy so that's kind of where we were prior to covet um we've had several conversations since then but our goal is to develop something so that it is it will occur in the summer and begin at an earlier age so i hope that also gives you a little more information mrs autry thank you very much thank you ms mckittrick thanks dr hall um so i know you we talk often about professional development for our faculty but i'm wondering if there anything in place in the course work for our students that has to do with cultural studies starting at
032very young ages so that as they grow you know it's it's almost too late if we wait until kids are in high school right to give them some kind of exposure to studying different cultures and so i'm wondering if we have anything like that in place for our youngest kids so i think adam would say that that's a component of all of our social studies curriculum and the audit that we started with was in social studies to make sure that we could check ourselves and make sure that our practice was representative and inclusive and we have some work to do to make sure that it is but uh in most areas i think mrs mckittrick the social studies curriculum carries that although it's infused it should be infused throughout right okay thank you and i
033think that's one of the things you would expect to learn more about right karen as the audits take place with the consultants that are going to be doing the work with learning specialists and we are starting with social studies because there was such a natural connection to the critical consciousness we see happening in the world today to the social studies content that that was a natural starting place for the audit work that's taking place right thank you yeah uh just quick comment on that too i mean you know i think part of the struggle is especially with social studies i mean there are some really shockingly uh ugly things uh about about the history of the world right and and so how do you teach that in a way that it's age-appropriate um you know
034i you know i i you know i don't know if any of you have read the people's history united states by howard's inn but um but there are certain parts of that that i couldn't imagine uh a first second or third grader you know um reading or being exposed to from a from from just in the graphic nature of it so i think translation is wow that's a challenge um you know so um so again so just real this real quick check here i know that i'm having some um some bandwidth issues um can you all uh can someone give me a thumbs up can you hear me okay okay all right um so okay i may need to turn my video off to so to avoid further degradation in my bandwidth but um anyway
035so that's just a quick comment on that and then uh and then so i've so uh so mr again i just want to thank you for the time that you put into this it was very thoughtful um one of the things i want to ask just in a very general sense well first off the questions that all of you were asking uh were incredibly insightful and i learned a ton uh just from the questions that you asked so i'm i'm glad that that that i shut up and let you all get in first with your questions um and then um secondly you know um again i want to thank mr jack for the time uh so in a very general sense um the question that kept kind of ping-ponging in my head was around was
036about time frame time frame time frame time frame right um so first recognizing that rome wasn't built in a day um you know and that and that all the initiatives that you're currently sort of engaged in and working around and are not gonna are not gonna come to fruition or bear fruit in a day um but but i would be interested in you know not right this minute you know and trying to answer that that part of what i'm curious about but just you know this is where maybe but you know as miss chapman this committee moves forward maybe we start to develop with our various departments more of um an action register um which sort of lists the initiatives uh that they're engaged in who's responsible for it and sort of what timelines um
037you know we you know we we project for completion with respect to some of that um and i know that that some of that already exists um so again so you know so so not so so i recognize that i'm not inventing electricity in what i'm saying right now um you know but just um but just again you know um where it doesn't exist you know pulling that together and then uh we're gonna sort of educate the committee about around some of that as well because i love to bring miss music back in a month or two or a quarter you know or next quarter and say hey you know you presented in you know april and here are the nine things you talked about um like can we walk through those nine things and
038how are we progressing um you know so so so you know kind of taking more of a process improvement approaches as well so and so now i i want to change my inner you mentioned bruce alexander mr alexander uh in one of your intro slides and so i i want to channel my my inner bruce alexander with my next question um you know uh one of the things that he's kind of challenged me with that's in when we talk offline um is sort of asking the question how do we how do we connect this back to our students in the classrooms today um as far as what we're doing uh and then where are some opportunities for quick wins um along the way and so again that's a so that's meant to be a general
039question um you know and so i just would like to sort of you know just um ask that in a very reflective way and uh mr jack or or any other others who'd like to weigh in on that um you know please please do so i really think that our work with facing history was designed to be a quick win okay because when we started school this year in a pandemic with all of the upheaval and and what's happening in our world we had to quickly provide tools for our social studies and our teachers to be able to have those conversations in the classroom from point of view from an equity standpoint where they've never had to have them or never expected or maybe we're not prepared for them before so i think some of
040our quick wins come out of our ability to go to the balcony and look out and see what the needs are and provide those supports with an organization like facing history that could come in and provide some immediate support during our first two weeks of training for our teachers so so i would look at things like that that were not consciously planned for but had to be addressed and it gotcha thank you i appreciate that um and i would say dr hall too another quick win i think for me is in the way that we are going to start looking at our data so you know we we have subgroup data we've we've always had it and looked at our academic achievement by subgroups because it's required by the state but there are ways to
041look at our information that you know help highlight what type of opportunities are available to our students when we start to disaggregate that data by race ethnicity gender income level geography i mean we can paint a different story about where those gaps exist who they exist for when we look at our extracurricular information our discipline data how we engage and work across our communities i think the data is is a quick win and now that we're starting to have that conversation looking at our data with those new eyes new questions um i think that that's a real quick win for us yeah i appreciate that miss chapman i you know i think that the challenge there is so par so part one of that is to your point just pulling the data together and looking
042at it right and having the time and the resources you know i.e you know an analyst is so so thinking about how we better support you too right and what you do uh because equity that you know dei is not a one-man band um and so thinking about how we support you and how we help find people that can work with you to help to look at that data i think i think is key too because the fact we can do that then then i think the real challenge begins right so so the question becomes how do i translate what the data is telling me uh how do i operationalize the lessons learned in that data right um and and and who are my partners you know in doing all that right and then how
043do i create you know sort of project plans and activators around that that and then attach time frames to that as well so it's a sort of a whole framework you know um you know that that that we're just at at the beginning of in some respects so so i appreciate that um and then next i want to challenge my intermiss mckittrick for a minute here is i'm impersonating the people really smart people on this committee um going back to the professional development piece um you know you mentioned that you know the six hour component uh it's a two-part question one do you think six hours is enough um and number two how do we assess and again there may not be a great answer for this so this is me thinking out loud how
044do we assess the effectiveness uh of professional development especially around equity like how do we assess and ms mcveigh you know you know please put a free jump to jump in as well for because this may involve how we evaluate from hr standpoint you know but how do we assess whether or not it's sinking in how do we assess you know whether or not um we're making sort of cultural progress um you know as it relates because we're spending time and money on the professional development how do we accept how do we assess or what kpis would be developed but perhaps we developed to assess whether or not that whether that pd was actually effective karen so no six hours is never enough but when we onboard our new faculty we know that there are
045so many other supports and so many other demands on their time that we tried to clear the deck if you will and make the onboarding of new staff around cultural sensitivity training the single most important onboarding that we could do for our new faculty then we labeled it as the six hour option because there's a contractual opportunity that allows us to give our new faculty that january in-service day as a day that they do not need to report so we knew we needed them we knew we needed to support them in a standards-based way with a uniform protocol to stand on to step forward from knowing that we have consulting teachers we have embedded coaches we have levels of support once those new faculty members step through the door our superintendent and our board ellen
046mcwilliams woods and david james thought that carla and her team were instrumental to establish that standard for our students our teachers to step forward from so that we would have a uniform foundation is it enough no because it's a it's a continuous journey for each person and how do we evaluate it we evaluate it with checklists with forms with protocols but the final evaluation is in the success of that teacher to build relationships with students and that is a more subtle evaluation that probably walks into do they stay with us are they the right person to teach in akron to support our kids and most of them are but our consulting teachers and our iboard process will find a few that are not so that metric is not one hard and fast not a thermometer
047but i think there are multiple measures that collectively tell us the health of our onboarding based on the success in the classroom of our teachers and we know from our equity work when we're planning our local equity plan we know that we have new inexperienced teachers that will require more support and how are we going to approach that what will we do how will we staff for that so those are ongoing conversations that um that i don't have a quick easy answer for i wish that i did because then we would be billionaires and sell it to every school district everywhere yeah it karen's karen's right and i think part of the conversations that we're having now karen myself dr glover is how do we take what we're doing with new hires as that foundational
048raise awareness grow some understanding and level the playing field across the entire district in that way because i mean we have other teachers who have never had that information and who are veterans right and so how do we get to that shared common language and knowledge around what equity is right we're still struggling with whether everyone in our district understands and has a common definition of what that means and so we're working through what what is a pd plan across the district for all staff so that we start at a place with everyone and then we tailor that work depending on what the building's needs are and then the second conversation is we're really asking do our new hires experience change right as a result of participation in that program and how do you measure
049it and then how does that show up in their own individual evaluations right at the building level or at the district level and then how does the work we do in equities show up at buildings in their 90-day plans so that they do the work at the building level with teachers who are touching students so all of these conversations are are taking place right now and you're right there's the whole metrics thing that we talk about and how we track it put timelines on it and ensure that not only that it gets done but it is part of the transformational work right of the district so we have that transactional work that deals with the you know individuals and the tactics and the things that we're going to do to affect change with people but
050then there's that whole district transformational work and how we change our pd offerings how we integrate equity as a an intentional right lens in 90 day plans so um you're right on target uh dr hall these are these are all the things we're wrestling with now roger that roger that and then um hey mrs you were saying earlier uh you were talking about uh i noticed you were you you used the word you've used the word we countless times in your presentation um as opposed to i um you know i know that signifies you the fact that you aren't doing all this by yourself you're obviously working with people around it and it got me to thinking about um uh succession planning right so i'm thinking about so we've got a few we've got miss
051folk we've got miss mcveigh and other you know senior senior leaders here within organizations you know are the folks that you are grooming from from essentially are they as entrenched in um and as on board uh and as plugged in as as all of you are uh around equity and and and the importance of supporting it absolutely and i learn from them you know that's why i use the word we because i learn every day every day i come to work i'm taught by the people that i have the privilege to work with so yeah there's no worry of succession planning in this district there are key individuals some on this very zoom meet that could step forward and leave tomorrow and do they lead every day so uh yeah i say we because it
052is not an eye situation at all roger that thank you i appreciate that um and then uh so then uh so the next question i had too was um in thinking about um the curricula uh component um you know uh this is me this is now i'm partially channeling mr alexander again uh and been part of this is me but but we but but mr alexander myself and miss mckittrick and others were at the dr aquabar others were at the um pre-covet uh there was an in-person uh nsba conference um that had a one-day kind of equity piece before that and one of the presentations uh some of you probably probably have heard me talk about this before uh was one that was it was really intriguing to me actually was the most fascinating one
053the day in some respects it was around equity and grading um you know and so so i really want to come back to you mr chicken and and committee to kind of ask that question uh around kind of first off your thoughts or what obstacles or barriers would you see um or or or opportunities or challenges around uh creating a pilot uh as it relates to uh equity and grading and so for those who are who are watching um you know let me let me just give an example of what i'm talking about um so that way and also too it just you know just so that way we're using the same vocabulary so you know there's johnny and johnny and judy and you know johnny and judy are taking an english class and um
054and you know judy uh there are three tests three papers she gets aaa on the papers at the end of the grading period what grade does she get well she's pretty odd but she gets an a right and then there's johnny i said johnny was johnny judy right johnny okay johnny um and johnny you know uh comes in and he gets a d on the first writing paper and he gets a c plus b minus on the second one and then and then on the final one he gets an a so clearly he's put it all together right he's learned what it is we wanted him to learn but in a traditional grading system what's his final grade it's not an a it's a some sort of some some some average of the a the
055b minus sleep plus and the d that's his final grade right um you know and the reason why i talk about equity is that you know judy prior to coming to you know great i'm sorry probably starting school may have been made because your family had more means may have had may have been in a summer enrichment program so she came in day one knowing this stuff right or or more um position to be successful versus johnny that didn't have any of that stuff so so so again so that's why i asked this question and i don't pretend to have the answer um you know but i know in that presentation there was you know that the speaker was really advocating for saying that well both those students will be getting a's because at day's
056end you know what we're evaluating on is the mastery of mastery of the skill set and in in in by and if by the end you've mastered it at an a level then shouldn't you get an a you know so uh anyway so so that's so someone to kind of open the floor i know that we're at 5 25 but i wanted to kind of this would be my last question but i just kind of want to get your thoughts or and other other misuse and others you know that educators on this kitchen others on the phone that are educators that may have a comment around around this but mr i'll start with you sure that that sounds exactly like the gusky research with the equal interval scale and the power of zero student gets
057a zero an 80 and an 80. the zero knocks them down to a fail no matter what and do they have mastery of content or do they have an average so we are always pushing for mastery of content and in education probably the most one of the two most difficult perspectives to change is the belief in how you grade so when you challenge an individual to grade in a different way you're challenging their belief system so those changes are slow but necessary and i think the pandemic may have quickened our movement to mastery when we build in projects and presentations of learning instead of a single exam that has a percentage score on it so when we look at presentations of learning to show what they have actually learned over a course we get so
058much closer to mastery grading that's exactly where we want to be holding kids accountable for content and then declaring that they have mastered it it's one of those struggles like the artificial intelligence that allows repeated scorings so that it takes is it johnny and i like to score boys higher than girls or whose paper is scored so that demystifies some element but in a.i there's still that whose final rubric is it and is there any bias in the rubric so ai is a help but it's not the final solution other other comments i was just saying that's a perfect example of one of those structural things mr what you were saying it was one was called the equity interval scale what was the other one zero something yeah equal interval so you have 0 to
05960 okay that's an f then you have 60 to 65 you you have equal intervals 100 to 90 90 to 80 80 to 70. but then if you get like 30 or a zero somebody puts a zero into the grade book instead of a 77 there's no way to recover from that zero the zero really holds the power of a 60 on a grading scale and that's probably the other piece that was in the presentation because it's pure gusky i see i see miss hughes shaking her head i mean that's the research right there gosh i appreciate it so um so yeah because and that was one thing for me you know part of this is kind of the disconnect at times with certain students between gpa and standardized test score um you know i
060think we all probably knew people going to school that had didn't have very good grades but they kicked your butt on the s.a.t or the act you're like well wait a minute and so you were walking around thinking that you were smarter than this person all through high school senior year the guy you know the guy or guy with the 2.1 ends with the 36 on the act you're like you know so um so yeah so that's probably probably what informed would ask i will probably inform that question as well and then um so yeah so just be transparent like one of the things that i i really want to want to ask us to kind of think about and then i'm going to i want to kind of push to think more about is
061is is is thinking through like how we would how would we pilot uh inequity and grading uh projects and i know when i was at kenmore garfield cluster liaison i you know i was able to have this conversation with it with a fair number of teachers and there were several that said hey if you guys ever do that like i would volunteer my classroom i would love to be a part of that work um you know and so um so again so so i know that there are people out there who who are willing because and i would certainly would never envision one of the forces on somebody but but if but if there are some people out there who are willing um you know might be you know to kind of offer up their
062classrooms and themselves uh for a pilot it's something i i would like would challenge us to to think about and if there are bears or obstacles that i'd love to i i'd love to understand what those are too um you know so um anyway so i know that we're at time um i missed ship i saw that you have unmuted your microphone did you um want to make a comment before we um sign off today okay um so um so again again just want to thank all of you uh again for your time today um i'm gonna ask i'm gonna keep asking about the equity and grading stuff you know as we move forward i promise um you you'll get tired of hearing me by june you'll you'll be very tired of me because i'll
063keep asking where are we at with that what's great probably you know what are the obstacles or the bears the challenges yeah so um anyway so mr chapman i will turn it over to you um to uh to take us home uh i think that this was a great discussion thank you next month of may i think our student services director will be coming to present some of the equity work taking place in that division so thank you all right having said that um we're at 5 so we're a minute over my military precision demands that we conclude so uh so with so with all due respect you know it's all of your time uh again my apologies for the fact that we ran now two minutes over so have a good rest of your
064evening and i look forward to uh seeing you all uh again next month all right take everybody you