Implementing Equity in Schools and Paradoxes in Policy with Mark A Gooden
Mark Anthony Gooden and Scott Lee continue their conversation discussing the ongoing routines and habits of equity focused leadership teams. Equity-focused school leadership is an ongoing, whole-team process for school improvement. The end their conversation discussing various challenges educators face regarding equity practice and policy implications.
Episode Outline
equity and power dynamics
data analysis and equity audits
challenges to sustaining equity initiatives
Affirmative action and the effect on K-12 educators
Links from discussion
San Antonio ISD v. Rodriguez 411 US 1 (1973) case mentioned in episode
Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1 551 US 701 (2007) case mentioned in episode
Chalkbeat article by Marta W. Aldrich about Tennessee law limiting professional development activities
WRLN coverage on Florida history standards referred to in episode
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:18
Greetings, friends and colleagues. Welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educators thought partner, a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. In this episode, I share the second part of my conversation with Mark Anthony Goodman. Dr. Goodman is the Christian Johnson Endeavour, Professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College Columbia University, where he researches school level leadership, antiracist leadership, culturally responsive school leadership, and legal issues in education. He has published studies and papers in a wide variety of journals, including Teachers College Record, the Peabody Journal of Education, and Urban Education, among others. He recently published the book, five practices for equity focused school leadership, along with co-authors, Sharon I Radd, Gretchen Givens Generett, and George Theoharis. We left off from the last episode, discussing the importance of teaching kindness and restorative practices. And we'll start today's episode, learning more about the specifics of the book. Let's talk a little bit about what you and your co-authors discuss. And you call the equity focus leadership team model, and that has four routines. And as an aside, I love it that you're calling it "routines." First off, why did you choose the word routine? And instead of another word like principle, you could have called it four principles, but you chose four routines. And then tell us about what those are and then why the focus on relationship building relationships is so much a part of those routines and the work of your equity leadership team.
Mark A Gooden 2:30
Yes, absolutely. I believe for us routines is a word that not necessarily you know, one of those words, I would say as probably not a success principle. But it's one of those things that we would love for leaders to embrace this as a ideally typical way of doing business, things that we do, that become a part of how we become, once again, better leadership. There's, there's certainly, certainly some parallels between equity focus school leadership, and just becoming stronger leaders. And I like that I like that as as an idea that to really expand upon. So, routines is coupled with as you know, these roles, because at certain times you play roles in this whole system, if you will, of doing equity work. So you talked about this idea to expand and strengthen relationships, we said that a little bit [ago]. So we don't have to say too much more about it. But as I said, it's just it's just important that people recognize that building community is has been a hallmark of my work for many years. And honestly, people have been surprised that I've come in to do equity focus work, and that they were actually enjoying and feeling closer to their colleagues around how we were going to tackle this difficult issue together. So that's surprising to people. Because once again, I think in the back of their minds, they're thinking we're going to be, we've got to become an official customer for this session is over. I say it's very sad, but But it's what we're told, like, "Be suspicious of anybody doing equity work." So the other one, we're gonna be talking about this transform, the use of power. think differently about how you lead, think differently about who leads beatings, for instance, we all have that sole leader, that traditional leader, that heroic leader, and we know that heroic leader runs every single meeting. He or she always writes the agenda. They always go through it and but what if we came in and it was the person over there to the right, running the leader on running the meeting from the other side of this circle? What if we transform some of that power of the position to other people so that it wouldn't be all mine and that it would empower folks who could really feel it to have to say this, again, empowered to give their input, right. So I think that's an important part. And then this one, I really liked what it means to integrate personal experience with systems and trend data. On the early part of we emphasize people telling their personal stories very important. And we emphasize people working together in groups to tell those stories, the personal narrative that the personal data is very important. But it's also important to recognize that there are trends, there's trend data, something that you mentioned earlier, like we have disparities in discipline, for instance, that we have to look at that in the context of our personal data. And we have our personal narratives, and those are valid. But because we come at this with different experiences, and we are on a continuum of learning, and knowing those stories can have different results in our head, real quick example, you might have an Asian American man sitting next to a white woman, and they can have different experiences that are both valid. But they may both be seen very differently by this overarching system. And those experiences need to be really matched to what are the trend data around Asian American students and white students within our school. So our experiences are important, but we don't look at those without connecting them to some of those experiences. And it is probably sounds more complicated than it is to do. But it's just important that we have people recognize that those two pieces can be a tension in some respects, but they can still work together. And then last but not least, and I know going out of order is assessing the credibility of data, just recognizing that once we collect data, thinking about where it came from, what it means, one of my favorite quotes is, and I've said this in different ways over the years, but essentially, I say the quality of the information that you receive, is directly correlated with the quality of the question that you're asking. In other words, if you're asking a bad question, you're probably gonna get some bad data, you just can't get that and run off with it. And just say, this is what we're doing this is this is accurate, just real quick, real quick. So I did I actually did a session for some district police officers and it was so big they had split the group up in two. Very different groups, once, one half of that group talked about data that supported mentoring more students, and what they could do as police officers to support leaders in their work. And, and the other group talked about those same kinds of data and what they said about that what these kids were doing, and how they were supporting the principals, it wasn't them sus- suspending kids or pushing them out or writing them tickets, same data, same data, but two very different interpretations, because they started with different premises around what they were going to do and how they were going to be in that system. And what they saw their jobs as as part of those systems. So so it's important for people to assess the credibility of the data, make sure it's credible, but also make sure that your interpretation of the data, you know, in some ways connect in ways that don't just become an extension of your biases.
Scott Lee 8:04
Let's talk a little bit more specifically about the data and how to use it. Since you mentioned, since you're talking about the data, you all have a chapter specific or a section of the book, it's actually more than one chapter that is focused on the equity audit. So first off, what is an equity audit? And what are the best practices and the important things as far as data analysis and developing professional learning around a good data audit?
Mark A Gooden 8:39
Yes, yes. Thank you for the question. So I want people to just get in their mind that the equity audit is basically a it's a tool that's used to inform your your equity, focus, change work, it enables you to collect data, and hopefully, collectively as a team, analyze those data so that you can better understand what's going on in your school, and how to assess policies, practices, decisions, things that are really happening within your context. And then how you how they may impact students differently. We do it on a national level, we sometimes look at the data and I don't want it to be a navel gazing thing. We were just looking at that as Oh, these are the data and that they tell us, I think interpretation to my last point. So so very important, right? Numbers. Some people have said that numbers may be you know, people that numbers are neutral. I let's say I go with your premise that numbers are neutral. The interpretation of those numbers are not, the interpretations are not interpretations really come from a lot of things. But oftentimes, we can't make them without some leaning on our values, our beliefs and our assumptions. And if we haven't interrogated those things, those numbers we just got to bend those numbers and make them so What I want them to say, right? You make a narrative to go with the numbers. So it's not like you see the numbers and all of a sudden they match. But there is, to some extent, definitely some disparities. And when we see those, we get to those by doing our own personal collection of data, and analyzing those data. And the thing that does that is the equity on it is a wonderful tool to be able to do that. And, and there is one in the book that is offered that folks can use and just need to remind people, we provide it, but there's, there's a lot of pieces to it. So folks should feel free to pick up the parts that make more sense to what they're doing in their context. Don't be afraid to pull in something that makes it more relevant. Because context matters. And in short, it's like a needs assessment. Where's the issue? Can we use this tool to go down and look at some of those actual numbers in and it's much more meaningful, when folks engage in that as a team and do their own work, so they can see their own data? I've been saying for years that, you know, people tend not to argue with their own data, but you have to give them space to collect it.
Scott Lee 11:06
Right. I was dreading statistics for a long time. And then when I finally took it, I'm like, oh, it's not about doing math, the important thing is interpreting the numbers. And the important part of it is what does the number mean? The last section of the book is about sustaining these practices in equity. Obviously, of course, that's going to be hugely important. What challenges do schools come across in sustaining the equity practices that you all discuss?
Mark A Gooden 11:41
Yes, yes. So I find that prioritizing equity work is difficult in the context where they're competing reform efforts. And you know, they're educators who believe as a result of that, okay, we're, that we're doing equity. Now, this is flavor of the month, it's not going to be here very long. So again, I'll do equity. Now everybody's doing equity, you know, people saying equity everywhere, and putting equity on everything in the context of all these other competing reforms, it's hard to figure out what we're doing. And as I said earlier, there are also internal pressures, because people look people are suspicious of discussing inequities. Because they, they almost feel like, like I said earlier, it's going to invalidate their, their experience, or it's going to make them feel bad about what they have achieved or who they are. Not necessarily true. But it's it's how people start to feel about like, Oh, we're doing equity, somebody has to be like, some losers, somebody has to the winners are now going to be, you know, penalized because they did what, once again, these really simplistic ways of looking at this makes it really hard to get into the conversations. And as I said earlier, we tend to hold on to particular perspectives when it comes to history. And unfortunately, often, those perspectives we hold on to, they don't always honor people who have been marginalized. They don't always honor people who have, for instance, been born in particular communities, and a struggling and a good people trying to make it work. But they're human beings who have flaws and make mistakes like everybody else. We're just waiting to rush to the point of saying that's on those folks, not us. We'd say things like we're in the greatest country in the world. And if they're not being successful, it has something to do with them. And this is not going to interpersonal level, we answer. we institutionalize things like this, right. We talked, for instance, one of the most heartbreaking violence for my students to read in the San Antonio vs. Rodriguez case, which you may remember from your law class, was they were trying to recognize poor people as a suspect class. And they were trying to say, look, these folks have been relegated to this particular area where they're unequal resources, and they have unequal access to education. And the court says, you know, first of all poor people are not a suspect class, that doesn't make it and this whole thing about trying to say that they deserve something. No, that doesn't make it either. Ultimately, there's actually a quote where they says, "if poor people want a better education, they should just move." How insensitive can you be, but the reason why that comment can be stated, in a case that has stood Supreme Court case, since it was decided is because we have these different kinds of beliefs. And what we often believe about people living in poverty is it is really their fault, isn't it? And if we haven't pulled ourselves away from that notion in a very strong and direct and powerful way, it just sort of flows in the ether. We don't say it out loud, because maybe that's rude, but we tend to think it's something that they did not do right. And that makes it really hard. To do equity work, because ultimately folks are thinking, we're doing stuff on behalf of folks who, for some reason are where they they are because what they did not us.
Scott Lee 15:11
I'm thinking about that mindset. And I'm thinking about a conversation from a while back. That was not a part of the podcast. And the context of this was dealing with rural poverty. I live in a place where educational equity is a huge problem, because we use property taxes, there's no state income tax here. So schools are primarily funded through property taxes, talking about a rural, really rural county. And the concept was, "Well, everybody's got equal access. I know somebody who graduated from college who went there," as if just because one person can overcome and "overcome" is a bad word. That's their word, the other person describing it, just because one person can be an exception to this issue of poverty than it's not a problem. And it goes back to your comment about meritocracy. What would your response be to somebody saying that and using that as an excuse in particular?
Mark A Gooden 16:15
Yeah, I think this is I think this goes along with what we what we tend to say when we we don't want to deal with systemic issues, it's easy to point to the person who made it, and that becomes the whole story. And human beings, and their experiences are much more complicated. And how we have constructed the country is also much more complicated. And we just have to be willing to do that. But it goes back to what I was saying earlier, by pointing to that one person who made it, we basically say, the 20, who did not make it, it has to be something that they did not do, right. And I'm not saying all 20 were, you know, victims of socio economic inequities? I'm not saying that. I'm saying, you know, maybe five or six of them, just decided they didn't they were not going to work hard. And they gave up, maybe. But that should, once again, have us curious about what happened, which is, let's go back and look at some of what they had relative to what other people had access to. You mentioned a very powerful way of funding schools except property taxes. Resources is part of it's not everything, because some people say, Oh, well, you throw money at the problem, you give them money, and they still don't do it. Oh, it's it's those resources tend to be correlated with other things as well. Some people may say teacher quality, which is tricky to think think about, but teacher quality around like how much education teachers have, I've committed to teachers, to working in those particular areas are committed to leaders, because we should not pretend that it's more difficult to work in, in impoverished areas. It's just more difficult to work in those areas. So why would we be surprised? And thinking that it's, it's easier just to live in those areas? So So yes, it's just one of those things that we just have to start giving people a little bit more pushback. And I've said to my students over the years that you can you can start a conversation like that, like when you've just described with a well placed question. You said, Okay, that's interesting that you say that, and I'm very curious about that. So what about those other people? Why do you think they didn't make it out? And it's, you know, let people out "they're all lazy." They're like, Oh, well, there's philisoph[ical reason]... But isn't it true that maybe they didn't have the same access? Yeah, just you can just have a really much more interesting and conversation with people just to kind of go down the rabbit hole a little bit, and, and then you get, you get a really, snapshot. I'll warn people, it's just a snapshot of where people are thinking in terms of their values, beliefs and assumptions and will often do not, if you listen carefully, in my experience, they're really telling you a lot about their experience and why it worked for them, and how that aligns to what worked for them. You oftentimes I'll find folks in that space who didn't make it saying, it didn't work for me, because it was me and everybody else around me. Rarely you get you do get some, but But oftentimes the people who are speaking on it have limited experience with with the folks that described it, they are describing.
Scott Lee 19:24
Before we go, I would like to discuss a couple of current policy issues if you still have time. There are several policy issues that I think are focused on equity are contemporary and very current right now. You mentioned briefly, affirmative action. I want to know more how this would affect K 12 educators and that's the recent Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action regarding the use of racial background as a factor in college admissions. What I'm curious about is, is this something that educators in the K 12, or world should be concerned about? And if so, why?
Mark A Gooden 20:11
Yes, I think I think it is something that K 12 educators need to be concerned about just given the conservative approach of this court, and what what decisions they may decide to hear in an effort to continue their logic, their logical approach to really taking race completely out of this. So that that is not even a part of the conversation, even though you find in the end there some some really interesting language, which I won't go into too deep detail on. But it is interesting that they sort of leave this thing where, you know, Justice Roberts is saying, "we're not really foreclosing the fact that students," presumably high school students "who are applying to these schools can still talk about their experiences on race." And so I'll start there, I think that we are saying that race is been taken out of can't be considered a factor. But people can share their experiences and a narrative about how race impacted their lives reflect that was a very, I don't know if he was trying to give an endorsement for our book or not when I first read that. But it's, it's just interesting, that there are these contradiction contradicting quotes or paradoxical quotes. I don't have it in front of me. But Clarence Thomas also makes another quote, and I'm going to try to make my answers shorter, because my daughter always tells me I'm too long winded on my interview. So I'm going to try to be quick. I would say, the short answer is yes, we need to be concerned about what this will mean, because there are instances where there's pushback around how students get access to selective high schools, for instance, there are people we have selective high schools, I think you and I talked about it, in New York City, and there are folks interested and opening up the access because those schools in a in a predominantly overwhelmingly, I should say, district that is made up of overwhelmingly black and brown students, those high schools. Selective high schools, and I'm talking about New York City Department of Education, our district here, over a million students, those high schools are mostly made up a white and Asian students, Asian American students. So so folks have been asking questions a long time about isn't this the thing about access? And isn't something wrong with the resources that are put into those spaces? And why can't folks get access and people you know, it's a thing of privilege, you know, you're able to pay to take the test prep to take the test to get in, then you can get in? And if you can't, hmm, sorry. And so there are real serious questions about that being a public school and it actually have an access. So I can see and what mom would have to wonder if if a challenge came to the Supreme Court on something like getting access to a school like that, what might they say? We have to be concerned that they'd say, you know, race has nothing to do with it, you know, and there is a group, I don't know if this is in Maryland area, whatever, where there was a question about Asian American students not getting access to a particular school. And so it seems almost like a parallel to the fact [the] pattern for this. So I think we have to be concerned about that. And then the court has already told us if you if you know the parents involved case, and I encourage your listeners to check it out. That was decided some years ago, this is a I think it was 2007, a Seattle case where it was Seattle and Bulevar. I can't think of that county. But in other words, what they wanted to do, they wanted to use race to have a tiebreaker system. And they were trying to make sure that they were you know, diversifying the schools and rights was going to be used as a factor to allow kids to go to some of those schools. Well, what the Supreme Court said is, you're not a higher ed institution, and you can't be using race as a factor. Because unless there was some compelling interest unless there was prior evidence that these respective districts had discriminated. Before, then you could not use race. You couldn't just say generally in society, there's discriminate racial discrimination, nope, no, as a district, if you can't show that, then you can't be using race to decide who's going to go to which school so that they will come more racially diverse, so you can't do it. So they've already in some respects, not this particular court, but the Supreme Court has already. They already have a ruling about that. And so when you couple that with this higher rate decision, if anything comes a bit about rates for K 12 schools, I've been going to go the same way that they did in this decision.
Scott Lee 24:38
A couple other issues. One is from my home state, which is Tennessee, in Tennessee. This law just came into effect back in July for this past July July of 2023. Which says that any state employee and by extension When an employee of a local school district could opt out of any type of diversity, equity and inclusion, training, or programming or professional development, both of us think that's awful. I'm sure that most of our listeners think that's a bad idea. But what thoughts do you have about that? And maybe, how could you approach it particularly maybe framed even as you're in your book, give if I were an administrator, and I wanted to take us through the process that you described, and I'm here in Tennessee, and I got somebody who says, I don't have to come, what kind of response? Or what kind of action? Should a school leader take in a context like that? Or like this? Or what advice would you or what advice would you offer a school leader in dealing with that? I guess?
Mark A Gooden 25:53
Right, right. Yeah, this is this is hard for me, as answers come in, as things are formulated, what I've seen now. And I start with some of these laws, you know, I know they use model legislation often. And I think Tennessee was a beneficiary of that as well. It's complex it's sad it's a difficult thing. But you do find that thing, just to deal with the question at hand. And, and I go back, I don't want to get too lost into the weeds. I think leaders have to instincts like that, be strategic, and be mindful, and be ready to support teachers who are really trying to do this work, I think they may have to be a little bit flexible around labeling at this point, as I said earlier, aspects of what we're doing, certainly in parallel, good leadership. And so while I have said in other instances, and I am standing by that, I think we have to fight to hold on to important aspects of the language. Otherwise, we end up doing something totally different. But I think for the time being, principles have to be strategic, and how they do good leadership. And how they do that without getting distracted by people coming in screaming and yelling, you're using equity or using this word, he's we're not what we're really doing is we're meeting our students where they are, where we've done an audit, and we this is what it tells us about students who are benefiting the least from our education. And as good leaders, you would want us to do something about that, right? We just can't ignore those students. And that becomes kind of a temporary fix around the language. Long term, I think we got to have educators who are going to push back, I was so proud of those Florida educators who went to the Board of Education and testified saying, Look, we can't do this, you know, this is very, very important work. And we have to we can't talk about the history of this country without talking about race and racism. Right? We can't talk about the history of the contributions of African Americans to this country without saying that they gave a lot of free labor. Right.
Scott Lee 28:08
And you're also discussing the Florida, the latest Florida standards, where they're actually saying, instruction includes how slaves develop skills, which in some instances can be applied to their personal benefit, which, of course is absolutely just not true. So
Mark A Gooden 28:24
Right. Right. Right. So so we so we have to be open to and I say that gave that labor, the labor was stolen, let me be really clear talking about language. So those things and those facts have to remain part of the conversation of what's happened in in states like Texas, and Tennessee. And if there's a glimmer of hope that I found in some of these policies that I've read, some of this is paradoxical, right? This is where we can't lose control of the language and the narrative, because many of the folks who sent who are saying you can't teach the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, you'll find that there is also saying the teachers, oh, but then you should teach about diverse authors. You don't you can't talk about race and racism, but you can teach about Frederick Douglass, you can even maybe teach about the debate, you know, between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln's can't talk about race, and you shouldn't be able to talk about race and racism. But you should we have curriculum standards to say use diverse authors who are probably going to talk about something else. And that no amount of them we're gonna talk about race and racism. But you like huh, how do they how do we reconcile those two things? And so here's what I believe we have to be educators at our strongest point in informing the narrative over two decades ago when I started as a assistant prof[essor], I would say to principals, "you just can't not be in policy at all, is .. because if you don't you have people who are not educators who don't understand educated education, we're going to be talking to legislators who don't know and don't understand, and they're going to, they're going to come up with things and they're going to say, either ask that one principal, I know where that one teacher I know And this is what we should be doing others to say we don't care, we just know what's better. 'We know better than educators,'" either one of those points, leaders have to be a part of that narrative going forward. And right now, we have to say, this is making it really difficult to do my job. This is making it really hard to recruit teachers to come to our state, we are facing a potential educational crisis, and you are fueling that crisis with these kinds of policies. And legislators need to hear that kind of language. And they can only hear that with all sincerity from people who do this work every day. And it's true all over the nation for a number of reasons, leaders thinking, second guessing, doing this work, and teachers are as well. And if we are making it harder for them to do that we are literally hurting our state's future in education.
Scott Lee 30:51
Thank you very much, Mark. I've enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being a guest on the thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Mark A Gooden 30:58
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I just say if folks want to continue to cut the conversation and follow up with me, my website is pretty easy. It's goodenPhD as a doctor of philosophy, goodenphd.com. Or you can find me on Twitter, similar handle handle just add gooden and PhD or Instagram, which is the game gooden PhD. We'd love to hear more from folks and have them check out the book and just continue the conversation.
Scott Lee 31:25
Great, and we will definitely link all those on our website to help help all the listeners find you as well.
Mark A Gooden 31:34
Wonderful. Well, thank you, Scott. It's been a pleasure and I've enjoyed it.
Scott Lee 31:39
Thank you I have to the thoughtful teacher podcast is brought to you as a service of oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website, www dot oncoursesolutions.net. This has been episode nine of the 2023 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us in person and on social media. We also greatly appreciate positive reviews on your favorite podcast app. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions, LLC. Scott Lee, executive producer in partnership with Chattanooga Podcast Studios. We encourage diverse opinions however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer partners or underwriters guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website, www.thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee, please follow me on social media. My handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com.
