Understanding Equity in Education

Defining Equity in Education: 6 Perspectives

These definitions share a theme of ensuring access to resources and opportunities for all students so that a student from a low-income family is just as likely to succeed as a student from a more affluent background, and a student of color is just as likely to succeed as a white student.

In essence, then, educational equity is achieved in a world where “every child, regardless of circumstances at birth, has the ability to reach their full potential” [11], a world without a “performance gap due to race, gender, family income, disabilities, resource allocation, [or] other factors” [4].

The definitions of equity in education sampled above describe an equitable education as both universal (accessible by all) and personalized (tailored to meet individual needs). The goal of equity is a universality of outcomes—we want all students to thrive and succeed. The process to reach this goal involves personalization—we want to support each student according to their own situation.

According to the Learning Policy Institute [12], critical elements of an equitable educational system include: 

• • the quality of teachers and teaching
  • the development of curriculum and assessments that encourage ambitious learning by both students and teachers
  • the design of schools as learning organizations that support continuous reflection and improvement 

In reality, there are many barriers to students receiving and being able to benefit from high quality education, including but not limited to:

• • trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) [13]
  • poverty
  • discrimination
  • language barriers
  • residency status

Adult stakeholders must work to break down or help students overcome these barriers in order to achieve equity in education. [14]

What’s the Difference Between Equity and Equality?

As we talk about equity in education, it is also important to note that it is not the same as equality. Equality is giving everyone the same treatment and resources, whereas equity is giving to each person what they need to have the same opportunity to succeed as everyone else.

What are common challenges in achieving educational equity through family engagement?

Decades of research have shown that family engagement can be instrumental in achieving equity in education, because families of all backgrounds are interested in their children’s success and capable of supporting their learning and growth. However, even with this motivation and potential, parents may have a difficult time knowing where to begin to support their child’s academic success, especially if the school has not oriented them to key academic goals and indicators.

Some types of high-quality programs that schools can offer for parents are expensive and hard to access. For example, family workshops can be highly engaging but tend to attract families who have the extra time and mobility to attend an in-person event. (This is why ParentPowered is designed from the start to be in a format that families can use on the go—text messaging.)

Because it takes resources in order to get resources, families who already have the most advantages are usually the ones to get access to effective tools. In addition, under-resourced districts that could benefit the most from family engagement may not have the means to fund a family engagement coordinator or set up other infrastructure and resources to involve families.

Creating authentic partnerships between schools and families is a complex and multifaceted task. According to WestEd [17], challenges include the following:

• • Family engagement activities are often isolated from other initiatives in districts
  • Family engagement staff in districts often work in a silo, not in collaboration with other district departments
  • Families of low-income students and families of students of color are often underrepresented in family engagement activities
  • Educators struggle with how to evaluate family engagement programs and activities, beyond tracking the number of participants attending events”

An additional challenge noted by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments [18] is that “Parents who do not speak English or who were educated in other countries may be unfamiliar with expectations for American school involvement.”

With dedicated and thoughtful family engagement work, these challenges can be overcome.

How does family engagement increase equity?

The results are in from decades of research: Equitable family engagement is a fundamental component of student success and school improvement. In fact, up to 80% of the variation in students’ performance in public schools results from home-related rather than school-related factors [19]. When caregivers, schools and communities work together, students’ attendance and grades improve. This has held true for students of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities.

Researchers have found that:

• • Parents’ high expectations for their students’ academic performance predicts academic achievement [20]
  • Attendance at on-campus meetings and communicating consistently with important school personnel predicts academic achievement [21].
  • Children whose parents received texts messages breaking down the complexity of supportive parenting demonstrated a significant boost in literacy skills [22].
  • Family engagement improves school attendance [23] and completion [24].

Family engagement can also influence the school to make positive changes in response to families. For example, when school staff get to know families better, they can address social determinants of health for the whole family. This in turn ensures kids come to school more ready to learn. The synergy between family well-being and student success is a main reason why community schools are so effective. 

In addition, when the school learns more about the family and the child through parent engagement efforts, the school can then adjust instruction and class materials to better reflect the child’s identity. As a result, the child can see themselves in their learning.

Educational equity is “a shared effort of the entire education community in caring for the diversity of students” [25] so that each and every one can succeed.

Family engagement is now being embedded into state and district equity policies. For example, see section II. A. of this Washington state school district’s Race and Equity Policy [26].

Equitable family engagement

To understand how to apply an equity lens to family engagement, let’s look at the most common family engagement activity: on-site workshops and community meetings.

A district taking an equality approach will focus on inviting every family to the parenting workshop so they can learn how to support their children’s literacy development at home. Every family now has the same resource, which feels like a fair strategy.

In contrast, a district taking an equity approach will say “not so fast!” Some parents, especially those with low incomes, may lack the time, transportation, or childcare to be able to attend. Therefore, they don’t actually have access to the workshop. This school district will look for ways to offer family engagement that empower parents as literacy learning partners, regardless of  whether they can attend an in-person workshop. The equity-focused district sees barriers to access as barriers to equity, because they reduce the educational opportunities available to students.

To better understand what it means to remove common barriers to equity, here are examples of how we put equity into action with all ParentPowered programs.

Putting Equity into Action

Information is distributed through text messages, which are limited to 160 characters each. This means that it only takes a minute to learn a parenting tip or a fact about child development.

In addition, the activities are suggested to fit into existing daily routines rather than requiring a family to set aside extra time. Folding laundry is a great time for a 4-year-old to learn about patterns that can prepare them for academic achievement in algebra later on. Bath time is a great time to practice rhyming with a toddler, which can set them up for success in language development and reading later on.

ParentPowered suggests quick and easy activities for families to use at home to practice math, literacy, and social emotional skills. These activities never require additional materials, just the people, places and things that already exist in a family’s life.

Families don’t need any equipment beyond normal household items to create educational opportunities. Kids can practice shapes by going outside and drawing in the dirt with a stick.

Millions of families in this country do not have reliable, adequate internet access [27]. About a quarter of Americans do not have broadband internet at home [28]. By contrast, 97% of Americans have cell phones [29], and 97% of cell phone users send and receive texts [30]. In fact, traditionally underserved adults text with the highest frequency.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 350 languages are spoken in this country [31]. At the district level, it’s common to serve significant groups of families speaking 10 or more different languages, especially in urban districts. ParentPowered’s content is available in 10+ languages and counting.

Custom messages and survey questions are translated into home languages, such as Spanish, Arabic, and more. Survey responses then are translated into English for the school team.

Our country is home to families from all around the world, from many different cultures. The principle of inclusion means that family background should be an asset, not a reason that family can’t connect with valuable resources.

The content creators of ParentPowered work with experts to review and version messages for cultural appropriateness and to ensure that activities resonate with all different lived experiences.

Making reaching out easy with our Reaching Out guide

For example, if a school district staff member reviews the list of attendees of family engagement events for the past year and finds that only 10% were low-income families whereas the school is made up of 35% low-income families, it’s an opportunity to improve. There may be barriers to access or something about the way the event is designed that is preventing or discouraging low-income families from attending.

The next step would be to connect with some of these families with an learning mindset to find out how their specific needs could be met in a way that works for them.

Online databases like The Civil Rights Data Collection can provide data to answer questions of equality in education like:

• • What proportion of students who were suspended or expelled are individuals with disabilities, compared to overall enrollment?
  • What proportion of students who are enrolled in Advanced Placement classes are English Learners, compared to overall enrollment?
  • What proportion of students who are in Gifted and Talented programs are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or another racial minority?

Ideally, these proportions should reflect the overall enrollment. These are the types of questions that can lead to the discovery of opportunities to improve equity.

Common areas for equity improvement include:

• • Math achievement affected by SES: A student with low socioeconomic status (SES) in the U.S. is almost four times more likely to be a low mathematics achiever than a student with high SES [35]. 
  • Rates of reading failure worse for low-SES and English Learners: Seventy-nine percent of students from low-income families and 90% of English Learners cannot read at a basic level by 4th grade, whereas that number is only 65% over all categories of learners [36].
  • The pandemic exacerbated reading achievement gaps: Elementary students at the end of the 2020-21 school year were on average four months behind in reading compared to pre-pandemic scores. Students in majority-Black schools and students in predominantly low-income schools both ended the school year six months behind in reading [37].

Additional Resources

Understanding Equity

• • Office for Civil Rights
  • The Annie E. Casey Foundation
  • The National Equity Project
  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  • Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
  • Guiding Principles for Equity in Education by McGraw Hill
  • Educational Equity: What does it mean? How do we know when we reach it? from the Center for Public Education
  • Equity Audit from Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC) 

Family Engagement for Equity

• • “Building Powerful Partnerships with Families” by Dr. Karen Mapp
  • “Evolving Together Towards Equity: Journeying from Family Involvement to Asset-Based Family Engagement” from the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction
  • Strategies for Equitable Family Engagement from OESE
  • Embracing a New Normal: Toward a More Liberatory Approach to Family Engagement by Karen L. Mapp and Eyal Bergman, published by the Carnegie Corporation of New York

Data

• • The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University
  • Diversifying the Educator Workforce from Great Schools Partnership
  • The Civil Rights Data Collection

3. Strive for Diversity and Representation

Research shows that student outcomes improve when students see themselves reflected in all aspects of their educational experience. For example, having just one teacher of color from kindergarten to third grade can boost academic achievement, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates for students of color [43, 44]. However, while half of all K-12 students enrolled in public schools are students of color, only 18% of the educator workforce is made up of people of color [45].

Representation would include staff, curriculum and community leadership. Students thrive when they read books written by authors representing the same diversity we value in this country. For the same reason, the historical figures students study should show diversity in gender identity. According to one former language and composition teacher who now reviews equity-based initiatives, it’s about inclusion — whose voices are heard and which perspectives are brought in [46]. Such changes to an educational program can be difficult to make, but they can go a long way in improving the academic experience and school culture.

To increase the number of teachers of color who are recruited, some schools and districts use “grow-your-own” programs, which focus on recruiting from within the community and begin preparing future teachers while they are still in high school [47].

To learn more about what research has shown about the impact of educator diversity on student outcomes, see this simple fact sheet from IES: Black teachers improve outcomes for Black students [48].

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