Student Equity SIG Meeting #2 - 2021-05-27

 Participation:

Support
Ann Su - Ed-Fi Governance Support

The meeting is scheduled to be held on 2021-05-27, 9:30 am - 10:45 am CT, via WebEx

Meeting Discussion Deck

Meeting recording link

Agenda/Meeting Notes

• Review the Business Case and the data needed to deliver
  • Requirements initiated by Leon County Schools for equity report
• Discuss how Ed-Fi can lean into this business case
  • Ed-Fi will provide:
    • Starter kit focused on Student Equity
      • Demonstration site to try out
      • Virtual machine to district IT group
      • Instruction to try out with student data
    • Support community on use case
      • Vendor companion guide
      • Badging to support the community and vendors
  • Digital Promise: It makes sense to keep the use case narrow so it’s approachable. Next step is to see how to get the data to the community/parent.
  • Abbott: And policymakers to make necessary changes to structural pieces (including school board members)
  • Verite: Share outcome at federal level in the future. Develop process for feedback loop to help teacher initiatives to address student equity.
  • Warwick PS: I have a wondering about how it appears that gender is being defined. In the document I see male or female.  Did you have a conversation regarding additional categories here?
    • Will be able to give guidance to the IT team that the descriptor will flow through automatically, and there is no extra effort to expand the information..
    • The state of Virginia requires districts to offer a non-binary option so our SIS will hold M, F, and X.
    • Warwick PS: I am also wondering about race/ethnicity in terms of categories and the language of "Family Situation" with "multiple parents' ' -- would prefer parent/guardian. Language and options here are critical for wider audience use and showing up aligned to equity vantage point.
      • There is no data limitation.
      • Yes, that too is a descriptor. The ODS database table unfortunately is labeled "Parent", but the actual relationship uses Descriptor labels that are set by your individual implementation.
    • Harlem Village Academies: Separately from Cameron's point, wondering if it would be useful to include First-Generation info in the student demographics?
      • Information is collected, to be readily available especially for high school students
      • David will check how accessible the data import is
      • Stephen will double-check on parent/guardian relationship definitions - not immediately remembering how that is configured in the ODS.
• Discuss whether we can make the assessment portion optional to simplify the solution
  • Leon County: final (5th) dashboard to see if assessments themselves are equitable among demographics
    • Compare and analyze student classroom performance with standard test performance and district-wide quarterly assessment on math and reading
    • Access to secondary program is a huge indicator of student equity
      • Also looking at AP exams
    • Avoid this report as a start as it will be difficult to require assessment vendors to collect information
    • Ed-Fi will provide documentation on how to engaged assessment vendors
  • Abbott:When it comes to equity, assessment work is a critical piece, or do we need to look at instructional programming
    • How is achievement defined? There are varied layers of data components.
    • Most that I'm aware of do use some form of assessment to measure reading proficiency
  • Loudoun: Our division often speaks of Equity in terms of access and achievement. 
    • Who is accessing which courses, and what our "outcomes" in terms of achievement.
    • Achievement really needs the assessment piece.
    • Initial equity dashboard looks at percentage of each group based on ethnicity and based on gender, what does representation look like. 2nd is an average summary.
  • Verite: There are different purposes for assessments. Need more intervention for specific groups of students.
  • Digital Promise: There's also a grading component to consider when looking at equity in terms of assessment and achievement.
    • Inconsistent grading policy: equity gap in assessment
    • There are some grading components with student results
  • Warwick: Agreed. Triangulation of the grading versus assessment with educators allows for deeper conversations about unequitable expectations for our youth and strategies to end this. There are a variety of ways we do this in elementary.  What an impact it can have on revamping our secondary schools to be places where all of our children can find the success they are capable of.
• Discuss next steps
  • Ed-Fi will take feedback and build out direction on how to deliver student equity
    • Leveraging the starter kit on chronic absenteeism and assessment (scheduled to be delivered at the end of July)
    • Digital Promise: import to have a broad base district to leverage the starter kit.
      • Loudoun: Sort of, but you have to aggregate it a bit
      • Warwick: SEA tracks it typically
      • Verite: All SEA have a part-B data system for special education accommodation
    • Get community to start using the kit
    • Get SIS and assessment vendors engaged to stand up the environment
    • Continue to collect feedbacks - can open a Slack channel if needed

Last updated 27 May 2021