 Well, good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to our final webinar in a five-part series on accelerating learning, co-hosted by AASA, the School Superintendent's Association, and LPI, the Learning Policy Institute. This series began as a collaboration between AASA and LPI as a way to reframe the narrative around learning loss. Instead of using a deficit frame, we have focused the series on lost instructional time and the need to accelerate learning, not remediate. This acknowledges that our students have been learning throughout the pandemic, even if they were working, taking care of family members, or having very different experiences from a typical school year. But we also recognize that the pandemic has hit some communities and schools harder than others, with communities of color disproportionately affected by COVID cases, as well as the economic impact of the pandemic. That's why today we want to focus on equity-centered strategies to support students, particularly as districts develop their plans for recovery and accelerating learning for all students. We encourage participants to continue the conversation on social media using the hashtag accelerate, not remediate. And as we get started, I'd encourage all of you to introduce yourselves in the chat and share with us your state, your district, or your community in which you're working. I mentioned this was the final webinar in a five-part series. In our first webinar, Linda Darling-Hammond talked about how social and emotional learning is a pathway to not a distraction from improving academic learning. Whole child summer learning will be crucial and be a crucial springboard for fall of 2021 as we attend to everything that our students have endured during the pandemic. Our second webinar discussed designing high-quality tutoring programs as part of a holistic strategy for accelerating learning. We learned that tutoring is most effective when it is part of the regular school day and staffed by certified teachers or well-trained paraprofessionals. The links for all of these webinars are in the chat box or will be put in the chat box shortly. Our third webinar showcased strategies for expanded learning time beyond the traditional school day, including learning programs and afterschool and summer programs and community school models that support the whole child and the entire community. Our fourth webinar focused on assessment practices, including formative assessments and measures of social and emotional well-being to provide teachers with just-in-time information to meet student needs. My name is Dave Shuler, and I have the honor of moderating our conversation today. I'm a superintendent in High School District 214 in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I'm a past president of the AASA, and I just thoroughly enjoy moderating and learning from colleagues across the country. This webinar series represents a bridge between research and practice, with researchers setting the table with information about evidence-based strategies and then district leaders explaining how they are actually implementing the research in their own districts. During this webinar, everyone except the presenters have been muted, so we'll be taking questions through the chat feature. You may write in your questions at any time throughout today's presentation and use the chat to engage in discussion. I'd also like to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded, and a video recording will be emailed to you in a few days, and the slides are currently available at the link in the chat. Today's session focuses on best practices for centering racial equity as districts build out their learning acceleration plans. First, we will hear from Desiree Carver-Thomas, a researcher and policy analyst at the Learning Policy Institute, and a co-author of a recently published District's Advancing Racial Equity, or DARE, tool, who will discuss the tool and how it can help district leaders think about concrete strategies to move racial equity forward both during and after the pandemic. Then we will hear from two exceptional leaders who have used and helped inform the development of the DARE tool, Superintendent Valerie Bridges from Edgecomb County, North Carolina and Superintendent Damaris Rao from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to analyze data and develop concrete strategies to address issues of race and equity. Both Valerie and Damaris have been part of a network of superintendents and other district leaders called the Racial Equity Leadership Network, facilitated by the Southern Education Foundation, the National Equity Project, with LPI serving as a research partner. As you hear from this panel, again, please drop your questions and reactions into the chat box and I'll be monitoring that. So let's get into it. Our first panelist is Desiree Carver-Thomas, who is a member of LPI's Educator Quality Team. Her work focuses on how educator quality, teacher diversity, and leadership development can promote equitable opportunities to learn. She's offered several LPI reports, including diversifying the teaching profession, how to recruit and retain teachers of color. She also leads LPI's Racial Equity Network Team. Before joining LPI, Carver-Thomas taught in the New York City Public Elementary Schools, where she had experience in bilingual education, special education, and as a math lead. As a graduate student fellow with the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley, she worked with the City of Richmond on implementing a full-service community schools initiative. She conducted similar work with the West Contra Costa Unified School District. Carver-Thomas holds an MPP from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, an MS in teaching from Fordham University, and a BA in comparative ethnic studies with a concentration in anthropology from Columbia University. Desiree, thank you so much for joining us today and providing us with more information about the evidence-based strategies embedded in LPI's DARE tool. Desiree. Thank you, Dave. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today to share about the district's advancing racial equity or DARE tool. So I'll just jump right into it. On the next slide, I'll show you kind of what I'll be covering. I'll start by explaining why discussing racial equity is central to learning acceleration and COVID recovery. I'll share a tool we've developed at LPI, and I'll discuss how you might use it in your own districts. So let's get started. And with my racial equity, and Dave spoke to this a bit, as more districts and schools begin the process of reopening for in-person learning, they're faced with difficult decisions about how best to meet the needs of students, families, and communities in the wake of a devastating pandemic that's hit communities of color especially hard. Since its inception, our education system has offered deeply unequal opportunities to students of color. But the pandemic has really put that fact in stark relief and created even greater equity gaps than before. Communities of color have seen disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death. We've seen children experiencing trauma and isolation, children whose families have lost their jobs or their homes who are experiencing food insecurity, there's the isolation of being separated, and of course the big digital divide that many have experienced. We've seen decreased engagement and in fact lost engagement in large numbers of students in some districts. And then on top of all of these challenges caused by the pandemic, there's the additional burden of stereotype threat that many students experience that's further exacerbated by the hate speech and violence that have intensified in some cases and gained broader recognition in other cases. So with that in mind, it's all the more important that we bring children back into school settings that when we do so, it should not be with a deficit lens or in ways that carry stigma since that will further depress achievement, especially first sense of color impacted by stereotype threat, rather than stigmatizing children through old style tracking and remediation. It's really important that we bring them back in ways that are joyful and engaging with supports for acceleration. So with that I'd like to move on to some background on the dare tool. It's a component like was mentioned of the racial equity leadership network, which is a project led by the Southern Education Foundation in partnership with LPI and the National Equity Project. The racial equity leadership network develops the knowledge and practices of educator leaders like all of you to advance racial equity. These are the cohort three fellows on this slide. You'll get to meet one of these fellows soon and they along with cohorts one and two really helped us to refine the dare tool and I'd like to put in a quick plug that applications for cohort four are on the Southern Education Foundation website and those are open. So please feel free to check that out and apply. And we'll move on to the next slide. So the district's advancing racial equity or dare tool is based on a literature review of existing literature and equity educational and instruments on educational equity. The practitioner experts in the fellowship reviewed the tool and influenced its design for usability and then the tool was peer reviewed in its final form. So now I will introduce the dare tool. We can skip ahead to slides. So I'm going to start by reviewing the organizing framework which you can find on page seven of the tool if you're following along. And you might be thinking that these domains look familiar and while these are not areas new areas of focus, the tool provides a new way for leaders to see their systems through an equity lens. So the intention is to support systems and continuous improvement. Obviously no staff can tackle everything in every area at the same time, but seeing the whole helps teams to be intentional about where to prioritize. You'll also notice that the framework is in the shape of a wheel and this is to show the domains that the domains work together. For example, given any issue, summer learning, teacher diversity, all of these would walk across multiple areas of policy and practice. And because there isn't a checklist, there is no particular order. However, we do usually start with vision, which is on the next slide. A clear ambitious vision for racial equity that's true to the context of the district and community is important to enroll others and prioritize actions that advance racial equity. The next domain is access to rich, deeper learning, culturally responsive curricula and practices. And this is the heart of racially equitable teaching and learning. It focuses on elements that are key to supporting opportunity, access and achievement for students of color. Next step, I don't have to tell all of you, I'm sure how important safe, healthy and inclusive school environments are to the well-being and learning of students. This domain focuses on attending to students' physical health, mental health and social and emotional well-being. It highlights the importance of fostering positive identity development through authentic peer-to-peer and peer-to-adult relationships. This domain also considers school and community members to adults feel safe, healthy and included on district campuses. And of course, advancing racial equity requires intentionality in the allocation and distribution of resources. This domain supports districts to think expansively about their financial human and material resources. We also know that the work of districts happens in dynamic local contexts with particular histories, politics and community assets. We've learned from our fellows that meaningful partnerships are necessary to engage community members in developing policy and practice that advance racial equity. Next, undergirding, all of this is a need for a robust system for gathering, communicating and using data to drive progress toward racial equity. And when you get a chance, I do urge you to read this section carefully. It calls for data systems that monitor a wide range of measures and also for educators to interpret data from an equity-oriented perspective that understands the systemic nature of racism and drives deeper system inquiry and continuous improvement. And finally, student success is at the center of the framework. And note that the definition of student success includes broad thinking about outcomes for the whole child. Achieving racial equity means that student success is not predetermined by student race. So next, I'd like to show you a graphic that shows how each of the domains is set up, what we call the anatomy of a domain. So first, you'll see a brief literature review that explains why the domain is important and gives the research base. And note that our language is asset-based and aspirational. We deliberately stayed away from starting with gaps and instead discussed why the domain is important for advancing racial equity. Second, in blue, you'll see essential questions that you can ask yourselves and your teams to guide thinking on the domain. And third, in orange, you'll see a bulleted list of specific evidence educators can look for in their system to help answer that question. So the look force are not an exhaustive list and should be adaptable to local contexts. Each section has an other option for educators to fill in with appropriate accessible information from their own context. So let's look at an example. Because we know many students are returning to school from an incredibly challenging year, we might start by looking at the safe, healthy, and inclusive school environments domain. The text here is small, but you can find the same information on page 18 of the tool. So we would start by reviewing the essential questions in blue to consider which essential questions feel most relevant in this moment. So if you can advance until the question pops up. So for example, your district context might demand you take a closer look at the first question, how does your district address students' physical and mental health needs? To help us address this question, we can review the look force, which are showing up, you might ask yourself which you're showing up in your context. So if you can advance. And then which require more attention. And finally, what else might you look for? So maybe your district already has a system for surveying students to determine their feelings of belonging and whether they have a caring adult at school. But maybe you haven't yet provided professional development for educators to implement trauma informed practices in and out of the classroom. And then remember that you always have the option to add other look force that would be most relevant to your district. So we'll finally consider some considerations for how you can bring this tool to your school and your district communities. So first, the tool should be used in collaboration with other stakeholders. So if you're providing expanded learning, then you would include that staff, your teachers, community partners, students and families. Next, the tool is not designed to be used as a comprehensive checklist, but rather as a tool for determining racial equity priorities and setting goals. And finally, use what you learned to iterate, revisit the look force to track and share progress toward greater racial equity over time and make adjustments as needed. So that's it for me. Thank you for your time and attention and for all of the work that you do for students. And please feel free to reach out with any questions. That was just outstanding. Thank you so much for walking us through at a really high level and then showing us those specifics. I'm really, really excited about the next section of our conversation, but I appreciate how clear and specific the tool is for those of us that are sitting in the seat of the superintendent to be able to work with our teams around this work. So let's pivot now and talk with some practitioners who have implemented the DARE tool in their districts. Our first panelist is Dr. Valerie Bridges, who is a superintendent in Edgecomb County Public Schools. She's served as an associate and assistant superintendent in Edgecomb and Washington County Schools. Before working in the eastern region of North Carolina, she worked in Guilford and Wake County Public Schools as a high school teacher, middle school assistant principal, and elementary principal. During her tenure as principal, she was named the 2007 Principal of the Year. The Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce nominated Dr. Bridges as the 2021 Distinguished Citizen of the Year, which is a great accomplishment. She's earned a B.S. degree in accountancy from UNC Wilmington, a master's degree in business administration from Meredith College, teacher certification from St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, a master's degree in school administration, and a doctorate degree in educational research and leadership from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She was most recently named one of 2021's Leaders to Learn by Education Week. Dr. Bridges is married and has two children. She loves professional football and college basketball. Her hobbies include reading, traveling, and shopping for shoes, but her real passion and joy is for children and helping students to reach their full potential. Her motto is, whatever it takes to help students succeed. Valerie, thank you for joining us and sharing with us how Edgecomb County Schools is addressing racial equity, including before, during, and as we recover from the pandemic. Dr. Bridges. Thank you, Dave. Wonderful introduction, and he mentioned about shoes. So yes, and not necessarily in the order he named them. So I want to say good afternoon and thank you for having me. I call myself the super proud superintendent, and I am in my fourth year or my senior year just finishing up my fourth year of being superintendent. So the staff always say, senior year, that means you're graduating, I'm going to grad school. So I look forward to sharing with you all this afternoon about the Edgecomb Way. And as we look at the Edgecomb Way on the screen, there are three shifts. And shift one is really about the racial equity leadership network fellowship and transcend. And I just was really fortunate as a first year superintendent to be able to engage in the two organizations. And they really helped me to set the trajectory that embarked on equity for all students. So racial equity is an 18 month fellowship. And transcend is a collaborative of leaders that engage in redesign work. So that was shift one. Shift two was the micro school, the redesign, and strategic planning. So we developed a micro school on the north side of our district, which was a very transient side of our district. Academics were really concerning. And so we developed a micro school. We work with both organizations, Rellen and Transcend, again, putting that together and helping us figure out how do we begin to make a difference for students? How do we work with students and for students to make that happen in our community? So all of our work was really embedded in redesign. It was embedded in our strategic planning. And then you see that third shift. All of these events that are listed, the pandemic, school closure, district action team, all of those events hit rather quickly and with the vengeance. And so we had to pivot. We had to gather ourselves. And we really had to lean into our commitment, which was making sure that we kept an equity lens and that we innovated for our students. So those are the three shifts. Next on the screen, you'll see a timeline. And I couldn't capture there everything that happened, but surely on that timeline, you see in 2017 becoming a superintendent, Rellen, Transcend, and you see district data concerns. So I became a superintendent for Edgecomb in 2017. Also finding out we were in school, our school system was considered low performing. So we had work to do. So 2018 really launched the micro school. 2019, we expanded some of the education plan based on data and feedback. And we really leaned into our strategic plan and creating that a living, breathing document. And we expanded the micro school. In 2020, we know that we had school closure. And again, lots of things happened, school closed on a Saturday. Our district action team jumped into action on a Sunday and we started hashing out, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna do this? And then in 2001, you see some things that are listed there. We continued our School of Innovation with the 11th and 12th graders. We're working on Summer Smart and Virtual Academy and we're continuing to redesign for our students. Keep in mind, we also have a demerger that will likely happen in the next two years with 1,800 scholars coming into our school system. So again, that's the timeline. On the screen here, I won't read these things, but this is our vision, our equity vision and our district goal of college acceptance for all. And we're really proud of this. This is not something that I created or just leadership within the district. This was principals, assistant principals, teachers, community members, they helped create our vision and our equity vision and our district goal. Our core values and our graduate aims, these graduate aims really talk about staying connected to our students from birth until 25. We do not, we believe that students, once they cross the stage and graduate from high school, that we still need to be a part of helping them to develop and helping them become a full adult. And so we continue to support them even when they're, rather they're in the military, have gone to the workforce or they've decided to go to college. So those are our graduate aims listed there. And then our ECPS strategic plan listed are our priorities. And the hyperlink is our strategic plan. It is a five year plan. We are told every action that we have in our district, we have to be able to tie it back to our strategic plan and our priorities. These five priorities that you see underneath those priorities are action steps. And we prioritize which ones do we need to do this year? How did we do? So we constantly kind of have a check balance for ourselves. As you see on each of the little motifs there, it's kind of like Nike with the swoosh. When you see our motifs, that's talking about ECPS and our strategic plan. We're really serious about it, but we also wanna make sure we cover all of the things that students and the community need. And then the dare tool, which I absolutely love. The dare tool is laid flat on the screen. You see the connections Desiree went through and she really shared and unpacked what that looked like. You would have thought that we created our strategic plan based on the dare tool, but I promise we didn't. I think the engagement that we had with Relin with Learning Policy Institute, it really helped us think about what are the things that are most important for students? How do we make sure systemically that we do what is right and needed for students? And you see clearly kind of almost as an overlay that priorities from our ECPS strategic plan, they fit perfectly with the dare tool. And so that's how we're doing our work and kind of the why behind what we're doing with our work. And then listen on the screen, the next two slides are really talking about the work that we continue to do. We found ourselves in a pandemic, school is closed, students can't be in the building, what do you do? Listed here are some of the things that we've done before the pandemic, but what we promised ourselves was that we were gonna continue to be an ambidextrous organization. We were gonna continue to live and take care of the right now, but also plan for tomorrow. And we weren't gonna let a pandemic or students not being able to be face to face, stop us from doing that. So Martin Millennium Academy is our K-8 Global School. We continue to build even during the pandemic, what does this need to look like? How can we reach our students when they can't be with us? How do we make sure that our teachers are okay and doing what's needed? As you go down the slide, you notice some other exciting things, the science of learning development, the North Phillips School of Innovation, and that's the micro school. It transitioned into the North Phillips School of Innovation. And so those were a cohort of eighth and ninth grade students, 15 eighth graders, 15 ninth graders, and we redesigned school. I had with me joining two really passionate principals that were crazy about students and were willing to really take a chance and make sure it happened. I also had the director of innovation who was joining me on that journey. And as we kind of talk through, what do we want this to look like for students? How are we gonna make a difference and make it more meaningful? We had empathy interviews. We had conversations with stakeholders within the community, faith-based parents, our school board, and we came up with the process of having a micro school. Now, trust me, we were, this was my first year as superintendent and I certainly didn't wanna mess anything up. And so the two principals, they were gung-ho, but then when it came time to, we've gotta make a decision, what are we gonna do? We all had a pause. We had a pause. We had that feeling in our throat of, okay, first year as a superintendent, I certainly don't wanna mess up, but my words to my two spunky principles was, I'm afraid as you are, but I'm more afraid not to do something that we know needs to be done to help students. So we have to take this chance. We're taking a calculated chance and we know how to iterate and change and tweak as needed. So we moved forward. It's been a huge success. We have built this out further beyond just the eighth and ninth graders and we've built it out in the school as well as throughout the district. On the screen you see learning pods. This is something we did during school closure when kids couldn't get to us, but we needed to have our hands on some students who didn't have access to internet. So there's an article that's listed there. And then below, you see some purposeful partnerships. It was just one of our priorities. You see some purposeful partnerships listed there. You see a concerted effort in that last bullet to write grants and make sure that we have resources that our students and staff will need because sometimes you don't always get everything that you need from the state or federal. So that means we have to write grants and make sure that we have all the things that we believe that are needed to help students be successful. And then here, one of my very, very favorite slides is around probable and possible. And this is a Cartesian plane with an X and Y axis and we see the past, present and future going across and then along the sides, we see outcomes. And probable, their probable future is what is most likely to happen based on the conditions that are in place, right? That's the historical picture. We see how it goes up and to the right and outside of the spoke of probable says likely outcomes. But then you see possible, right? And possible is the space in between as teachers, as staff members, as leaders, as stakeholders and our school board and our community. That's the space in which we do things differently and we provide opportunities for students and that's when we get to see the possible, right? And those are those desired aims and outcome and that's the space in which in Edgecom we can insist on being a part of. We insist on leaning into that possible future for our students. And the last slide that I wanna share with you is around data. So I came in as superintendent in July of 2017 and the word was thank you, welcome. We're glad to have you, Dr. B. But by the way, we are a low performing school district and so you see the data and this represents the number of schools were small districts. So we have 14 schools at that time. We had six schools that met or exceeded growth and we had eight schools that did not meet growth. And so that put us in low performing according to North Carolina. In 2017-18, you see how it went from six to 11 and then it went from eight to three, so it went down. In 2018-19, we continue to climb. We're at 12 schools exceeded or met growth and only two that did not meet. We certainly don't have data for 1920 but what I'll say is for us, we are really holding on and embracing the possible future for our students and making sure that we do the things that will help them to be successful. I will stop there and we'll pivot to the next speaker. Thank you so much. Valerie, thank you for that. I took so many notes. I'm gonna definitely be following up with you after this call. Could you maybe just take 30 seconds or a minute and explain what a micro school is from your perspective? Absolutely. Yeah, so we created a micro school which is a small kind of an incubator school, a school within a school. And so we had 15 eighth graders and 15 ninth graders and they were in feeder pattern schools. So it was the eighth graders that would be going to that high school the next year. We took those 30 students and we did not pick them. It was all voluntary. If you would like to come, here's the plan, here's what we're having, these are ideas. And the two principals really redefined what school meant for those students. They were housed at the high school but they stayed in cohorts together and they had a small number of teachers that supported them. And we just kind of, we continue to make sure that they had something in the morning called kind of Harambe where they're celebrating and they're talking through each other. They're having these conversations, they're doing affirmations. We had something called a genius bar where they would check in and make sure, if I have questions, what do I do? And it's okay to ask these questions. There was set aside time to go deep with that. They all also had a session called roses in concrete. And that was their opportunity to kind of share and check in, this is where I am with my assignments. These are the things that I'm doing. We really spent a lot of time around inquiry-based learning and project-based learning. We did not have subjects that were individualized. We combined subjects so that students really had a sense of learning and what that looked like. And we did the empathy interviews with students and we did passion projects. So they were really learning things that they were passionate about. And it was our job and our responsibility to make sure that we hit the standards through their learning. And we, again, great success with that and we continue to build out. So after eighth and ninth, we went down to six and we're now going up to 11th and 12th grade. So we're going both directions and making sure that we tweak along the way and taking advice from parents and from students to get it right for them. Thank you so much. I'm totally coming to visit. So that's outstanding. I agree, Angelica. I love that chart that you had up a couple of slides ago. I always say our job is to modify the trajectory of which our students' futures are when they walk through our doors on day one. So that's awesome. Absolutely. Thank you. So it's now my pleasure to introduce Damaris Rao, the superintendent of the School District of Lancaster. With over 35 years of experience in public education, Dr. Damaris Rao is a seasoned veteran when it comes to setting the standard for student achievement. Known for her passion in urban education and commitment to equity for all students, Dr. Rao has a proven track record of reducing the achievement gap, increasing graduation rates, expanding early childhood programs, implementing programs to reduce bullying behaviors and successfully turning around low performing schools. Dr. Rao began her career as a classroom teacher, central office coordinator and assistant principal in the Bronx, New York, before becoming an instructional leader and principal in Greenwich, Connecticut. After a short time in suburban education, Dr. Rao returned to her urban roots in New Haven, Connecticut, where she was the executive director of schools before being named superintendent of the School District of Lancaster in July, 2015. Her focus areas in the science of learning and development include equity, inclusion and excellence, improving our curricula in ELA and math and developing school leaders to support effective teaching practices. Having been a foster child, Dr. Rao understands the positive impact education has on student success. She received her bachelor's degree in elementary education from St. John's University, master's degree in elementary early childhood education from Hunter College, an administrative certificate from the College of New Rochelle, a doctorate in organizational leadership from the Teacher's College of Columbia University and her superintendent certification from the University of Connecticut. Thank you, Demaris, for sharing with us how you're advancing equity in Lancaster. I have a new notebook and a new pen to take just as many notes I took from Valerie. So let me turn it over to you, Dr. Rao. Thank you, Dave, and thank you for having me here today. I always enjoy talking about the work that we're doing around equity in our school district. We've been hard at work in this area for several years now and in light of the social justice protests and all the good work that's come out of that, I really feel proud and want to really share more of a on-the-ground approach to equity work in a school district. So if we could go to the first slide, please. So the school district of Lancaster is a school district that is very, very diverse. We encompass the city of Lancaster, which is about 60,000 people. And then we encompass a small Lancaster township and it's one district. Now, the interesting thing is the school district, as you can see from the slide, is very diverse and a lot of poverty. 90% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Interestingly, we are also surrounded by very affluent suburbs and rich farmlands. If any of you have thought of visiting the Amish, Lancaster County has one of the largest Amish populations in the country. Unfortunately, because we are in the city, we have a lot of organizations that do not pay taxes. 25% of taxable places do not pay taxes in the city of Lancaster to our schools. So that includes churches, colleges, hospitals, multiple nonprofits, which has then resulted in, of course, us having a much higher tax rate than our affluent peers that surround us. And that becomes an issue of equity. Right now we are in the midst of a lawsuit because we believe that our state is not funding our schools equitably in light of the high tax rates in our inability to raise sufficient funding for our students. Next slide, please. So the journey towards equity started when I first got here as most superintendents and principals and other educators typically do right is to really look at student data. And immediately what struck out to me was the disproportionality of how our black males were suspended. And just the huge amount of suspension period, nevermind the disproportionality that we saw. So we started looking at that data and knowing that we had to do something about that and starting to develop tools for our staff. Then I was fortunate enough to be part of the racial equity leadership network, which introduced us or introduced me to the data tool. We called it the district equity indicators at that time as a new name, but it's still the same thing and it's still fantastic. I would recommend it to everyone. As a result of that participation, I developed an equity design team. It's part of the framework of the realm organization is that you develop an equity design team with a purpose of developing a pilot program that identifies and addresses an area of disproportionality. And that went so well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what we did there, but it went so well that we went from an equity design team of about 10 folks to an equity steering committee, now a district-wide committee of 20 folks involving a variety of people from board members to the NAACP president of our local chapter, our students, teachers and staff and parents. And the difference between the district equity committee is that the district equity committee focused on greater systemic and institutional practices of inequity because you have to look at yourself and how your organization is promoting inequity, oftentimes without realizing it. Next slide, please. So he used the purpose of the equity design team as I mentioned. I'm sorry, can you go back one slide? There you go. So yes, so we looked at a variety of data for the purpose of really trying to identify racial inequities that were negatively impacting our kids, using research to address those inequities, identifying an equity challenge based on a variety of data that I can talk about. And then of course, researching best practice and implementing a pilot strategy to address that issue. Next slide, please. So after a significant amount of time, reviewing quantitative performance data, looking at suspension data, attendance data, data on who was attending our honors programs and AP programs, working with F&M's college for opinion research to analyze our data. And this is what we found. What we found here is on your screen and for many school districts across the country, this will not surprise you, right? That our black male students, particularly in middle school, but both in middle and high school were disproportionately suspended, resulting in lower student academic outcomes across all areas. And it was through the F&M opinion center who did some deep dives in research for us, they found that our black male middle school students were four times more likely to be suspended than a white student. And then when we looked at all of our academic achievement data, what we saw was that that decline started when students left elementary school in fifth grade and started sixth grade middle school. And so those became the areas that we really wanted to focus on in terms of making a difference in student outcomes. You know, oftentimes we try to do things that are gonna affect the entire district, K-12, that doesn't work oftentimes, right? And we are a great believer here in the district in piloting small gathering research and seeing if it works before we extend it to other places. So that's what we're gonna do with this, but I wanna show you another slide. Next slide, please. So what you see here is that we also gathered quantitative data, quantitative, I'm sorry, and qualitative data, where we interviewed faith-based leaders, parents, nonprofit organizations, students, teachers, of course, community leaders, faith-based leaders. We interviewed multiple groups of people and shared the data with them and said to them, why do you think this is? And what should we be doing to support our students, particularly our black males in sixth grade? And honestly, what we found was, next slide, please. There you go. Those two highlighted columns show you what was the most common response from all of our focus groups. That is, everyone said that implicit and explicit bias were areas of concern and we needed to address it through staff training. And the other area that they expressed thought that would be very positive for our students, especially our sixth grade black males, was providing mentorships for those students. And so it was interesting, we had not planned to actually do this work for another six months because we really wanted to go slow and make sure we're looking at that data. But when we saw the results of the focus groups, we felt such a sense of urgency that we said, we can't wait. We need to find an organization who's going to help us with equity training, implicit bias training for our staff, because what we heard was so difficult to accept from teachers in our group, from parents, from the members of the committee who were holding these focus groups, who had tears in their eyes when they heard from certain folks about why our students weren't learning. And we said, you know what, we can't wait. We need to put out an RFP right now and interview some organizations who will help us work with our staff and our students and families, because it's not just for staff. So we can go to the next slide, please. So that's where this tool really came in, the dare tool. We focused again on, we call them equity levers and they were all super important and integrated as Valerie indicated. What this did, this tool was help our equity design team and the equity steering committee understand the most powerful levers for change in order to prove outcomes for students. Next slide, please. Now, I know this is very hard for you to read and it's not intended for you to read. You will get this when you get your slide deck. But what I wanted to show you was that was that we worked on each of those indicators. Excuse me. Now, our work has been going on since 2018. So we've had a great opportunity to make some adjustments in the work that we do. And what I've done here for you is sort of just highlight the red is the areas that I really am most proud of, right? So this year, and it started last year while we were still out of school was really developing an equity policy that will now enable us to look at every single decision through an equity lens. And I'm very fortunate that I have a board that is very supportive of equity. And so I have a group of my equity committee who is developing that equity policy, having done a bunch of research, looking at others equity policies across the nation. We are at the stage now, and again, this is part of the dear domains where you don't just develop an equity policy by yourself. Now we are taking that equity policy out to our community and asking them for feedback before we bring it to our board of directors. Under systems for gathering, communicating and using data, one of the things we've been doing as I mentioned before is really looking at our suspension, attendance, benchmark assessments, and really analyzing who's struggling, where and why. So what is the obstacle that we as a school district have put in place that is not helping this group of students succeed? And that's how we always put it. It's about us, the adults who have to change. It's about us, the adults who are doing something that's impeding our students' learning. And if we can own that, we can be responsible for outcomes. So one of the things that is being developed right now in time for our schools to open in the fall is typically, we all look at failure rates, right? Who's not attending school? Who's not graduating? Who isn't doing very well? Well, I have charged a high school with creating a high school dashboard that will enhance students' access. So now I wanna know, what are our students doing well in? So if I have a child who's not in an honors program, for instance, at the high school and has A's and B's and C's, I wanna red flag on that child and I want someone to talk to that child and get that child to move into a higher level course so that all of our students have access to high level courses. We are also creating a district report card because we believe, our organization believes that it is important to be accountable and to own your data and to share that data. And so as you can see, we've done a lot of work. We've added a new ethnic studies class and African American literature class, a variety of work in each of the dare domains because all of them are important and all of them work together to send a message about what's important for kids and what the work is that the adults have to do. And I think it's really important to really listen to your students when you start doing some of this equity work. For me, the equity work started when I met with my high school kids and they talked about the high levels of suspension. But the other thing they talked about was something that was so clearly discriminating against our students. So in the school district of Lancaster we have one high school campus where we have two buildings. And what the students told me was that in one building the majority of advanced placement international baccalaureate courses were placed in one building. And in the other building, there were very few if any of those high level courses. And that was the beginning of here is an institutional practice that we need to change. And so we did. And so next year, the following year after that, of course, the programs were distributed equally amongst two buildings. And it really created a sense like you are on a college campus because now you're walking back and forth to take courses as opposed to all of the highest level courses being in one building. Oftentimes not representing the demographics of our students in the district. The other thing we did is we started looking at our small learning communities. And I took one small learning community and actually followed a child into that community all day to follow her school schedule. And what I found was that this particular small learning community was developed to address, let me put this honestly, to track a certain group of students. And so what I found is that our ELD students our English language developing students were being tracked into this, it was supposed to be a medical pathway. And somehow it became a pathway to becoming a certified nursing assistant rather than a doctor, registered nurse practitioner, all of those high wage positions. So we worked that year and the next and we have changed that small learning community where there are multiple pathways within one community. So you can still get your CNA, that's what you choose. But you can also choose to take dual enrollment classes at our local college and go towards technical programs to become X-ray technicians and so forth. Or you can go to another college if you're really interested in becoming a registered nurse or a doctor. And by the way, we pay for that in the school district of Lancaster because we believe that access is important for all of our students. And so those, it was really important to dig down into what is the organization itself doing to create obstacles for students and use these equity domains really are very helpful in getting you to think about all of those components. Hi Damaris. A question came in and I'm wondering since I know you have your master's degree in elementary at early childhood if you have some comments on it. Brain development for some children may not be sufficient by age three or four for success in elementary school. This may be because of inadequate resources or available adults during young childhood. What can be done with these children and what can be done to improve their environments to provide the necessary brain development in the very early years? Would you have any reaction to that? I'm sorry, it's such a long question. I have to read it for myself. Sure, of course. Yeah, so brain development. So we know that many times our students who live in poverty aren't being given that enriching environment. So that is why we fight for pre-K. So we have 20 pre-K classrooms in our district that we use our grant money for. However, we are also enhancing the pre-K program here and we work with partners so that they also have pre-K programs. So the majority of our students do come to school with pre-K experience. And I think that is absolutely vital. Typically we have still awaiting this because so many of our families believe and entrust us when we talk about pre-K programming. One of the things related to COVID that I'd like to just address around that area too is so I don't know about many other school districts but we lost a lot of kids during COVID whether they went to charter schools or cyber programs or just disappeared. And now we're finding students who because we were in virtual mode for a long time we're finding students, the students who are coming back to us who did not go to kindergarten and students who were in our own kindergarten who really did, were not successful. They didn't attend. And in most cases, we know that virtual learning does not work for most kids. And so what we're doing is we're creating what we're calling a K1 program, a compacted kindergarten first grade program for families who want to have their children have a successful kindergarten experience because what we don't want is kids to go into first grade without a good foundation. And that includes some of those foundational skills in kindergarten and grade one. And we'll be working with families who want to try to do that. Because again, we do not want children to face first grade feeling stressed about what they've not learned. So yeah, it's part of that equity work because around my school district, many of the schools did open. And because we were in urban school, there was a sense that we should not open. I did not agree with that, put it right up there. I just felt that they could open, we should be open. So I finally got my kids into the buildings in January, but there was a lot of learning loss, a lot of learning loss that we need to make up with, a lot of opportunities for social development that we need to make up with, a lot of opportunities for language skills that have to be made up. And so, you know, and all of that is around equity, making sure our kids are college and career ready. And sound. Just go to that. Last slide, it's still hard work. And we've been doing this for three years, three to four years, actually. I'll be starting my seventh year in July, but there are constant challenges to achieving equity work. And I encourage all of you to push hard, push back and keep our students in the center of the work that you do so that they can achieve at the highest levels, like everyone else. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. That's awesome. There's a question in the chat, maybe Valerie, you could, if you'd be willing to answer, because I think it's so important. I think it's one where we could probably do a whole webinar, but what are the key components and structure of your staff equity training program, your professional learning for adults to ensure that the training is transformational and impacts lived experience of students and families in school communities, rather than a one-off compliance exercise? Do you wanna grab that one? Because I think it's so important to our work. Yeah, be glad to. So lots of work happened for me during those 18 months of racial equity training. That fellowship was powerful. All of the things that I was able to garner and learn there in bite-sized pieces, I brought that back to our staff. So we've started that work. They were working alongside me during my first year as superintendent during those 18 months. And now we're continuing that. And so each time we have our district leadership team meeting, we're continuing to unpack some of the, is so much work, right? We're continuing to unpack that. We're continuing to look at our data. We're continuing to figure out what are the priorities? What are the things that we can do and how should we do it? So we've created a glossary. We have really supported implicit bias and small pieces. So a lot of times we'll use a video. We'll use a discussion. We'll use articles. We use articles that are part of North Carolina school system and we'll use articles that are outside of our school system. And so as a team, we unpack those and we have those conversations. And what we've agreed is that if we can, as adults, have some conversations around this, how can we expect children to do it? And so again, we do it slow. We do it methodically. We do it during strategic planning. Again, you can't take the equity lens on and off. It has to be a part of the work. And I will say as a fourth, finishing up fourth year as a superintendent without having the partnership with Relin, with Learning Policy Institute, with my other colleagues that were a part of that, I don't know if I would have had the courage to do some of the work and share some of the, just uncover some of the things that were a part of our district. Some, as Damaris said, they weren't things that people necessarily plan, it's systemic. And so you have to be able to get at some of that. And so through that 18-month fellowship, it really showed me like, open your eyes, pay attention. There's lots of work to do, but are we doing the right work? So in Edgecom, we started small. We started with the team. We started with discussions. We started with, and we put it together with other work that we're doing. So some of our SEL work around social emotional learning and trauma, we had to like dive into our communities, what have our parents experienced? And when you start having those empathy interviews, if unless, you know, you gotta have thick skins because people are gonna tell you some things that as a school system, you didn't get right, right? Like they've graduated, they're older, they're okay, but they didn't get right. You also have to pair that with most of the leaders in your district have come through school systems similar to the ones we could describe. They have been successful. So it's that juxtaposition, I've been successful, but the families that I'm serving may not be. So how do you reckon with that, right? Like I'm okay. And I've said that to the staff. We, you know, these are your principals, your assistant principals, your directors and assistant superintendents. You've been successful in a school system or a district that we're saying we need to disrupt and do some dismantling, and then we've gotta rebuild. And so you have to, you know, you've gotta be tough about that and you have to be real with yourself and be transparent. And so we start, again, we start small, we all have biases and then we've been building out from that. Yeah, thank you. I think, you know, we're at the top of the hour, but I would just, you know, as we wrap up, say it's so important that you make a commitment to incorporate racial justice into all of your professional learning. If you really, you have to be courageous, you have, we, the first Monday of every month is focus an hour on just PD regarding around racial justice. And that's a commitment we've made as a school community. If you haven't read case studies on diversity and social justice education, there's a great, just to help you lead your team members through some of that work because I needed some help in creating some of the scenarios. I'm super thrilled, Desiree, that you provided an opportunity to walk through the dare tool with us. I opened it up in the link and I've already sent it on to a bunch of our team members, so that was great. If people are looking for a great summer read and you have not read Grading for Equity, I'd put that all on your bucket list too. It's been transformational for us as our school system moving things forward. I wanna thank very much. When I put my email address in the chat box, for anybody I know there were about three or four additional questions that we just didn't have time for, one around technology, reach out to me. I'd be happy to share the books with you along with answering any additional questions you have from my perspective. And I hope you all join me again in thanking Damaris, Valerie and Desiree for awesome information. You can see on the link on the slide the four previous webinars that have been recorded. And so the recording will be sent out to everybody that registered within about three days or so. And so you just expect to get that and feel free to reach out. I learned so much. I'm reinvigorated to embrace this work again and I'm glad I've got some great partners to help me work through this. So thanks to all of you, thanks to AASA and LPI for presenting this whole webinar series. And again, have a wonderful day. I hope everybody gets some time this summer to renew themselves and to think about how we really do accelerate learning. And please, please, I know we all took tons away. Desiree started us out absolutely on the right path by saying think of this from an asset perspective not a deficit perspective. We should not be talking about learning loss. We should be talking about learning renewal and learning acceleration. And that will put us all on the right path to a future we can't even imagine. It's gonna be so great for all of our kids. So have a great rest of your day. Appreciate all of you.