Get In Formation: The Time for Ed Equity in DC is Now
In Washington, D.C., the DC Equity Lab and the Fellowship for Race and Equity in Education are partnering to raise the level of discourse and inspire entrepreneurial action with the end user in mind.
In early January, the DC Equity Lab convened a diverse group of educators, entrepreneurs, innovators, and community members to enjoy wine and grapple with complex problems in our city. Using a strategic questioning protocol, folks grappled with problems that fell into eight buckets: bullying, trauma in schools, high school push outs, the school to prison pipeline, school integration, bridging across racial and cultural differences, and absenteeism and truancy.
Participants shared what they knew about each problem, prioritized the most important ones, and crowd sourced the background information needed to guide a thoughtful design process. In crafting their questions, the “how might we” format was applied to unleash the power of the idea and reinforce the active nature of answering these questions.
The DC Designers for Equity posed the following questions that spurred deep reflection for the DCEL team:
1. How might we design a prison to school pipeline?
We have to treat each other better. Designing lives of infinite choice means creating second chances, especially for the pushed-out and condemned. What if we scaled and enhanced innovative programs such as the Bard Prison Initiative and provided people signature experiences of restoration, redemption, and retooling? With our prison populations growing exponentially with people of color, an equitable response would include personalized pathways that certify and retool our most vulnerable citizens with options for creative and transformative reentry.
2. How might we build truly diverse schools across zip codes?
We have to do a better job of being together. We are experts in separation. We blame inherited structures that we underwrite and then reframe them as insurmountable obstacles. If we can rally to put a man on the moon and design electric cars, certainly we can design learning spaces that are integrated and more humane. Equipped already with the skill, we now need the courage and the will to design them. Building diverse schools does not simply mean that people of color invade white spaces. It means that we create new spaces of equity shared and cared for by all.
3. How might we discuss difference more openly?
We have to talk better. When we talk about ‘the kids’ and do not say black children or Latino children, we miss an opportunity to talk about difference, the ways we are different, and how our differences make us stronger. The absence of the difference talk implies that our differences are deficits and create discomfort. We need language and structures to facilitate these conversations. All people must engage in the work of reconstructing and transforming our identities into agents of liberation. Else, we carelessly slip and become agents of white supremacy; perpetuating systems of oppression instead of interrupting them. We need to acknowledge the dominant cultural narrative that rubs out the experience of others, create space to deconstruct it, and create a new normal. How might we work together to create a new normal where difference is leveraged to recreate whole communities?
4. How might we disrupt white normativity in our schools?
We have to do better about including everyone. White normativity is a puppeteer that invalidates people of color and our experiences. Take the achievement gap framework, for example. The framework assumes that being white is the destination and when students of color achieve like white students then we have ended racial injustice. It also assumes that white people are the standard to which all people should aspire. How might we design an accountability framework that empowers people of color, validates their experiences, and acknowledges the orbit of bias that exists in systems of oppression? How might we design accountability systems that measure ourselves against our goals and not each other?
Washington, D.C. is ready to grapple with these problems. If you are ready, get in formation and follow the public conversation at @dcequitylab. Slay.
