Acting on Equity Gaps

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Acting on Equity Gaps

• Rebecca Martin
• Senior Vice President
• University of Wisconsin System
• July 30, 2007

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Overview of Presentation

• What Is The Equity Scorecard?
• What Is Equity?
• Why Now?
• How It Works
• The UW System Pilot

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• The Diversity Scorecard is a tool and a process
  to help campuses assess their effectiveness in
  providing historically underrepresented students
  with the credentials they will need to gain
  economic, social, and political power.
• Estela Mara Bensimon
• Center for Urban Education
• University of Southern California

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What Is The Equity Scorecard?

• A comprehensive campus-based strategy for
  assessing and improving institutional
  effectiveness
• A holistic and systematic strategy that
  spotlights and prioritizes racial/ethnic
  inequities for action planning
• Provides a solid base of information for closing
  the access and achievement gaps

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It Is Not

• A mandate
• A report card
• A uniformity driven assessment model
• A replacement for existing assessment and
  evaluation efforts

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Core Principle of The Equity Scorecard

• Evidence, i.e., factual data about
  inequities in educational outcomes access,
  enrollments, retention, excellence,
  graduationcan have a powerful effect upon
  faculty members, administrators, counselors, and
  others and their motivation to solve them.
• Estela Mara Bensimon

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What Is Equity?

• Equity is achieved when students of color
  succeed in any variety of measures relative to
  their representation (including access and
  excellence) on campus.
• Why Equity Matters Implications for a
  Democracy,
• Diversity Scorecard Project, Center for Urban
  Education
• University of Southern California

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Why Now? In Order To

• Address educational outcomes stratified by race
  and income
• Reap the benefits of increasing economic returns
• Equip all students for a knowledge-based economy
• Foster social, political, and economic stability
  of our state and the country
• Eliminate educational inequities
• Increase institutional accountability

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The Accountability Side of Diversity

• These are evidence based practices that will
  make individuals more conscious of the state of
  educational outcomes for historically underserved
  students and will enable them to act
  purposefully.
• Estela Mara Bensimon
• The Accountability Side of Diversity

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How It Works

• Awareness Engage in institutional
  self-assessment to provide a clear and
  unambiguous picture of inequities
• Interpretation Analyze and integrate the
  meaning of the inequities
• Action Develop strategic actions to achieve
  equity in educational outcomes based on data, not
  assumptions

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It is said, What gets measured gets
noticed.Team members were skeptical at first.
The act of breaking data down by race and
ethnicity has provided many aha moments.
Estela Mara Bensimon
When Data Speak

• Through the simple act of disaggregating existing
• data, institutions are able to locate the most
  critical
• gaps in the academic performances of students of
• color and other underrepresented students.

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The Equity Scorecard
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The Process

• Create campus evidence teams
• Analyze existing data through the four
  perspectives
• Develop Scorecard
• Share results

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Access Indicators

• In what programs and majors are underrepresented
  students enrolled?
• Do underrepresented students have access to
  important career enhancing academic programs like
  internships or fellowships?
• What access do underrepresented students have to
  financial support?
• What access do underrepresented students, at
  four-year colleges, have to graduate and
  professional schools?

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Retention Indicators

• What are the comparative retention rates for
  underrepresented students by program?
• Do underrepresented students disproportionately
  withdraw from hot programs like engineering or
  computer sciences?
• How successful are underrepresented students in
  completing basic skills courses?

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Institutional Receptivity Indicators

• How well is our postsecondary education system
  serving the needs of students of color?
• Do educational outcomes for students of color in
  specific areas reveal an equity gap?
• Does the composition of the faculty enhance
  diversity, and correspond to the racial and
  ethnic composition of the student body?

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Excellence Indicators

• Access
• Which majors or courses function as gatekeepers
  for some students and gateways for others?
• Why are African American students concentrated in
  certain majors, such as education, social work,
  business?
• Achievement
• What are the comparative completion rates in
  highly competitive programs?
• What is the pool of high-achieving
  under-represented students eligible for graduate
  study?

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The UW System Pilot

• One effort in the larger context of system-wide
  diversity planning
• Established focus on closing the achievement gap
  between students of color and their white peers
• Process for institutional assessment,
  accountability and organizational change
• Partnership with the Center for Urban Education

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System Context

• Two decades of system-wide plans for diversity
• Commitment to accountability, achieving
  excellence
• Specific linkage to goals in system and campus
  plans

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Pilot Campuses

• One research university
• Four comprehensive universities
• System of thirteen two-year colleges
• Range in size, student demographics, other
  institutional characteristics
• Differences in team characteristics and
  experiences

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Key Factors

• Commitment to equity and student success
• Diversity as a campus-wide priority
• Leadership support
• Institutional research capacity
• Willingness to confront difficult questions
• Openness to organizational and systemic change

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Difficult Findings

• The achievement gap, in all its forms
• Deficiencies in admissions outcomes
• Drop/Failure/Withdrawal rates in key courses
• Lack of support for certain students and groups
  of students

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Opportunities

• Potential interventions based on better
  understanding of the real problems
• Shift in campus culture
• Infusion of data-driven approach and sense of
  institutional responsibility across campus
  discussions
• Focus campus agenda on addressing student success
• Link to strategic initiatives, resource
  decisions, faculty interests

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Reflections

• An undertaking with high stakes and high rewards
• Painful process for the team, the leadership, and
  the campus
• Institutional self-knowledge leading to
  meaningful change

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Closing

• We must deliberately and energetically remove
  the conditions that deny or impede equitable
  outcomes for all students. The Diversity
  Scorecard is a tool and a process to help
  campuses assess their effectiveness in providing
  historically underrepresented students with the
  credentials they will need to gain economic,
  social, and political power.
• Estela Mara Bensimon, The Diversity Scorecard
  A Learning Approach to Institutional Change,
  Change Magazine (January/February 2004).

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Resources

• UW System Equity Scorecard Website
  http//www.uwsa.edu/oadd/equity/index.htm
• Center for Urban Education Websitehttp//www.usc.
  edu/dept/education/CUE/