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The Ongoing Challenges, and Possible Solutions, to Improving Educational Equity

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Schools across the country were already facing major equity challenges before the pandemic, but the disruptions it caused exacerbated them.

After students came back to school buildings after more than a year of hybrid schooling, districts were dealing with discipline challenges and re-segregating schools. In a national EdWeek Research Center survey from October, 65 percent of the 824 teachers, and school and district leaders surveyed said they were more concerned now than before the pandemic about closing academic opportunity gaps that impact learning for students of different races, socioeconomic levels, disability categories, and English-learner statuses.

But educators trying to prioritize equity have an uphill battle to overcome these challenges, especially in the face of legislation and school policies attempting to fight equity initiatives across the country.

The pandemic and the 2020 murder of George Floyd drove many districts to recognize longstanding racial disparities in academics, discipline, and access to resources and commit to addressing them. But in 2021, a backlash to such equity initiatives accelerated, and has now resulted in 18 states passing laws restricting lessons on race and racism, and many also passing laws restricting the rights and well-being of LGBTQ students.

This slew of Republican-driven legislation presents a new hurdle for districts looking to address racial and other inequities in public schools.

During an Education Week K-12 Essentials forum last week, journalists, educators, and researchers talked about these challenges, and possible solutions to improving equity in education.

Takeru Nagayoshi, who was the Massachusetts teacher of the year in 2020, and one of the speakers at the forum, said he never felt represented as a gay, Asian kid in public school until he read about the Stonewall Riots, the Civil Rights Movement, and the full history of marginalized groups working together to change systems of oppression.

“Those are the learning experiences that inspired me to be a teacher and to commit to a life of making our country better for everyone,” he said.

“Our students really benefit the most when they learn about themselves and the world that they’re in. They’re in a safe space with teachers who provide them with an honest education and accurate history.”

Here are some takeaways from the discussion:

Schools are still heavily segregated

Almost 70 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, most students attend schools where they see a majority of other students of their racial demographics .

Black students, who accounted for 15 percent of public school enrollment in 2019, attended schools where Black students made up an average of 47 percent of enrollment, according to a UCLA report.

They attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 67 percent, while Latinx students attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 66 percent.

Overall, the proportion of schools where the majority of students are not white increased from 14.8 percent of schools in 2003 to 18.2 percent in 2016.

“Predominantly minority schools [get] fewer resources, and that’s one problem, but there’s another problem too, and it’s a sort of a problem for democracy,” said John Borkowski, education lawyer at Husch Blackwell.

“I think it’s much better for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, when people have opportunities to interact with one another, to learn together, you know, and you see all of the problems we’ve had in recent years with the rising of white supremacy, and white supremacist groups.”

School discipline issues were exacerbated because of student trauma

In the absence of national data on school discipline, anecdotal evidence and expert interviews suggest that suspensions—both in and out of school—and expulsions, declined when students went remote.

In 2021, the number of incidents increased again when most students were back in school buildings, but were still lower than pre-pandemic levels , according to research by Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education.

But forum attendees, who were mostly district and school leaders as well as teachers, disagreed, with 66 percent saying that the pandemic made school incidents warranting discipline worse. That’s likely because of heightened student trauma from the pandemic. Eighty-three percent of forum attendees who responded to a spot survey said they had noticed an increase in behavioral issues since resuming in-person school.

Restorative justice in education is gaining popularity

One reason Welsh thought discipline incidents did not yet surpass pre-pandemic levels despite heightened student trauma is the adoption of restorative justice practices, which focus on conflict resolution, understanding the causes of students’ disruptive behavior, and addressing the reason behind it instead of handing out punishments.

Kansas City Public Schools is one example of a district that has had improvement with restorative justice, with about two thirds of the district’s 35 schools seeing a decrease in suspensions and expulsions in 2021 compared with 2019.

Forum attendees echoed the need for or success of restorative justice, with 36 percent of those who answered a poll within the forum saying restorative justice works in their district or school, and 27 percent saying they wished their district would implement some of its tenets.

However, 12 percent of poll respondents also said that restorative justice had not worked for them. Racial disparities in school discipline also still persist, despite restorative justice being implemented, which indicates that those practices might not be ideal for addressing the over-disciplining of Black, Latinx, and other historically marginalized students.

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Remote learning turned spotlight on gaps in resources, funding, and tech — but also offered hints on reform

“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. This part looks at how the pandemic called attention to issues surrounding the racial achievement gap in America.

The pandemic has disrupted education nationwide, turning a spotlight on existing racial and economic disparities, and creating the potential for a lost generation. Even before the outbreak, students in vulnerable communities — particularly predominately Black, Indigenous, and other majority-minority areas — were already facing inequality in everything from resources (ranging from books to counselors) to student-teacher ratios and extracurriculars.

The additional stressors of systemic racism and the trauma induced by poverty and violence, both cited as aggravating health and wellness as at a Weatherhead Institute panel , pose serious obstacles to learning as well. “Before the pandemic, children and families who are marginalized were living under such challenging conditions that it made it difficult for them to get a high-quality education,” said Paul Reville, founder and director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Educators hope that the may triggers a broader conversation about reform and renewed efforts to narrow the longstanding racial achievement gap. They say that research shows virtually all of the nation’s schoolchildren have fallen behind, with students of color having lost the most ground, particularly in math. They also note that the full-time reopening of schools presents opportunities to introduce changes and that some of the lessons from remote learning, particularly in the area of technology, can be put to use to help students catch up from the pandemic as well as to begin to level the playing field.

The disparities laid bare by the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent from the first shutdowns. “The good news, of course, is that many schools were very fast in finding all kinds of ways to try to reach kids,” said Fernando M. Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and director of GSE’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and International Education Policy Program. He cautioned, however, that “those arrangements don’t begin to compare with what we’re able to do when kids could come to school, and they are particularly deficient at reaching the most vulnerable kids.” In addition, it turned out that many students simply lacked access.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right. You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it,” says Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

The rate of limited digital access for households was at 42 percent during last spring’s shutdowns, before drifting down to about 31 percent this fall, suggesting that school districts improved their adaptation to remote learning, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge of U.S. Census data. (Indeed, Education Week and other sources reported that school districts around the nation rushed to hand out millions of laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks in the months after going remote.)

The report also makes clear the degree of racial and economic digital inequality. Black and Hispanic households with school-aged children were 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white ones to face limited access to computers and the internet, and more than two in five low-income households had only limited access. It’s a problem that could have far-reaching consequences given that young students of color are much more likely to live in remote-only districts.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right,” said Reimers. “You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it.” Too many students, he said, “have no connectivity. They have no devices, or they have no home circumstances that provide them support.”

The issues extend beyond the technology. “There is something wonderful in being in contact with other humans, having a human who tells you, ‘It’s great to see you. How are things going at home?’” Reimers said. “I’ve done 35 case studies of innovative practices around the world. They all prioritize social, emotional well-being. Checking in with the kids. Making sure there is a touchpoint every day between a teacher and a student.”

The difference, said Reville, is apparent when comparing students from different economic circumstances. Students whose parents “could afford to hire a tutor … can compensate,” he said. “Those kids are going to do pretty well at keeping up. Whereas, if you’re in a single-parent family and mom is working two or three jobs to put food on the table, she can’t be home. It’s impossible for her to keep up and keep her kids connected.

“If you lose the connection, you lose the kid.”

“COVID just revealed how serious those inequities are,” said GSE Dean Bridget Long , the Saris Professor of Education and Economics. “It has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with special needs, and school systems that are under-resourced.”

This disruption carries throughout the education process, from elementary school students (some of whom have simply stopped logging on to their online classes) through declining participation in higher education. Community colleges, for example, have “traditionally been a gateway for low-income students” into the professional classes, said Long, whose research focuses on issues of affordability and access. “COVID has just made all of those issues 10 times worse,” she said. “That’s where enrollment has fallen the most.”

In addition to highlighting such disparities, these losses underline a structural issue in public education. Many schools are under-resourced, and the major reason involves sources of school funding. A 2019 study found that predominantly white districts got $23 billion more than their non-white counterparts serving about the same number of students. The discrepancy is because property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, and white districts tend to be wealthier than those of color.

The problem of resources extends beyond teachers, aides, equipment, and supplies, as schools have been tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities, from the basics of education to feeding and caring for the mental health of both students and their families.

“You think about schools and academics, but what COVID really made clear was that schools do so much more than that,” said Long. A child’s school, she stressed “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care.”

“You think about schools and academics” … but a child’s school “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care,” stressed GSE Dean Bridget Long.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

This safety net has been shredded just as more students need it. “We have 400,000 deaths and those are disproportionately affecting communities of color,” said Long. “So you can imagine the kids that are in those households. Are they able to come to school and learn when they’re dealing with this trauma?”

The damage is felt by the whole families. In an upcoming paper, focusing on parents of children ages 5 to 7, Cindy H. Liu, director of Harvard Medical School’s Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities Laboratory , looks at the effects of COVID-related stress on parent’ mental health. This stress — from both health risks and grief — “likely has ramifications for those groups who are disadvantaged, particularly in getting support, as it exacerbates existing disparities in obtaining resources,” she said via email. “The unfortunate reality is that the pandemic is limiting the tangible supports [like childcare] that parents might actually need.”

Educators are overwhelmed as well. “Teachers are doing a phenomenal job connecting with students,” Long said about their performance online. “But they’ve lost the whole system — access to counselors, access to additional staff members and support. They’ve lost access to information. One clue is that the reporting of child abuse going down. It’s not that we think that child abuse is actually going down, but because you don’t have a set of adults watching and being with kids, it’s not being reported.”

The repercussions are chilling. “As we resume in-person education on a normal basis, we’re dealing with enormous gaps,” said Reville. “Some kids will come back with such educational deficits that unless their schools have a very well thought-out and effective program to help them catch up, they will never catch up. They may actually drop out of school. The immediate consequences of learning loss and disengagement are going to be a generation of people who will be less educated.”

There is hope, however. Just as the lockdown forced teachers to improvise, accelerating forms of online learning, so too may the recovery offer options for educational reform.

The solutions, say Reville, “are going to come from our community. This is a civic problem.” He applauded one example, the Somerville, Mass., public library program of outdoor Wi-Fi “pop ups,” which allow 24/7 access either through their own or library Chromebooks. “That’s the kind of imagination we need,” he said.

On a national level, he points to the creation of so-called “Children’s Cabinets.” Already in place in 30 states, these nonpartisan groups bring together leaders at the city, town, and state levels to address children’s needs through schools, libraries, and health centers. A July 2019 “ Children’s Cabinet Toolkit ” on the Education Redesign Lab site offers guidance for communities looking to form their own, with sample mission statements from Denver, Minneapolis, and Fairfax, Va.

Already the Education Redesign Lab is working on even more wide-reaching approaches. In Tennessee, for example, the Metro Nashville Public Schools has launched an innovative program, designed to provide each student with a personalized education plan. By pairing these students with school “navigators” — including teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches — the program aims to address each student’s particular needs.

“This is a chance to change the system,” said Reville. “By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now.”

“Students have different needs,” agreed Long. “We just have to get a better understanding of what we need to prioritize and where students are” in all aspects of their home and school lives.

“By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now,” says Paul Reville of the GSE.

Already, educators are discussing possible responses. Long and GSE helped create The Principals’ Network as one forum for sharing ideas, for example. With about 1,000 members, and multiple subgroups to address shared community issues, some viable answers have begun to emerge.

“We are going to need to expand learning time,” said Long. Some school systems, notably Texas’, already have begun discussing extending the school year, she said. In addition, Long, an internationally recognized economist who is a member of the  National Academy of Education and the  MDRC board, noted that educators are exploring innovative ways to utilize new tools like Zoom, even when classrooms reopen.

“This is an area where technology can help supplement what students are learning, giving them extra time — learning time, even tutoring time,” Long said.

Reimers, who serves on the UNESCO Commission on the Future of Education, has been brainstorming solutions that can be applied both here and abroad. These include urging wealthier countries to forgive loans, so that poorer countries do not have to cut back on basics such as education, and urging all countries to keep education a priority. The commission and its members are also helping to identify good practices and share them — globally.

Innovative uses of existing technology can also reach beyond traditional schooling. Reimers cites the work of a few former students who, working with Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative,   HundrED , the  OECD Directorate for Education and Skills , and the  World Bank Group Education Global Practice, focused on podcasts to reach poor students in Colombia.

They began airing their math and Spanish lessons via the WhatsApp app, which was widely accessible. “They were so humorous that within a week, everyone was listening,” said Reimers. Soon, radio stations and other platforms began airing the 10-minute lessons, reaching not only children who were not in school, but also their adult relatives.

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• Published: 04 August 2023

On the promise of personalized learning for educational equity

• Hanna Dumont   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2910-6311 1 &
• Douglas D. Ready 2  

npj Science of Learning volume  8 , Article number:  26 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Students enter school with a vast range of individual differences, resulting from the complex interplay between genetic dispositions and unequal environmental conditions. Schools thus face the challenge of organizing instruction and providing equal opportunities for students with diverse needs. Schools have traditionally managed student heterogeneity by sorting students both within and between schools according to their academic ability. However, empirical evidence suggests that such tracking approaches increase inequalities. In more recent years, driven largely by technological advances, there have been calls to embrace students’ individual differences in the classroom and to personalize students’ learning experiences. A central justification for personalized learning is its potential to improve educational equity. In this paper, we discuss whether and under which conditions personalized learning can indeed increase equity in K-12 education by bringing together empirical and theoretical insights from different fields, including the learning sciences, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. We distinguish between different conceptions of equity and argue that personalized learning is unlikely to result in “equality of outcomes” and, by definition, does not provide “equality of inputs”. However, if implemented in a high-quality way, personalized learning is in line with “adequacy” notions of equity, which aim to equip all students with the basic competencies to participate in society as active members and to live meaningful lives.

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From tracking to personalized learning.

Resulting from the complex interplay between genetic dispositions and unequal environmental conditions, students begin formal schooling with diverse sets of cognitive skills and socio-emotional characteristics 1 , 2 which are associated with how well and how fast students will learn. Schools around the world thus face the challenge of organizing instruction for large numbers of students while at the same time responding to their individual needs. Given that academic skills vary by student socio-economic background, how schools manage student heterogeneity influences the provision of equal opportunities and the capacity to promote educational equity.

Schools have traditionally treated academic differences as obstacles to be surmounted during classroom instruction, and sought to reduce student heterogeneity by grouping students with similar abilities together. The most obvious example of this is the worldwide practice of organizing students by age, driven by the assumption that students with similar ages have similar abilities and thus require similar instruction 3 , 4 . Schools also sort students according to their abilities into different courses, educational programs and schools, with the aim of creating even more homogeneous groups so that teachers can direct instruction towards the average ability level in a classroom 5 , 6 . However, robust empirical evidence now suggests that such tracking practices increase educational inequalities as less-demanding tracks and courses often provide less opportunities to learn, with disadvantaged students more often assigned to these lower-level tracks 6 , 7 .

In recent years, there have been calls to embrace students’ individual differences 8 through personalized learning—an umbrella term for the idea of adapting instruction to students’ individual needs and providing unique learning experiences for each student. Dockterman 3 even calls for “a new dominant pedagogy” in which “one would never expect all teachers to teach the same lesson on the same day in the same way to all students” (p.15). Technological advances together with major investments by governments, venture philanthropies and technology companies have vastly increased the availability and use of technological solutions for personalized learning in schools and thus contributed to this paradigm shift.

The increasing calls for personalized learning often go hand in hand with the premise that personalized learning will lead to more equitable academic outcomes among students of different social backgrounds 8 , 9 . The fact that children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to succeed in school than their peers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds continues to be a cause of concern for education systems worldwide 10 , 11 . Alarmingly, despite global educational expansions, socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement have remained stable over multiple generations 12 and have even increased in many countries over the past 50 years 13 . Given these inequalities, the aim of this paper is to discuss whether and under which conditions personalized learning can increase equity in K-12 education by bringing together empirical and theoretical insights from different fields, including the learning sciences, philosophy, psychology and sociology.

Educational equity: theoretical and empirical perspectives

As much as there is agreement on educational equity as a valuable goal, there is no agreement regarding its definition. In fact, very different and even contrasting (implicit or explicit) conceptions of equity exist among researchers, educators, and policy-makers and have been the subject of philosophical debates for decades 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 . In the present paper, we distinguish between prominent conceptions of equity and employ them as an analytic lens as we address the implications of personalized learning for educational equity.

One widely held notion of educational equity centers around educational outcomes, asserting that equity entails students of different backgrounds achieving equal outcomes such as academic performance 15 , 16 . This conception of equity, often referred to as “equality of outcomes”, is based on the premise that educational outcomes serve as a gateway to later life goods such as income, social status and health 16 . This perspective is also reflected in the way social inequalities in education are typically operationalized, particularly through SES achievement gaps, which highlight disparities in academic outcomes between students from different backgrounds.

A widespread counter-perspective to the “equality of outcomes” conception of equity argues that ensuring equality of opportunities is a more appropriate goal 15 . Complicating matters, equality of opportunity is in itself a concept with many different meanings 16 . One common understanding of equality of opportunity is the provision with equal inputs, or resources 16 , 17 . Schouten 16 , however, cautions that this “equality of inputs” conception “will do little more than reinforce unequal opportunities that already exist” (p. 2). In line with this concern, Sokolowski and Ansari 8 contend that “different children require different inputs” (p. 6) to ensure educational equity.

Another conception of educational equity, known as “sufficientarianism” or “adequacy” 16 , 17 , 18 takes into account both inputs and outputs. Scholars following this perspective argue that it may be morally acceptable or even necessary to treat individuals unequally by providing more resources to those who are at risk of falling short of achieving adequate outcomes. That is, the inputs provided should ensure that all students reach a minimum level of educational outcomes. Once this minimum level is achieved, any inequality in educational outcomes is seen to be no longer problematic 15 .

To gain a comprehensive understanding of how personalized learning can improve educational equity, we must also examine the role of schools in exacerbating or mitigating inequalities—a topic that has been the subject of scholarly debate for decades. A large group of scholars views schools as “sorting machines” that contribute to the (re-)production of social inequalities 19 . In contrast, considering the substantial inequalities in academic skills already present at kindergarten entry, others argue that schools serve as “great equalizers” because learning experiences in school are more equal than learning experiences out of school 20 , 21 . Importantly, there is robust empirical support for both arguments. While the two perspectives may seem contradictory, it is important to note that the two viewpoints employ different counterfactuals 22 . Scholars arguing that schools reproduce or even exacerbate inequality ask, “What would inequality look like if students attended identical schools?’’, scholars focusing on the potentially equalizing effects of schooling ask, “What would inequality look like if students did not attend school?’’ Therefore, when analyzing how personalized learning can improve educational equity, it is important to consider what the learning experience of students would be like without personalized learning, which may vary greatly depending on the respective socioeconomic context.

Personalized learning: the revival of a multifaceted concept

The idea of personalizing learning by adapting instruction to students’ individual differences has existed for centuries 3 , 23 . Notably, Dewey’s 24 progressive educational philosophy can be regarded a key historical root of personalized learning as he argued that education should be centered around students’ interests, experiences, and abilities. In the 1970’s, the notion of personalizing learning gained further prominence thanks to Vygotsky’s 25 theoretical concept of students’ “zone of proximal development” and Cronbach and Snow’s 26 empirical research on so-called “aptitude-treatment interactions”, which aimed to identify the most effective instructional strategies based on students' individual characteristics. Despite this long history in academic circles, personalization has not been widely implemented in practice, most likely because adapting instruction to individual students is highly challenging for teachers 27 . In recent years, however, technological advances have presented new opportunities to take students’ needs into account during classroom instruction, propelling the increased popularity of personalized learning 28 .

While personalized learning generally refers to the idea of responding to individual student needs during classroom instruction, it appears in many different forms 29 . In fact, the term personalized learning has been used to describe a wide range of different instructional approaches 30 , 31 . This lack of a shared definition is further complicated by the fact that other terms—such as adaptive teaching 32 , 33 , individualized instruction 34 , 35 , or differentiated instruction 36 , 37 —are often used interchangeably with the term personalized learning. One key difference between these other terms and personalized learning is that the latter is mostly used when classroom instruction involves learning technologies such as adaptive learning systems, intelligent tutoring systems or even educational robots 30 , 38 . Such learning technologies continuously collect data about students and adjust tasks, instructional materials or feedback accordingly via algorithms or artificial intelligence. To date, there are numerous technological solutions for personalized learning available, which differ greatly with respect to the data collected, the learner characteristics taken into account (e.g. prior knowledge, typical errors, motivation, self-regulation skills), the use of artificial intelligence and the role of teachers 39 , 40 However, despite the great advantages of learning technologies for personalized learning, scholars have noted that personalized learning does not necessarily require the use of technologies 41 .

Personalized learning does find support in the recent literature, with some studies reporting that such approaches, especially those supported by adaptive learning technologies, are more effective in raising student achievement than traditional non-adaptive instruction 34 , 37 , 39 , 42 , 43 . Whereas the majority of this research occurred in high-income countries, technology-supported personalized learning has also been shown to be effective in low- and middle-income countries 29 , 44 . In contrast, the emerging evidence for the benefits of personalized learning to reduce educational inequalities is much more mixed: Some scholars have reported that technology-enabled personalized learning approaches particularly benefited low-performing students 45 . Others found that initially low-performing students 46 and students with lower working memory capacity 47 learned less than their more competent peers when using technology-enabled personalized learning systems. Experimentally addressing the question whether computer-assisted instruction can narrow the SES achievement gap, Chevalère et al. 48 found that students from low- and high-SES backgrounds benefited equally from such instruction in comparison to conventional teacher-led instruction. Importantly, even though the SES achievement gap remained the same, low-SES students receiving computer-assisted instruction performed comparably well to high-SES students receiving conventional instruction. Given these mixed findings, we will now take a closer look at the conditions that must be in place for personalized learning to provide greater educational equity. More specifically, we will consider the conditions related to the human cognitive architecture, the self-regulatory and socio-emotional needs of students and the broader context of schooling.

Considering the human cognitive architecture

Considering the human cognitive architecture is key to our understanding of whether personalized learning can improve educational equity. Over the past several decades, the learning sciences have compiled a large knowledge base on how people learn, in particular how complex knowledge is acquired beyond the mere memorization of facts. This research has shown that learning is a highly individual and active process, which happens through the interaction of individuals with their social environment 49 , 50 , 51 . Learners are not passive recipients of information; rather, they make sense of content by building a coherent and organized mental representation of that content and by integrating it with their prior knowledge 52 .

There are large individual differences between students in their learning potential 8 . Differences in learning potential mainly reflect differences in general cognitive abilities and in domain-specific prior knowledge, which individuals acquire via previous formal and informal learning opportunities 52 . Because prior knowledge in one domain is the foundation for acquiring new and more complex knowledge in the same domain, it is not surprising that students’ prior knowledge is the most important determinant of academic performance 53 . Importantly, differences in students’ learning potential are not stable, but dynamic and change over time 54 .

Psychological research suggests that instruction is most effective when these cognitive characteristics of students are continuously taken into account. That is, when content is too advanced given a students’ prior knowledge, there is a risk of cognitive overload whereby new knowledge is not learned or only learned on a very superficial level 55 . If the learning content is too easy and the learner is not cognitively challenged, learning can likewise be hampered. Hence, the targeted instruction associated with personalized learning should cognitively stimulate every student equally and result in learning gains of all students.

But what about educational equity? The answer greatly depends on the considered conception of equity. If equity is understood solely in terms of "equality of outcomes," personalized learning may have limited benefits. In fact, personalized learning, which helps all individuals reach their full potential, may accentuate and even exacerbate student differences in academic performance, as high-ability students are permitted to advance more quickly through curricular content and their initial advantage over their low-ability peers grows even wider 8 , 52 . And since academic achievement is often tied to socioeconomic status, personalized learning may then widen existing socioeconomic disparities in student outcomes.

The “equality of inputs” notion of equity also stands in contrast to personalized learning, as the explicit rationale for personalized learning is to treat students differently based on their respective needs. Hence, scholars who view equity as the provision of equal opportunities through differential treatments 8 , are likely to view personalized learning as a means of improving equity. Furthermore, the "adequacy" notion of equity, which aims to ensure that all students reach a minimum level of educational outcomes, also aligns with personalized learning, and we will explore this perspective further in the concluding section.

Considering students’ self-regulatory and socio-emotional needs

Learning is more than a cognitive activity; rather, it encompasses multiple emotional, motivational and social processes 50 , 56 , 57 . During classroom instruction, it is therefore vital to continuously take students’ diverse needs into account in an integrative manner. In particular, students’ self-regulatory and social-emotional needs are constantly subject to change and deserve attention during instruction.

Students’ self-regulatory skills are key to understanding whether and how personalized learning can foster educational equity. There is robust empirical evidence showing that students with lower cognitive abilities and lower levels of prior knowledge are less capable of self-regulating their own learning process and require increased instructional support and guidance, a phenomenon known as the “expertise-reversal effect” 58 . Although technology-enabled personalized learning approaches adjust the difficulty level of instructional tasks, they typically do not take into account students’ self-regulatory skills such as the use of meta-cognitive strategies 59 . This means that they do not systematically develop such skills in students, yet they place enormous self-regulatory burdens on students, which can result in off-task behaviors and a lack of engagement for some students. This is supported by a recent study. In the implementation of one personalized learning system that required considerable student autonomy and assumed a high degree of student self-regulation, low-performing students learned less than their high-performing peers, despite the fact that each student had in fact received academic content “just right” for their skill level 46 . However, it is important to note that the problem of overburdening students does not solely apply to technological solutions for personalized learning. If teachers equate personalized learning with a “student-centered” approach in which students can choose their own learning content and are responsible for their learning process without much interaction with their teachers, the same issue arises. Research has consistently shown that all students need explicit instruction in self-regulation strategies 60 , pointing to the important role of teachers in helping students acquire self-regulatory skills or in explicitly designing educational technologies which gradually develop self-regulatory skills 61 .

Additional student characteristics that most personalized learning systems to date do not take into account include students’ motivation, goals, beliefs, interests, emotional states and personality 28 , 30 . Strong evidence suggests that such socio-emotional needs must be fulfilled via high-quality social interactions. Not only is learning a deeply social activity, learners require emotional safety and a sense of belonging in order to cognitively engage in learning 57 . Therefore, academic success requires that teachers build strong, supportive relationships with their students, which is particularly important for students from less-advantaged backgrounds 62 . This stands in contrast to some technology-based personalized learning approaches in which teachers are reduced to “facilitators.” In fact, Lee et al. 4 found that many teachers in schools transitioning to a personalized learning approach heavily built on technologies were not able to build close relationships with their students. Similarly, Nitkin et al. 46 reported that low-achieving students working with a personalized learning system learned the most in instructional modalities where they worked closely with teachers, and learned the least in modalities where they worked alone.

In summary, these findings underscore the crucial role of teachers in personalized learning, especially for students who are struggling academically or come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Without strong instructional and emotional support from teachers, personalized learning is likely to harm educational equity, regardless of the conception of equity that is applied. If students’ self-regulatory and socio-emotional needs are not taken into account, differences in educational outcomes will widen—as indicated by a recent study, which showed that students with higher working memory capacity benefited more from technology-enabled personalized learning than their peers with lower working memory 47 . Not only would the “equality of outcome” notion of equity be violated, but the “equality of inputs” perspective and the perspective of providing equal opportunities based on students' needs would also be compromised. As a result, this would also violate the “adequate” principle of equity and put low-achieving students and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds at risk of not reaching the minimum proficiency level.

Considering the broader context

The extent to which personalized learning can contribute to educational equity also depends on the broader context in which teaching and learning takes place. Students’ experiences with personalized learning can vary widely across (and even within) schools 46 . In many countries, between-school social and academic stratification is primarily the result of residential segregation, because most children attend schools close to their homes. In other countries, tracking is the main force driving the large differences between schools, including disparities in their socioeconomic composition. Hence, students from low- and high socioeconomic backgrounds often attend schools that differ greatly in the quality of education they provide. More specifically, schools serving high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students not only cater to larger numbers of children with academic and behavioral problems, they also have fewer resources and attract less qualified teachers than schools serving students from high socioeconomic backgrounds 63 , 64 . This confluence of factors makes it more difficult to provide high-quality personalized learning. This especially applies to technology-enabled personalized learning approaches, as disadvantaged schools may not have the necessary technological equipment, software, reliable and robust internet access or technical support staff, let alone teachers who know how to effectively integrate technology into teaching 65 , 66 .

The implementation of personalized learning in low-income countries is even more challenging than in disadvantaged schools in high-income countries. Many of the assumptions under which technology-enabled personalization operates do not transfer to low-income countries, such as a 1:1 child-computer ratio 67 . Although there has been a rapid expansion of school enrollments in the past decades in low-income countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, the majority of students still do not possess basic competencies in reading and mathematics 68 . Many schools in low-income countries, especially in rural areas, are confronted with a lack of physical infrastructure (e.g. electricity, enough classrooms, access to reliable internet) and educational resources (e.g. textbooks, computers), and are often challenged by underqualified and inexperienced teachers, high rates of teacher absenteeism, student-teacher-ratios as high as 100:1 and high levels of student poverty and malnutrition 67 , 68 , 69 . However, this does not necessarily apply to all schools as there is evidence that schools in low-income countries are also characterized by stark segregation and large differences in school quality 68 . Even though the implementation of personalized leaning under such harsh circumstances is extremely challenging 69 , there is robust evidence that among myriad interventions, pedagogical interventions in which teacher instruction is adapted to student needs are the most effective in increasing student performance 44 .

Taken together, the potential of personalized learning for improving educational equity may be hampered by the unequal conditions of the broader context in which teaching and learning takes places. No pedagogical strategy will be able to compensate for stark socioeconomic inequalities between schools and districts. At the same time, the role of personalized learning, in particular technology-enabled personalized learning, for improving educational equity may depend on the context itself. In industrialized countries, the overuse of technology may crowd out the benefits of human contact between teachers and students, which could be particularly detrimental for low-achieving students. In low income-countries with no universal access to schooling and high numbers of unqualified teachers, technology-enabled personalized learning may have a greater potential to improve equity than in industrialized countries because the technology may be all that is available for some students.

Implications for the implementation of personalized learning

The potential of personalized learning to improve learning outcomes and educational equity can only be achieved as long as teachers continue to play a crucial role. Teachers can adapt to students’ needs in multiple ways, for instance by questioning, assessing, encouraging, modeling, managing, explaining, giving feedback, challenging, or making connections 70 . Instead of replacing teachers, learning technologies should empower teachers and facilitate learning and teaching processes 40 , 71 . New developments towards “hybrid intelligent learning technologies”, which have been developed in collaboration with teachers, offer great potential to rethink which teaching tasks can and should be offloaded to artificial intelligence—and which should remain the responsibility of teachers 40 . The further development of personalized learning technologies should also address whether and how students’ self-regulatory and socio-emotional needs can be taken into account. This implies addressing the role that students can play in co-constructing their learning experiences. Importantly, teachers should stay engaged with classroom learning activities at all times and monitor students’ learning whenever necessary. As long as personalized learning systems only adapt to students’ cognitive skills, teachers must respond to students’ self-regulatory skills and socio-emotional needs, which is particularly important for low-achieving and disadvantaged students 50 . Taken together, the effective incorporation of personalized learning technologies poses significant challenges for teachers, and this is likely to persist as these technologies continue to rapidly evolve through improved artificial intelligence.

Implementing personalized learning also requires a context-sensitive approach that takes into account the conditions under which learning occurs, particularly in low-income countries. In addition to obvious adjustments due to a lack of resources, an understanding of the local social environment is also needed. For instance, if high levels of teacher absenteeism are a problem, it is important that teachers do not feel obsolete when learning technologies are implemented, thus leading to even higher levels of disengagement. Hence, even though personalized learning holds great promise for improving school learning in low-income countries, the nature and form of personalized learning may be different than in high-income countries 67 . That is, personalized learning itself needs to be personalized.

Finally, whole-school approaches to implementing personalized learning may be particularly promising, because they also consider school organizational and institutional factors, which could otherwise hamper the potential of personalized learning. Two well-evaluated whole-school reform programs in the U.S. that were specifically designed for disadvantaged students—Success for All and the University of Chicago Charter School—have been shown to improve learning for disadvantaged students 72 , 73 . Interestingly, even though these programs do not call their instructional approach personalized learning, one key element is that teachers adapt their instruction to students’ needs.

Aiming for adequacy instead of equality of inputs or outcomes

Given the theoretical considerations and presented empirical evidence in this paper, which reflect insights from multiple academic disciplines, what can we conclude about the potential of personalized learning to improve educational equity? Learning is a highly individual process shaped by each student’s unique characteristics. Adapting instruction to students’ specific needs and personalizing students’ learning experience should—at least in theory and when implemented as outlined in the previous section—lead to learning gains for all students and support each individual student in reaching their full potential. However, as explained above, this is likely not to lead to “equality of outcomes” and may even increase inequalities, because high-ability students may learn at a faster rate than low-ability students. The solution is certainly not to deprive high-ability students of appropriate learning opportunities.

Moreover, by definition, personalized learning cannot increase equity defined in terms of “equality of inputs”, as the concept of personalized learning is based on the premise that unequal inputs are needed to provide students with equal opportunities to learn. The complicated issue, then, is deciding how much inequality of inputs is reasonable and fair, particularly given limited resources. We argue that the solution may be found in the “adequacy” conception of educational equity 16 , 17 , 18 . That is, inequality in outcomes are tolerable if all students develop the basic competencies necessary to fully participate in society as active members and to live meaningful and fulfilling lives. This also implies that inequality of inputs is appropriate to the extent that at-risk students are provided the resources necessary to develop these competencies. In fact, in the U.S., the notion of educational adequacy is increasingly framed as a constitutional right, where all citizens deserve schooling that at a minimum provides the knowledge and skills needed for success in the modern world, and the ability to assume adult roles as active and engaged citizens 74 .

Based on the adequacy understanding, personalized learning surely serves the interests of educational equity. At the same time, this opens up a number of new questions and issues, in particular how basic competencies are conceptualized and defined. While there may be a wide agreement that all students should be literate and numerate, given their importance in shaping outcomes across the life span 75 , there may not be shared definitions of “basic”, let alone consensus on the host of more complex skills that the economy will demand in the future. Hence, the implementation of personalized learning must be accompanied by deep normative discussions on the ultimate aims of education, and its role in the production of a more equitable and just society.

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COVID-19, the educational equity crisis, and the opportunity ahead

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, heather j. hough heather j. hough executive director - pace @hjhough.

April 29, 2021

As the one-year anniversary of campus closures due to COVID-19 passed last March, nearly half of America’s children were attending schools operating remotely or open only on a hybrid basis. In California, more than 70% of students were attending schools that were fully remote.

But spring brings new hope. Amid steps to ensure safe health practices and the acceleration of vaccinations, the rates of transmission have decreased from earlier peaks in the winter and students are beginning to return to school.

While the return of students to campus is something to celebrate, it is essential to note that the pandemic and related prolonged school disruptions have and will continue to have a profound impact on the lives and learning of students.

Due to inequitable access to health care, income inequality, and disproportionate employment in high-risk, “essential” jobs, low-income, Black, Latino, and Native American communities have borne the brunt of the pandemic, with dire health and economic impacts that hinder their children’s educational opportunities and learning. It is difficult for children to learn if they are sick or hungry, or if they have family members who are sick or even dying. Some students have found themselves without a safe, stable place to live, lacking basic necessities, and disconnected from needed services and supports when schools—a primary avenue for public service delivery—closed for months on end.

Making learning in the pandemic even more challenging, many of these students have lacked reliable access to the internet and computers. And working parents have often found themselves unable to stay at home with their children, sometimes leaving them without needed supervision and support. This has been especially difficult for children in the early grades who may not be able to independently follow directions or navigate online assignments, as well as for some students in upper grades, who may need support to stay on task and away from online distractions such as social media. These instructional support issues are only compounded for students learning English or those with special needs.

Research by my organization, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), has documented how student learning has suffered during the pandemic, leading to growing equity gaps.   One study showed significant learning lag in both English language arts and math, with students in grades 4-6 the most impacted. As of fall 2020, students in these grades were between 5 and 25% behind where they would be in a typical year. These averages mask serious differences between student groups. In most grades, low-income students are substantially further behind than higher-income students. And in some grades, lower-income students are falling behind while higher-income students’ learning actually accelerated. Further, students learning English demonstrate substantially more learning lag than comparison students in nearly every grade in English language arts and in early grades for math. For example, on the MAP English language arts assessment, grade 5 students learning English are roughly 30% behind, while native English-speaking students are only 10% behind.

Another study , with colleagues at Stanford, examining oral reading fluency in grades 1-3 found that in the spring of 2020, the development of reading fluency largely stopped. Students’ reading fluency was again growing at normal rates by the fall, but the return to nearly average gains was not sufficient to recoup spring’s losses. No growth in the spring and summer meant that in fall 2020, students in 2 nd and 3 rd grade had fallen about a third of a year behind where they should be in terms of expected reading development. These findings also show that students in historically low-performing districts are falling behind at a faster rate.

In our studies and others like them, many students are missing from schools and assessments. We suspect some of the students that have missing data in our analyses may be disengaged or missing from school altogether. K-12 public school enrollment in California has dropped by a record 160,000 students (a 3% decline overall), a change about five times greater than the state’s annual rate of enrollment decline in recent years. It is likely that students missing from our analyses have experienced even larger learning losses than those students observed, meaning that the equity impact of the pandemic is almost certainly larger than we estimate.

As we move forward, we need to be particularly concerned for our youngest and oldest students. The biggest declines in enrollment are in the earliest grades , and preschool enrollment is down as well. Additionally, distance learning has been hardest for our youngest students , meaning that a large proportion of students are likely to start kindergarten and 1st grade very far behind. If these students in the early grades don’t develop the basic skills they need, it may be difficult for them to access future learning.

Additionally, older students have experienced more challenges around mental health, isolation, and disengagement , and with greater consequences. Across the state of California, there are troubling signs that high school students are not engaging with distance learning. In Sacramento City Unified School District, 10 times more students are significantly disengaged compared to last year. And in Los Angeles Unified , the number of Ds and Fs in grades 9-12 increased by 8.7 percentage points in the fall compared to the same time period last year, with greater increases among Black (23.2%) and Latino (24.9%) students. If educators don’t work hard to get these students back on track, graduation rates will decline and inequities in college access and success will increase.

Our educational system in the United States was already highly inequitable and plagued by opportunity gaps in learning that have widened during the pandemic. Although we may see the light at the end of the tunnel on the coronavirus crisis, the educational equity crisis is just beginning.

This unprecedented challenge requires unprecedented action.  The good news is that new federal investments offer needed resources. California K-12 schools have received or are slated to receive roughly $28.6 billion in federal funds between spring 2020 and spring 2021 to address pandemic response and learning loss. About $129 billion in COVID-19 relief funds will go to K-12 schools nationally .

This money must be used to catalyze a transformation in our education systems. While many are eager for a return to normal, the old “normal” was under-serving our nation’s most vulnerable children and youth. As we respond to this public health and education emergency, we must build toward an education system that places equity at the center so that all students—and especially those most impacted by the pandemic and systemic racism—have the support and opportunities they need to achieve their potential.

We can begin by nurturing student social and emotional well-being to support academic progress. But we must also go further to reimagine the very systems in which students learn. By redesigning schools to be restorative places —places where students feel safe, known, supported, and fully engaged in learning—we can lay the groundwork for long-term and systemic transformation. Such a system should prioritize relationships between families, students, and educators, address whole-child needs, strengthen staffing and partnerships between schools and community partners, and empower teams to rebuild and reimagine systems. This transformation must happen in every school and district in the country, and especially in those serving low-income students and students of color who have for too long been ignored.

The new one-time federal funding for these efforts is critical, but local, state, and federal leaders should be planning now to improve and expand overall school funding in a way that provides sufficient funding for education systems and ensures the equitable distribution of funding to those schools and districts serving students with the highest levels of need. The old adage goes, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the inequities in our society and in our schools, but the disruption in the status quo presents an opportunity to reimagine and rebuild our educational systems to better serve America’s students.

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• Our Mission

Using Data to Advance Equity

Listening to students is a valuable source of data as schools seek to support students and create more equitable learning outcomes.

Equity now is anchored on an idea that students’ voices matter. If we listen to our students, they will tell us precisely what they need, but they might tell us things that we may not want to hear. Listening to students can be a valuable data point. There will be no need to guess or hypothesize about how we can best support them; we can go directly to the source. But we must be prepared to hear the honest, insightful, surprising, critical, and at times angry perceptions that young people can offer. I recently worked with a school district that has been focused on improving the experiences and outcomes of Black students. I was brought in to help the district “do better” by its Black students. The district asked me if I could help to create a plan of action or set of professional learnings to help improve Black student outcomes across the district.

The first question I asked was “Have you talked to the Black students yet?” After receiving a negative to that question, that was my first data point to collect. How can we figure out how to support and serve Black students without first talking to Black students? In response, I was part of a team that did just that; over the course of a three-month period, we held “listen and learn” sessions with hundreds of Black high school students about their likes and dislikes of their schools, what they wish teachers knew about them, how to make schools better, what contributes most to their learning, and their experiences with their peers. These data (which were collected anonymously) were powerful, sad, infuriating, and enlightening. As follows, you will see some of the comments (data) that came from Black students about their experiences in school. Students were provided several prompts and then asked to respond on sticky notes. The prompts are followed by a sampling of responses.

What should teachers/staff know about Black students that they don’t already know?

• “We are humans just like everyone else; we are not angrier or criminals just because we are Black.”
• “I feel like they should know Black students aren’t all the same or act the same.”
• “I want them to know that we do care to be something and be successful in life. I want them to care and put the same amount of effort they put in other students to us.”
• “I feel like teachers and staff should know that Black students aren’t as strong and tough as some may appear. We do have feelings, and some stuff really does hurt.”
• “Teachers should know that skin color does not equal the way somebody learns, and we are all here for the same reason.”

What would you like to see in the curriculum that would better support you as a student?

• “I would like to see more real-life application of the curriculum, and I would like to see more teachers encourage Black and Brown students to take Advanced Placement/Honors.”
• “I would like about three minutes to ask how we as students are doing, especially if it is an elective. Three minutes to do a mental check-in won’t hurt our instruction time.”
• “I want to see teachers trying as hard as the students, and I want more time to study.”
• “To help me out when I need it and stop guessing I am a dumb person.”
• “I would like to see more talk about our heritage as Black people. There are a lot of things about Black culture and history that get overlooked.”
• “Stop expecting very little/too much from me. I know that I am an intelligent Black student, but it should not be surprising. I want to succeed like everyone else. Don’t put me in the spotlight.”

All these responses are part of a large data set that highlights how Black students see school, but the comments highlight some of the raw, unedited, and direct views that Black students have about their teachers and schools, which need to be taken seriously by school personnel if there is a real commitment to support Black students under an equity framework. Data can be compelling and insightful, but at times it can be sad and discouraging yet informative about the work that needs to be done. If one of our key goals is to recognize and repair harm for students, asking them in what ways they believe they have been harmed is the most authentic way to capture those injuries. Our students are brilliant, insightful, and highly intelligent. They are more than capable of letting us know what they think, feel, and need. The equity issue is whether we are willing to listen. And, if not, why?

EXAMINING DATA THROUGH A DISPROPORTIONALITY LENS

An important data indicator is the concept of disproportionality, which refers to a group’s representation in a particular category that exceeds expectations for that group or differs substantially from the representation of others in that category. For example, special education has been deemed an area where students of color are represented in higher numbers than they are in the general population (Harry & Klinger, 2014). Disciplinary disproportionality is another area that encompasses the significantly high rates at which students of color are subjected to discipline referrals, suspensions, expulsion, and school arrests. School leaders and practitioners should always be assessing schoolwide data and individual data to determine if certain groups of students are being subjected to differential or unfair treatment. At the school or district level, leaders might ask the following questions:

• What is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students who are suspended and expelled?
• What is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students who are in GATE courses?
• What is the racial/ethnic breakdown of students who are in Advanced Placement/Honors and International Baccalaureate courses?
• What is the gender breakdown of students in leadership positions?
• How many students whose first language is not English are in advanced courses?
• How many students with disabilities are in advanced classes?
• What is the graduation rate for non-white students?

For classroom teachers, similar types of reflective data points should be occurring that help them think about their own practice and ensure that some students are being recognized and affirmed, while others are being rendered invisible, surveilled, or punished. Questions to think about for practitioners could include these:

• Do I call on the same students consistently?
• Do I try to offer affirming comments to all my students?
• Whose name have I not called today?
• How have I made sure to recognize my quiet students?
• What are the types of comments that students have heard from me today?
• Who have I recommended for leadership opportunities, and why?
• What has the racial/ethnic/gender breakdown been of students who I have disciplined or sent to the office?

DISAGGREGATED DATA

By now, it should be clear that student data can be quite revealing, but only when we are willing to take a deeper dive into what the data are really telling us. The disaggregation of data involves data that have been divided into detailed subcategories. It can reveal inequalities between different subcategories that aggregated (large) databases cannot. Often, larger data sets can paint a positive picture of something such as district achievement rates, but a more analytical look at the data can highlight disturbing outcomes. Most disaggregated data are numerical, but it is possible to have categorical disaggregated data as well. For example, many schools will boast about a high school graduation rate that may be close to 90%–95%, which is an impressive feat. However, the disaggregated data would ask, What are the graduation rates for students with IEPs? How many students who are multilingual learners graduated? What are the graduation rates for Black or Indigenous students?

A close look at  disaggregated data reveals that, in some cases, the graduates for those subgroups are only in the 60%–65% rate, which is completely unacceptable. While the numbers might be low, the percentage is still important. Losing one student is one too many. At the classroom level, a teacher may have taught a lesson, and it appears that most of the students understood the concept being taught. Only after disaggregating data across all students do teachers recognize that of the 30 students in a class, 6 failed to understand the concept. The disaggregating of data allows the teacher to see where there is a need for additional support for certain students to bring them up to par. One of the areas that also helps us to disaggregate data is when we look at big subject areas like reading or literacy.

The National Reading Panel has identified five key concepts at the core of every effective reading instruction program: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, evaluating reading for students in Grade 4 covers three key areas:

• Reading for literary experience: Readers explore events, characters, themes, settings, plots, actions, and the language of literary works by reading novels, short stories, poems, plays, legends, biographies, myths, and folktales.
• Reading for information: Readers gain information to understand the world by reading materials such as magazines, newspapers, textbooks, essays, and speeches.
• Reading to perform a task: Readers apply what they learn from reading materials such as bus or train schedules, directions for repairs or games, classroom procedures, tax forms (Grade 12), maps, and so on.

Yet often schools will get a general (aggregated) reading score for students, but this amorphous score does not provide educators—nor does it provide the students and parents/ caregivers—with an accurate assessment of where a student may not have been taught well. Is the student strong in phonemic awareness, but needs more support in reading comprehension? Does that student show strong ability to identify characteristics, sequence, and plot of a text, but struggle with reading to perform a particular task? Disaggregation of test scores gives a better glimpse into where there is need for additional support and avoids a generalizing of what needs a student has or does not have in a particular subject area.

If schools and districts want to keep an open eye on becoming equity focused, understanding data and creating more data-informed decision-making processes are a must. However, in a number of my interactions with teachers, I have been told that many do not understand much of the data that are given to them from their schools. Having data is important, and understanding data is vital, but using data to inform decision making around curriculum, instruction, assessment, and policies can be transformative. To that end, district and school leaders bear a major responsibility to make data accessible, understandable, and usable for school personnel, students, and parents/caregivers. Among the steps that can be taken are the following:

Creation of data teams. The purpose of data teams is to create a collaborative community of stakeholders who can discuss data, identify important trends, and serve as the conduit to the rest of the school or district. These teams can help ensure that multiple voices and perspectives are honored when interpreting data and share a consistent message with members of the school community. While each school is responsible for determining the composition of their data teams, a diverse representation of school personnel across grade levels and years of experience is highly recommended to ensure that multiple perspectives (and analyses) are honored.

Offer ongoing professional development on data. Most schools offer professional development on a multitude of topics. However, what is often missing are ongoing learning sessions that explain to teachers and staff what data are being collected and how to interpret these data. Having someone with expertise who can go over data, address any questions, and be a resource for those seeking greater clarity can help to increase awareness around data. The more valuable professional learning sessions occur when teachers can demonstrate how they use data in their classrooms to inform instruction and student learning. Moreover, teacher training that has an explicit focus on equity-driven data is largely absent in most school districts.

Identify user-friendly data platforms . A step that can be useful for building data literacy is the incorporation of user-friendly data formats. Many districts have platforms that allow parents/caregivers and students to track student progress. Using learning management systems that allow users to track student performance can be a game changer for parents/ caregivers and students. Many find these formats quite useful to monitor daily, weekly, and monthly progress. Identifying a format that teachers, staff, students, and parents/caregivers find beneficial can go a long way in creating more transparent and user-friendly ways to track student work and progress. There are also lots of platforms that allow school personnel to see trends, patterns, and areas of concern for students. Each district should be diligent in identifying the platform that works best for them.

Talking to parents/caregivers about data. One of the ways that equity comes to fruition is when all stakeholders feel as if they are seen, are valued, and have a voice. Belonging matters. To that end, schools should strive toward finding ways to get parents/caregivers engaged in school-related matters. Schools can make major strides to be inclusive by offering seminars, webinars, and learning sessions that are specifically for parents/caregivers about how to navigate data platforms about their schools, their students’ performance, and various resources that are available to support learners.

In the spirit of transparency and openness, such endeavors send a clear message to parents/caregivers: We want you to be informed and knowledgeable about what we are doing as a school community, how your child is doing academically, identifying supports for your child, and offering concrete ways about how best to access your child’s teachers. Such efforts can go a long way to invite parents/caregivers into the learning process. Examples of such forms of parental engagement may be more popular at the primary grades but could be strongly encouraged at the middle and high school grades as well.

From   Equity Now: Justice, Repair, and Belonging in Schools   (pp. 175-181) by Tyrone C. Howard, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Copyright © 2024. Use the code SAVE20 for a 20 percent discount on this title.

Why Access to Education is Key to Systemic Equality

All students have a right to an equal education, but students of color — particularly Black and Brown students and students with disabilities, have historically been marginalized and criminalized by the public school system. The ACLU has been working to challenge unconstitutional disciplinary policies in schools, combat classroom censorship efforts that disproportionately impact marginalized students, and support race conscious admission policies to increase access to higher education.

Let’s break down why education equity is critical to the fight for systemic equality.

What does “education equity” mean, and why is it a civil rights issue?

Education equity means all students have equal access to a high quality education, safe learning environment, and a diverse student body that enriches the educational experiences of all students.

As the Supreme Court said in Brown v. Board of Education , education “is the very foundation of good citizenship.” Through education, young people learn important values about our culture and democratic society, and about their own values and relationships to others in this society. In addition to being an important foundation for kids’ and young adults’ future professional success, education allows individuals to be informed voters and participants in democratic processes, and public education is the first experience most people will have with the government.

For all of these reasons, equity in education is a critical foundation for a democratic society in which people of all backgrounds are equally included. Without equal opportunities to obtain an education, they will not be able to participate equally in jobs, in voting, and in other crucial areas of life. And when students are not able to learn together, this harms their ability to work together and live and engage with one another later in life.

What was the foundational Supreme Court case aimed at addressing discrimination in education nationwide?

Modern understandings of educational equity have their roots in Brown v. Board of Education , the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision that ordered an end to school segregation and held racial segregation in education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the constitution. The ACLU played an important role in the Brown litigation, and has continued to fight for education equity on many fronts in the decades since.

What is the “school-to-prison pipeline”?

The school-to-prison pipeline refers to school discipline practices, such as suspensions and referrals to law enforcement, that funnel youth out of the classroom and into the juvenile and criminal legal systems.

This trend reflects our country’s prioritization of incarceration over education, and it’s made worse as resources for public schools are cut. From inadequate resources for counseling to an overreliance on school-based police officers to enforce harsh zero-tolerance policies, many students — overwhelmingly students of color and students with disabilities — are isolated, punished, and pushed out of our education system for typical childish behavior and behaviors associated with disabilities.

Cops and No Counselors

How the lack of school mental health staff is harming students.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Even a single suspension or disciplinary infraction can have enormous consequences for a child’s education. As a student is pushed further down the school-to-prison pipeline, those consequences escalate quickly. In some jurisdictions, students who have been suspended or expelled have no right to an education at all. In others, they are sent to disciplinary alternative schools.Youth who become involved in the juvenile system are often denied procedural protections in the courts, and students pushed along the pipeline find themselves in juvenile detention facilities, many of which provide few, if any, educational services.

How are Black students, students of color, and students with disabilities disproportionately impacted by discrimination in education? What barriers to higher education exist for students of color?

Black and Brown students and students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to discipline and referrals to law enforcement that remove them from the classroom and subject them to additional punitive consequences and even physical injury. For example, over the 2017-2018 school year, Black students accounted for 28.7 percent of all students referred to law enforcement and 31.6 percent of all students arrested at school or during a school-related activity — despite representing just 15.1 percent of the total enrolled student population.

Our country’s schools are increasingly diverse, but also increasingly segregated . Students of all races are harmed by the inability to learn with one another in diverse school settings. Black and Latine students are also more likely to attend schools that are intensely segregated both by race and by socioeconomic status. Students of color are also less likely to have access to advanced courses, and are frequently tracked away from college preparatory courses when they do exist.

Moving Beyond the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Rulings

The work to ensure educational opportunities for people of color continues, despite the court’s decision.

Inequities in K-12 education can be replicated in college and university admissions criteria. As with elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities are required to ensure that educational opportunities are open to all students from the application stage and through student’s experiences during their college education. There are a wide range of things that colleges and universities can do to ensure that educational opportunities are open to people of all backgrounds.

What non-punitive responses should schools take when approaching school discipline issues? What non-punitive resources should schools invest in?

There are a range of evidence-based methods schools can use to respond to the behavioral needs of students. These range from strategies that teachers and schools can use to foster a positive learning culture and model, to interventions addressing particular disciplinary issues, such as conflict de-escalation or restorative justice, to using functional behavioral assessments and wraparound support for those students with higher levels of need.

Additionally, schools that employed more mental health providers saw improved student engagement and graduation rates . Schools that used other types of support, including restorative and trauma-informed practices, saw beneficial results, including reduced disciplinary incidents, suspensions, dropouts, and expulsions. Investing in mental health resources, support personnel, and interventions that promote positive student interactions can make schools safer and healthier learning environments, while also helping to combat the discriminatory school-to-prison pipeline that targets students of color and students with disabilities.

How do classroom censorship efforts (i.e. laws that block students and teachers from talking and learning about race and gender) lead to inequality in education?

Instruction about racism and sexism belongs in schools because it equips students to process the world around them and to live in a multicultural society.

Attacks on education have morphed from demands to exclude critical race theory from classrooms to ever-increasingly devious and dangerous demands to erase entire concepts from American history. Book bans, so-called transparency laws designed to intimidate educators into compliance, and attacks on individual expression have left our education system at the mercy of a hostile and discriminatory minority. Students can’t learn in that type of environment. Our future depends on educational institutions that value instruction about systemic racism and sexism. We need to expand culturally relevant instruction and increase funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools, not attack it for its role in uplifting the systematically oppressed.

What can colleges do to ensure they create opportunities for students of color in light of the recent Supreme Court decision effectively eliminating the use of affirmative action in college admissions?

Affirmative action in college admissions has been an important tool, but it is not the only avenue for ensuring that educational opportunities are open to all. In the absence of affirmative action, it is more important than ever that schools work to identify and remove inequitable barriers to higher education. At a minimum, schools must continue to comply with federal and state civil rights laws that require them to provide educational opportunities on an equal basis. They can achieve this by ensuring that policies and practices do not unnecessarily limit opportunities for people on the basis of race or ethnicity (or other protected characteristics, including disability, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity) and by ensuring that school climate enables all students to access and engage with educational opportunities .

What does the ACLU’s work in education equity look like today?

The ACLU and our affiliates around the country are challenging disciplinary policies that disparately target students of color and students with disabilities and infringe on their right to a safe learning environment. This includes litigation, such as our recent victory resulting in the end to charging students with “disorderly conduct” or “disturbing schools” in South Carolina schools, and advocacy, such as the ACLU of Idaho’s recent report Proud to be Brown and the related civil rights complaint. The report documents how school districts in Idaho are jeopardizing Latine students’ civil rights and liberties by enforcing “gang” dress codes that target mostly Latine students in a discriminatory way, and have negative consequences on their cultural identity, discipline, and education.

CYAP v. Wilson

The ACLU Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s “disturbing schools” law.

We are also fighting back against efforts to ban books and restrict what students can learn about race, gender, and sexual orientation. In Florida, for example, we’re challenging the state’s harmful Stop WOKE Act. We continue to press for equity in higher education following the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, and defend against attacks on diversity in K-12 schools.

From K-12 to higher education, the ACLU is working to combat discrimination in education and ensure all people have equal access to safe, quality education.

Learn More About the Issues on This Page

• Racial Justice
• Human Rights and Racial Justice
• Human Rights

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Designing for Equity Voices, Tools, and Resources for Equity in Education

Amanda Avallone (she/her/hers) Learning Officer (ret.) Next Generation Learning Challenges in Portland, Maine

Together, educators are doing the reimagining and reinvention work necessary to make true educational equity possible. Student-centered learning advances equity when it values social and emotional growth alongside academic achievement, takes a cultural lens on strengths and competencies, and equips students with the power and skills to address injustice in their schools and communities.

Practitioner's Guide to Next Gen Learning

Resources for educators who are committed to redesigning their schools so that education can be a force for equity and human flourishing.

If you talk to just about anyone in the next gen learning space, you are likely to hear the terms rethink, reimagine, and redesign. These are powerful words because they convey three truths: 1) that the way we think shapes the schools we build; 2) that what we imagine can expand our ideas about what is possible; and 3) that, if education as an institution is not equitable, it’s because it was designed to be that way.

At the same time, the prefix “re” is even more potent. It tells us that we can, and should, think deeper, imagine bolder, and design better than we have in the past. The COVID-19 pandemic and widespread protests against racism and systems of oppression have given educators plenty to rethink. However, many schools, districts, and organizations in the NGLC community are doing more than thinking. They are taking action to transform schools so that education dismantles—instead of perpetuates—an inequitable status quo.

This edition of Friday Focus: Practitioner’s Guide to Next Gen Learning is dedicated to curating and sharing resources for educators who are committed to redesigning their schools so that education can be a force for equity and human flourishing. This collection of resources is drawn from the NGLC website , including the diverse voices of our guest bloggers, tools built in collaboration with equity-focused partners, and resources from organizations with Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) founders and leaders.

The resources are organized into six themes, as follows:

• Redesigning for equity
• Supporting adult learners and leaders
• Building a school culture of community and equity
• Creating culturally responsive learning
• Teaching for social justice
• Working for equity amidst the pandemic

(Re-) Designing for Equity

Racism and inequity are products of design. They can be redesigned —Caroline Hill of 228 Accelerator, Michelle Molitor of The Equity Lab, and Christine Ortiz of Equity Meets Design

If we want more equitable school designs, it stands to reason that we’ll have to purposefully “design for equity.” As part of a design thinking process, equity design principles like these from the NGLC Equity Toolkit play an important role in reimagining learning. They make explicit the intended values, qualities, and functionality in the learning experience a school creates for students. In addition to design principles, this resource includes planning and design tools contributed by CityBridge Education and the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE), an Assessment for Learning Project grantee.

To learn about ways schools are putting equity design into practice, you can also read “ Designing for Race Equity: Now Is the Time ,” an NGLC blog post by CityBridge’s Andrew Plemmons Pratt. In this story, Andrew unpacks the five principles of the equityXdesign framework and shares stories and examples of ways they are put into practice at various schools that partner with CityBridge.

CCE’s “ Building for Equity: A Guide for Inclusive School Redesign ” provides educators with a framework and tools for driving equity-focused, innovative school change. This guide’s approach emphasizes ways that both culturally responsive learning and personalized, student-centered design can be achieved together.

“ What Happened When My School Started to Dismantle White Supremacy Culture ,” a post by NGLC contributing blogger Joe Truss, describes how his school came to define their North Star and find their purpose as an anti-racist school. Joe, the principal of Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco, California, explains how exploring and dismantling White Supremacy Culture enabled his staff to build a new foundation and engineer their school for equity.

Using the right kind of data to make educational decisions is the focus of “ Street Data: A New Grammar for Educational Equity ,” by Shane Safir, author of The Listening Leader: Creating the Conditions for Equitable School Transformation . In her blog post for NGLC, Shane points out that the kinds of data school leaders rely on for decision making further marginalizes the students we claim we want to serve. By contrast, "street data" humanizes the process of gathering data and takes us down to the ground to listen to the voices and experiences of our students, staff, and families.

Supporting Adult Learners and Leaders

[T]o build a new, more inclusive culture, we first needed to be able to see the norms, values, and practices in our institutions that advantage white people and ways of working, to the exclusion and oppression of all others. —Ben Hecht, in “ Moving Beyond Diversity Toward Racial Equity ”

Schools and other institutions that have made the commitment to redesign for equity recognize that working toward racial equity involves more than what Ben Hecht, writing in the Harvard Business Review , calls “‘velcro-ing’ new guidelines, practices, or programs onto the existing structures and culture of the workplace.” Creating a culture of equity requires changing ways of being, doing, and communicating. The following set of resources provides support for leaders and educators to learn, practice, and take action to adopt new structures in service to equity.

Professional Learning Sequences in the NGLC Equity Toolkit feature 14 tools and adult learning experiences, from a variety of organizations, designed to develop awarenesses of individuals’ identity and privilege, as well as the structures of power within the classroom, school, and community. In the course of the learning experiences, school leaders actively work toward the creation of equitable practices, policies, and structures and build capacity in equity-based skills and mindsets, including constructivist listening, recognizing dominant discourse, and using consultancy or tuning protocols to support equity-oriented instruction.

Discussion Protocols , also from the NGLC Equity Toolkit , are user-friendly tools to help adult learners construct meaning from reading a shared text. These protocols, from School Reform Initiative and National School Reform Faculty , provide a structured process or set of guiding steps for participants to follow. This process honors multiple lived realities and diverse perspectives and provides a safe space for people to offer different interpretations of the issues and subject matter presented in the text they are discussing.

For guidance in creating a “brave space” for conversations about race that are inclusive to all races, sexes, genders, abilities, immigration statuses, and other lived experiences, explore these Tools for Courageous Conversations from the Remote DEI Collective . This resource also includes considerations for implementation in a remote work environment.

This Organization-Wide Equity Pause Resource from Equity Meets Design notes that, “Our common discourse of urgency and business-as-usual creates little time for reflection; our pace of life eclipses our awareness.” It therefore offers examples and guidance to leaders, challenging them to create ongoing spaces for transformation by pausing other tasks and making the time to do the work of becoming anti-racists in an anti-racist organization.

This story from NGLC’s Friday Focus: Practitioner’s Guide to Next Gen Learning , titled “ Share Your DC: A Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Expedition ,” features an equity-focused learning expedition designed for adults in the school community. Khizer Husain, the chief of staff at Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., describes how, over the course of three evenings, Two Rivers educators and parents grapple with the complex problem of creating a strong, diverse community where members can truly connect across difference.

Building a School Culture of Community and Equity

[T]he system of education in the U.S., a western, industrialized, capitalist country, is itself an expression of culture. It has been used to advance and sustain dominant white values as the “norm” and to position everything else as the “other.” When students experience this “othering” and cannot bring all their ways of knowing and being to a learning opportunity, it impacts their willingness, motivation, and ability to learn deeply. —Sarah Luchs, for NGLC, in “ Unpacking Cultural Complexity to Create More Equitable Learning ”

Developing new mindsets, structures, and skills among adults is an essential component of designing schools for equity. However, that work alone will not transform the student experience or build equitable and inclusive relationships with families and the communities schools serve. The tools and resources below provide guidance, examples, and food for thought about what it takes to create an inclusive community in which all students are known, valued, and feel as if they belong.

Using personal experience to address the topic of belonging, NGLC contributors Marco Dominguez, an English teacher at Desert Ridge High School in Mesa, Arizona, and Jaime Barraza, chief of staff at Distinctive Schools in Chicago, explore cultural belonging through video storytelling. In “ Mr. Sundays: A Latino Teacher's Exploration, “ Marco describes his relationships with learners and also the “great sadness” he feels knowing that he is likely the first and only Latino teacher his students will ever have. Jaime’s video, “ My Name is Jaime ,” uses the motif of his name—and how it was distorted at school—to tell the story of what it means to be “othered” and, conversely, the power of learning experiences that support students to decide for themselves “what is worthy and what is valuable.”

“ Cultivating Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist Leaders of the Future,” a blog post by NGLC grantee Sara Cotner, the founder and CEO of Montessori for All in Austin, Texas, describes the collaborative and inclusive process their flagship school, Magnolia Montessori, followed to develop “ Creating a Welcoming & Inclusive Community For All. ” This public-facing guide presents, in English and in Spanish, the school’s key understandings for each grade band related to identity, diversity, justice, and action, along with sample texts learners may read and discuss at school or with their families.

“ Creating An Intentionally Diverse School: Lessons Learned ,” a NewSchools Venture Fund publication, features intentionally diverse schools, including NGLC grantees Thrive Public Schools in San Diego, California, and Valor Collegiate Academies in Nashville, Tennessee. Based on interviews with educators at these schools, the brief emphasizes creating not just a diverse student body, but also an inclusive environment where every member of the school community is valued, respected, and important.

As part of their work to design more equitable models, many schools in the NGLC community are shifting away from traditional disciplinary practices and “command and control” school cultures that disproportionately and negatively affect children of color. Instead, they embrace creating an intentional community, co-created values, and accountability for upholding shared ideals. “ School Culture: Restorative Practices ,” from the NGLC Equity Toolkit , provides authentic videos and other resources to support implementing restorative practices at your school.

Creating Culturally Responsive Learning

If we’re serious about equity, we need to ask ourselves why cultural responsiveness is not as visible and valued as whole person development and personalization within next gen learning. Let’s start talking about it and propel next gen learning to be that force for equity we need it to be. —Kristen Vogt, NGLC, in “ Why Aren't We Talking about Culturally Responsive Education in Next Gen Learning? ”

The stories and resources in this section explore the intersection of next gen learning design and culturally responsive teaching and learning. In “ Culturally Relevant Performance Assessment for Students ,” for example, NGLC contributing blogger Maya Kaul from the Learning Policy Institute includes this quotation from Gloria Ladson-Billings: "All instruction is culturally responsive. The question is: To which culture is it currently oriented?" Using examples of performance assessments, such as capstone projects, from schools in California and Hawaiʻi, Maya illustrates how schools can foster a sense of cultural belonging among all students, especially those whose cultural identities are not traditionally honored and represented in the classroom.

In “ Culturally Responsive Assessment through Nā Hopena Aʻo (HA) ,” NGLC guest bloggers Brook Taira and Kauʻi Sang from the Hawaiʻi Department of Education in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, explain how their state is responding to a need for culturally responsive and place-based educational frameworks. The Hawaiʻi DOE, an Assessment for Learning Project grantee, has designed a proficiency-based pathway to prepare students for college, career, and community in Hawaiʻi and beyond. The new set of learner outcomes that emerged from this work, titled Nā Hopena Aʻo (or HĀ), is uniquely grounded in Hawaiian values, language, culture, and history.

“ The Intersection of Project-Based Learning and Cultural Responsiveness ,” by Riley Johnson at New Tech High in Napa, California, describes how his school begins the year with a school-wide design challenge in which students explore their own culture, the culture of those around them, and the culture that makes up the backbone of their community. Through this shared design challenge, Riley reports, the school community has found ways to be more explicit at identifying what it means to be culturally responsive and, more importantly, what it looks like in action.

Writing for the blog Diverse Issues in Higher Education , Donna Y. Ford, Distinguished Professor of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, calls attention to the negative effects of adopting culture-blind social emotional learning (SEL) philosophies and frameworks. In “ Social-Emotional Learning for Black Students is Ineffective When it is Culture-Blind ,” she cautions against simplistic solutions to complex problems like racial trauma, and she urges educators to “understand that there is no way to work effectively with the ‘whole child’ of color when culture is demonized, ignored, discounted, and/or trivialized.”

Teaching for Social Justice

If 2020 has revealed one thing, it's the level of racial and economic inequality that continues to plague our country and world. As future leaders, it's imperative that all of our students, regardless of their ethnicity or zip code, know how to advocate for themselves and their communities. —Theresa Bruce, Modern Classrooms Project, Baltimore, Maryland

In NGLC’s work with partner schools and districts in our community of practice, we often refer to the importance of not just learning about a topic but learning deeply by doing. The following stories and resources apply that learning design principle to social justice. For example, teacher Theresa Bruce, in her blog post for NGLC, “ 21st Century Learners as Activists ,” explains why teaching advocacy is an essential competency and a priority within her classroom. To illustrate, she describes her unit on civil disobedience, which pushes students “to examine current systemic structures and institutions while also learning about methods of mobilization, organization, protest, and advocacy to utilize outside of the classroom.”

“ Transforming High School by Challenging Students to Take Action ” by Matt Doyle, superintendent at Vista Unified School District in California, includes a personal narrative by Perla Lopez, a student at Vista High School. In this NGLC blog post, Perla describes her experience in her high school’s Challenge course, a class in which learners investigate a topic, engage with it, and then determine how to take action on their learning by advocating for change.

The ASCD Education Update article “ Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning ,” by Dena Simmons, challenges educators to teach “fearless SEL.” The author, who is the assistant director at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, argues that, “We owe our students an education that centers on their lives and explicitly addresses the sociopolitical context. This will not only prepare our students to engage civically and peacefully across difference, but also to become the changemakers and leaders we need.”

For classroom activities, texts, and other resources for teaching and learning social justice at all grade levels, explore these free online resource hubs: “ 20 Picture Books for 2020: Readings to Embrace Race, Provide Solace & Do Good ,” “ Teaching for Change: Building Social Justice Starting in the Classroom ,” and “ Teachers 4 Social Justice: 2020 Resources for Abolitionist Teaching and Solidarity in These Times .”

Working for Equity During a Pandemic

Even though options for connecting are limited right now, we can create spaces in remote settings to provide support, interact, and dedicate time and resources to ongoing action, backing up commitments to equity and racial justice...when the pandemic keeps us isolated, and when racism persists, the distance in our workplaces must not serve as another dehumanizing force. —Kristen Vogt and Stephen Pham, in “ Taking Action toward DEI and Antiracist Commitments Remotely ”

As a result of the pandemic, many organizations, including schools, are finding themselves operating in an unfamiliar environment, such as a remote work culture. The resources below are designed to support positional leaders and others to promote equity in spite of physical distance or other challenges. For example, the seven organizations of the Remote DEI Collective (RDC) have been remote or partially remote for longer than the pandemic and are committed to engaging in matters of DEI and antiracism remotely. While the RDC does not claim to have all the answers, they offer some considerations for navigating these unprecedented times in their Remote DEI Toolkit .

In his essay “ What’s Next for Schools? Dismantling, Healing, and Refusing to Return to Normal ,” Adelric McCain, director of equity and impact for the Network for College Success at the University of Chicago, identifies the disruption of Spring 2020 as an opportunity to radically rethink the power dynamics between students and teachers and points to two areas worthy of inquiry: “First, how do we as educators create learning spaces in which students’ identities truly matter? Secondly, how do we critically examine our practices and beliefs in order to create learning spaces (virtually or in person) where young people are seen and heard, and not just assessed?”

“ Schools as Communities of Care ,” an NGLC blog post by Jeff Heyck-Williams, the director of the Two Rivers Learning Institute in Washington, D.C., explores the role of schools as community hubs that can support intentional progress toward a more just and equitable society or, as products of a racist White-supremacist culture, intentionally create communities of inequity. Jeff argues that, although educators are right to worry about how disrupted learning will impact our most marginalized students, “the conversation around these inequities...needs to start with the trauma of these times. Schools need to ensure that they are communities of care before they undertake any of their other essential work.”

“ Crises as a Catalyst: A Call for Race Equity & Inclusive Leadership ,” by ProInspire, is a reflective guide for individuals and organizations to advance race equity and inclusive leadership during crises. In response to “the unprecedented circumstances brought forth by COVID-19 and recent acts of police brutality,” the guide includes questions to support both individual reflection and team discussions to support organizational leadership to “evolve who we are as leaders and ignite an inner transformation that can sustain the work needed to support Black, Indigenous, and communities of color in the social sector as a whole.”

Photo at top courtesy of Thrive Public Schools.

Amanda Avallone (she/her/hers)

Learning officer (ret.), next generation learning challenges.

Amanda retired from Next Generation Learning Challenges in 2022. As a Learning Officer for NGLC, she collaborated with pioneering educators and their communities to design authentic, powerful learning experiences for young people. She created educator professional learning experiences that exemplify the kind of learning we want for our students and she supported, connected, and celebrated, through storytelling, the educators who are already doing the challenging work of transforming learning every day.

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March 13, 2024

• Open access
• Published: 02 May 2024

Teaching foundational language equity concepts in the pre-clinical curriculum

• Maria Gabriela Valle Coto 1 ,
• Reniell X. Iñiguez 2 ,
• Marina A. Lentskevich 3 ,
• Syeda Akila Ally 3 ,
• Julia F. Farfan 3 ,
• Yoon Soo Park 3 ,
• Ananya G. Gangopadhyaya 3 &
• Pilar Ortega   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5136-1805 3 , 4  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  485 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

225 Accesses

Metrics details

Despite the prevalence of non-English languages in the US population, existing medical training to teach communication with linguistically diverse communities is limited to electives or solely focuses on medical interpreting. Language-appropriate communication skills are seldom comprehensively integrated in medical education. This study describes the development and evaluation of an intervention to teach foundational language equity concepts.

The authors implemented a pre-clinical language equity course at three medical school campuses between August 2020 and March 2022. Sessions focused on the impact of language in health, physician language proficiency standards, and working with medical interpreters. The study sought to (1) understand students’ language skills and prior clinical experiences with patients with non-English language preference and (2) evaluate the curriculum’s impact. Students self-reported their language skills and experiences as part of a voluntary pre-questionnaire. Pre and post-questionnaires evaluated knowledge, attitudes, and intent to apply language equity concepts. Descriptive statistics and chi-squared tests were used to examine trends; themes were identified from free-text responses.

Overall, 301 students completed the course, 252 (83%) completed at least one questionnaire; for each session, between 35% and 46% of learners completed both pre and post-questionnaires. Three quarters (189/252) reported non-English languages. Over half (138/252) reported previous non-English language patient care, and 28% (62/224) had served as ad hoc (untrained) interpreters. Only two students (< 1%) had ever been assessed for medical language abilities. Students demonstrated improved post-course language equity knowledge, strategies for interpreter-mediated encounters, and likelihood to report a plan for language skills assessment (all p  < .001). Most plans were multifaceted (61%, 38/62), involving goals like completing a language course, taking a proficiency exam, openly discussing skills and uncertainties with team members, and increasing professional interpreter utilization.

Conclusions

A longitudinal language equity curriculum can be feasibly integrated in pre-clinical education, highlight the linguistic diversity of the student body, and serve as a first step in ensuring that all students have a strong language equity foundation prior to clinical rotations. Future steps include evaluating the intervention’s potential long-term effects on professional interpreter utilization, student clinical performance, and institutional culture that promotes multilingualism.

Peer Review reports

Over 67 million individuals in the United States speak a non-English language at home [ 1 ]. At least 38% of these individuals speak English less than very well and are labeled as having limited English proficiency (LEP) [ 2 ]. Recently, a more inclusive term, non-English language preference (NELP), has emerged to describe individuals who can best communicate in a language other than English with respect to a particular type of service or encounter, such as medical care [ 3 ]. When individuals with NELP seek healthcare, language discordance between clinicians and patients often leads to suboptimal communication and poor outcomes [ 4 ] Language discordance can be successfully addressed either through a professional interpreter (who does not eliminate the language discordance but serves as a mediator for effective communication between clinician and patient) [ 5 ] or by matching the patient with a language-concordant clinician (thereby achieving language-concordant care) [ 6 ]. While mandates from the federal government require meaningful healthcare access in a patient’s preferred language [ 7 ], implementation and utilization of language services (e.g., medical interpreters) and confirmation of non-English skills for clinical use vary significantly across states and healthcare systems [ 8 , 9 ].

Data show that hospitals frequently underutilize professional interpreters [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ] and medical students and physicians use their non-English skills in patient care even when they recognize their skills are limited [ 10 , 14 ]. A recent risk assessment study evaluated why physicians choose to ‘get by’ with limited language abilities and identified “lack of physician knowledge and skills” related to language-appropriate communication strategies, such as working with interpreters, as the most common factor and the most amenable to intervention [ 15 ].

To improve clinicians’ skills in language-appropriate care, some prior work has explored medical education curricula related to language equity. A 2017 US survey by Himmelstein et al. gathered responses from a quarter of US allopathic medical schools and found that 29 out of 38 schools “provided specific instruction addressing how to work with medical interpreters and/or patients with LEP [ 16 ].” The rest of the survey focused on training related to working with interpreters and did not address provision of language-concordant care or student recognition of their own language skills/limitations. Himmelstein et al. point out that “a few schools reported having a large bilingual student population and therefore did not see the need for this instruction” – an alarming statement that illustrates how institutions may view language-appropriate care as the responsibility of some but not all clinicians. In stark contrast to the hundreds of hours dedicated to English clinical skills education, institutions commonly check the box on teaching language-appropriate care by categorizing all non-dominant linguistic groups (of which more than 350 exist in the US) as LEP and providing a one-time educational intervention. Even clinicians with full proficiency in one or more non-English languages are likely to encounter patients with whom they are language-discordant.

Some published curricula [ 3 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] have sought to increase physician trainee knowledge on how to work with professional interpreters. Unfortunately, data demonstrate that students and clinicians persistently underutilize medical interpreters and use their own language skills to “get by” in taking care of linguistically minoritized patients.10 Hence, it is not enough to teach student how to work with interpreters; they also need to know when to do so – a clinical decision-making skill that should factor in the clinician’s language skills and limitations, the medical complexity and urgency of the situation, and management of limited resources (e.g., requesting an onsite interpreter versus using a telephonic interpreter).

Medical language courses (e.g., medical Spanish) aim to improve language concordance for direct patient-clinician communication and teach learners to recognize their limitations in the target language [ 23 ]. However, these opportunities are typically offered as electives, focus on one language, and require a minimum language proficiency level; [ 24 ] as a result, they are only accessible to a small subset of trainees. Additionally, multilingual students or physicians may feel overburdened by frequent requests to serve as ad hoc interpreters themselves [ 14 ]. Efforts to improve language-appropriate healthcare through medical education should target all students rather than only those eligible for a language course, and should do more than teach students how to work with interpreters. A comprehensive and nuanced approach to language equity is needed to prepare future physicians for effective communication with all patients.

To address current gaps, we developed and evaluated an intervention to longitudinally integrate foundational language equity concepts within the required pre-clinical curriculum at three medical school campuses.

The University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) has historically been home to one of the most diverse student populations in the mainland US [ 25 ] and has three campuses: Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford each in an urban, suburban, and rural setting, respectively. UICOM’s required Doctoring and Clinical Skills (DoCS) longitudinal course spans the 18-month pre-clinical curriculum.

Educational intervention

We developed three language equity sessions to be imparted within the DoCS curriculum at all three UICOM campuses. To develop each session, we created a coalition comprised of a faculty member with content expertise in language-appropriate healthcare, a DoCS faculty member, and several medical students. The group was linguistically diverse, representing eight non-English languages (Belarusian, Bengali, Hindi, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Urdu). The coalition met monthly between August 2020 and March 2022 to refine the content, learning activities, and questionnaires for each session.

We reviewed conceptual frameworks in the literature, seeking approaches that would allow us to best address the identified gaps in language equity education [ 26 ], and ultimately selected two: First, self-determination theory, proposes that addressing student competence, autonomy, and relatedness improves learning, and has been applied in medical education through small group activities and case-based learning [ 27 ]. Understanding how to build linguistic competence, graduated autonomy in language-concordant care, and the interdependence/intersection of clinician skills and patient language preference are aspects of language equity that have not been formally addressed through prior curricula and can be explored through a self-determination lens. Second, community cultural wealth [ 28 ] is a framework based on social capital theory [ 29 ] that posits that individuals’ cultural—including linguistic—assets can be sources of power and social mobility. Medical students’ pre-existing language skills intersect with their early childhood lived experiences, personal and familial national origin, ethnicity, and cultural heritage. If acknowledged and promoted, this linguistic capital can not only enrich the classroom but also healthcare interactions with patients.

Drawing on these conceptual frameworks and based on previously identified gaps in physician knowledge [ 15 ] and structural barriers to language-appropriate care [ 30 ], each session (Table  1 ) focused on one of three main areas: (1) the role and impact of language in health, (2) physician language proficiency standards for clinical use, and (3) working effectively with medical interpreters. One faculty member led all three sessions, and the coalition recruited and trained faculty, residents, and senior medical students with prior experience caring for NELP patients to serve as small group facilitators. Each session involved two hours of pre-session student preparation, consisting of three or four articles and a 90-minute live virtual meeting with several interactive components (detailed in Table  1 ).

Participants

All 301 medical students in the class of 2024 at the three medical school campuses (182, 65, and 54 at Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford campuses, respectively) participated in the language equity curriculum and were invited to complete voluntary pre- and post-session questionnaires. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Pre-questionnaires were sent approximately one week prior to the session, and a reminder and opportunity to complete the survey was provided during the first few minutes of the session. Post-questionnaire links were provided in the final five minutes of the session, and students received an email reminder within one week after the session. The University of Illinois Institutional Review Board approved this study on August 15, 2017 (protocol# 2017 − 0482).

Questionnaires

Coalition leaders created questionnaires by reviewing the available literature and applying their experience as multilingual clinicians and trainees. We identified one validated tool to classify student language proficiency, the Interagency Language Roundtable scale for healthcare, or ILR-H, a self-reporting tool validated for use by health professionals [ 37 ]. Due to the paucity of questionnaires in the literature to gather and track data regarding language use in healthcare, other items were developed using research team member expertise following guidance from Artino et al. [ 38 ] Questionnaires were piloted with student members of the coalition prior to implementation.

Pre-session questionnaires asked students to indicate their language skills and prior experiences related to language in healthcare. Specifically, we asked about any prior training or exposure related to medical interpreting and caring for patients with NELP. Items with multiple choice responses allowed for optional free-text responses. For the free-text items that would be used for qualitative analysis, an ethnographic approach was used since the goal was to enable respondents to describe prior experiences relevant to the care of linguistically diverse populations.

Some items aimed to assess changes in learner knowledge and attitudes pertaining to each session’s topic. Knowledge questions were multiple choice or true/false items. Attitudes questions with 4-point Likert scale response options (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) asked about student confidence in several common situations, such as using their non-English language skills for patient care, or recognizing potential communication errors that may occur when providing medical care for patients with NELP. Finally, the post-session questionnaires elicited student intent to apply the concepts learned and gathered feedback, including suggestions for future improvements.

Statistical analysis

Aggregate data on self-reported race and ethnicity for the class of 2024 were used to inform overall descriptive statistics about the cohort of participants. We used descriptive statistics (frequencies and proportions) to examine trends in questionnaire responses. To evaluate internal structure validity evidence of survey responses, we used Cronbach’s alpha to examine internal-consistency reliability. To evaluate validity evidence supporting relations to other variables, we examined pre-post changes to learners’ responses. More specifically, responses were dichotomized (Agree/Strongly Agree v. Disagree/Strongly Disagree) to facilitate interpretation; learner responses between pre- and post-session changes in knowledge and attitudes were compared using chi-squared tests. We conducted analyses using both paired pre-post data (restricting analysis to learners who completed both pre- and post-questionnaires) and unpaired data (using all data collected); we opted to display the results of both analytical methods to maximize the inclusion of data from all respondents. Data compilation and analyses were conducted using Stata 17 (College Station, TX).

Once data were fully deidentified, we reviewed qualitative responses using Microsoft Excel. Coding and inductive analysis followed the Standards of Reporting Qualitative Research [ 39 ]. Two research team members (M.V.C and J.F.) reviewed qualitative responses from selected questionnaire items with free-text response opportunities and identified codes and sub-themes individually for each item. We further analyzed sub-themes and grouped them together in overarching themes.

Each of the three live language equity sessions were held at the three sites between December 2020 and May 2021. Across the three sites, all 301 students completed the full curriculum, and 83% (252/301) responded to at least one of the questionnaires; paired response rates, indicating students who completed both pre- and post-questionnaires, were 46% (session one), 42% (session two), and 35% (session three). The overall racial/ethnic demographic distribution of students was as follows: 38% White (115/301), 24% Asian (73/301), 15% Hispanic/Latinx (46/301), 12% Black/African American (36/301), < 1% American Indian/Alaska Native (1/301), 5% Multi-race (16/301), and 5% Unknown (14/301). Response rate per site was 96% (175/182), 69% (45/65), and 81% (44/54) at Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford campuses, respectively.

Descriptive statistics

Overall, 252 (83%, 252/301), 158 (86%, 158/182), and 224 (74%, 224/301) students completed the pre-questionnaires for the first, second, and third sessions, respectively. Following each session, 117 (38%, 117/301), 67 (36%, 67/182), and 79 (26%, 79/301) students completed the post-questionnaires for the first, second, and third sessions, respectively. Internal-consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of survey items (24 questions with rating responses) was 0.73, demonstrating good reproducibility. As previously noted, we ran all analyses both using unpaired data to maximize use of all student responses, and using paired data that restricted the analyses to respondents who responded to both pre and post-questionnaires. Depending on the session, the paired response rate ranged between 35 and 46%. Overall, while there are modest changes in effect sizes when analyzing paired versus unpaired data, our findings indicated no changes in statistical inference (i.e., statistical significance remained the same across the vast majority of items). Additionally, pre and post-subgroups in the unpaired data did not differ in their linguistic profile ( p  = .097).

Most respondents (75%; 189/252) indicated having skills in a language besides English, with over 38 languages represented. The most common non-English language spoken across all three campuses was Spanish (46%, 116/252), followed by French (8%, 19/252), and Mandarin (4%, 11/252). When analyzed separately by campus, Arabic was reported by four Peoria students (9% of 45 respondents), making it the second most common non-English language reported on that campus, and Urdu was as common as Mandarin in the Rockford campus (each reported by 2/44 respondents, tying for third most common language reported).

Students’ prior language-related experiences in healthcare

Students reported experiences in three specific categories: (1) interactions with linguistically diverse patients, (2) assessment of non-English language skills, and (3) any prior training related to working with medical interpreters.

Interactions with linguistically diverse patients

More than half of session one respondents reported previous experience providing medical care to patients with NELP (55%, 138/252), which was true across respondents who were multilingual as well as those who were monolingual English-speaking: 56% (104/186) of multilingual students and 53% (34/64) of monolingual students reported previously caring for this population ( p  = .699) and regardless of campus ( p  = .095).

We asked students to select and describe the nature of their prior interactions with NELP patients. The largest subset (28%, 62/224) had been asked to serve as interpreters, of whom ten (5% of 224) reported having received any training on how to interpret and none had been certified. The majority who reported serving as ad hoc interpreters indicated playing this role with their own family members, and some in clinic/hospital settings when volunteering or shadowing or when working in other healthcare jobs prior to medical school.

When analyzing associated free-text responses, we identified six themes (Table  2 ). Most (113/172, 66%) described experiences an observer in the care of patients with NELP. Thirty-four students (20% of 172) elaborated on their experiences as ad hoc interpreters. For example, one described that “Growing up I had to often translate for my mother whenever she took us to the pediatrician or when she needed to see her PCP.” A few (22/72, 13%) described the direct care of patients with NELP, and three students had done so as part of research working with patients enrolled in clinical trials.

Prior experiences assessing non-english language skills

In session two, we asked students to report whether they had ever been assessed for their non-English language skills in healthcare and whether they had been taught self-assessment techniques. Two students reported having had medically contextualized language assessment; one described having been interviewed to confirm language skills in Spanish prior to volunteering as an assistant at a clinic and another as a community health educator. Twenty-six students (16% of 158) reported having taken and passed some form of general (non-medical) language assessment; most of these respondents described advanced placement language courses or exams in high school or minors/certificates in college (e.g., Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Korean). Very few (3/158, 2%) reported being exposed to any language tools for progressive self-assessment.

Prior training related to working with medical interpreters

In session three, over half of the respondents (144/224) reported previous exposure to patient care mediated by a professional medical interpreter. Most reported having received partial training to work with interpreters (153/224, 68%), but when invited to elaborate through free-text responses, many of the respondents (26/54, 48%) explained that they were referring to our preceding language sessions given as part of this language equity curriculum. One student explained, “Previous sessions have discussed the importance of using a medical interpreter to communicate and understand the nuances of explanations and to prevent missing vital details in patient care.” Other training themes identified included self-study opportunities to learn these skills (6/54, 11%) and partial training in working with interpreters as part of research experiences (1/54, 2%).

Post-session change in knowledge and attitudes

Across the three sessions, student knowledge and attitudes improved for most questionnaire items (Table  3 ). In the first session, students reported increased confidence in explaining the role of language in health and in addressing language issues that may arise in healthcare settings ( p  < .001). Students were less likely to indicate that “language is a barrier” to quality medical care ( p  < .001; p  = .015 for unpaired and paired responses, respectively), suggesting that the session helped some students gain a more nuanced understanding of language as an opportunity to improve quality medical care rather than as a barrier. However, after the first session, students were more likely to respond incorrectly to the definition of medical interpreter ( p  = .003 [unpaired]; p  < .001 [paired]) and to report discomfort with the prospect of mixing languages during communication with patients ( p  = .010 [unpaired]; p  = .004 [paired]), suggesting that one session about language and healthcare alone is insufficient at gaining the necessary skills to provide language-appropriate care.

Following session two, students were more likely to correctly define “false fluency” and “medical language proficiency” and describe the accuracy limitations of language self-assessment (all p  < .001). They were also more confident in discussing language skills with peers. Although more than 75% of pre-session respondents reported having skills in at least one non-English language, only 16% reported a self-perceived ability to use non-English language skills with patients without an interpreter, and this percentage did not significantly change after the session (18%, p  = .808[unpaired]; p  = .651 [paired]).

After the final session, when looking at the full data set (unpaired responses), students were more likely to successfully define the role and value of medical interpreters following the session ( p  = .016), though when comparing paired data only, the difference was not significant ( p  = .147) as the number of students that had this knowledge prior to the session was high. This was the only item that differed in statistical significance when examining unpaired versus paired data. Importantly, students were more likely to recognize common pitfalls during interpreter-mediated encounters ( p  < .001). They also reported increased confidence in the logistical process of requesting a medical interpreter at their clinical sites, as well as the steps for collaborating with a professional medical interpreter via in person, through video, and via phone (all p  < .001).

Intent to apply concepts learned

After each session, students had the option to provide free-text responses to describe the ways they plan to apply the new knowledge into their practice. One-hundred and two students provided such responses for session one (87% of 117 post-session respondents), 62 for session two (93% of 67 post-session respondents), and 56 students for session three (71% of 79 post-session respondents). Table  4 summarizes the themes identified across responses.

Following session one, the most commonly recurring themes for skills application were focused on advocacy and systems-based practice with 29 students (28% of 102) sharing their plans to advocate for patients’ language rights and 29 (28% of 102) planning to increase their use of professional interpreters: “I plan to always make it a top priority for the patient to have interpretive resources and for us both to be able to fully understand one another.”

After session two, more students reported a plan for progressive non-English language self-assessment than before the session (91% of post-session respondents [61/67] v. 24% of pre-session respondents [38/158], p  < .001). Most post-session respondents indicated a plan to pursue multiple approaches to advance or assess their language skills (61%, 38/62), including taking a language course (44%, 27/62), taking a formal assessment exam (42%, 26/62), scheduling time for progressive self-assessment using the validated tools provided during the session (56%, 35/62), and discussing medical language skills, uncertainties, or questions with peers and supervisors (63%, 39/62). Students could use a free-text box elaborate on ways they plan to apply what they learned, and 54 did so. From those responses, we identified two major themes: most discussed how they will assess their second language skills (61%, 33/54) and others wrote about increasing their recognition of false fluency (39%, 21/54). One participant described this knowledge gain about false fluency as being aware that “ perceived language skills are different than actual skills.”

Following session three, we identified four themes across free-text responses about knowledge application. Twenty-four students (43% of 56) referenced their increased practical knowledge about hospital policies regarding language use and how they will use that information to better access professional interpreters in the future. One student shared, “I feel more confident in understanding the process of requesting and utilizing an interpreter, making it more likely that I will advocate for their use whenever needed.”

Student feedback and curricular updates

Most students consistently reported that the didactic components were useful in helping them achieve the session learning objectives (94% [110/117], 100% [64/64], and 85% [67/79] for each session, respectively). Respondents rated the interactive elements similarly positively with regards to usefulness toward achieving learning objectives (90% [105/117], 90% [58/64], and 86% [68/79] for each session, respectively). When asked about feedback for future improvements, almost half of session one respondents suggested to shorten the breakout session duration (44%, 44/99); this informed our planning for the second session. Some students proposed expanding the scope to include more facilitator examples of lived experiences working with NELP populations, as well as education on nonverbal communication strategies (25%, 25/99). After session two, students suggested topics that could be explored for additional content (29%, 14/48), such as information about available resources for learning a non-English language for medical use. Following the third session, the most common opportunity for improvement noted by students was to the desire for hands-on practice experience in working with medical interpreters (43%, 31/72).

Based on this feedback, following the successful implementation of the three-part language equity series, the medical school implemented several curricular updates. First, a fourth educational intervention was developed during a required course that takes place after the first few months of clinical clerkships. This fourth session was added to enable students to reflect about language-appropriate care in the context of patient safety following their initial clinical experiences. Second, the medical school improved the accessibility of language services information to students in the clinical years by creating an informational tag that could be attached to student identification badges. Third, the coalition has begun working with the institution’s simulation center on recruitment of a linguistically diverse pool of standardized patients. This is a first step in planning for standardized patient encounters where formative and summative evaluation of students’ language-appropriate communication can be more broadly incorporated.

We developed a longitudinal language equity curriculum to equip medical students with foundational language equity concepts and skills. One of the strengths of our curriculum is its implementation across urban, suburban, and rural sites. Over half of respondents indicated past exposure to care of NELP patients regardless of their own non-English language skills. This finding supports the need for language equity education for all students, not just those whose skills are proficient enough to provide language-concordant care nor those who are internally motivated to sign up for language electives or extracurricular experiences. Notably, by the third session, both multilingual and monolingual students across all three campuses described a plan to advocate on behalf of their patients with NELP if they observed poor communication practices. Similarly, many students planned on increasing their own use of professional interpreters.

By collecting language skills data, our intervention facilitated recognition of the rich linguistic diversity of the student body in participating schools; three quarters of respondents reported skills in at least one non-English language. Language skills are invisible characteristics that may intersect with other elements of diversity such as race, ethnicity, immigration story, and nationality, among others [ 40 , 41 ]. While many institutions offer some form of medical Spanish education [ 24 ], and Spanish is the language of greatest need in most areas of the US, [ 1 , 2 ] the linguistic diversity of our study’s participants highlights the need for preparing all learners (not just Spanish speakers) to appropriately use their language skills clinically. Students with skills in less common languages may have difficulty identifying educational resources for advancing or assessing their proficiency, making language equity education an important and foundational way to engage students in language-appropriate care regardless of languages spoken. Institutionalizing language equity education is an opportunity to highlight language – an understudied facet of student diversity – and engage learners and faculty in active discussions in which multilingual experiences are explicitly valued. Embedding language equity concepts, including skills for working with interpreters [ 42 ] as part of core, required clinical skills training sends an important message that skills for language-appropriate care are a key part of a comprehensive toolbox for all physicians.

Students learned the importance of progressively self-assessing their skills in languages besides English to accurately determine when they should partner with a qualified medical interpreter. For monolingual English-speaking students or multilingual students with intermediate or lower skill levels in a language, they should always partner with an interpreter via remote or in-person modes [ 10 ]. The choice of mode of interpretation depends on availability (which can vary by clinical site) and encounter complexity. Students received a list of their local campus’ clinical sites and information on how to access language services at each site. For multilingual students with advanced or higher skills in a language, proficiency testing is recommended to certify their skills; additionally, self-assessment should be continually applied since some clinical situations might pose unexpected or complex linguistic challenges with which even an advanced speaker may need additional language support [ 35 ].

This study sheds light on persistent structural barriers that disproportionately affect multilingual trainees and contribute to language-related health disparities for patients [ 43 ]. A concerning number of students reported having been asked to serve as ad hoc interpreters. These findings are consistent with prior literature about ad hoc interpreting by trainees, [ 14 ,  44 ] and support the need to revisit hospital policies and training for all healthcare staff (e.g., resident and attending physicians, nurses, etc.) who may be unaware of language-related legal requirements or best practices. Importantly, our longitudinal intervention resulted in many respondents developing a plan to apply strategies to improve and/or assess their language skills and to openly discuss language issues with peers, staff, or supervisors. Future research should explore long-term outcomes by evaluating the rates of working with interpreters, participating in language courses, or taking language assessment examinations for students exposed to the foundational pre-clinical language equity curriculum.

Our study had some limitations. While overall student engagement in the course was excellent, we observed attrition in the number of students who completed the questionnaires, with 25% of participants completing the final session’s post-questionnaire, potentially resulting in sampling bias. Also, a small subset of students (17%) participated in the course but did not complete the questionnaires. Since language data is not routinely collected, we have no way of knowing whether this subset of students differed from respondents with regards to their linguistic profile. All students were from the same institution despite being situated on three different campuses with unique patient populations. Student feedback prompted some course improvements, such as creating a role-play video to illustrate an example of an ethical dilemma that may arise during a medical encounter between a patient with NELP and a partially fluent medical student. In future courses, the impact of these changes should be evaluated. Secondly, our primary outcomes were self-perceived attitudes, confidence, and intent to apply concepts learned; it would be important to correlate these findings with students’ performance on experiential opportunities, such as standardized patient encounters, to assess the clinical skills taught in the course and receive formative feedback. Moreover, it would be valuable to track learners’ progress throughout the clinical years of medical school and residency through metrics such as interpreter utilization, periodic language proficiency assessments, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction.

Incorporating a pre-clinical undergraduate medical curriculum is a strategy for exposing all medical students to foundational education about improving health equity through language-appropriate care. Next steps should include exploring methods for evaluating these skills, including students’ communication with linguistically diverse populations and interprofessional collaboration with medical interpreters during clinical clerkships. Future research should also consider the potential indirect impact on language services utilization by other members of the healthcare team who might learn about language-appropriate care from medical students who took the course and explore whether language equity education improves belonging for students and clinicians from linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Data availability

Data is provided within the manuscript; additional data requests should be directed to the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

Doctoring and Clinical Skills

Limited English Proficiency

Non-English Language Preference

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Doctoring and Clinical Skills team at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, specifically, Shila Dauner, MPA, Angelica Bevelle, Euna Chi, MD, Julie Loza, MD, and María Isabel Angulo, MD for their invaluable support with implementation of the course and questionnaires. The authors also thank the many senior medical students, resident physicians, staff, and attending physicians who served as facilitators and provided feedback about the curriculum. Lastly, the authors are deeply grateful to Amy De La Torre, Alondra Díaz, and Christopher Llerena, MS, who, as medical students, contributed to course development and facilitator recruitment as core members of the language equity task force.

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McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

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Marina A. Lentskevich, Syeda Akila Ally, Julia F. Farfan, Yoon Soo Park, Ananya G. Gangopadhyaya & Pilar Ortega

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MGVC co-led the project’s conceptualization, investigation, and formal analysis, and led the writing of the original draft, review, and editing. RXI co-led the project’s conceptualization and investigation, and participated in manuscript draft preparation, review, and editing. MAL, SAA, and JF participated in the project’s conceptualization, investigation, and manuscript draft preparation. JF also contributed to the formal analysis. YSP led the formal analysis and participated in critical manuscript review. AGG participated in project conceptualization, investigation, and critical manuscript review. PO was the primary lead in project conceptualization, investigation, and methodology and supervised the manuscript draft preparation, review, and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Valle Coto, M.G., Iñiguez, R.X., Lentskevich, M.A. et al. Teaching foundational language equity concepts in the pre-clinical curriculum. BMC Med Educ 24 , 485 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05474-3

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Public schools

'Equity' Grading Is the Latest Educational Fad Destined To Fail

Why work extra hard when you won't be able to get an a why try to improve when you won't get worse than a c.

Steven Greenhut | 5.3.2024 7:30 AM

Modern public-education history is littered with novel education theories  that have failed so spectacularly that the terms are now used as pejoratives. For instance, when I was in elementary school in the 1960s, the "New Math" focused on teaching abstractions rather than fundamentals. You can find reams of research documenting its failure decades later, but the evidence was recognized almost immediately.

That then-new approach "ignored completely the fact that mathematics is a cumulative development and that it is practically impossible to learn the newer creations if one does not know the older ones," according to Morris Kline's 1973  Why Johnny Can't Add . Another well-known but more recent failure is "Common Core,"  a set of educational standards embraced by California and 39 other states in 2010. On hindsight, it also deserves a failing grade.

"Despite the theory's intuitive appeal, standards-based reform does not work very well in reality," read a 2021 Brookings Institution report . "The illusion of a coherent, well-coordinated system is gained at the expense of teachers' flexibility in tailoring instruction to serve their students." Don't get me started on some of the loopier ones: pass-fail grading, the replacement of phonics  with whole-language learning, and  Social Emotional Learning  (SEL).

"Education in the United States has lurched from fad to fad for the better part of a century, finding ever-ingenious ways to underperform preceding generations,"  explained  investigative reporter Joe Herring in a 2022 piece reviewing some of them. Apparently, there isn't enough productive employment for education PhDs, so they spend their time dreaming up big experiments to improve education rather than focusing on the obvious ones.

The process gains life as evidence pours in about the latest underperformance. And the latest data certainly is impressive, albeit in a depressing way. Following COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, traditional public schools (and California's in particular) couldn't rise to the occasion. Teachers' unions slowed re-openings. Test scores  plummeted , especially for poor and minority students. Many students checked out permanently, as soaring  chronic absentee rates  prove.

Always eager to embrace easy-button solutions rather than, say, ideas that promote competitiveness and excellence, our school bureaucracies are on to some "innovative" ideas that have a ballpark-zero chance of improving educational outcomes. The new ones are based around the concept of  equity . As with every education reform fad, they sound OK in the elevator pitch. Who doesn't support equity? But they will create a mess that further impedes student progress.

For instance, some Bay Area schools have approved "equity grading." It's strange to focus on grading rather than teaching, but the details are even stranger. The Mercury News   reports  that one district removed "the practice of awarding zero points for assignments as long as they were 'reasonably attempted.'" It also eliminated extra credit for class participation. EG offers students "multiple chances to make up missed or failed assignments and minimize homework's impact on a student's grade." Now it will be almost impossible to get an A or an F.

It brings to mind Garrison Keilor's  Lake Wobegon , the fictional Minnesota town "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average." Parents rightly worry that the new grading system will promote slacking. Why work extra hard when you won't be able to get an A? Why try to improve when you won't get worse than a C? It will create a false sense of equity—and make it tougher for colleges to recognize the best students.

Education theorists and consultants who promote this nonsense claim that it will encourage students and teachers to focus entirely on the  mastery of material  rather than surrounding fluff. They say it will better prepare students for the work world. Yet a lot of that so-called fluff—class participation, completing homework, handing in assignments on time—contribute mightily to such mastery.

Regarding the work world, ask my editor what he thinks if I miss my deadlines and still expect a paycheck. "Supporters of mastery-based grading say it could promote equity," notes an Education Next   article . But will it improve learning and test scores? One needn't be a math whiz to know the answer.

State education officials also have jumped on the equity bandwagon. The California State Board of Education last year approved a new 1,000-page math framework that, as Education Week   reported , "aims to put meaning-making at the center of the math classroom" and "encourages teachers to make math culturally relevant and accessible for all students." The framework isn't binding on districts, but it will influence everything from textbooks to teaching standards.

I'm not sure how to make mathematical computations more meaningful and relevant, but I suppose someone will write a book about its failures in a few years. Meanwhile, many parents know what succeeds: competition. But providing additional  schooling options  would pressure school bureaucracies and jobs-protecting teachers' unions to improve, and to them that's not a tolerable outcome.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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A rally in global equity markets lifted stocks in Europe to record highs on Friday amid strong corporate earnings and hopes central bank interest rate cuts are near, while the dollar edged higher despite signs of slowing U.S. economic growth.

More buddying up than budgets and Bears in Johnson's first trip to Springfield as mayor

Democrats expecting to talk to the mayor about detailed education funding or a new lakefront bears stadium discovered otherwise. he told reporters his visit was about “making sure that we’re building on relationships.”.

Mayor Brandon Johnson walks through the Illinois State Capitol as he visits Springfield to lobby state lawmakers Wednesday.

Tina Sfondeles/Sun-Times

SPRINGFIELD — Mayor Brandon Johnson said he came to Springfield on Wednesday to fight for equitable education funding and to make sure Chicago receives its fair share of resources.

But there was more geniality than specificity in private meetings with Gov. J.B. Pritzker and legislative leaders just three weeks before a self-imposed May 24 spring session adjournment date.

Democrats were prepared to talk to Johnson about his Monday reference to $1 billion owed to Chicago Public Schools due to years of underfunding under the state’s school funding formula — but the issue wasn’t even broached during a nearly 30-minute meeting with the governor.

And the mayor’s controversial support for a new lakefront Chicago Bears stadium also wasn’t a focal point of the meeting.

Johnson told reporters he reminded Pritzker and legislative leaders that Chicago is the economic engine of the state and deserves its “fair share of resources.

“It’s also to continue to build relationships with the opportunity that we have in this moment, as a state, to really build the type of operation that speaks to equity injustice. This is a unique chance for us to do that,” Johnson said of his trip. “So it’s a level-setting. It’s making sure that we’re building on relationships, but it’s also clear that in order for the state of Illinois to be the great state that it is, that the city of Chicago has to have its fair share of resources.”

Johnson called discussions with the Illinois General Assembly about the Bears “ongoing,” dubbing Soldier Field a “structural damaged situation that really needs a solution.” The Bears last week met with Pritzker aides who highlighted their opposition to the plan. The governor’s office last week called the proposal a “nonstarter” after the meeting.

“And that’s what this is about, providing solutions to a problem … like everything else I’ve inherited,” Johnson said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson talks with reporters in Springfield on Wednesday.

Tina Sfondeles/Chicago Sun-Times

It was the Chicago mayor’s first trip to the state capitol since taking office. Johnson also met with Pritzker and legislative leaders in Springfield in April 2023 in a ceremonial visit weeks before he was sworn in.

Johnson defended the timing of his visit — and his late-in-the-game budgetary asks — saying, “We’re at the right time.”

“You know when stuff gets done. So we’re down here at the right time,” Johnson said.

Several members of the Chicago City Council Black Caucus also met privately with Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch on Wednesday, in what was dubbed an informal city lobbying day. Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th), the mayor’s hand-picked Education Committee chair, said it marked the first time in five years that members of the caucus had come to Springfield.

“The thing we’ll do next year is we’ll come in January. We come earlier. We get earlier access,” Taylor said. “We can get a lot of those things that we’re looking for.”

Taylor said her requests included funding for infrastructure and investments in education, some narrower than the mayor’s.

Mayor Brandon Johnson walks through the Illinois State Capitol as he visits Springfield to lobby state lawmakers on Wednesday,

“He’s advocating for some of the same things we are, but remember, it’s 50 other folks. It’s just 20 of us as the Black Caucus, and so he’s advocating on the entire city. We have specific asks for the South and West sides,” Taylor said.

“Him coming down is a great thing. Him coming down with us didn’t make or break us because now the other caucuses have to do their due diligence to come down here as well.”

During Johnson’s closed-door meetings, the Illinois Senate Executive Committee quietly cleared an education measure that Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union had opposed.

The bill was initially intended to stop the Chicago Board of Education from closing, or making any changes to, selective enrollment schools until 2027 when the board will be fully elected. It was a response to a resolution passed by the CPS board that called for a plan to invest in neighborhood schools and move away from school choice.

The measure the Senate committee passed Wednesday cleared the House last month. It included a moratorium on all Chicago school closings until 2027 — and it would also stop the Chicago Board of Education from changing standards of admission for selective enrollment schools. The measure must still clear the full Senate.

Johnson said he has had discussions with lawmakers to amend the measure: “Those amendments are being assessed and analyzed now.”

As for whether he felt snubbed by the Senate’s approval during his visit, the mayor countered that he understood the “process.”

“There’s a process that the General Assembly goes through,” Johnson said. “I understand that process, and we’re going to stick to that process.”

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Private equity’s investment in healthcare has increased rapidly over the past decade, and this is now drawing attention from regulators. Signifying this increased scrutiny is a joint Request for Information (RFI) issued in March by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeking comments from the public on “private-equity and other corporations’ increasing control over health care”. (Access the RFI  here .) While the RFI has made headlines, it is part of a broader regulatory effort to evaluate private equity’s role as a major player in healthcare. This post summarizes some of those efforts and the concerns among regulators over private equity investment in healthcare that regulators are seeking to address.

Private Equity Investment

Private equity’s investment in healthcare has increased drastically over the last decade. While exact numbers aren’t available, reliable estimates point to a one hundred and eighty-nine percent (189%) increase in annual private equity deal value in the healthcare industry from 2010 to 2019,[1] with the number of reported deals increasing from 352 in 2010 to 937 in 2020.[2] These investments in the industry are wide ranging and include everything from hospitals and physician practices to specialty facilities and managed care plans.[3] This investment, driven in part by the increasingly complex regulatory environment for healthcare delivery and reimbursement, has engendered speculation and studies on the effect private equity has on the pricing and quality of healthcare services. A concern among regulators is that private equity is making healthcare more expensive and less effective, and this concern is the driving force behind the actions described below.

The DOJ, FTC, and HHS RFI

On March 5, 2024, the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, FTC, and HHS jointly released an RFI seeking “public comment regarding the effects of transactions involving health care providers…and facilities, conducted by private equity funds or other alternative asset managers.”[4] The RFI states that the agencies are “concerned that some transactions may generate profits for [private equity firms] at the expense of patients’ health, workers’ safety, quality of care, and affordable health care for patients and taxpayers.” 

The RFI specifically seeks feedback on the following: (1) transactions that do not meet the Hart-Scott-Rodino threshold for antitrust review; (2) the effects of consolidation within the healthcare industry; (3) the claimed business objectives for transactions; (4) what types of transactions are most associated with adverse outcomes; and (5) what actions the agencies should consider taking.

In conjunction with the release of the RFI the FTC hosted a virtual workshop to examine the role of private equity investment in health care markets.[5] The workshop highlighted some practices that regulators are focusing on and what actions they may take to address them. Among the identified practices and concerns are the following:

• “Flip and Strip” Transactions: Private equity acquisitions using large amounts of debt, with the goal of increasing profits quickly and reselling for a gain a few years later.
• “Roll-Up” Transactions: The use of a series of smaller transactions to avoid antitrust review while consolidating market share. This practice was specifically addressed in new merger guidelines released by the FTC at the end of 2023, which direct agencies to consider the cumulative effect of a series of acquisitions.[6]
• Common Ownership and Interlocking Directorates: Purchases of ownership stakes in competitors within the same industry or having directors serve simultaneously on the boards of competing entities.
• Profit Extracting Practices: Enacting cost cutting measures to increase profits. Decreasing staffing levels was highlighted numerous times during the workshop as a special cause for concern.
• Corporate Practice of Medicine: A concern that medical professionals feel beholden to private equity owners and are being pressured away from making decisions based solely on their medical judgement.
• Ownership Transparency: HHS is working to ensure that regulators have a full view into the ownership structures of healthcare entities.
• Reimbursement Standards: HHS may take action to ensure government reimbursement of healthcare goods and services is tied to quality standards.

State Oversight of Healthcare Transactions

In addition to potential federal actions, an increasing number of states have passed laws proving greater oversight of healthcare transactions. In general, these state laws require prior notice of transactions involving healthcare entities and give the state’s attorney general office either an explicit approval right over the transaction or authority to review the proposed transaction prior to closing.[7] Additionally, these laws typically require the disclosure of upstream and indirect owners of the parties to the transaction.

As of April 1, 2024, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington have enacted versions of these laws. While state regulatory responses have thus far primarily gained traction among states controlled by Democrats, a growing bipartisan concern regarding private equity in healthcare could see similar laws enacted in more states in the coming years.[8]

At the 2024 Spring National Meeting of the National Association of Commissioners (NAIC), the Health Innovations Working Group heard presentations about the role of private equity in health care.[9] The presenters highlighted many of the same concerns raised at the FTC workshop, but also acknowledged that complex insurance rules have led some providers to sell to private equity firms.

Presenters suggested that state insurance regulators should take action to support antitrust enforcement, ensure greater transparency within the healthcare industry, specifically around ownership and prices, and provide greater support to healthcare providers looking to participate in value-based care initiatives. The NAIC took no concrete actions regarding the issue at their Spring National Meeting but may take some actions moving forward.

Private equity’s role in healthcare is likely to continue to be subject to increasing scrutiny and further regulatory action. Consequently, private equity firms and their affiliated healthcare organizations should be prepared to respond to new regulatory requirements. 

[1] Richard Scheffler, Laura Alexander, James Godwin. “Soaring Private Equity Investment in the Healthcare Sector: Consolidation Accelerated, Competition Undermined, and Patients at Risk” American Antitrust Institute. May 18, 2021.

[2] Id. The numbers only reflect deals that were reported. The actual numbers are likely greater.

[3] Maanasa Kona “Private Equity in Health Care Trends & Impact” Georgetown University, Center on Health Insurance Reforms March 17, 2024.

[4] https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USDOJOPA/2024/03/05/file_attachments/2803589/DOJ-FTC-HHS%20HCC%20RFI%20-%2003.04.24%20-%20FINAL.pdf

[5] “Private Capital, Public Impact: An FTC Workshop on Private Equity in Health Care” March 5, 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/ftc-host-virtual-workshop-private-equity-health-care

[6] Merger Guidelines, U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. December 18, 2023. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P234000-NEW-MERGER-GUIDELINES.pdf

[7] See, Cal. Health & Saf. Code § 127500; Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-486i; 740 Ill. Comp. Stat. 10/7.2a; IC §§ 25-1-8.5-1 – 25-1-8.5-5; Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 6D § 13; Minn. Stat. § 145D.02; R.I. Gen. Laws § 23-17.14; Wash. Rev. Code § 19.390.

[8] “Senator Markey Leads Colleagues in Bipartisan Investigation into the Role of Private Equity in Restricting Access to Methadone Treatment for Opiod Use Disorder.” Accessed at: https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-leads-colleagues-in-bipartisan-investigation-into-the-role-of-private-equity-in-restricting-access-to-methadone-treatment-for-opioid-use-disorder

[9] Minutes of Health Innovations (B) Working Group March 17, 2024 Meeting. Accessed at: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/national_meeting/HInn%20Min%203.17.pdf

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