Using Data for Equity
At Detroit Prep, we believe in our mission of providing a world-class, equitable education that will give all students a foundation of academic excellence and character development. We often ask ourselves - what does it look like to measure our progress toward this mission?
To answer this question, this year, I participated in a Community of Practice through the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition on Using Data for Equity. Diverse Charter Schools Coalition is an organization that supports schools working toward true integration.
In the fall sessions, we spent time assessing and reflecting upon our personal relationship with data and the systems and processes that exist at our school and others in the Community of Practice. We continued our analysis to unpack ways in which we assess growth and progress towards achieving racial equity in our respective school communities. Finally, we explored our personal connections to data.
In the second half of the year, our focus shifted to designing our own research questions:
How might we create a database of achievement and behavioral data that can be disaggregated by race, socioeconomic status, free lunch, and gender to identify and address any disparities in academic and behavioral outcomes among different student groups?
How can we use data to inform and guide decision-making processes, allocate resources more effectively, and ensure accountability for providing equitable opportunities and outcomes to all students?
How can we use data to design and target effective interventions for historically underrepresented and marginalized students?
Having access to this data promotes transparency and understanding of the experiences and needs of different student groups, which is an essential step in creating a more equitable educational system for our students!
Our next steps are to identify the data to be collected: which academic and behavioral outcomes to track and which demographic variables to use as categories of analysis (e.g. race, socioeconomic status, free lunch, gender, etc.) and then develop a data collection plan. Stay tuned for more updates on how we use data for equity.
In the meantime, take a look at how our intentional use of data and learning modalities has impacted the learning experiences for students at Detroit Prep!
