The ED&D Community Wraps Up 2019–What’s Planned for 2020?
When we started the Equity, Disproportionality, & Design project in February, we started a mission to give all students in California the chance to live up to their full academic and social potential. Since then, we’ve forged community partnerships that have inspired progress and hope for this mission. We know the journey is just starting, but we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished together so far and excited about reaching more people in the coming months.
Design Training: Building our services with our community
We believe that putting community stories front and center will sustain the emotional investment in preventing disproportionality, so we not only design for our community, but with our community. In October we held our first of three design workshops with our partners at the Teachers Guild, where we gathered members of the education community–parents, teachers, administrators, and others–to learn about designing from a place of empathy. At the end of this workshop each member joined one of three design teams: Awareness, Action, and Scale. These teams will be our community partners in the development of our preventive services and tools. Our aim is to make these services a reflection of our school community so that everyone can see themselves as a participant in our work.
The more inclusive our design communities are, the better we’ll be at addressing disproportionality in and around special education. As a community design team member said at a recent coaching call, “Disproportionality begins way before the special education conversation happens.”
Disproportionality Awareness Training
We believe that having a common language for disproportionality and a shared awareness of its effects gives us a common emotional investment in this work. In December, we presented our disproportionality awareness training here in National City, CA. During this training, participants discussed the national conversation about equity and practical ways to measure disproportionality. They also listened to and shared stories about inequality and the personal ways they’ve been affected by it. Taking a bias to action mindset, the participants split into teams and practiced making preventive disproportionality plans and coaching each other to improve their ideas.
We want this training to reach more people! If your SELPA is interested in experiencing this with us, please contact Adrianne Bautista at adrianne.bautista@sdcoe.net.
“Disproportionality begins way before the special education conversation happens.”
Coaching calls: growing our relationships and leveling up our skills
In our first round of coaching calls, we turned ideas into action by coordinating empathy interviews with our design team members. Armed with a commitment to hearing the stories of our community, our Awareness, Action, and Scale teams set out to interview people affected by disproportionality in schools. We took insights from these empathy interviews and put them to use by including them in our Overview on Disproportionality training.
After building empathy, it was time to start developing preventive disproportionality services. We believe the best services are ones that have been refined through testing, so in our second round of coaching calls, we took a bias to action mindset and trained design team members to test small ideas. Whether it's a checklist for reflecting on key special education decisions or scaled up empathy interviews through social media, our design teams are now learning crucial lessons from bravely trying and analyzing prototypes.
Our predictive data tool: empowering SELPAs to take action
We want to share our predictive data tool to help SELPAs take a preventive approach to disproportionality. When we first started working on our data tool in 2014, we created a way to predict risk ratio scores using easily accessible data. We’ve improved it over time and now we want more folks to have it as part of their routine for preventing disproportionality. We and our partners at the Center for Educational Development and Research (CEDR) systems, produced a prototype that helps users predict disproportionality in special education eligibility rates as frequently as they need to take decisive action towards their equity goals.
What’s Coming in 2020
The first half of the school year was about building the ED&D community design teams and introducing them to our SELPAs. The second half of the year will be about applying the work of our design teams to our preventive tools and services. It’s also about growing our relationships with SELPAs so we can work together on improving Awareness about disproportionality, empowering ourselves with tools for Action, and activating our community networks to Scale our efforts.
Growing Our SELPA Partnerships
We believe that our relationships with SELPAs are the foundation for sustainable preventive work, so in 2020 we’re building out structured plans with SELPAs that include trainings, coaching, and customized preventive disproportionality services. If your SELPA is interested in partnering with us on this work, please contact Adrianne at adrianne.bautista@sdcoe.net.
Beta testing the data tool
Version one of our predictive data tool is almost ready for beta testing! While we put the finishing touches on the initial design, we’re coordinating beta testers that represent a variety of district profiles. If you’re interested in beta testing with us, please contact Ryan Estrellado at restrellado@sdcoe.net.
Co-Hosting the Equity 2020 conference in San Diego
Conferences are a great way to share our message with lots of people and to interact with others working to promote equity and prevent disproportionality. That's why we're excited to partner with the San Diego County Office of Education (Geographic Equity Lead), to host the Equity 2020 conference. Our team will be presenting one of our project deliverables, An Overview of Disproportionality in Schools, at the conference. If you haven't registered, there's still time! You can register here. We hope to see you there–stop by and say hi!
Taking our training on the road
We'd like to meet more people and share our commitment for preventing disproportionality in schools. We're right in the middle of planning in-person trainings across California. If you'd like to have us visit or want to know when we'll be nearby, contact Marcus Jackson at marcus.jackson@sdcoe.net.
Continuing Design Trainings
We've got two more design workshops in 2020. The next one is on February 13, 2020. The objectives of this workshop are to take an experimental, bias to action mindset in addressing disproportionality. We’ll also learn about the short and long term path forward and start to build momentum for our spring activities. The one after will be on May 13, 2020. The objectives of this workshop is to celebrate educators and their design journeys. Educators will learn to explain the impact of the project and carrying the movement forward.
We’ll be posting registration links to these trainings soon!
“Many students have trauma and other issues. They feel their story is already written.”
The stories of our families, students, and school staff are the key to nurturing our emotional investment in preventing disproportionality. We hope that having these stories at the center of our work honors these experiences and also inspires our community to shape their stories into one where all students reach their full academic and social potential.
We hope you join us in taking a human-centered approach to preventing disproportionality in our schools. Here are some ways to take part in the work:
Share our website and invite others to sign up for our newsletter
Follow us on social media. We're e_d_and_d on Twitter and Instagram
We hope you have a wonderful holiday break and we look forward to moving our mission forward in 2020.
All the best,
Equity, Disproportionality & Design Team
In collaboration with the California Department of Education and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence