Acting on Equity Gaps

1. Acting on Equity Gaps Rebecca Martin Senior Vice President University of Wisconsin System July 30, 2007

2. Overview of Presentation • What Is The Equity Scorecard? • What Is Equity? • Why Now? • How It Works • The UW System Pilot

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

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

5. It Is Not… • A mandate • A report card • A uniformity driven assessment model • A replacement for existing assessment and evaluation efforts

6. Core Principle of The Equity Scorecard …“Evidence, [i.e., factual data] about inequities in educational outcomes [access, enrollments, retention, excellence, graduation]…can have a powerful effect upon faculty members, administrators, counselors, and others and their motivation to solve them.” Estela Mara Bensimon

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

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

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

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

11. When Data Speak “It is said, ‘What gets measured gets noticed’.Team members were skeptical at first. The act of breaking data down by race and ethnicity has provided many ‘aha’ moments.” Estela Mara Bensimon Through the simple act of disaggregating existing data, institutions are able to locate the most critical gaps in the academic performances of students of color and other underrepresented students.

12. The Equity Scorecard ACCESS Objective Baseline Improvement Equity Target RETENTION EXCELLENCE Equity in Educational Outcomes Objective Objective BaselineImprovement Equity Target BaselineImprovement Equity Target INSTITUTIONAL RECEPTIVITY Objective BaselineImprovement Equity Target

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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