• Testimonials

  • "Anti-racist approaches to education leadership requires constant learning and re-training. I do not know of a more effective, progressive, and professional organization from which to draw practical learning on this topic that can be used 'real time' in the field."

    Salomé Portugal
    School Support Manager
    New Leaders for New Schools

Publications

Recent publications from National Equity Project staff, board, and partners.

Featured Publication

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“Coaches Root Out Deep Bias”

The National Equity Project coaching model is featured in the August 2010 JSD (Journal of Staff Development).  Members of Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council) can download the article, “Coaches root out deep bias,” by Valerie von Frank for free here. Non-members can purchase the article for $3.00.  We cannot offer it on our site due to copyright.

Victor Cary, Senior Director and Tom Malarkey, Senior Coach and Impact 2012 Program Manager, are both featured.  The article also highlights the work of Kimi Kean, Oakland Unified School District Regional Executive Officer and a longtime National Equity Project partner and her experience with our coaching as principal of Acorn Woodland elementary school. Acorn Woodland was a new small school we helped open in 2000 that has become high-performing school serving low-income students of color.

Journal of Staff Development
“Coaches Root Out Deep Bias,” JSD, August 2010.  www.learningforward.org

“Coaching is about developing your inner capacity. It’s about inquiry. What’s your current reality, what data tells you that, what goal do you have, what’s getting in the way, what do you want to try to make that different? Then, once you try, reflecting on it. What did you produce now? Are you closer to your goal? What’s the next strategy you’ll use? It’s about teaching people how to think and problem solve rather than giving people a prescription.

“Without coaching, we would have had no way out of the rut that we were in,” Kean said. “Coaching helped us look at patterns in data and how we were creating inequities. We’d been so in it that we hadn’t been able to see it clearly. Working with the coach, we had to ask, ‘Why do we think that’s happening? What do we think we can do about it? What’s our role as educators?’”

von Frank, Valerie. “Coaches Root Out Deep Bias,” JSD, August 2010, Vol. 31 No. 4, p. 25.

Additional Publications

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Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in our Schools. Pedro Antonio Noguera and Jean Yonemura Wing, Eds. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

In this groundbreaking book, co-editors Noguera and Wing and their collaborators investigated the dynamics of race and achievement at Berkeley High School, whose highly diverse student population illustrates the “achievement gap” phenomenon. Unfinished Business brings to light the hidden inequities of schools – where cultural attitudes, academic tracking, curricular access, and after-school activities serve as sorting mechanisms that set students on paths of success or failure. Unfinished Business examines the results of the Berkeley High School Diversity Project, a six-year research and organizing project that brought together high school students, parents, teachers, staff, and university researchers to explore how a school and a community can act together to address the racial disparities that exist in academic performance. The book explores what factors contribute to the disparity in academic achievement between students of different racial and class backgrounds, and identifies the factors that are responsible for the racial separation of students within the school.

LaShawn Routé Chatmon was the Co-Director of the Diversity Project and contributes to the book.

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Teaching as Inquiry: Asking Hard Questions to Improve Practice and Student Achievement. Alexandra Weinbaum, et al, Eds. Teachers College Press, 2004.

Tom Malarkey and former BayCES coach Liz Simons contribute chapters to this examination of invaluable, research-based guidelines for incorporating inquiry into teacher’s instructional practices and student work as part of the ongoing work of schools.

“We see the role of collaborative inquiry as creating a professional community where experts and novices learn together from the examination of cases and the support of effective practice. Together, members of inquiry groups hold themselves and their colleagues accountable by surfacing unexamined assumptions and concepts…and by asking and demanding answers to questions such as, Where are we going? How well are we doing? What have we learned from outside experts, other schools and teachers, and our own experiences? How can we support each other in improving our practice?”

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Working Toward Equity : Resources and Writings from the Teacher Research Collaborative. Eds. Linda Friedrich, Carol Tateishi, Tom Malarkey, Elizabeth Radin Simons, and Marty Williams, The National Writing Project, 2006.

Tom Malarkey and former BayCES coach Liz Simons helped edit this book, in collaboration with CES National, the National Writing Project and the Bay Area Writing Project.  Click here to download the complete PDF.

“What is equity? What does it mean to work for equity in schools? What does it mean to make equity central in our work as teacher-researchers? Working Toward Equity explores these and other questions in 13 narratives from a broad spectrum of educators chronicling their real work in classrooms, schools, districts, and professional development organizations.

Working Toward Equity grew out of the pursuits of the Teacher Research Collaborative, a three-year collaboration among educators who believe that the power of inquiry can be focused on vital educational goals such as equity.”

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“In The Midst of Transformation: Reflections from the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools.” Horace, Vol 23 No. 4. Winter 2007.

LaShawn Routé Chatmon was featured in the Winter 2007 issue of Horace, The Journal of the Coalition of Essential Schools.