What We Learned: Kansas City Equity in Schools Cohort 2021
In partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Beloved Community launched our inaugural Equity in Schools (EIS) Kansas City Cohort in January of 2021. We were joined by eight participating organizations, 4 large districts and 4 charter networks; these organizations include: Shawnee Mission School District, Liberty Public Schools, Blue Valley Schools, Lee’s Summit R-7, Academy for the Integrated Arts, Brookside Charter, USD 232, and Citizens of the World Charter School.
EIS Kansas City is one of our most successful cohorts. Despite acute danger from the Covid-19 pandemic, participating in a fully virtual format, and having to navigate ongoing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programming from critics of Critical Race Theory, the participants had strong engagement throughout the nine-month long cohort process.
“We had just the right amount of content facilitated with us and team time to directly connect and dive into planning around our district needs. The CRT discussion was timely and appreciated. Loved the student voice from the panel!”
Equity in Schools
The Beloved Community Equity in Schools Cohort Model is a nine-month intensive experience where organizations participate in four components: 1) Organization-wide Equity Audit, 2) Eight intensive Capacity Building Content Sessions, 3) Individualized Coaching, and 4) Drafting a three-year Equity Work Plan.
The cohort experience provides ample opportunities for organizations to do deep work within their organization while also creating a community of practice where organizations can share and discuss their strategies, successes, and pain points with similar organizations.
In this cohort we worked with district and school leaders who expressed a dedication to leading with DEI at the forefront of their organizational policies and practices. After completing the eight content sessions, organizational teams took these commitments and operationalized them into individual Equity Work Plans, three-year equity road maps designed to support organizations in leveraging their equity data to turn their commitments into action.
The full list of facilitated cohort sessions includes:
Foundations of Racial Equity
Understanding the Equity Audit
Building & Assessing Belongingness for Adults
Building & Assessing Belongingness for Students
Inclusive Community Engagement
Debiasing Talent Practices
Inclusive & Intercultural Leadership
Creating an Equity Work Plan
Additionally, we supported their leadership teams to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion expectations and practices into their ongoing work through individual coaching.
Our Facilitators
Dr. Allisyn Swift (she/her), Associate Director - Equity in Schools
Dr. Swift is a former Early Childhood Educator and Administrator, Independent Educational Professional Development facilitator, Zero-to-Three National Center for Infants Toddlers and Families Leaders of the 21st Century Fellow, Past Chair of The New York City Association for the Education of Young Children Policy Circle, Past Chair of the East New York Early Education Policy Committee, Supervisor at the The Harlem Children’s Zone’s The Baby College program, recipient of the School Psychology Trauma Focused Training Grant at Tulane University, Lead Network Psychologist and Race & Equity Coordinator for FirstLine Schools Charter Management Organization where she was awarded the Guardian Award for her service and advocacy for children and organizational change. Dr. Swift uses a human-centered, anti-racist and trauma-informed approach to support organizational change toward equitable and antiracist practices. Her research interests include the use of participatory action research to study the effects of race-based interpersonal and systemic stress on child socialization and parenting practices, advocate for child centered anti-racist apporaches to education, and professional development to enhance the cultural and social-emotional competence of teachers.
“We were able to collaborate with our teams and get 1:1 time with Dr. Swift. She was such a helpful conversation partner and really helped us get the wording of our goals and strategies down.”
Alisha Keig (she/her), Associate Director - Equity in Schools
Alisha is an anti-racist educator and social justice advocate who has worked in education for eight years as a classroom teacher focused on English Learners and district leader, focused on creating and delivering high quality DEI curriculum to a variety of staff at all levels and guiding district-wide equity and inclusion initiatives. Alisha has presented at local, state, and national conferences on designing culturally responsive curriculums and spaces. Alisha came to Beloved because of their focus on people and systems, head and heart, and operationalizing equity in tangible ways. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University, where she was also a D1 athlete. She holds master’s degrees in Instructional Practice and K-12 Education Policy from Lipscomb University and Vanderbilt University, respectively. Alisha currently sits on the board for two Nashville nonprofits, the Diverse Learners Cooperative and the Tennessee Nature Academy.
Below, Alisha shares some data and learnings from our Equity in Schools Kansas City cohort.
Our Cohort
In total, approximately sixty school and district leaders participated in the cohort. Each school and district was asked to craft a team of seven to nine decision makers from their organization. Cohort members included superintendents, chief DEI officers, assistant superintendents, principals, deans, school board members, executive directors, directors of instructional materials and curriculum, and teachers.
Below is the self-reported demographic information of the cohort members:
Race:
Black/African American: 19.5%
White: 74.5%
American Indian/Native American: 2%
Gender:
Male: 35.3%
Female: 64.7%
Self-reported demographic information: Black/African American 19.5%, White 74.5%, American Indian/Native American 2%
Self-reported demographic information: Male 35.3% Female 64.7%
Main Focus Areas
Our first Kansas City cohort will focus on advancing equity in the following areas:
62.5% of organizations created a priority and goal specific to recruitment (D2), retention (E5), belonging (I3) and onboarding (D3) of Black, Indigenous and educators and staff of color. Some of the strategies cohort participants are implementing at their organizations include hiring third party consultants to assist with recruitment, mitigating and dismantling bias in the selection process, and adjusting questions on interviews to understand candidates' content knowledge and mindset.
62.5% of cohort organizations have a priority and goal specific to creating a culturally responsive curriculum (I4). Research shows that culturally responsive pedagogy has a positive effect on academic outcomes and can increase positive student behaviors. Some of the strategies cohort participants are implementing at their organizations include providing professional development for educators on how to implement culturally responsive pedagogy, adding a cultural competence category to teacher observation rubrics, and auditing current curriculum for inequities, inaccuracies, and multiple perspectives.
75% of cohort organizations have committed to focus on increasing belonging (I3) and shared voice/shared power amongst marginalized student populations. Research shows that increased sense of belonging for students is correlated to decreases in disciplinary issues. Some of the strategies cohort participants are implementing at their organizations include student focus groups, culture and climate surveys, and student-led decision making processes.
Organizational leaders had the opportunity to respond to post-survey prompts and expand on how they’re changing their individual practices in these focus areas:
Debiasing Talent Practices: “This is a critical area for advancing district-wide equity efforts in a vast majority of school districts- I am the co-chair of our Grow Your Own Steering Committee which is designed to recruit High School students of color to the education profession- this session made me aware of more tools we can use in our organization to address biased recruitment and hiring practices.”
Inclusive Leadership and Change Management: “I need to challenge myself to have more experiences in which I have the opportunity to learn from not being part of the dominant culture. I want to develop stronger relationships with others that will allow me to help our district improve as a whole and will help me to mentor and provide support to individual staff members who seek me out for guidance. I also want to continue to amplify and elevate DEI in our organization; this cannot be something that we do to check a box. We need to evaluate all the little actions that we take to build our culture and challenge ourselves to change so we can do better.”
Belonging: “I see us consistently pushing the boundaries of belonging. We are continually looking to remove barriers to belonging and to create unconditional belonging. Rooting out othering, marginalizing, and stereotyping from our school.”
Testimonials
"We worked in our district teams AND also in role alike. As my colleague from Lees Summit so eloquently stated in her comments, the opportunity to support each other on a common challenge topic for our districts at this moment was so powerful. LOVED it!"
“THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!! I really enjoyed learning from every single one of you and Alisha - you rock!!!!! I learned so much for every one of our conversations. Thank you for all the support you offered our team and me personally as the leader. This experience has made an impact; thank you!!!”
“We had supportive team time. We are truly making progress as a team on our plan, the goals, and strategies. We also made great professional relationships that will endure with other districts in the cohort. I know that there will be continued collaboration and thought partnerships that will endure because of this work and opportunity. Thank you Beloved - and Thank you Kauffman for the opportunity and support.”
Beloved Learnings
Implementation Coaching: The Education and Programming team at Beloved Community continues to think about how to best deepen our regional support of cohort alumni. We constantly grapple with questions like how do we assess the efficacy of our programming? and what additional skills, knowledge, or scaffolding do our alumni need to successfully implement their equity work plans upon leaving the cohort? After many internal conversations, and after an enthusiastic response from EIS Kansas City alumni, Beloved Community plans to continue its commitment with the Kansas City region by piloting a year-two intensive coaching model. Beloved hopes to continue its partnership with the Kauffman Foundation to support a subgroup of Kansas City participants as they seek to implement their three-year equity work plans with fidelity. Beloved consultants will create a customized coaching experience for each organization and hold space for networking events, lunch and learns, and whole group strategic planning sessions.
Shifts for Session Format: Although participants consistently described our content sessions as highly effective, it is clear that the format could shift to increase engagement, namely: increasing the session length and offering hybrid consultation with Beloved coaches. Shifting from a four-hour to a five-hour session would be helpful as it allows additional time and space for within-team processing time, effective whole group share out, and networking and cross-organization collaboration. There were times the cohort had robust conversations and we found ourselves wanting to stay on a topic for longer than time allotted which unfortunately forced the presenters to move through other information at a faster than normal pace.
Our virtual spaces were productive for three reasons 1) they offered Beloved staff a chance to be in multiple places at once, 2) they were locales of inclusion as folks with disabilities were able to access our content easier in a virtual format, and 3) we were able to attract a wider audience of decision makers (board members, superintendents, principals, community members) because they could tune in to our presentations without physically disengaging from their day-to-day responsibilities.
However, in the future, and as we learn to live with the ebb and flow of the pandemic, we’d also like to offer hybrid cohorts where Beloved staffers are present in-person at various points including: the session 0 equity audit kickoff, session 8 for crafting the equity work plan, and celebrations.
Final Team Time Differentiation: We piloted a new programmatic component for this cohort to help the organizations name and refine their priorities early on in the experience to prepare for equity work planning. The last 25 minutes of each content session was designated as a protected final team time and we introduced a tool that provided organizations with topic-based questions that were differentiated based on the equity audit standards and substandards. These questions helped organizations see the connection between the session content and the equity audit questions, and gave them an opportunity to focus on their specific organizational needs.