If you are making a decision, always include people who have expertise on the question at hand and who have a personal stake in its resolution. Do not include people who have no knowledge of the problem and don’t care about it. Sometimes, but not too often, ask for help from those who have some expertise in the problem you face. Occasionally include those affected by the resolutions that are developed.

There are other models guiding participation in decision making, but this is an easy, carry-around-in-your-head one. But, be on guard! There are some parts missing from this assembly, and thus they require some thoughtfulness on your part to put into operation.

Always include people who have expertise and a personal stake; your decisions will improve in quality and acceptance. What could be easier? Well, as H. L. Mencken pointed out a century ago: There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. Consider the following:

1. Who are the experts in your school? Often the job title goes with expertise, so you would expect, for example, the science teacher to have competence in science questions. Other times, the expertise you are looking for is not readily apparent. In these cases, you have to add to the model. Here, you must have enough connection to the people in the school to know special areas of knowledge in the organization or to ask the right people to find out hidden sources of expertise. The better you know the school, the better this model works.

2. Is there too much agreement? The question of including people in the decision usually arises because the school does not have a readily applicable policy. Schools run on routine, that is, you don’t decide a new schedule, room assignments, or attendance policy every day. Instead, these decisions are baked into the school routine. It is the problems not addressed by the routine of the school that will prompt you to think about getting help.
   Let us say you have assembled a group to help you resolve a problem and they are both supportive and eager to find a resolution. You want honest opinions from this team; however, some members of the team might not think their ideas are worth presenting, especially if those members strongly support you. It seems paradoxical that the people who trust you would withhold honest assessment, but there it is. At times, people who have confidence in you assume your ideas are going to be better than theirs, thereby depriving you of useful information.
   Daniel Kahneman (2011) suggests appointing a devil’s advocate who will reliably and cogently argue against potential resolutions to the problem. This person needs to be appointed because you don’t want the naysayer to be a volunteer in a group where opposing the majority is seen as simple obstructionism. You need somebody to be an antidote to the feeling of unity that can accompany a group decision. In cases of major decision, you might even appoint someone to explain why the chosen resolution will fail.

3. Did the resolution appear too quickly? It seems like an odd problem. After all, the purpose of group decision making is to decide. The risk here is going from problem identification to resolution without the intermediate steps of gathering information, establishing what an acceptable decision must have and what you would like to have, and developing several resolutions before seizing on one. It is good to have a Plan B—and a Plan C and D. Slow down the process.

4. Are people prepared to participate in decision making? Making decisions is a learnable skill. If you invite people to share in the process, you might need to give them a little practice in framing problems, defining acceptable solutions, and creating solutions. Possessing expertise or relevance to a problem does not necessarily grant ease in the dynamics of the problem-solving process.

There are two “maybe” cases in deciding on someone’s participation, both suggesting caution. There are people who have expertise but no interest in helping you with your problem; the biology teacher may not want to help you buy house plants. Conversely, people with no expertise in construction will likely be interested in knowing that their parking lot will be closed for repaving.

The literature on decision making is substantial and multi-disciplinary. These remarks on involving people in decision making represent a quick summary intended to answer the question: Who should I involve in decision making? If you find this useful, you might well find the following works beneficial as well.

References

Hoy, W. K., & Tarter, C. J. (2008). Administrators solving the problems of practice: Decision-making concepts, cases, and consequences. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Representation matters—it’s not just a catchphrase, but it’s also recognition of empirical evidence that diverse schools have lots of benefits for students, educators, and entire schools. 

Unfortunately, however, schools still tend to be pretty segregated in terms of faculty and student demographics. Typically, Black students are more likely than White students to go to schools that are racially segregated or to attend schools where most students live in poverty. The attendant consequences can also be devastating: students of color are more likely than White students to be assigned school disciplinary consequences that involve school removal. They are also more likely to be assigned to special education services than their White peers and less likely to be assigned to gifted classes. However, the presence of teachers and administrators of color can change this reality. One study found that schools do assign higher proportions of Black students to gifted programs when there are Black teachers and administrators in the building. Similarly, another study found similar results with Latinx individuals. Specifically, Latinx students were less likely to be assigned to severe school discipline consequences when they were in schools with Latinx principals than when they were in schools with White principals. These and other studies suggest that school climates where there are more people of color in leadership and teaching positions might do a better job of creating context for trust among faculty, families, and students. 

Race-based sorting is also a recognized problem among school faculty. Forty percent of all schools do not have a single faculty person of color. This means that, contrary to the results we reported above, many students of color do not see someone who looks like them as either a teacher or a principal. Additionally, because principals and superintendent positions are usually filled from pools of teachers and because teachers are overwhelmingly White, it can appear that qualified candidates of color are simply not in school leadership pipelines. This is simply not true. However, as we’ve discussed, academic optimism is made of three constructs: collective efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis (or press). In cases where the faculty is overwhelmingly light—and leaders perpetuate patterns of hiring or promoting only White faculty—that culture is likely not conducive to conditions where faculty have confidence in the collective skill of the group nor where faculty are likely to trust one another enough to organize their work around the academic goals of the school. 

Finally, gender inequities also deprive schools of high-quality leaders who can orient school cultures around the academic goals of a school. In particular, women’s leadership tends to be associated with techniques that drive school improvement such as collaboration, relationship-building, and mentoring up-and-coming leaders. However, women are generally promoted to assistant principal positions later than their less-experienced male peers and, when they are promoted from AP to principal, they are routed to elementary and middle school positions. These positions can make them perceived as less qualified, tough, or ready for district- and state-level leadership positions (although evidence suggests those perceptions are flat-out wrong). Once again, perpetuating patterns of inequity in organizations detracts from the key mission: student learning.

Taken together, these and other studies show that equity is not a problem that is separate from school culture—it is, in fact, a problem of school culture. Faculty diversity benefits students, educators, and whole schools. When that diversity is absent, a school misses the valuable contributions of diverse educators and may also dedicate valuable financial and human resources to things like restoring trust, establishing feelings of efficacy, and centering the school’s academic mission. 

It is hard to say a good word about bureaucracy. Mechanistic, soulless bureaucracy is insensitive, ineffective, and often outrageously frustrating.  I want to carefully and cautiously say a good word or two about bureaucracy. See what you think.

First off, let’s avoid the inevitable problem of the word “bureaucracy”; the term comes with a spotty history. Instead, consider the word/s “structure” or “organizational structure”. 

No one is in charge of the whole structure. Rather, different people exercise authority over different things. The school board approves a course, the principal marshals the resources necessary to teach it, and the teacher puts the last word on how it is taught. I think there is general agreement that the principal’s purview is the entirety of the school while the teacher is concerned with the classroom, and, of course, there are overlaps. 

The role of the principal is often obscured by the welter of words that describe the position: leader, manager, director, coordinator, and so forth. It seems safe to say that the principal is a central decision-maker, that is, some decisions are best left to a coordinating authority.  Decisions about teaching assignments, scheduling, and use of school resources are usually made at the principal’s level. Centralization is the term of art that describes how many other people weigh in on decisions. Centralized schools have few; decentralized have more. 

A second term of art in organizations is formalization, which refers to the written procedures at work in the school organization.  Lots of rules and regulations? High formalization. Few? Low formalization. The rules give continuity and stability to the school organization and limit the amount of unpredictability.  There is no daily decision, for instance, about when classes start, where everybody is supposed to be during class time, and when the school day is over. The decisions are made and, in the absence of compelling circumstances, followed. 

Centralization and formalization are the very stuff of structure or bureaucracy, though we are not using that word. Most educators would agree that schools need some centralization and formalization, That is, they need some coordination and some written rules to function.  How much? is an interesting question because it puts us right into the problem of porridge at the house of the Three Bears.  Too hot or too cold doesn’t work; we must find the amount of structure that is just right.  It is not enough to agree that we want centralized decision-making that does not hinder the mission of the school and that we want rules that enable people in the school to accomplish the central purpose of the school: to provide effective instruction. Whom shall we ask to find the right structure?

Well, we can ask the teachers.  Ask the teachers if the rules help them at their work or get in the way. Ask them if there is authentic communication between the administration and the teachers when it comes to the actual consequences of some rules. Ask the administration about the purpose of some rules or the openness of administrative decision-making. Ideally, the resolution to these questions could be achieved through a continuing and informal conversation between faculty and administration. And, in fact, that happy scenario happens at some schools.  One finds schools in which decisions about the flow of resources to various programs involve both administrators and teachers who bring some expertise to the table.

In those schools where there is a tension that hinders an easy exchange of professional opinion, teachers can be asked about decision-making and rules in a more formal questionnaire (Hoy & Sweetland, 2000, 2001). This model assumes some good faith among all parties to move the school toward its purpose. A response from the teachers about the usefulness of the school structure should lead to the formation of a group, formal or informal, depending on the school, to address any issues unearthed by questioning the faculty.

Creation of such a group calls upon a deep knowledge of the faculty and administration. Problems of centralization and formalization can be vexing, indeed, and thus call for a decision-making group made up of those with expertise about the question—to improve the quality of the resolutions—and some personal stake in the outcome—to improve acceptance of the resolutions.  The right mix of centralization and formalization no doubt varies with each school, but finding the right mix seems to involve knowledgeable and committed staff in all schools.

- C. John Tarter

References

Hoy, W. K. & Sweetland, S. R. (2000). School bureaucracies that work: Enabling, not coercive. Journal of School Leadership, 10, 524-541.

Hoy, W. K. & Sweetland, S. R. (2001). Designing better schools; The meaning and measure of enabling school structures. Educational Administrative Quarterly, 37, 296-321.

What does Academic Optimism look like? 

Let’s start by imagining a school that has a positive climate. You may not have known the name of Academic Optimism before last week, but you’ve probably been in a school where you observe it—or even feel it. What, then, might Academic Optimism look like, sound like, and feel like? Going through each of the elements of Academic Optimism:

• Collective Efficacy. In a school where collective efficacy is the norm, you are likely to see teachers who collaborate frequently, share materials openly, and demonstrate a spirit of “we got this” because they believe in the power of the group to drive student achievement. 

• Faculty Trust. When trust is the norm, you are likely to see people doing their jobs well, creatively, and unencumbered by burdensome regulations. Faculty and students may interact with a sense of warmth and believe the best about each other. When interpersonal or disciplinary challenges arise, they are addressed with curiosity before moving to consequences as needed. Multiple voices and groups are represented in the school’s decision-making processes. 

• Academic Emphasis. The whole school is geared toward the shared mission of student learning. You’ll see exemplary student work displayed and celebrated. You’ll see engaging classrooms where teachers meet students’ multiple learning needs. Faculty throughout the school often use student data to make decisions. Those data shape both instructional choices and school-level norms regarding equity. 

What policies promote Academic Optimism? 

Policies communicate values and provide direction for decision-making throughout an organization. Therefore, the policies that schools use can shape the organizations to be more academically optimistic. We’ll consider three types of policies here: 

• Time for teacher collaboration. Reflective, collaborative practice that fosters trust among colleagues requires time and resources. The most successful schools provide ample time for teachers to collaborate (and this doesn’t just mean scripted PLCs). When teachers have time and resources to plan creative lessons, co-create instructional materials, or observe advanced practitioners, it tends to pay dividends in their own classrooms. Moreover, faculty may be increasingly certain that—as a group—they can accelerate learning for all students. 

• Structured data review and use. This is related to the previous point, but extends beyond data for instructional planning. Data, when used well, can improve schools rather than just penalize teachers. Data review can also illuminate things like inequities in school disciplinary consequences or in student course-taking patterns. Are more of your students of color expelled than your white students? Are more boys than girls taking trigonometry? Providing training and time to understand these data is an essential part of sustained focus on student learning and of facilitating Academic Optimism in a school. 

• Integrate perspectives of all stakeholders, including students, faculty, and families. When groups come together to make decisions for the sake of students, they may be more likely to learn about one another and therefore to foster trust among groups. We know that cooperation among schools and families is essential for student success, but that requires shared decision-making. Elements of trust include openness and competence, so building trust will require the participation of multiple stakeholders. 

In its conceptual heart, Academic Optimism is a construct made up of three parts: collective efficacy, trust in students and parents, and academic emphasis. 

• Collective Efficacy refers to the faculty’s group belief that they can accomplish the goals they set and can affect student learning outcomes.

• Faculty Trust in students and parents refers to the willingness of the faculty to rely upon the students and parents to work together to achieve educational outcomes. 

• Academic emphasis, sometimes called academic press, refers to a school’s focus on academic success and achievement for all students. 

When these three concepts come together, they form the Academic Optimism of a school (Hoy, Tarter, Hoy, 2006). High levels of academic optimism—that is, high levels of collective belief that faculty can help students learn, strong trust between faculty and students/parents, and a clear academic emphasis—lead to schools that perform well, even in the face of other factors, including low SES and previous levels of student achievement. Academic Optimism can be a powerful predictor of how a school can perform. It can also explain why schools that should be performing well may not be. We’ve seen cases in the past in which schools had all of the “right” factors, but strikingly low levels of trust or self-efficacy among the faculty led to lower achievement in students. Academic Optimism also exists at the individual level in schools, but for our purposes now, we are going to stick to the organizational variable. 

Academic Optimism is not dispositional optimism. It is not a generalized belief that things will “just turn out okay.” It isn’t looking on the bright side or seeing the glass as half full. In that sense, the name optimism may be a little misleading. But even with the potentially confusing name, we know that Academic Optimism is a powerful construct and we would love to help your school find out more about how you score on the measure.

What measure is this, you might ask? Great question! Academic Optimism has a rigorously validated, reliable measure that both Lauren and Amy have a wealth of experience administering. The measure breaks down all three components of Academic Optimism, so we can tell you both how your school stacks up when compared to other districts and in what specific areas you can improve.

We hope you are as excited about Academic Optimism as we are. Stay tuned for the next blog, when we tell you about specific school policies that have an influence on creating and nurturing a culture of Academic Optimism. And, as always, get in touch if you are interested in learning more about our services! We would love to come to your school, virtually or in-person!

As an educator, you’ve probably heard the terms school climate and school culture tossed around a lot. Depending on your school and context, you might have heard things like, “Well, if we just develop a culture of belonging, then students will want to come to school” or, “At the end of the day, school climate contributes more to student achievement than teachers do.” These terms have become so ubiquitous in schools that it may be hard to sort the myths from the reality—or the research. This week, we want to introduce some key definitions and offer some of the reasons we think these constructs are critical to our mission and to your school’s success. 

What is school climate? 

While school climate and school culture are often used interchangeably, they are different and those differences are important. We start here with climate. You might think about your own school. Is it perceived as a “good” school that makes students and faculty happy to be there and eager to learn? Some researchers have described climate as the “weather” of an organization and others have explained climate as “the composite of norms, expectations, and beliefs which characterize the school social system.” School climate might be thought of as the personality of the school—how it feels to be there, or the vibe of the school.

What is school culture? 

School culture is a little bit more complex, primarily because the word culture is wrapped up in broad understandings of social interaction across many different fields of study. Most of the time, culture refers to the ways in which societies and systems function and convey meaning to their members. Culture typically includes both the goals of a social system and the values that underlie that goal. Think about a school’s mission statement. This likely includes specific goals (academic success, global citizenship, lifelong learning) as well as specific underlying values (engagement, community, success) and these are all representative of a school’s culture. School culture also comprises other traditions, rituals, practices, and beliefs that shape the function of an organization. In schools, you might think of dress codes, faculty meetings, lunchtime seating arrangements, or student government associations and how they embody the goals and values of an organization. Think about the parts of your organization that are explained by saying, ‘Well, that’s just how we do things here.’ That’s school culture at work. 

Why do climate and culture matter? 

As you probably guessed, culture and climate are closely related. The way we enact or ‘do’ culture is a part of the climate. Do students linger in hallways because they perceive classes to be boring and irrelevant? Those are transmitted beliefs (culture) that operate within an organizational climate. Does your school leader resist feedback from faculty? That is a pattern of enacted values (culture) that shapes climate. 

The bottom line is that culture and climate matter for all kinds of positive outcomes in schools. Specifically, healthy climate and culture can transform schools into places where students, teachers, and leaders are eager to work, learn, and collaborate. Indicators of positive or healthy climate and culture include trusting relationships among adults, trusting relationships between adults and students, positive attitudes toward students’ families, strong feelings of fairness, and the priority placed on academic work. These indicators are almost always associated with positive outcomes that include things like higher levels of parent engagement, lower rates of student dropout, reduced student chronic absenteeism, longer teacher tenures, more fruitful professional collaborations, and—you guessed it—increased student achievement. 

Sound like something your school needs? This is where we can help. We have prepared a collection of tools to assess your school’s culture and climate. Once those assessments are complete, we can work with you on an action plan to improve culture and climate to meet your specific goals. To learn more, click the link below. We’d love to connect with you and your school.

When we look back on the years of the ongoing pandemic, we will all see ways that our lives were changed. Some of us lost family members or changed our careers, while some learned to focus on different things than they did before Covid. At Aequitas Educational Consulting, we have been changing too. Our biggest change? We want to provide more help to schools. As students and teachers pivoted to exist in a completely unknown educational ecosystem, we’ve seen so many strains on school culture and climate during the last year and a half. Educators did an amazing job, but the pandemic definitely took a toll on everyone from principals and instructors to students and families. So now, we want to help schools begin the process of healing. This isn’t to say that the pandemic is over (it isn’t) or that we are leaving the world of gender equity (we aren’t) but rather that we want to do more.

How will we do this? Perhaps that is the question you are asking yourself now. And we are so excited to tell you. We are widening our services to include measurement, assessment, and recommendations for improving school climate, culture, gender and racial equity, and leadership structure. Wow! That seems like a lot. Yes, it does. But don’t worry, we’re going to spend some time explaining exactly how we can do this, using measures that are established, tested, and reliable drivers of school improvement. Over the next few months, Lauren, Amy, and a surprise guest blogger will have lots to say. We hope you will smash that subscribe button so that you can enjoy these blogs as they come out every other week.

We’ve got big, important work to do in schools and we at AEC are so excited to continue that work with a brand new focus, a bigger to-do list, and a more comprehensive toolkit.

In the meantime, please consider reading our earlier articles or sending a suggestion or two for things you'd like to see here. We hope that you will get some rest and have time to recuperate this summer. See you soon.

- Lauren and Amy

Good news

The Biden administration and Secretary Cardona have clearly and vehemently discussed their desire to roll back former Secretary DeVos’s changes to Title IX policy, which we wrote about last year. Specifically, the current administration hopes to bolster protections for victims and survivors of sexual assault at schools and colleges nationwide. This is good news because DeVos’ changes had actually increased protections for those accused of sexual assault, who are already very unlikely to face any legal and institutional consequences. If those changes are reversed, victims are likely to have a much better chance at fair and just processes.

Wait and see

Further, Secretary Cardona will participate in a series of hearings in late June in order to inform the administration’s perspective on the federal civil rights of transgender students in school. A number of states have passed or attempted to pass bills that restrict the rights of trans students and curtailed their ability to participate in extracurricular activities. Cardona and his colleagues have suggested that they want to learn more about the Title IX prohibitions on discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. While the administration has been less clear about its goals and positions on issues of trans students’ human rights in schools, we are hopeful that the hearings this month will be the start of a progressive education agenda.

Needs more clarity

There has also been some conversation in the Biden administration about addressing racial and gender inequities in higher education. Gaps in college completion and loan use by race, gender, and income are well-established but the administration has so far been pretty vague about its plans to either study the problem or address the known gaps. Moreover, while issues of Title IX and transgender students have been mapped onto a calendar of lawmaking hearings in the next month, there is not yet a calendar of similar hearings to address these noted inequities in higher education.

On balance, we are encouraged by Secretary Cardona’s agenda. However, we are also committed to ongoing engagement with our local and federal representatives in order to ensure that not only are education policies restored to their pre-DeVos state, but they continue to become more inclusive and equity-focused.

Self-care is definitely experiencing a moment in the spotlight. This started before the pandemic and the focus has only increased as we’ve gone through the last year and a half of anxiety, upheaval, and just general awfulness. Throughout this time, we’ve been reminded by our schools to practice self-care. Maybe your admin or department head has suggested going for walks, taking a long bath, curling up with a good book, and any number of other relaxing activities. Maybe there are signs or affirmations hanging in your department office or school bathroom. Perhaps those make you smile and you're sitting there reading this and wondering what possible problem I could have with these kinds of messages. After all, aren’t they designed to make you feel more cared for and less stressed?

Well, let me tell you, things like that only work in school cultures that are supportive of teacher well-being the rest of the time. Especially this year, when many teachers have felt like their very safety has been threatened, messages like this are not doing much to help teachers. If you’ve been around schools for a long time, you may have heard the sentiment “You can’t get to Bloom before Maslow.” Simply put, you can’t get to any higher-order thinking or feeling until you’ve dealt with the basic need for safety. And if your school’s culture isn’t focused on safety, both the physical and emotional varieties, then your school’s messages of self-care are falling on deaf ears. If your school is finding ways to target, scold, censor, or punish its teachers for expressing their feelings about being unsafe, then your school is not creating a safe culture. And if your school’s culture isn’t safe, they might as well skip posting those affirmations, because teachers and school staff will see right through them.

It isn’t the responsibility of teachers to self-care their way out of questioning right vs. wrong and standing up for themselves. There are not enough relaxing baths in the world to make a teacher feel okay about their administration not supporting a safe environment. How many books would one have to curl up with to feel okay—just okay—in an environment where they fear being punished or shamed for expressing their opinions?

So, what is the point of this, Amy? Are you really arguing that teachers shouldn’t take care of themselves? Absolutely not. But unless administrators are working to create a culture of caring in their schools, they should stop foisting the responsibility onto their teachers. Toxic school culture will never be fixed with self-care and affirmations. To convince teachers that self-care is important, administrators must first create a culture that supports them. That kind of culture allows all school personnel to care for themselves and their students.

Want some more information about how to improve your school culture? Looking to do some healing in the fall? Reach out to Aequitas and let’s chat about how we can help.

The desire to compare your school to a family very likely comes from a good place. It is designed to create a sense of community and a culture of caring, both of which are needed in schools. This sounds great, in theory. But in practice, there are things that we do for our families that we should not do for our workplaces. There are sacrifices of time, money, energy, and other finite resources that we make for our families without question or thought, because that is what you do for your family. Schools benefit greatly from encouraging these kinds of sacrifices, especially from their teachers. Teachers provide materials, food, and other resources for their students because they are their “kids”. Schools capitalize on this by asking teachers to do things that are above and beyond, and in many cases deeply unfair, for the “good of the kids”. Teachers who try to stand up for themselves or the needs of their children are seen as turning against the family and engaging in negative behaviors. Worse, people who complain or bring concerns to their administration can often be described as turning on the family or putting their own interests before the needs of “their kids”. 

Organizations are not loyal. Your school is not your family. No matter how much you love your school (and we hope you love it), your schools should not ask you to make sacrifices of your mental or physical (or financial) health for them. And yet, often teachers are asked that. Additionally, the family metaphor contributes to a culture of toxic positivity in schools. What is toxic positivity, you may be asking? 

Toxic positivity is an obsessive focus on positive thinking and discourse. Toxic positivity isn’t just saying “look on the bright side”, but rather it is an insistence that anything that is perceived as being negative or critical is an enemy of the organization. In reality, forcing people to “look to the positive” doesn’t actually make them happier. Instead, it makes them feel like their emotions are not valued or heard or that they should feel shame for advocating for what they need for their mental or physical health. In reality, it is alright to not be alright all the time. It is normal and healthy. And insisting that your staff or students not express those feelings does not make the feelings go away. 

So how are the family metaphor in schools and toxic positivity related? When teachers are encouraged to “do it for the kids” and to minimize their own needs on behalf of the children’s needs and scolded or punished for bringing concerns forward, we see the dysfunctional intersection of these two issues. After all, you are willing to do anything for your family right? Why, then, if your school is your family, would you not be willing to do anything for them? And from these questions, we get to where we are now. Teachers and school personnel are asked to sacrifice their own family time, their money, their mental and physical health, for the good of the organization. And how do the organizations repay them for this? By telling them that they are doing it for the family and they shouldn’t complain. 

What do we do about this, you might ask? One important thing that you can do starting tomorrow is to stop insisting that people focus on the positive all the time. Let people experience their feelings and validate them when they express them to you. It isn’t for you to decide if those feelings are valid. This is especially true if you are an administrator and a member of your staff brings you a concern or complaint. It is not your job to make them believe something else. It is your job to listen. Does that mean that you have to become a receptacle for everyone’s complaints? Of course not. But it does mean that you cannot simply insist that people stop complaining and think positively. And, while we’re at it, let’s throw out some of those inspirational wooden signs too. Especially this year, let’s let people feel their feelings. You know, in the way that you would for your family. 

It’s important to offer a caveat here: the ways in which men write about themselves are not necessarily the best or right ways to do so. However, since education leadership positions are dominated by men, search committees may default to seeing men’s patterns as preferred. It’s helpful to know this as you write your own applications. Obviously, none of my suggestions are relevant all the time, but I’ve identified several distinct trends I see in women’s statements and letters. If I were in the position to advise any of the women whose letters and statements I’ve read, I would suggest the following:

Be the leading character, rather than part of an ensemble cast.

Women tend to contextualize themselves in teams or organizations. They might say something like, “As part of x, I helped to develop y.” It is of course useful to highlight your work on teams, but exclusively using that language may give the impression that you don’t work independently and may not have leadership potential. More often than not, I’ve noticed that men center themselves in their statements (and their referents do the same in letters). That same sentence, when written by a man, might sound like, “I led x to pioneer the development of y.” The people who read your application will be well aware that very few people operate outside of teams or organizations: make sure to feature yourself as a leading character.

Use strong verbs to describe your skills and accomplishments.

Women often minimize their accomplishments and contributions. Two specific examples stand out: women use the word “serve” where men use the word “work” (e.g., I served in this capacity…) and women use constructions like, “I sought to/I seek to”. In the first case, that verb difference can imply that you undervalue your own work—service is often unpaid while work is paid. Work also implies skill and qualification. In the second case, the phrase might suggest that you “sought to” or “seek to” do something but it never actually came to fruition—the emphasis is on intention rather than outcome. Position yourself as someone who gets things done. Describe your work clearly and with active verbs.

Talk about talent, rather than your personality. (Caveat: except insofar as your personality makes you better suited for the position you’re applying for.)

This often refers more to letter writers than women writing about themselves, but the point stands: be sure to discuss (or ask your writers to discuss) your talent, rather than your personality. I’ve seen women described as “easy to work with,” “helpful,” and “compassionate.” Of course, these are great personality traits, but they don’t tell a reader anything about your skill. Men, on the other hand, are rarely described according to their personalities, but instead by their skills—“leader,” “out of the box thinker,” “innovator,” or “team player.” Application readers are looking for great colleagues or great students; these common distinctions in the descriptions of candidates paint very different pictures of who belongs.

Leave luck out of the conversation.

At least according to their letters, women often think they’re lucky. I’ve seen innumerable phrases like, “I was lucky enough to…” or, “I had the opportunity to…” or even, “I was blessed to…”. My guess is, most of these women weren’t all that lucky. Instead, they had a track record of hard work, consistent accomplishment, and put themselves in positions where others noticed that. Women, feel free to say this about yourselves. While similar phrases may have been present, I cannot remember an instance when I’ve seen a single one included in a man’s application. Men generally refer to their work, skill, and leadership without thinking they got lucky.

Ask someone else to write about you.

I recognize even as I write this that some of these patterns and turns of phrase are entrenched habits that will take a long time to undo. Some of us are not able to clearly see or write about our own talents, skills, accomplishments, and contributions. If that is the case, consider asking a friend or colleague to draft a few short paragraphs about you. That strategy might give you a better perspective on what you should highlight in your application because it gives you an idea of what others see in you or what you’ve brought to your current organization. Similarly, when you ask for letters of recommendation, consider asking your referents to highlight specific skills, like your leadership, your project management skills, or your ability to innovate.

Rave: Teachers

There has been a huge amount of hate heaped onto teachers online recently. From politicians to parents groups, it seems like all anyone wants to talk about is how teachers don’t want to go back into schools, despite the vast majority of them currently being in schools, and how they don’t care about their students’ emotional and mental health. Well, let me tell you, as a teacher, who knows a ton of teachers, this is just not true. The last year has been incredibly hard for teachers and the ones that I know spend more time prepping for, writing material for, and worrying about your kid than you know. I understand that parents want their kids back in in-person classes. And trust me, we all want that. But teachers asking for it to be safe doesn’t make them monsters, it makes them people who are concerned about their own health and the health of their students, not to mention the families of their students. Teachers care very much about the mental health of their kids, which is why they have advocated for more mental health services in schools for years.

It might feel good to post online about how the teachers are lazy or how they should just get other jobs if they don’t want to do them, but if you really want to do something that is useful and not unkind, consider advocating for teachers to be vaccinated, schools to have proper ventilation, increased mental health and counseling services in schools, and testing to be free and abundant. Also, remember that teachers are humans who exist in the world and online and, though you might feel great about writing that rant about those entitled teachers, your kid’s math teacher probably isn’t going to feel wonderful about it.

Rant: The Massachusetts Department of Education

I teach in Massachusetts (full disclosure) but this one couldn’t go by without me commenting on it. We all want kids to be back in physical classrooms. We also want it to be safe. But unilaterally demanding that kids go back, without considering the massive schedule changes, staffing needs, and emotional upheaval for kids when they have their teacher switched ¾ of the way through the school year isn’t the best way to do it. Conveniently left out of most of the coverage of this are the lack of staff and the lack of space that is required to pull this off. But hey, your 3rd grader wants a new teacher at this point in the year, right? Nope, probably not. This wasn’t the right move by DESE. You know what would have been great for DESE to do instead? Advocating for vaccinating teachers. You know what isn’t helpful for kids, parents, or teacher retention rates in Massachusetts? Pitting the teachers against the parents. Massachusetts, we can do better than this and we should. We owe it to our incredible kids to do better than this mandate.

Rave: The New York State Education Department

Shout out to the NYSED for canceling most of the NY Regents exams for this year! This has been such a tough year for so many of our kids and families, and standardized testing should be the literal last thing on anyone’s mind at this point. We know that standardized tests largely measure things like income level and that students and families of color have been some of the hardest hit by the pandemic. So, what exactly do we think we are measuring with the standardized tests this year? Some people argue that we are measuring learning loss. But what is learning loss in the middle of a pandemic? Not a thing, that’s what. So, a big socially distanced high five to the people in New York who are doing what is best for kids in a truly terrible year. Next up, Biden administration, we are looking at you to do the right thing on the national stage. But that is a topic for another blog.

Stay healthy and sane, readers! And, as always, if you are looking for PD about how to make your district more gender-equitable and better for all your kids, reach out to us at AEC about the services that we can provide for you.

Because of these gender imbalances at the upper levels of many organizations, the people most likely to write job postings are men. We all have our blind spots, of course. But what you may not know is the language in your job posting may signal to women that they are not qualified for your open position, that they have to adopt traditionally masculine characteristics to be successful, or that your organization is not welcoming to women.

Instead, consider using these questions to check and revise your job description before posting it. You never know what qualified women you might miss if your job posting implicitly suggests that the position is only for men.

Does your job posting use insider language or terms?

Insider terms like, “hacker,” “badass,” or “ninja” may suggest that your job is designed for men. Women may not associate with a ninja and so they may not apply. Instead, focus on the qualifications of the job such as education, years of experience, or disciplinary experience. You might say, for example, “The candidate has completed a Bachelor’s degree, possesses at least three year of professional experience, and has extensive experience managing diverse projects and teams.”

Does your job posting use male-coded words, like “confident,” “driven,” or “aggressive”?

Women are far less likely to apply for a job if they see adjectives that tend to be associated with men. Similarly, avoid words that are coded for women and do not have an equivalent for men (e.g., “feisty” or “sassy”). On the other hand, opt for synonyms that do not have a gendered code. Some examples might be: “goal-oriented” or “motivated.”

Does your job posting use words that signal individuality or community?

If your job posting uses words that seem to value individuality—think “independent” or “leadership”—you may miss out on women applicants. Instead, opt for a balance to words that indicate your value for individuality and community. To do that, include words like, “cooperate,” “collaborate,” or “support.”

Does your job use gender-neutral pronouns?

Instead of using, or even alternating, the pronouns “she” and “he” in your job posting, consider referring to the candidate in a gender-neutral way. You might try, “their,” “you,” or “the candidate.”

Does your job explicitly list the position’s family or flexibility benefits?

Women may forego an application if they are not clear on the benefits that will allow them to both do a great job and uphold their care responsibilities. Instead, provide explicit information about your family or leave benefits, or provide information for how candidates can find out more. Bonus: List the starting range for the salary!

1. Think about what real on-the-ground support looks like.

   The impulse on the part of any administrator may be to send supportive emails, leave small treats or cards in teachers’ mailboxes, or try to lean on the “school as a family” metaphor in order to increase teacher morale and sense of well-being. Maybe you have developed a school slogan or mantra or left extra Covid-safe snacks in the teacher cafeteria. While those things might be appreciated in the moment, real support comes from providing what teachers need—from time to plan to relief from unnecessary meetings to making sure that your policies and on-the-ground practices support people being able to take care of themselves and their families.

   It is all well and good to tell people that you want to support them but if the requests they make for help are met with comments about how we are all struggling and we are a family so they ought to do it for the team… well, let’s just say that you probably aren’t being as supportive as you think. Get into the habit of saying yes to what people need unless you have a real, concrete reason to say no. And to anticipate a potential question, “We’ve never done that before” is not a reason to say no. Also, while you are working on this, it is a great time to look at your school or district’s leave and absence policies and childcare infrastructure to be sure that you are providing organizational support for teachers caring for their families in 2021 and beyond.

2. Create a feedback system that is anonymous, timely, and specific.

   Consider how you are asking people for feedback about how they are doing. If it is irregular, infrequent, or requires them to provide personal information, it probably isn’t doing what you think it is. Teachers are trained to show that they can do it all and to be silent when they are struggling. Yet we know, based on the lower retention rates in teaching and the data on teacher burnout, that many are struggling and may be afraid to say so because of fear of repercussions. Yes, it may be difficult to hear some of the anonymous feedback and yes, you may feel hurt by some of what people say. But being able to have the real data on how your staff is doing and to provide more functional support may lead to better staff retention. I think we can all agree, having to hire new teachers for Fall of 2021 might not be the easiest task. Make your people feel heard and appreciated and you can minimize the number of people who decide that teaching isn’t a sustainable life model anymore.

3. Cancel that meeting that could be an email.

   We’ve all seen the memes and heard the jokes about meetings that could be emails. And yes, we know that providing information to teachers and staff is one way to lower anxiety. But take a hard look at your meeting calendar and about the meetings that you, as an administrator, attend with your teachers. Unless it is absolutely essential that you or your teachers be present at the meeting, cancel it. Zoom fatigue is real and planning time is precious. This is a great year to hold on to that cool article you read or that new initiative that you saw at a virtual conference. You, as an administrator, might feel like it was important and relevant information, but chances are that anything you try to roll out during this year will be viewed with at best annoyance and at worst downright hostility. Better to hold on to that idea until next year, as people begin to feel that they have their feet underneath them again.

There are many actions that administrators can take starting tomorrow to make their staff feel more supported. As long as the support is based on the needs of the staff and authentic, it will go a long way toward making this challenging year a little bit less awful. Want to know more about ways to help your staff and evaluate your policies? Contact us and we can help you out!

Research shows that many female professors spend less time on their professional responsibilities and more time on care responsibilities, homeschooling, and housekeeping. Their male colleagues and partners have not experienced the same losses. What does this mean for the future of women’s work?

The pandemic is nearly a year old. That means most of us have been reconfiguring our job, home, family, and social roles for months. It also means that this has been the case long enough that researchers have measured and published some of the professional changes for working people during the last 11 months. Notably, a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discussed the unique consequences of COVID-19 that women have faced and will continue to face. 

Researchers surveyed about 900,000 faculty members in institutions of higher education (IHEs) all over the US and Europe. Of those, about 20,000 responses were usable for this set of analyses. The paper, published by Drs. Tatyana Deryugina, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna E. Stearns, finds that many of academia’s gender inequities that predated COVID-19 have been exacerbated. The authors also find new imbalances that disproportionately affect women. 

For example, before the onset of the virus, women reported spending about 30 fewer minutes on research per day than did men. Women also reported that they spent 20 more minutes on other job responsibilities and 40 more minutes on childcare per day. In a profession where research productivity is the key to job security and better wages, lost research productivity is a professional risk. It is well-established that women tend to be asked to carry out a disproportionate number of service obligations in their faculty roles and, moreover, that pre-tenure faculty and women of color tend to carry the heaviest service loads. These additional, assigned responsibilities may account, in part, for the imbalance of time spent on research. In turn, and under the best of circumstances, women are less likely to reach the highest ranks of the faculty. The data bear this out: pre-COVID, only about a third of full professors (the highest rank) in the US were women.

Time use has changed dramatically for all parent faculty members but the losses are particularly acute for women. Female parent professors lost about 90 minutes of research per day, compared to about 30 minutes daily lost by male parent professors. Male and female parents of children younger than seven years old lost time, but women lost 120 minutes on average daily while men lost 90 minutes. Many universities and IHEs have offered tenure clock extensions, and more women (18%) than men (14%) have reported that they plan to opt in to those extensions. Once again, this means further delays in salary bumps and job security for women who are currently redirecting much of their time to care responsibilities and housekeeping. 

Kim Hooper recently said in a Scary Mommy article: “It goes without saying that a global pandemic would have an inevitably catastrophic impact on the economy. What should not be inevitable is the catastrophic impact on women.” Women have, for decades, been made to choose between careers and families because systemic biases, low-wage jobs, and workplace discrimination tend to work against equity for women in workplaces. The findings reported by Deryugina, Shurchkov, and Stearns are just another example of contemporary factors that amplify an old problem. Hooper warns that the pandemic may have set us back 60 years in terms of equity gains for women in workplaces. 

Nevertheless, some organizations are taking steps to account for women’s unique situations and to protect their trajectories toward tenure and long-term career stability. Those might include reconfiguring promotion standards, creative arrangements between education students and faculty members’ own children (as in the case of Barnard College), or relocating service assignments to tenured faculty members. Long-term, however, the pandemic will require us all to think about how policies around work hours, flexibility, child care, and leave either help or harm women’s careers. 

In a recent report, CNN details the ups and downs of the economy and specifically of the December 2020 jobs report. While they suggest that December is always subject to some seasonal variation, the end of 2020 brought more devastation for many working women. Women actually lost 156,000 jobs, while men gained 16,000. This means that the economy as a whole lost 140,000 and every last one was a job previously held by a woman. In the last year, women have lost 5.4 million jobs compared to 4.4 million losses for men. This is a monumental job loss in the total economy, but women have borne the brunt of the unemployment crisis. Moreover, this means that they will have more challenges when the workforce expands again—they will have been out of work and losing time and experience in the interim months (or years).

At the beginning of 2020, there was relative equality between men and women in job holding: women held 50.03% of all jobs just 12 months ago. Now, they trail men by 860,000 jobs. Moreover, Black and Latina women disproportionately work in hourly, part-time, low-wage, and minimum benefit positions, so they were hit even harder than White women in the last quarter of 2020.

I (Lauren) have seen these numbers play out in the real lives of my friends and colleagues. Their stories comprise only a small set of anecdotes, but those are still meaningful. Some of my friends are leaving education after lengthy careers because their schools have failed to treat them fairly. Some of my university and faculty colleagues fear for their long-term employment prospects because their care and homeschooling responsibilities have slowed their research productivity. Many members of the custodial and facilities staffs on my campus were laid off or took major pay cuts—and many of those individuals were women and women of color.

Taken together, these numbers are further evidence of what we’ve known for a very long time: working women shoulder a disproportionate amount of home and care tasks, tend to work in more part-time positions, and are more prone to job change or loss when economic shocks occur. While there will be a lot of immediate repair needed and a lot of training and assistance to get women back to work (should they want to return), there is some good news. There are practical and policy solutions for the failures we see manifested in the recent job reports. We need comprehensive child care and paid parent leave policies, especially in times of crisis. All employees should make a living wage and be afforded sick time, and those in high-risk or frontline positions should make hazard pay. Finally, we need a program of training and on-ramps for Black and Latina women so that they can recover the professional ground lost to them over the past ten months.

At AEC, we advocate for policy change—like comprehensive child care, paid parental leave, and inclusive hiring policies—and help you to do the same. If you want help strategizing about solutions for diversity in your workforce, let us know how we can help you.

First of all, let me start by telling you a little but about who we are. Dr. Lauren Bailes and I (Dr. Amy Schrepfer-Tarter) both have PhDs in Educational Policy and Leadership from Ohio State University. Lauren is currently a faculty member at the University of Delaware and I teach at a public high school in Massachusetts. We both have experience as public school teachers, a strong knowledge of the research that supports best practices in school leadership, and a longstanding interest in gender equity in education and improving the climate and culture of schools. Lastly, we both are deeply devoted to the idea that meaningful professional development must be actionable and specific. Our belief in the importance of gender equity in education is the foundation of Aequitas Educational Consulting.

AEC offers different kinds of analysis and professional development, depending on what your district or school is looking for. We know that professional development time and money are both precious and limited resources, so we offer each of these services à la carte but we can also build a package tailored specifically to meet the needs of your school, district, or organization.

So what can we do for you?

Policy and Document Analysis and Consulting

We know that there are lots of school policies that can promote or detract from gender equity in schools, especially around topics like dress code, disciplinary regulations, and attendance policies. We will do an analysis of your handbook to highlight areas where you can improve policies and offer you a series of practical benchmarks so that your school becomes a fairer, more equitable place for everyone.

School Climate Analysis

We know that lasting changes around equity in schools must be supported by trusting, efficacious, and academically focused school climates. Using the Hoy & Tarter measure of Academic Optimism in Schools, we can help you identify areas for improvement in school culture and give you strategies to strengthen your climate to help support your faculty as they tackle important conversations around equity.

Analysis of Gender Equity in Curriculum

We know that there are many curricular choices that can help or hinder educators on the road to achieving gender equity in your school. We can work with your teachers to assist them in modifying their curricula so that they are more representative and inclusive of all gender identities and voices.

Analysis of Interview & Hiring Practices

We know that there are lots of ways that interview practices and hiring norms can lead to greater or lesser levels of gender disparity, particularly in school leadership. We can work with your leadership or hiring teams to evaluate what changes can be made to your hiring practices in order to actively counter the gender disparities present in the school leadership pipeline.

These are just a few of the services that AEC can provide for your district. We are already working with a great group of educators and would love to work with you in 2021 or 2022. Want to find out more? Check out this link for more information and reach out to us with any questions. We can’t wait to talk to you!

We’ve become remote teachers, homebodies, and armchair epidemiologists. We’ve learned to double-check whether we’re muted, disinfected our groceries, and cancelled time with loved ones. We’ve found creative ways to support students, attended Zoom weddings and birthday parties, and learned which masks we like the best. We feel fortunate that we have remained healthy and are sending you and your friends and families lots of good thoughts for health in the coming year. Basically, it has been a really hard year. We know that things will continue to be challenging in 2021, but one thing that will change for the better is that we are back in action!

In 2021, we will continue tackling tough issues around gender disparity in curriculum, assessment, and policy in schools and will be able to bring remote professional development opportunities to a school or district near you. We have a lot of different services, depending on what your district’s needs are. If you are interested in doing document analysis, policy analysis, or professional development around gender disparity in your school, please reach out to us. We are looking forward to working with you in 2021!

In the meantime, please consider reading our earlier articles or sending a suggestion or two for things you'd like to see here. We hope that you will get some rest and have time to recuperate this summer. See you soon.

- Lauren and Amy