This past Tuesday, I spoke at our local school board meeting in favor of a draft Board Policy taking a proactive stance on educational equity in our system. Over the last few months, I’ve been tangentially involved with reviewing and revising this proposed policy, and as it nears final approval, I wanted to be sure to voice my position about why we need an “equity policy.”

Early on in this work, I felt that the policy was rather controversy-free. It called out the need for our system to take proactive steps to ensure equitable outcomes for all learners, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or disability. How could that raise controversy?

I learned something quickly, though: Talking equity for students with disabilities? No sweat. For kids in poverty? People are all-in. Gender? Hardly a ripple, despite the struggles many have accepting the reality that non-binary and transgender students exist.

Race? A much different story.

That we would propose a policy addressing racial equity was baffling to many people… staff and community members alike.

This was the surprise for me, though in hindsight it should not have been (more on that shortly).

A large proportion of the proposed equity policy focuses on ways to deconstruct why our system perpetually produces predictably different results for students of color. The data is clear in terms of student outcomes…whether it is positive outcomes (such as graduation rate, enrollment in AP programs, or post-secondary progress) or negative outcomes (such as exclusionary discipline or drop-out rates)… something about the way our system works isn’t getting our students of color the same results as white students.

What I assumed would not be a controversial premise (we should examine our systems to find ways to ensure that students of color are supported toward the same levels of achievement experienced by white students) turned out to be hard for some to wrap their minds around.

The responses seemed to fall into a few broad categories:

• Lack of awareness: “I didn’t think this was an issue in our school or community. I guess I just don’t see it [racism, discrimination] here.”
• The discomfort pivot: “We have such a small nonwhite population, why don’t we focus on our students in poverty or our special education students instead?” [Read: Talking about race is uncomfortable.]
• Defensiveness and denial: “We need to stop focusing on race. Talking about race causes the race problem, anyway. We had a black President after all! Racism is no longer an issue.”

All of the above seem to ignore the premise that I thought was a no-brainer: we should examine our systems to find ways to ensure that students of color are supported toward the same levels of achievement experienced by white students.

But I should have predicted those responses. All I need to do is think about my own reactions to the same concepts of equity just a few years ago.

A few years ago, I would have proposed the same solution I’m hearing now in our equity policy conversation: If the system is working for some people but not others, then the people for whom the system doesn’t work have a clear blueprint of what to do. Look at what the “successes” are doing, and just do that. It’s about personal responsibility. It’s about work ethic. People like me move through the system just fine. Upset you’re not as successful as people like me? Maybe try doing things the way I do… All people need to do is work harder…like me.

I no longer believe any of that.

It is only now, in my 40th year on this planet, that I think I’m able to wrap my head around the fact that I have experienced the world differently than others. As a white man in this country, there are countless difficult experiences I’ve never had to experience that people of other races can’t opt out of facing. The assumptions people make about me based on my race are centered more around dad jokes and innocuous memes as opposed to the unearned assumptions about violence, intellectual capacity, or criminal behavior too quickly leapt to about men of other races.

And as for school? I’ve never sat in a literature class and not seen books by or about people like me. I’ve never been the only one of my race in a classroom while students discuss situations of racism or oppression that are hypotheticals to everyone in the room except me. I’ve never had my cultural holidays treated as cute novelties or my religious traditions described every year at best as quaint myths and at worst as overgeneralized afterthoughts.

I’ve come to realize that while there are certainly aspects of public education that can be stifling to hands-on always-moving want-to-get-mud-under-my-fingernails people like me, the system is designed for people in my social position. School is designed by and large for people who look, think, and act like me.

The reality is that the way of teaching and learning that works for me isn’t the only way proven to work. However, if what has worked for me and people just like me is the only basis for way I teach, the only behavior I value and validate, and the only kind of performance I reward, I’m not opening minds but closing them. And in many cases, this means doors of opportunity get closed for students who aren’t like me just because the system is designed to value my preferences over their realities.

So what does this have to do with a school board adopting a district equity policy? What does board policy even do… I mean, really, can most of us even identify where to find our school district’s board policies, let alone know what is in them?

Whether we know the policies or not, they ultimately do influence top-level decision making, which definitely influences our work and practices.

This is what I do hope happens with our district’s equity policy: I hope it shapes the direction our leadership pushes us as classroom teachers to expand our instructional strategies beyond what works for us and people who operate like we do culturally and linguistically. I hope that the unarguable premise (that we should examine our systems to find ways to ensure that students of color are supported toward the same levels of achievement experienced by white students) crosses that line from static policy into dynamic action.

It will be uncomfortable and will likely get ugly for some people who look like me. People who look like me don’t have to talk about race. We can step out of the conversation, retreat, and whether things change won’t directly impact us or our offspring. But, if we really want to change the outcomes for our students of color, a policy is the first step, not the final one. The harder work is down the road: How do we, the white majority in this profession, talk boldly about realities of race… both to acknowledge the realities of privilege and the daily challenges students and families of color face as the result of current systems and practices?

How do we as individuals in the system change what we do in our classrooms in order to change our system’s outcomes?

That is where policy meets practice.