Introducing: Equitable Classrooms
Equity has been an aspiration of public education in this country since the earliest school segregation cases in the 1780s. Educators and civil rights groups have struggled for equity for generations since. In 2020, the challenges our students face in virtual learning have exacerbated the need to address equity in meaningful, lasting ways.
Edtech platforms typically provide data about student log-ins and online activity to show “engagement.” Analytics from Equitable Classrooms reveal what is actually happening in classrooms, making it the strongest source of visibility into how engaged students are in their learning.
TeachFX was founded on the belief that equity starts in the classroom. In this tumultuous year, our experiences working with teachers, principals, and district leaders across the country have propelled us to build a brand new product — one that gives districts unprecedented visibility into classroom equity.
It’s called Equitable Classrooms. Quite simply, Equitable Classrooms measures equity of voice in your classrooms.
We know from five decades of research that an individual student’s rate of classroom talk drives his or her learning gains because student talk facilitates learning. But the lack of equitable opportunities to speak in the classroom creates inequitable learning outcomes — as Rachel Lotan puts it in Teaching Teachers to Build Equitable Classrooms: “Because those who participate more learn more, the gap in levels of participation contributes to the widening of the learning gap.”
“Because those who participate more learn more, the gap in levels of participation contributes to the widening of the learning gap.”
What is Equitable Classrooms?
Equitable Classrooms helps leaders understand the equity of voice in every classroom in your school or district with precise data, presented in vivid and clear visualizations, about how engaged every single student is.
Our vision with Equitable Classrooms is to empower leaders to effect change for our students most in need.
With Equitable Classrooms, districts can understand, across subjects and grade levels, which students and which subgroups are getting opportunities to speak and, hence, to learn.
To address issues of equity in education, we’ve spent years looking at standardized test scores, access to advanced or AP coursework, SAT preparation and testing rates, college admission, and student discipline trends — but we’ve never before gotten this close to the source of the problem.
To show you the kind of equity reports you can generate with Equitable Classrooms, we’ve displayed below data and visualizations from one of our anonymized beta partners. Please have a look.
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Do you want Equitable Classrooms in your district?
We aspire to provide this data to all the districts striving to improve outcomes, equity, and engagement for their students. To that end, we are offering Equitable Classrooms at no cost to a limited number of school and district partners.
The first deadline to submit your one-page application is December 11th, 2020.
If you are interested in Equitable Classrooms or have questions about the product or the application, we will be holding a webinar on December 1st at 10am PT / 1pm ET; you can RSVP for the webinar here. Please also feel free to book time on my calendar. Thank you for the important work you do.