Equity in Curriculum and Instruction

 Curricular resources, including the selection and adoption of new instructional materials and textbooks, are reviewed to ensure that they not only meet academic standards, but that they are representative of a diverse group of students and diverse perspectives. Our Language Arts curriculum reading selections, from kindergarten through grade 12, are chosen to ensure that illustrations, themes, titles, and subjects are representative of a diverse group of characters and authors. Work is currently ongoing in the revision of the K-12 social studies curriculum that includes an examination of the Social Justice Standards created through Learning for Justice, an organization whose mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy, and which emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action. As curriculum continues to be revised and developed, the Social Justice Standards are a critical thread running through the identification of state standards and content to be mastered. Similarly, the recently revised Health curriculum was extensively reviewed to ensure inclusion of current topics of interest, including gender identity.

In addition to work in curriculum, instructional work is centered on the use of data to help inform instructional practices. Disaggregated data will be reviewed to support the equity work. Recent work has focused on areas such as the examination of data to decrease course failure rates at the high school, to increase student academic performance through unrestricted access to Honors and Advanced Placement coursework, to reduce disciplinary and behavioral incidents, including suspensions, at the middle school, and to improve performance in math and language arts at the elementary schools.