Leadership Project

The classes a school offers determines the experience students will have both in high school and beyond. Although class offerings are part of the school's system or infrastructure, they often go unexamined because they seem set in place. However, class choices and enrollment that are striving to create equitable experiences at our school should be intentionally curated to provide all students equal chances of feeling successful as scholars and to have an equal chance of getting into college. At Environmental Charter High School (ECHS), the science course offerings have not changed much since the school’s inception in 2001. Data from the last three years indicate that African American students have lower enrollment and find less success in our two advanced science courses. These equity gaps point towards varying opportunities for our African American students compared to other race and ethnic groups in terms of college readiness and how they experience science at our school site. The literature suggests that when examining our science coursework vertical alignment we should find new ways of enrolling students into these courses, ways that encourage rather than deflect participation. Inviting parents and students to information sessions about AP courses early in their high school experience and giving them a say in what courses to offer can produce more buy in. In addition, we need to examine what we are doing pedagogically that might give students a lack of belonging in these courses.

My goals for this project were to engage the science department along with Black students in an examination of the access and success of our advanced science courses (Physics and Advanced Placement Environmental Science) for Black students at ECHS. We will start with both quantitative data for the last six years and qualitative data from interviews with students and counselors regarding these two courses. We met on Monday every two weeks since December 2020. The team set research norms using scholarly articles, completed a causal analysis, collected student survey data, reflected pedagogically on our own anti-blackness, presented course information in parent meetings, and made recommendations for changes and support we need in our department for the 2021-2022 school year. I have been part of the science department for the past six years, first as the Environmental Science teacher, then as an instructional coach, and currently support this team in my new role as the Environmental Leader. My role was to help co-facilitate these meetings, gather resources, and bring in other stakeholders when needed. My goals for this project were to increase the accessibility of our two advanced science courses and to change them if necessary so that all of our students and our Black students in particular could take more science courses and find success in them. Data that can serve as evidence for these changes will not be available until the Fall of 2021 but we did collect enough data to determine that changes were necessary.

Based on the California Dashboard data, Environmental Charter High School has a good rate of supporting students to be college-ready for the overall population. However, for the last two years a lower amount of African American students at our school have obtained college readiness. I chose to look at passage rate and grades of all our science courses for Black students to see in which courses we have more students succeeding and failing. I made that decision for B or better because GPA affects college eligibility so most students attending notable universities need to have grade point averages above a 3.0. This means that for Physics over 70% of our Black students received a C or F for six semesters straight. The Advanced Placement Environmental Science course only had three semesters of lower academic success but the enrollment is so low that the problem becomes compounded. Based on the analysis of the quantitative data, the two advanced science courses offered at our school have lower academic success for our Black students. In addition, the APES course (the only science advanced placement course we offer) in particular also has very low enrollment.

I started collecting qualitative data by conducting an empathy interview with the Dean of Students (previously Lead Counselor) who has noticed equity issues in the Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES) and Physics courses for several years. She mentioned that there are always about 15-20 students out of 130 seniors that cannot take the Physics course. Several senior students cannot access the course because they failed a math class a previous year so are either making up the math course or taking a remedial math class instead of Physics. The counselor also mentioned teaching methods in that class that were not culturally responsive. This included having a confusing grading system and having a high emphasis on math rather than connecting Physics to other content or students skills. In another interview (with the Lead Counselor) she emphasized that a lot of the decisions made by the counseling team is around getting students the best GPA rather than on students interests or access to all classes. She also emphasized how difficult it is to get students to take the class and believes it should be promoted the way the history department promotes their AP courses.

For APES, course capacity is only 30-60 students depending on the number of sections, which is dependent on interest from students the previous school year. Enrollment is voluntary, dependent on teacher referrals, and requires a significant amount of summer work. It should also be noted that it is also our only AP science option. They also mentioned that the support for the class came from the teacher. They helped students who came to tutoring and would have study sessions for students. In addition she added that some students are discouraged from taking Physics and APES if other courses may be easier to pass. When diving into the data we found that the pattern regarding low success in Physics and APES was not just for our Black students but also true for our Hispanic and mixed students.

In an opening activity with the science department, we used Jamboard to have teachers share what they saw as issues of equity and inaccessibility in the science department. Three out of five members of the science department do recognize the impact of math tracking as an equity issue in its relation to our Physics course. Math skills also came for student’s ability to do other science practices. Teachers have several other concerns regarding equity including quality and quantity of lab equipment in classes and lack of choice in science courses. There was also mention by two teachers around pedagogy such as how we measure success, how we integrate student’s knowledge/experience into our courses, and how we support students when they have difficulty.

In the student interview, she shared insight into why students take the APES course. She said that she took it because of the grade point average not because of interest. She was encouraged by a counselor and her mother to take it and both felt she was capable of doing it. She remembers having students visit her Biology class and announcing the class and their experience in it but she also heard them say that it is too difficult to take along with another Advanced Placement class so she wasn’t going to take it. The APES course was of high difficulty for her and she felt that most students were not prepared for the amount of work and would give up. She mentioned the only parts that were relatable were the Environmental Racism unit but that the teacher would sometimes seem to blame poor people for problems she found to be a reflection of the teacher’s lack of connection to the students. For Physics she emphasized how students in lower math courses than hers were really struggling and found the class difficult. She felt the teacher should teach the math concepts to make it easier on students and at the same time said students hate Physics because it is too much like math and the students hate math. Finally she also gave insight on support. Much of the support is students getting to the teachers office or tutoring hours. She felt that having space for student study groups might be better because it is easier to tell friends you do not understand something rather than the teacher, especially if they just explained it to you.

From these initial data, four patterns emerged related to the equity gap at ECHS. These can be summarized as minimal efforts in the recruitment and enrollment process, offering a math-centered Physics course rather than a conceptual one, the lack of culturally responsive teaching in advanced science courses, and lack of support while students are in these courses. The team moved on to causal analysis to make more sense of this data. The causal analysis led to more data collection but that is where we encountered some challenges.

In order to do causal analysis the team decided to use a fish diagram. The fish diagram revealed the collective thinking around what was causing our access and achievement problem. We decided to choose a branch to confront for this semester. We voted on it and it was decided that student input for courses was the root cause we would focus on for the lack of access and achievement in the two advanced science courses.

This led us to conduct a survey for students and parents regarding course selection. We found that overwhelmingly all students shared that they had low interest in the two advanced science courses we offer and preferred courses such as Computer Science and Anatomy and Physiology over Physics and AP Environmental Science. In our parent survey, the parents seemed to trust our course offerings and did not push for any changes. A challenge we felt emerged was that we did not pick the right casual factor to further interrogate. We began questioning whether the surveys we created were valid and fair. The school has very limited capacity in terms of courses we can add because of the low number of classrooms; there are never any free classrooms on our campus, so adding a course requires removing one. It felt unfair to provide the students with so many choices when we knew we could perhaps only add one more choice given the circumstances. There are also credentialing constraints with our current staff. When the students choices do not reflect the staff’s skills then this means we need to hire different people. The last challenge is not knowing the scheduling for the Fall, due to the pandemic. Usually the student take 7 courses per semester, during distance learning the students only took 6. This really altered the number of students taking advanced science courses. Thus adding choice for the next semester will require waiting to see how the schedule pans out in the Fall.

Another challenge was trying to address our instructional practices while also doing the other parts of our research project. We truly believe that addressing anti-blackness in our curriculum and in our teaching is a fundamental part of better serving our Black students; therefore we were not willing to let this piece go. However it was hard to transition between the two activities and sometimes left gaps in each of them. In addition the spring presented a lot of scheduling conflicts where holidays replaced Monday meetings and we couldn’t do as much research and collective planning as we wanted. For example to create the student survey, because of time constraints for the other collective members, only two of the team members were able to work on it. Luckily we were all able to analyze the data together but having created the tool together would have been better for everyone to make sense of the data. Finally, another issue was deciding when to make collective decisions versus non-democratic decisions. Sometimes the team just wanted me to make decisions or at times they would request that we slow down to take our time collective. It feels easier to complete tasks as one person but I know slowing down throughout these last few months helped gain buy-in from all of the team members.

One of the success of the project is the adding a computer science course for the Fall semester. This course was one of the highest interest courses for our students. In addition we have partnered with the National Equity Lab to offer a college course in partnership with UC Davis that will provide students with another way to boost their grade point averages and have more choice. We also helped coordinate and facilitate an informational meeting for incoming 11th grade students and parents. Parents were given an overview of the science options for their students, the pros and cons of taking each course, and the supports students would need from their families and the supports they would have in school. Another success was building relationships with math department regarding this equity issue and with the county science coordinator who is now offering support.

Our next steps include; introduce more supports for next semester, continue collecting data on student success in these courses, offer more after school science options for the next school year, research other school science programming, begin to make overall course changes for the 2022-2023 school year (which include teaching conceptual Physics), and continue reflecting on our own white supremacy/anti-blackness as teachers.

As someone who grew up in a Black and Brown neighborhood with schools that were under-resourced, I did not have strong science instruction. My goal has always been to expose students to a science curriculum that not only helps them understand the world better, but also allows them to see themselves as a scientist; not make them feel like science is not for them. I think that I wanted to look at our science course data because based on conversations with students I know in my heart they are not having the best experience with science at our school. Knowing that a lot of our immigrant parents and working parents, like my parents, do not often question our course offerings, I think an analysis of course offerings every couple years is necessary in order to look for equity gaps. As someone who sees themselves in solidarity with the Black community I centered Black students because as their numbers get smaller at our school we tend to focus our conversations and strategies around their success a lot less. As a leader this has moved me to have a sense of urgency and interested in doing research to find programming that is better for all of our students. I want to know what other schools are doing and offering when they have a similar demographic to ours. I want to do right by our students who want to use college as a way to get out of poverty like I did. I also want to do right by the students who love science but are systemically left out of certain courses. Offering science courses that they have access to and can achieve in is the best way we can prepare them to prosper in college and to provide accessible choice. As a student who was tracked throughout my early school years, it is important for me to provide all students access and support to all opportunities offered at the school.

The skills I depended on most were my facilitation skills, my community building skills, my analytical skills, and adapting the tools I used in our research course. For facilitation, I made sure that all voices were included and participated. I made sure to collectively construct and use norms both for meeting and for research. We had community building at every meeting which really helped us feel connected especially for the new teacher who had never met us in person. I used articles that we analyzed in PLI in order to support the research we were doing collectively. I also asked for support from our data person at school and our instructional coach in order to analyze the large amounts of quantitative data for the last six years. Finally I used the “Plan, Develop, Study, and Act” cycle we used in our research class in order to do collective inquiry and find a focus for our research.

My vision for curriculum and instruction as a social justice leader is informed by various theories and pedagogies that have helped me understand my role as an educator and as a person who sees herself as marginalized and in solidarity with other oppressed peoples. These theories and pedagogies include but are not limited to; critical race theory, culturally sustaining pedagogy, ethnic studies pedagogy, and abolition. School leaders need to be reflective and transparent about better understanding and centering “issues of equity, diversity, social justice and oppression” (Kose, 2010, p.2). In addition, since schools have been part of reproducing systems of oppression, it is the responsibility of a transformative leader to counter this oppression (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016, p. 1275). This will require an equity driven and anti-oppression vision, a learning theory that challenges teachers to diffuse power in the school and classroom, and coherent practices across the school community that are sustainable.

Thinking forward feels unproductive at times due to the uncertainty of how we will return in the Fall. If things continue improving and our students and their families are safe, my hope is that we return ready to process our own grief, anxiety, uncertainty, and disillusionment alongside our students. At the same time I hope we come back ready to rebuild our relationships through authentic community building embedded into everything we do as a school. This will require training of teachers and students on how to process our feelings while also trying to get work done to move forward towards our goals. This means we also talk to students and families about their lived reality so we can respond with the right interventions and not what we think our families need. We can also stay in touch with organizations in the community to see what data we can learn from, and support for families already exists.

More specifically related to what I have learned from my project, I hope that we come back ready to listen for the ways our students' interests and goals have changed over the past year and a half. I hope to push for changes in infrastructure, schedules, and courses so that what we offer better reflect the opportunities our students want to pursue and that we can better support them.

Our work on white supremacy and anti-blackness in our instruction and school practices needs to also continue as we grow alongside the social movements that are continuing to push for systemic change in our communities. This also means I will continue to be a scholar using a critical race lens that not only finds equity gaps but finds creative solutions for how we can improve the school experience for all students.

In order to make this work more sustainable I want to help create wrap-around services that are not just the responsibility of the school personnel but can be part of a community school model. Maier et.al explain that the community schools approach is “grounded in principle that all students, families, and communities benefit from strong connections between educators and local resources, supports, and people” (2012, p. 19). Community schools thrive by bringing in “local assets and talents” to address conditions “outside of the school [that] must be improved for educational outcomes to improve” (Maier, 2012, p. 19). Having the school infrastructure include family services means that it does not all fall on my shoulders, there are personnel in place to think through services.

To better engage families, attempts to build relationships need to go beyond coffee with the principal. As social justice leader I can attend local festivities and events, be visible and available when students are picked up and dropped off, make home visits when students or families need more support, and if possible live within the school community. Just as important will be creating spaces during the school day where parents can participate in the activities of the school and get to know each other and teachers better. Finally having events where families feel like they can come and bring all of their children will make these spaces more accessible.