Defining Equity

“The route to achieving equity will not be accomplished through treating everyone equally. It will be achieved by treating everyone justly according to their circumstances.”

-Paula Dressel, Race Matters Institute

Why Should We Care about Equity?

Equity plays an important role in our lives and experiences, especially in education. In an ideal world, everyone would have the same advantages. Students would enter school ready to learn and personal and social barriers wouldn’t exist or interfere with student learning. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world where everyone has the same advantages and abilities. Some students have personal and social circumstances that interfere with their learning and other students have personal and social circumstances that make it easier for them to excel. As a result, understanding what equity is and how to create conditions for equity in your school is important.

We share care about equity because the nations demographics have changed.

• 85.7% of public school students were white in 1960
• “Today, the majority of public school students are students of color” (The National Education Statistics, 2017)
• “More than half of public school students also qualify for subsidized meals because of low family income” (Education Week, 2017; Conditions of Education, 2019)
• “In 2014, 20 percent of school-aged children were in families living in poverty, and children of color are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be poor” (Education Week, 2017)
• Black and Latino students reading scores are significantly lower than their white peers (Education Week, 2017)
• By the age of 24, students from families with high incomes are eight times more likely to have a bachelor degree (Pell Institute Indicators, 2019)

Defining Equity

“Equity is referred to as fairness,” (Glossary of Education Reform, 2014), justice, and freedom from bias. In education “equity is the process in how we ensure every child has access to a high quality education” (Cannon, N.D/ Equity Meets Education). This means ensuring that the resources, opportunities, and supports for success are based on the student's needs. When educational equity occurs, barriers such as personal and social circumstances do not interfere with students' academic achievement. These circumstances are understood and addressed to ensure the success of the student.

Equality versus Equity

Equality and equity are often used interchangeably even though they are two different concepts. This often occurs because many people believe that equity means everyone receives the same thing. This is a common error and supports the need to distinguish between the two concepts to improve equity at the school level.

Equity, as we learned earlier, is providing each student with the resources and opportunities they need to be successful. Although equality and equity are closely related, important in social justice, and deal with resources, equality is providing the same or equal resources for all. Equality is often associated with treating people the same and providing them with the same opportunities and resources.