East Penn Definition of Equity
Equity in education means that opportunities are differentiated to ensure all students have access to the resources, programs, and experiences that they need to feel safe and supported. In East Penn we believe in removing barriers to learning and commit to fairly distributing access, opportunity, and participation.
We use four frames to examine situations from an equity lens: structural, societal, socio-economic, and cultural.
Structural
We remove barriers to educational opportunities that exist due to organizational structures or practices by ensuring concerted efforts are made to provide access for underrepresented groups to learn alongside their peers in classrooms with appropriately designed rigorous programs that meet individual needs.
Societal
We remove barriers to educational opportunities that exist due to disadvantages caused by pre-existing prejudice in society, based on both conscious and unconscious bias, related to students’ membership in one or more underrepresented groups by broadening access to engaging and challenging curriculum and instruction backed by high teacher expectations for performance.
Socio-economic
We remove barriers to educational opportunities that exist due to students’ economic status by ensuring they have advocates on a personal and systems level.
Cultural
We remove barriers to educational opportunities that exist due to students’ cultural backgrounds by incorporating the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds in our materials and resources.
