ROANOKE, VA. – Roanoke City Public Schools is launching a new way of measuring student success, Equity 2.0.
At Tuesday night’s school board meeting, members focused on making a level playing field.
Superintendent Verletta White said transitioning to this new measurement system is the future.
“Making sure that students are reflected in our curriculum, making sure that we have diversity in our teaching ranks and making sure that we have transparency in that process as well,” explained White.
The school board presented the annual equity report, which looks different this year because of the pandemic.
Equity 2.0 builds upon years of previous work and means a more comprehensive equality dashboard in the future, rather than a scorecard.
“It’s just beyond equality, but it’s really getting to equity to make sure that students get exactly what they need and so the metrics will go along with that in terms of instruction, curriculum, the professional development that we offer our teachers,” said White.
There are five target areas:
- Reflection
- Responsiveness
- Leadership
- Curriculum reframing
- Engagement
White said getting all the data out will help them make the best decisions.
“We have to make sure that we’re thoughtful, that we are methodical about thinking through where we’d like to see increased diversity, where we would like to see increases in equity,” White said.
The dashboard will go live this summer, be publically available and help shape the upcoming strategic plan too.
“When we’re talking about educating children, all has to mean all and this is really in line with the board’s vision to make sure we’re ensuring equity across the division,” White said.