Solving Disproportionality and Achieving Equity: A Leader′s Guide to Using Data to Change Hearts and Minds

I'll start with what I loved: the introduction that discusses what happened to the black teachers and students after Brown vs. Board of Education; the tools and worksheets in the last 2 chapters to support schools and districts with looking at their data before changing policies to address disproportionality. What I didn't love was the writing style of the book. It often felt like I was reading a dissertation and I would have preferred a more conversational wiring get style. I'd say the majority of the book is written in this way and causes it to feel very technical. Otherwise, I do plan to use the book for future reference when supporting schools in their disproportionality work.

This book has an obvious left wing political bias. If you lean left you will think it's great, if you're on the right you'll think it's leftist propaganda. Either way college texts should present objective non political information. This book is as far from unbiased as it gets.

This book affords us the insight into why so many systems appear to be equitable but actually don't provide the needed resources in the correct places. It is a must-read for everyone, especially educators.

Great read if you want to better understand schools

ISBN 1506311253 (Solving Disproportionality and Achieving Equity: A Leader's Guide to Using Data to Change Hearts and Minds, 1st ed.) is intended to show to educators and seeking solutions policy makers how a lack of proportionality manifests and could be thoughtfully addressed alleviating complex issues of students of color, e.g. that African American students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled.The content on its 248+XVI pages is clearly divided into "Introduction", 5 chapters, 23 appendices, "References", and "Index". Each chapter represents a topic clearly divided into sub-chapters, which contain analysis and solutions listed under vignettes, activities, case studies, steps, causes, exercises, activities, etc. The topic text incorporates graphs, tables, lists, and schematics. After the initial reading, it can be used for studying just particular aspects, just of specific analysis or solutions, or warming up.The book is in black and white and 2 shades of grey. Its layout is modern, clear, and graphically advanced to emphasize most frequently sought info. The titles of chapters and sub-chapters are in a larger typeface and capitalized respectively, while those inside are boldfaced. Thus, grasping the pages at 1st glance is easy. Approx. 22 pages of the book are shown by the Amazon.com's "LOOK INSIDE!" function. What cannot be seen is that the book is well printed on good paper and the soft cover is not prone to catch fingerprints, but easily crease.

No book could live up to the ambitious title of this one. I appreciate it as yet another insightful look on issues of race and bias in education and find the ideas and supporting vignettes thought provoking. Although I am a highly analytical person, I found the analytical analyses (e.g. pages 86 through 93) both confusing and simplistic. The calculations of a risk index and risk ratio are easy to do, but the interpretations in the field I learned them in (epidemiology) required a great deal of context to see through questions of confounding and causality to get to the right interpretation. I think it is presented briefly here as to not overwhelm the reader, but that brevity may do injustice to using data properly. Perhaps this could have been two books, one covering important ideas of colorblindness, deficit-thinking, and the many other ways we as individuals, institutions, and a society fail too many of our children. Then the analytical "book" could have gone into the data along with interpretation. Not every school fits the same model and we could explore more completely some pitfalls of cursory data analysis. I could also see this book as a reference for an extended workshop or course where there is opportunity to use this book to discuss and share experiences.

A perfect education for all may be a Utopian ideal, but as a nation we must do better than we’ve been doing. The title of this book is incredibly lofty, but it also is a call to action. What’s explored here is one approach to bringing together quantitative data and qualitative vignettes in hopes of dealing with entrenched systems that prolong inequality.The perfect may well be the enemy of the good, but inability to reach perfection is no excuse for not doing better. Digging into this book and others like it can help broaden the reach of efforts for meaningful change.

I lead Professional Learning in one of the fastest growing urban school districts. As many other districts have probably experienced, we have been spinning our wheels for years trying to figure out how to solve the Opportunity Gap issues in our system. This year, we are using this amazing text as a guidebook for our Opportunity Gap work with 19 schools and counting. Dr. Fergus does as great job at setting the stage by exploring the components of a flawed educational system that led to disproportionality in the first place. He empowers readers to take action by providing step-by-step guidelines, tools, and activities. This book provides a great springboard for those who are done talking and want to start doing.