Equity, Inclusion, and Implicit Bias
Equity, Inclusion, and Implicit Bias
Career Connected Learning and Comprehensive School Counseling Programs (CSCP) are grounded in equity and ethical practice principles. Equity and ethics are foundational to the professional organizations that guide the various roles of the CSCP team members. It is imperative to address the policies, systems and practices that create barriers and perpetuate dominant culture norms. The intersection of individual identities, lived experiences, life exposures and core values are very much a part of how a person perceives the world around them. This means that it is essential for those delivering comprehensive school counseling and/or career connected learning program services to continue to explore and self-reflect to build awareness and understanding of one’s identities and learn ways to recognize and address their biases. Identities can hold power; therefore, it is important to be aware of when biases show up and then intentionally work to minimize how one’s positionality and privilege can impact their interpretations, interactions, decisions, and actions. How adults show up in this work matters.
ODE Education Equity Stance
The Oregon Department of Education adopted the Education Equity Stance to clearly articulate shared goals and the intentional investments that will support an equitable educational system, and create clear accountability structures. Education equity is the equitable implementation of policy, practices, procedures, and legislation that translates into resource allocation, education rigor, and opportunities for historically and currently marginalized youth, students, and families including civil rights protected classes. This means the restructuring and dismantling of systems and institutions that create the dichotomy of beneficiaries and the oppressed and marginalized.
For more information, visit the Oregon Department of Education Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion webpage to find resources to support your work with different student populations. You will also want to make use of this resource DACAmented/Undocumented Toolkit.
You can also participate in the Engaging Equity professional learning series which provides Oregon educators with a comprehensive set of learning experiences that build their critical equity skills and competencies for supporting culturally responsive and sustaining education in a purposeful way.
Advance CTE’s Statement on Equity in Career Technical Education
Historically, Career Technical Education (CTE)—once called vocational education—was an alternative educational option for learners who were considered non-college bound. A disproportionate number of low-income learners, learners of color, learners with disabilities, female learners and other historically-marginalized populations were often “tracked” into terminal vocational programs that denied their full potential and left them with limited opportunity.
Today, the quality of CTE has vastly improved, making it a preferred path for many secondary and postsecondary learners. Yet even today, many learners do not have access to high-quality programs of study in their communities. The same systemic barriers that contributed to tracking in the 20th century—implicit and overt biases, resource inequity, school segregation—result in [cumulative and complex inequities still impacting vulnerable and marginalized populations.]
[School] leaders have a critical responsibility to ensure each learner has opportunities for career success and is supported in identifying and realizing [their]goals. [School] leaders must identify and dismantle historical barriers and construct systems that support each learner in accessing, feeling welcome in, fully participating in and successfully completing a high-quality CTE program of study. This means leveraging data to identify and address equity gaps, building trust with historically-marginalized communities, establishing feedback loops to ensure each voice is heard, allocating resources appropriately to expand access to high-quality CTE, and putting measures in place to support each learner to achieve success.
Once the right systems are in place, CTE can be a powerful tool for closing achievement and opportunity gaps. High-quality CTE programs of study can prepare each learner to earn a credential of value that enables [them] to achieve economic and social mobility, obtain employment in a career of choice with family-sustaining wages, and access opportunities for advancement and lifelong learning. It is only through such an intentional focus on equity that states will be able to truly put learner success first.
Implicit Bias
Your team will also want to help staff throughout the district understand how implicit bias can affect how we all might function in our counseling, teaching, advising, and CCL partners’ work with students.
The American Psychological Association has this definition of implicit bias on its website:
Implicit bias, also known as implicit prejudice or implicit attitude, is a negative attitude, of which one is not consciously aware, against a specific social group.
Implicit bias is thought to be shaped by experience and based on learned associations between particular qualities and social categories, including race and/or gender. Individuals’ perceptions and behaviors can be influenced by the implicit biases they hold, even if they are unaware they hold such biases. Implicit bias is an aspect of implicit social cognition: the phenomenon that perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypes can operate prior to conscious intention or endorsement.
Among the resources your team can utilize in sharing information about implicit bias is this Implicit Bias Video Series. There are seven videos in the series and each video is 3-5 minutes in length.
Section 6 of this guide provides more details on the potential bias and ethical use of aptitude testing.
Your team is invited to adopt an Equity Stance statement to accompany your Beliefs, Vision, and Mission Statements. Neither the ASCA National Model nor the Oregon Framework currently address the importance of having such a statement; however, Comprehensive School Counseling Programs such as the one in Portland Public Schools are adopting such statements:
We believe School counselors are ethically obligated to advocate for the dismantling of policies, practices, and procedures that sustain institutional racism in our schools. The power structures that perpetuate white supremacy must be challenged to truly realize equity and justice in our schools. School counselors are in a position of both servitude and leadership–we must take the lead, using data to clearly show the gaps that exist between Black students and their peers. We must actively seek out injustice and institutional racism in our schools and school counseling programs while engaging in uncomfortable courageous conversations. As the PPS COSA team, we are committed to engaging in this work side-by-side with school counselors and challenging the status quo that leaves many of our Black and Brown students behind.
Additional Equity and Inclusion Resources