Building a Racial Equity Office to Give All Students a Path Toward Success

If we’re going to give all students the experiences, support, and structures to ensure their success, we need to make sure that each individual student has what they need to thrive. Schools, systems, and communities must work together to mobilize the right combination of resources: a combination that creates high-quality learning experiences and outcomes for all students and ensures that race is no longer predictive of a student’s life trajectory. As Harvard professor Dr. Irvin Scott says, this work can start with leaders in education who are committed to actively changing the structural and systemic inequities in schools and school systems.

In 2017, the Dallas ISD Board took a big step. It unanimously passed a Racial Equity Resolution and Policy and established the Racial Equity Office (REO). The policy charges the REO to create high-quality learning experiences for all students by focusing explicitly on African Americans and English language learners, the two student groups that Dallas ISD’s data had made clear needed a different combination of resources than what they currently had. This demonstrated a commitment to the hard, necessary work of education resource equity—and in the years since, Dallas ISD’s REO has become a role model for districts across the nation.

• Equity and excellence. There needs to be a shared understanding around why resource equity is central to creating excellent education for all students—and why some students have additional needs and therefore need additional resources.  
• Shared responsibility and joint accountability. District equity leaders must instill a systemwide culture of shared responsibility and joint accountability.  
• Continuous improvement. No one’s going to get this work right on the first try—but we need to start somewhere, which means that creating a culture of continuous improvement around equity work is critical.

Every district or organization considering its own REO will enter this work with a different context. Dallas ISD started with these six critical phases to organize the thinking and set itself up for continued success. Districts can follow these steps to help prepare for the critical racial equity work required. 

• Phase 1: Establish a policy. Consider how you can create an environment in which the right people actually have the power to make decisions and shift resources as needed. 
• Phase 2: Identify the team. You’ll need to figure out who the right person is to lead the work and who else will be on their team. Think about the district context, existing talent, and potential talent pool, to determine whether it makes sense to promote from within or search externally.