Fake Equity — or 'Cosmequity' — Is Just PR, Not Real Improvement
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the difference between genuine equity efforts and cosmetic equity that looks good on paper but doesn't actually help students.
Key Takeaways
- Cosmequity is PR, not progress - Many equity initiatives focus on appearances rather than meaningful changes for students
- Lowering standards isn't equity - True equity means providing support to meet high standards, not eliminating the standards
- Students deserve real improvement - Superficial equity efforts waste resources and betray the students they claim to help
Transcript
What is with the fake equity stuff?
This really bothers me that time after time, districts will do things that purport to promote equity, but really don't do anything to help students.
And equity is just a branding exercise, right?
Like instead of working to improve school climate and behavior, we just cut down on suspensions by banning them.
Or instead of working to improve student learning and academic achievement, We just improve grades, the statistics, by banning any grade lower than a zero.
These are moves that are made in the name of equity, but it's fake equity.
It's what my friend Ken Williams would call cosmequity, cosmetic equity, in his book Ruthless Equity, which I was happy to endorse.
This is just an excellent book on actually promoting equity.
I think we just have to push back against these approaches to equity that are transparently all about branding.
It's just about making us look good.
It's not about helping our students do any better.
And ultimately, any effort to promote equity has to actually benefit students.
It can't just be better statistics.
It can't just be good PR for the district.
And this makes me so angry that so much money is being spent on things that if we were to study them carefully, I think we would find actually make learning worse, right?
Like, I'm pretty sure if you did a rigorous study, which would be difficult, of the effects of these policies like no grade below a 50, I'm pretty sure you would find that they have a negative impact on student learning.
But because they're good PR, it's good branding, it's good for the district to be able to say, hey, failures are down, more of our students are passing, more of our students are graduating, And districts know it'll be a long time before anybody catches them in the lie that has occurred there, right?
Like if we're graduating students who don't know anything, who can't read, who can't do basic math, it's going to be a long time before we can kind of figure that out and catch it and hold people accountable.
It's easy for people to get away with marketing around equity in the short term.
And I think one of the things we have to do as a society is just not fall for it, right?
We have to not put short-term pressure on people through quantitative accountability targets.
Campbell's Law tells us People are going to respond this way if we emphasize those quantitative targets too much.
Like, it is hard to move the needle on any, you know, entrenched kind of number, right?
Like, real-world change is hard, and we need to be both urgent and persistent in our pressure for that improvement, but we also need to not be suckers.
We need to not be fooled by fake equity that is just branding.
So check out Ken Williams' book, Ruthless Equity, if you want a really good take on equity.
Highly recommend that.
Available wherever books are sold.