Assessing Educational Equity

When assessing educational equity, you must do a lot of documentation.  Making sure that each student’s diversity is documented and how you went about making sure that they were taught equitably.  In order for this to work you have to know the make-up of your student body.  The different schools that I have worked at have provided different data.  I did have one school that gave a list of your students that were minorities or on the free and reduced lunch.  This was one of our targeted areas for a improvement plan, so we were allowed to see who we needed to focus on.  This is the most helpful information since I can’t tell who is and who is not just by looking at them. This will also help me to know who I need to furnish a calculator or other supplies to throughout the year without the other students knowing who I gave things to.  When assessing equity you will want to use the two methods:  quantitative and qualitative.  I  am a math person so I like quantitative much better because it relies more on concrete material then qualitative in which you  may have to infer something.  No matter which you like better, you should use both methods to get better assessment results.   

Access or lack of effect culture

I feel that culture is a big issue today.  We have forced our children into a fast paced world where being good at something isn’t good enough anymore.  We are letting infants listen to Mozart to make them smarter.  Isn’t normal, well, normal anymore.  With that being said, if a child doesn’t know what an ipod, or mp3 player is, they’re not normal.  If they can’t talk about the latest playstation games, xbox or nintendo games, they are not “cool”.  Our world has become a impatient technological world and if you don’t jump on board, you may get swept away in the current.  The lack of access to digital technology will change the culture of your school.  It will deprive those students from the wealth of knowledge and the communications that are taken place online.  Students that are not being taught to use the resources online and which resources are credible, or not, then they will be already behind when they leave high school.  If they can’t use the latest technology to make powerpoints and post them to the web for clients to view or podcasts of important information that they can’t deliver face to face, they will be lost.  With more and more people using online as a meeting place, our students need to be digitally connected to know what is available and how to get our message, information, or plans out.  ( Side note:  I feel that this is what Barack Obama has on Hilary Clinton in the Election).  If you have access to the technology that is moving the world forward (or back, depending on who you are), you are in a different position than those that don’t.  You are capable of getting any information instantly or communicating with anyone all over the world instantly.  Which culture is better for American’s?  I don’t know, but I know that I like being able to look up anything that I don’t understand instantly without much trouble.  I like being able to take my college classes online so I don’t have to find a babysitter and leave my son.  I like being able to make a DVD of my picture so I can store thousands on one disk.  We are in the “information age”.    If your not informed then you are missing out.

Does Digital Technology Help (Hamper) Equity

Of course I think that it does both.  Digital technology can help and hamper equity depending on how it is used in the classroom.  If the technology being used is always used in the same way, then it will help those that like it and learn that way, but will hamper those that don’t like or learn that way.  Equity is being able to use the digital technology in the best way for your students.  A teacher can not teach in a way that every student is going to learn in their way everyday.  That is impossible, but teachers can alter their ways enough that each student is learning in their own way at least once a unit.  Solomon, p. 207 states that equity: is defined as an educational goal central to the development and maintenance of a democratic society.  That probably isn’t the idea that comes to mind when you hear equity, but it is correct.  We need to teach our students and I mean all of our students to be productive members of society.  This is the part where you have to differentiate between classes and even school districts depending on you make up of students.  If I try to go and teach in New Mexico, I will most likely have to learn Spanish and teach like I am teaching in a ESL classroom.  What I am trying to say is that Digital Technology can help all students when it is presented in their optimal way to learn.  Now, finding each students optimal learning way is, I believe impossible.