Equity in Education

Equity in education is achieved when all students have the resources they need to excel. This means providing additional attention, resources and support where historical oppression has produced the greatest gaps in outcomes. 

Put another way, equity is removing the predictability of outcomes that correlate with any social or cultural factor (e.g., race, gender, class, disability). Since the 1960s, equity in education has taken on the meaning of addressing historical inequality by providing more resources to address gaps between minoritized groups and majoritized groups.

Some students have more opportunities to engage in grade-level assignments in their classes, which means some students are having more grade-level opportunities to attend to and then encode (learn) new information.

If students, particularly students from minoritized groups,receive fewer opportunities to encode grade-level knowledge successfully, they will not learn as much as their peers who did receive opportunities, creating a “rich get richer” effect compounding over time.  This creates inequitable outcomes. 

How does having opportunities to successfully retrieve information impact equity?

When students do not receive opportunities to recall information, they are more likely to forget it. Over time they are likely to “lose” knowledge compared to those who did receive opportunities to recall information. This results in inequitable learning outcomes.