Here’s what you’ll need
Timing: ~2 hours prep, 45-90 minutes for the activity
Materials:
⇒ Poster boards, sticky notes, pens
⇒ Your YouthTruth data or any survey data with subgroups. If you don’t have your own data available, consider using any of the publicly-available data that Education Trust—West has curated on their website.
⇒ Education Trust—West’s Planning Template.
Space: A room large enough for participants to walk around (a virtual room can also work)
The Education Trust—West is the California-based office of the nationally recognized Education Trust based in Washington D.C. and works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-k through college. The organization exposes opportunity and achievement gaps that separate students of color and low-income students from other youth, and identifies and advocates for the strategies that will forever close those gaps. Learn more about The Education Trust—West at www.west.edtrust.org.
Prepare your data
⇒ Select your data: Consider using survey data disaggregated by grade-level, race/ethnicity, gender identity, etc.
⇒ Select your subgroups and themes: After deciding which broad audience to explore, think about which segments, and within which themes you want to include. For example, high school girls’ perception of rigor in their math classes could be an area of inquiry. Or, perhaps you’ll look at parent feedback on communication disaggregated by household income or level of education.
⇒ Create your posters: Either prepare your slides to print as posters or sketch out the data onto large poster boards using markers. If using YouthTruth data, consider copying and pasting screenshots of your disaggregated data directly from your reports.
Facilitate your Data Equity Walk!
Use Education Trust—West’s Facilitation Guide, which outlines in more detail the following steps:
1) Introduce the exercise: “This is an opportunity to observe, become familiar with, and reflect on data that affects our students.”
2) Data Equity Walk, round 1 (20 minutes): “Please walk around the room and observe each chart and the data it shows. As you take this first walk, use the sticky notes to write down and post your reactions to the data as you see.”
Read the guiding question out loud before participants walk the room:
⇒ What are your general reactions to the data? What questions do these data raise for you? What’s the story behind the data? How does this connect to your personal experience? What further information would be helpful? What solutions can you think of to address the issues raised by these data?
3) Think-pair-share (10 minutes)
4) Large-group share (25 minutes)
5) Closing/Call to Action (5 min): Thank the group for their participation, discuss implications for the work going forward (see additional call to action examples in the Facilitation Guide).
For more tools to help facilitate your own Data Equity Walk, visit the Education Trust—West’s webpage.