Rina Simmons

Literacy Intervention Specialist, Acacia Middle School (2023)

Hemet Unified School District

How do you define educational equity?

I feel fortunate that I have an answer to this question because I have been lucky enough to be around leadership who made it a point to define it for me. When I started in education, I kept hearing that we had to treat students “equally.” That was the word that was being pushed around and in my first couple of years teaching, I saw nothing wrong with that. That is, until an Assistant Principal my third year of teaching laid it out for us and I now have an understanding of equity because of her.

I define educational equity as giving our students not all the same things to be successful, but giving all of our students what they individually need to be successful. For example, I can give all of my students the same copy of a novel we are reading. That is equality, but not equity. Equity is considering I have many different minds in my class and not all of them will have the same access to a quality education just by giving them all the same book. Some students may need a translated copy of the book; others may need assistive technology to work independently. Some students will be able to work with the material easily and without assistance while others may need intervention to gain the reading skills to even begin to decode the book.

Equity is meeting students where they are and giving them what they need, as an individual, to be successful. Equality is a facade to simulate that we are providing equal opportunities to our students; equity is actually putting that idea into practice.