Equality and Equity are not Equivalents: Ways to Distinguish Equity from Equality

Introduction
Equity seems to be the word on educators’ lips these days, but confusion still abounds on this concept. Conversations on equity and equality can be uncomfortable for many people, but unless we call the issue out, difficulties will persist. In the field of Educational Leadership, we often see the image of three people behind a fence to describe what equity versus equality looks like.

Two more illustrations are useful in comparing the two concepts to young kids and to adults. A TikTok video done by a third-grade schoolteacher tells how she teaches her students with Band-aids. When a little boy scrapes his elbow and gets a Band-Aid, some of the other kids bemoan how it’s not fair that they don’t get one too. She goes on to use this as a teaching moment for her students. She assigns a hypothetical scrape to the rest of the students one on a knee, one on chin, one on a hand, and she goes on to ask them if a Band-Aid for their elbow would help. The kids understand that it wouldn’t because they have different scrapes. So, they learn about providing the needed resource to each student rather than the same resource one each time. In a simple way she shows them the difference and why it matters.


One of our recent students was telling about a program he created last fall, he learned about equity with a similar example. If you give every person in the town a size 8 shoe everyone will have shoes, but some may not fit, some may be too loose, some people will not be able to walk in them, some will be too tight. But if you give everyone a shoe that fits you can make the difference in how they get by day to day. That is the difference between equality and equity.

To view, search TikTok video done by a third-grade schoolteacher
tells how she teaches her students with Band-Aids.

Educators often use the phrase “meet students where they are at,” but what does that actually mean to everyone? We cannot simply talk about implementing equitable practices in the classroom or in a lecture hall and then not consider students’ lives outside the classroom. We cannot implement equity if we do not look around us and outside our circles, to the people outside our communities, people different than us, people we are supposed to serve daily. We need to implement an equity lens across different aspects of our day and workplaces and have a commitment to this ideal.  


As we clarify these terms, it might be helpful to consider two experiences that we authors had involving equity and equality early in our education journeys.


Dr. Dawn Person
When I was in second grade, I had a teacher who valued the integration of music across the curriculum.  It was a normal practice in our classroom for me and my classmates to stand in a large circle around the room and sing to the strong handed piano playing of Mrs. C.  She loved to sing and play the piano with her students.
I was the only black child in my class and had recently moved with my family to this rural western Pennsylvania school where there were no other black children except me and my siblings for the most part, no black teachers or school leaders.  I moved from an all-black urban school where I completed kindergarten with the only black teacher I had in my life until my sophomore year of college.  


Anyway, Mrs. C decided to teach us old Negro spirituals! I knew many, but not all of these songs, from my church upbringing and spending time with a whistling grandmother.  Mrs. C said one day to our class, children, I am going to teach you old Negro Spirituals (this was in the early 60’s when Negro was still frequently used to describe Black people and this genre of music).  So, she began bellowing out the song “Old Black Joe.”  I’ll never forget it.  “Old Black Joe” was a song inspired by a fictional servant in Pittsburgh near my hometown, where Old Joe longed for his friends lost in the cotton fields.  Now, none of us in this classroom had any idea who Old Black Joe was or why his head was hanging low or why he could hear his friends calling him home.  All we knew was that Mrs. C got such joy from singing this song in a vibrant manner.  No history or context was provided for us, and the true meaning of “Old Black Joe” was lost on us and maybe Mrs. C.  I’m not sure…
We also sang the song “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” This song was familiar to me, as I sang this in church.  I knew this song was a slave song and I knew its origins and use. Mrs. C never taught us anything about these songs and frankly, I was more than a little uncomfortable singing these old Negro spirituals with a room full of white people who had no connection or understanding as to our history as Americans and the birth and purpose of these songs.  
I applaud Mrs. C for her commitment to equality of songs by exposing us as small children to different musical genres, but something was missing in this process- the opportunity to learn context and history.  She was practicing inclusion before that term was popular in education, but I must admit that her equity lens was far from developed and for a 7-year-old to try and teach others the meaning of these songs, well, it was far beyond my scope.  I felt embarrassed and just wanted these songs to end so that we could move on to another genre Mrs. C loved.  
 
Ricardo Pitones
I must have been about 11 years old when I first had to grapple with the concept of equity versus equality on my own. I grew up in Southeast LA, both my parents immigrants to the U.S., my dad a mechanic, my mom a homemaker, Spanish was our spoken language at home, and we had just enough to get by day to day.


It was the early 2000s when I started 6th grade, I was still an ELD student, we did not have a computer at home since they were still a luxury in the early 2000s, and I had gotten to the point where I was further along in school than my parents had gone to in Mexico. I would get home but there was not much support my parents could provide academically so whenever they could, they would take me to my aunt’s house who would help me with any of my English or reading heavy homework.


However, this particular year in school I had been placed in a class that in conjunction to our regular curriculum had a substantial yearlong project that included writing a 50-page report on a country, creating a model of a famous building in that country, and cooking a class of 30 students a dish from the country (up to this point I had never written anything longer than a 5 paragraph paper in school).  I’d chosen some Baltic State since I’d ended up closer to middle of the selection order and any country I had even a slight familiarity with had already been chosen. As the school year went on, I began to realize how much I was struggling to make progress on this project. Myself and other kids in the class had expressed the difficulty we were experiencing to our teacher about finding information on our respective countries to add the necessary historical information, graphs, political analysis, and cultural overviews to this report. However, she explained to us the need to treat everyone fairly and how it would not be equal treatment for everyone if some people could turn in an adjusted form of this report.


When the time came at the end of the year I worked hard to try and put everything together to the best of my ability. I was happy to be done after so much anxiety around completing it. I remember grades for this year long report were set to be given on open house and we’d finally get to know how we did that night, every report in big three ring binders and building models were displayed in her class for families to see. I remember seeing friends with grades of A, B, A+++ for those deemed to be outstanding. Then there was mine with a big C- in red and some of my other friends in the class with Ds and Fs on theirs for other parents and kids to see that night. The next day my teacher made a point to let us all know that the grade she’d assigned us was the grade we deserved and how if some of us had worked harder we would have received a better grade, one that we would have been proud of.


I think about how that was such a formative experience in my learning and how for a long time I went on to feel inadequate in so many different educational spaces because of it. And this learning moment in particular was predicated on the idea of equality, that treating everyone fairly was the only way things could be done in a classroom with not much consideration for anything else.

The Big Picture
Practices of equality like these often miss the fact that every student in class has a different context, background, level of access to resources and information, support at home, reading level, understanding of important concepts, ability to understand the language, ability to access technology, ability to use the internet, socioeconomic status, and much more. By not taking a holistic approach to serving students, there are often gaps in educators’ work.  


Placing the onus on a students’ ability alone, to succeed or fail academically regardless of anything else relies heavily on deficit-based thinking (Bensimone, 2007). This approach blames each student for their performance rather than creating an opportunity for the educator to reflect and ask themselves what factors could have contributed to student’s preforming differently than was expected. This mindset seems to be more common in educational spaces than we think especially because of the idea that everyone needs to be treated equally is so prevalent.


Instead, different teaching methods can be implemented by reframing and using equity thinking, acknowledging the barriers that can be part of preventing a student’s success. They have become much more apparent over the last couple of years, when many of our typical learning spaces were moved online. Questions arose. How many students did not have laptops, how many did not have internet at home, how many did not have a quiet space at home, and how many did not have a home at all? But these are the things that students dealt with every day prior to COVID-19, so why only at this time were the needs that existed being met?


Submitted by co-authors Ricardo Pitones
and Dawn Person, PhD

DR. DAWN PERSON

Dawn R. Person is Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership at California State University, Fullerton. She also serves as the Director of the Center for Research on Educational Access and Leadership (C-REAL), a solution-focused data-driven research center that serves community partners in Los Angeles County and Orange County as well as national and international associates committed to issues of educational leadership and student achievement. Prior to her two and a half decades of college teaching, Dawn served as a counselor, advisor and administrator in student affairs, coordinating programs and services in support of students of color, international students, first-year students, and student athletes. She serves as a consultant to colleges and universities on program evaluation, student retention, organizational change, and multicultural issues.


Among her many honors and awards, Dawn has received the augural Diversity in Research Award from CSU Fullerton, she was honored with the American College Personnel Association's Diamond Honoree Award, a lifetime achievement award, as well as the and the Most Valuable Professor Award at CSU Long Beach. She remains active with the Council for the Study of Community Colleges, American Educational Research Association, American College Personnel Association, National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and other professional associations.

RICARDO PITONES

Ricardo Pitones currently serves as the Program Analyst at the Center for Research on Educational Access and Leadership (C-REAL) at California State University, Fullerton. In his role he focuses on student development, research, grant writing, and student success. Prior to his current role Ricardo has worked in several other student service areas including student life, identity centers, assessment and special programs, Clery compliance, and student conduct. Core areas of Ricardo's practice include evaluation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.