Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools (Paperback)

Use the power of equity audits to help eliminate achievement gaps and educational bias!

If you′ve heard about equity audits but aren′t really sure how to use them in your school, you are not alone. This resource, written by well-known authors and experts in the areas of equity and achievement, expands school leaders′ understanding of how to interpret data in order to make equity audits work and provides practical, easy-to-implement strategies for using this school assessment approach to help ensure a high-quality education for all students, regardless of socio-economic class.

Grounded solidly in theory, this book demonstrates how audits can help not only in developing fair programs that provide all students with the opportunity to reach their potential but also for hiring, training, and retaining good teachers. Readers will discover how to remedy inequalities in student achievement by using:

• A set of "inequity indicators" for evaluating schools, generating essential data, and identifying problem areas
• The NCLB Act in a positive way to create equity
• Nine skill sets for improved equity-oriented teaching
• Charts, graphs, and support materials that can be customized for specific settings

Ideal for helping principals develop school-based equity audits with confidence, Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools can also be used by superintendents to increase equity awareness at the district level.

Linda Skrla is Professor of Educational Administration at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the Texas A&M faculty in 1997, Linda worked as a middle school and high school teacher and as a campus and district administrator in public schools. Her research focuses on educational equity issues in school leadership, including accountability policy, high success school districts, and women superintendents. Linda is Vice President of Division A of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and Editor of Educational Administration Quarterly. She has published extensively in academic journals and has co-authored and co-edited five other books, the most recent of which is Using Equity Audits to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools (Corwin Press, 2009).