This document summarizes a presentation about helping students of color and students receiving financial assistance to thrive in independent schools. It discusses recognizing individual student strengths rather than weaknesses, providing direct support within the school community, and transforming institutional structures and mindsets that perpetuate discrimination. It also summarizes research showing the negative impacts of biases and disparities in educational experiences and outcomes for minority students.

1. You belong here:
Helping students of color and students
receiving financial assistance to thrive
in independent schools
April 16, 2015

2. Middle Schools
• Adda Clevenger Junior Preparatory and
Theater School for Children
• Alt School
• Alta Vista School
• Cathedral School for Boys
• Children’s Day School
• Convent of the Sacred Heart Elementary
School
• The Hamlin School
• Katherine Delmar Burke School
• Kittredge School
• Live Oak School
• Marin Country Day School
• Marin Preparatory School
• Mission Dolores Academy
• The Nueva School
• Presidio Hill School
• St. Anthony of the Immaculate Conception
• San Francisco Friends School
• The San Francisco School
• School of the Epiphany
• Stuart Hall for Boys
• Synergy School
• Town School for Boys
• West Portal Lutheran School
High Schools
• Convent of the Sacred Heart High School
• Gateway High School
• Immaculate Conception Academy
• International High School
• Lick‐Wilmerding High School
• The Marin School
• Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory
• San Francisco University High School
• San Francisco Waldorf High School
• Stuart Hall High School
• The Urban School
• 60+ PARTNER PUBLIC REFERRAL SCHOOLS
AND COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATIONS
partner schools

3. • Athenian School
• Aurora School
• The Bay School of SF
• Bentley School
• The Berkeley School
• Black Pine Circle Day School
• Branson School
• Brentwood School
• Buckley School
• Bush School
• The Carey School
• Castilleja School
• Children's Day School
• Chinese American
International School
• College Prep
• Crane Country Day School
• The Crowden School
• Crystal Springs Uplands
School
• Curtis School
• École Bilingue
• French American
International School
• The Gillispie School
• The Hamlin School
• Head Royce School
• Hillbrook School
• International High School
• Jewish Community HS of
the Bay
• Kalmanovitz School of Ed,
SMC
• Katherine Delmar Burke
School
• Lick‐Wilmerding High
School
• Los Gatos‐Saratoga
Observation Nursery School
• Marin Academy
• Marin Country Day School
• Marin Primary & Middle
School
• Mark Day School
• Marlborough School
• Menlo School
• Montessori Family School
• Moses Brown School
• Mount Tamalpais School
• National Cathedral School
• Pacific Ridge School
• Park Day School
• Peninsula School
• Presidio Hill School
• Prospect Sierra School
• Redwood Day School
• Sacred Heart Schools,
Atherton
• St. Gregory College Prep
• St. Mary’s College
• St. Ignatius College
Preparatory
• Samuel Merritt University
• San Francisco Day School
• San Francisco Friends
School
• The San Francisco School
• San Francisco Waldorf
School
• Stuart Hall for Boys
• Town School
• The Urban School of San
Francisco
• Vacaville Christian Schools
• Viewpoint School
• Village School
• Westridge School
• Wildwood School
Other clients:
• Education Outside
• EPA, Region 9
• Siemens Healthcare
Diagnostics
• SMART
Conferences:
• Affinity Group Educators
Workshop
• Asian Educators Alliance
• CAIS
• Creating Balance in an
Unbalanced World
• EBISA
• Equity and Inclusion
Through a Leadership
Lens: What Works in
Education
• Lick‐Wilmerding Asian‐
American Student
Conference
• NAIS
• POCC
• POCIS of Northern CA
• PSPP
• White Privilege Conference

4. Our purpose today
© 2012 Blink
• Explore individual, community
and institutional issues,
opportunities and responsibilities
in helping students and families
to thrive
• Identify useful tools and lenses
for helping students and families
thrive
• Have a professional conversation
about identity, diversity and
inclusion

5. Guidelines
• Confidentiality
• Yes, and…
• Make this useful
© 2011 Blink

6. Hello…
What was the first thing
you noticed about
Alison?
© 2011 Blink

7. What we notice in a split second
(Elsea, 1985)
• Skin color
• Sex
• Age
• Appearance
• Facial expressions
• Eye contact
• Movement
• Personal space
• Touch
© 2011 Blink

8. Racist sexist babies?
• 3 months: show a positive bias toward
attractive faces (Langlois, 1987)
• 6 months:
‐ interested in skin color and gender
differences (Bisson et al., 1955‐1989)
‐ able to “discriminate between different
races” (Katz & Kofkin, 1997)
• 24 months:
– notice and ask about differences (Bisson et al.)
© 2011 Blink

9. A student scenario
A motivated, strongly
recommended black male student
who “loves school and learning”
and was at the top of his class in
public school is struggling
academically in his first month at
your school, turning in incomplete
assignments, missing deadlines and
not showing up during scheduled
tutorials.
… What’s your gut response?
© 2012 Blink

10. Noticing ourselves
Where is my gut reaction coming from?
• Background
• Experience
• Cultural norm
• Identity and status
© 2012 Blink

11. Framing
• What don’t I know? What am I assuming?
• What could this situation be about?
© 2012 Blink

12. What do we fear?
"There’s often an undercurrent of
fear or tension between black male
students and many white teachers,
and even some black ones. This fear
can be triggered over something as
minor as a black boy walking around
the room. On some subliminal level,
the teacher is afraid to have even a
very young black male defy the
simplest rule. She’s afraid his
defiance will escalate."
—Harry Morgan, Professor,
Early Childhood Development,
State University of West Georgia
© 2012 Blink

13. Educational disparities
• Black and Latino students are under‐represented in
“gifted and talented programs” (US Dept of Education,
2012)
• Teachers’ perceptions of African‐American boys ages
7‐9 shift from “cute” to threatening: they become
“aggressive,” “hyperactive,” “failing” (Kunjufu, 1985)
• Black students are 3.5 times more likely than white
students to be suspended (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012).
© 2012 Blink

14. Individual support
• Recognize the whole student without requiring
the student to bare all
• Recognize how identity and culture matter in the
student’s experience and the school’s perception
of the student
• Partner with the student and their family,
leveraging their strengths and resources
• Provide direct and diverse support within the
school community, including but not limited to
affinity opportunities
© 2012 Blink

15. Transforming the coal mine
(Angela Park, 2007)
“It’s not just about individual behavior – niceness
across difference – it’s about power, the
institutional power and structural discrimination
and the invisible ways that privilege and this
domination mindset play out and are built into all
human systems and institutions. It’s a structure
that must be altered...”
© 2010 Blink

16. Working with struggling students
“The problem [is]n’t the students”
(Treisman, Mathematics Workshop Program, University of California, 1985)
© 2012 Blink

17. Myths about student failure
(Treisman, 1985)
• Motivation gap
• Inadequate preparation (especially in
“vertical” subjects)
• Lack of family support and understanding of
education
• Income (race and ethnicity have nothing to do
with academic performance)
© 2012 Blink

18. Why Treisman’s model works:
setting the bar high
The workshop “is an intensive, demanding program
for talented students, particularly minority
students, who are planning career[s] in
mathematics‐based profession[s]... They are told
that they are among the most promising freshmen
and that the program is seeking students with a
deep commitment to excellence. ... The emphasis is
on students' strengths rather than their
weaknesses ... the direct opposite of tutoring or
other remedial programs” (Gillman, 1990).
© 2012 Blink

19. Struggling students: a self‐perspective
(Treisman, 1985)
Because of their participation in [a special high
school program], these students saw themselves as
an academic elite group. They were accustomed to
being the tutors, not the ones in need of tutoring.
... Knowing the students' sensitivities, I took care
that the Workshop not appear to be a tutoring
session. The problem sets (called worksheets)
were always difficult, with near‐impossible
problems thrown in frequently to protect the
Workshop's non‐remedial veneer.
© 2012 Blink

20. Why Treisman’s model works, cont.
• Small peer learning & teaching communities in which
students “ask each other questions ranging from whether
one was permitted to write in pencil on a test to how one
might circumvent certain University financial aid
regulations… critique each other's work, assist each other
with homework problems, and share all manner of
information related to their common interests. Their
collaboration provide[s] them with valuable information
that guide[s] their day‐to‐day study.
• Faculty leadership instead of “the traditional faculty
response to minority students… to hire someone to deal
with them, create tutorial programs for them, and house
them in a temporary building on campus somewhere…
the mathematics workshop model build[s] a community
around the courses and manage[s] the courses by faculty,
not tutors in temporary buildings.”
© 2012 Blink

21. Don’t blame the canary
(Treisman, 1985)
“Once again, we were forced to deal with the
fact that the problem wasn’t the students.
Students, in fact, respond to whatever you give
them.”
Dealing with the problem of student failure
“means that the [school] has to rethink what the
collective responsibilities of departments are.”
© 2012 Blink

22. Community proaction
• Create a shared foundation of understanding
for diversity and equity as mission‐vital
• Acknowledge and challenge normative biases,
including the public‐private school bias
• Practice having vital conversations about
identity, diversity and inequity in the school
community
• Equip community with language and tools for
“what to say/do when…”
© 2012 Blink

23. Deficit perspective
(Gorski, 2008)
A deficit perspective holds marginalized
groups accountable for exclusion and inequity,
locating the problem in “deficient” behaviors
and cultures, rather than systemic bias and
discrimination. The solution is, therefore, to
“fix” marginalized people. In schools, this
means “facilitat[ing] change in [minority]
students while ignoring the structural
inequities of schools.”
© 2012 Blink

24. Public schools: just as good
Controlling for “key” family factors, “students
who attend private high schools receive neither
immediate academic advantages nor longer‐
term advantages in attending college, finding
satisfaction in the job market, or participating in
civic life.”
© 2012 Blink

25. Key family factors
• Financial resources
• Cultural capital
• Educational opportunity expectations
• Parent/guardian involvement with schoolwork
© 2012 Blink

26. The private school advantage: exceptions
(Center on Education Policy, 2007)
“[S]tudents who attended independent private high schools
had higher SAT scores than public school students, which
gave independent school students an advantage in getting
into elite colleges… This finding suggests that while these
schools are no better at teaching the subject matter, they
may provide students with test‐taking skills that help them
further their education, or they may enroll students with
higher IQs (aptitude tests like the SAT are a better measure
of IQ than achievement tests are).”
“[O]ne special type of private school, Catholic schools run by
holy orders (such as Jesuit schools), did have some
positive academic effects. There are very few such
schools, however; most Catholic schools are run by
their diocese, not by an order” (Meyer, 2007).
© 2012 Blink

27. Surviving v. thriving:
2 models for schools
Surviving
• We don’t see differences.
Everyone is equal.
• It’s up to you to fit in. (We
have standards!)
• We make some
accommodations for special
cases.
Thriving
• We’re committed to
increasing access and
opportunity for diverse
groups.
• It’s our job to scaffold
students to our standards.
• We recognize that some
people are already
accommodated, and the
issue is equity.
© 2011 Blink

28. Life in independent schools
What does it cost to be an IS student?
Consider:
– Financial costs
• Academic (including field trip costs), student life
(athletics, performance, social and special events),
transportation and family giving
– Time costs
• Travel, after school, homework
– Social and emotional costs
• At school and at home
© 2011 Blink

29. Taking inventory: What does it take
to be an independent school family?
• Beyond tuition, what do IS expect of
parents/guardians? What is “good” parenting,
especially for an exceptional need?
• Which expectations are bona fide, and which
are unhelpful?
• What access and opportunity do IS provide
to families to meet
those expectations?
© 2011 Blink

30. Spheres of responsibility
& opportunity
Individual
support
Institutional
commitment
Community
proaction
© 2011 Blink

31. Institutional commitment
• Define the school’s responsibility for students
thriving
• Identify the school’s role in learning and
experience gaps among student groups
• Integrate cultural competency as a core
professional expectation
• Support programming and pro growth to equip
educators to empower all groups of students to
thrive
• Increase diversity and eradicate
“the only one” burden
© 2012 Blink

32. A model for inclusion
(Banks & Banks, 2004)
• Environment
– What diversity and multicultural values your
classroom/office explicitly conveys and practices
• Antidiscrimination education
– How you empower people to recognize and strive for
what’s right and fair
• Epistemology
– How you help people to rethink norms and
assumptions
• Curriculum
– What you teach and how you teach it
• Pedagogy
– How you scaffold diverse students to excellence
© 2010 Blink

33. Next steps?
With the goal of helping
traditionally underrepresented
students and families thrive at
your school:
• What growth is vital?
• What opportunities for
inclusion and equity do you
need to pursue?
• What do you need to do? Who
needs to be involved? What are
your next steps? And how will
you hold yourself and others
accountable?
© 2012 Blink

34. Thank you
Alison Park
alison@rethinkingdiversity.com
415.847.9087
Nonoko Sato
nonoko@thesmartprogram.org
415.865.5400
© 2012 Blink