Equity & Continuous Improvement

The District Equity Leadership Team (DELT) is comprised of staff members representative of a wide range of job classifications across Valley View School District. The primary role of the DELT is to develop, oversee, and monitor all equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts in the district. Below is a list of objectives that DELT utilizes to ensure that the equity lens is synonymous with our ongoing continuous improvement efforts: 

• Organize and use disaggregated data to inform leadership of district equity needs. 
• Policy review to identify barriers to achieving educational equity. 
• Develop infrastructure to establish equity leadership at every level of the district. 
• Set expectations for professional practice and professional learning that leads to educational equity for every learner. 
• Define and apply performance metrics for assessing district equity progress. 

Courageous Leadership for Equity is an ongoing professional learning opportunity that builds the capacity of staff to have authentic, solution focused, dialogue about existing gaps between various student and staff groups.

Through critical thinking and self reflection, participants immerse themselves in an adaptive process of identifying and problem solving for complex equity, diversity, and inclusion challenges.

Currently, there is spirited discourse, as well as confusion, surrounding the application of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in educational institutions across the country. At the same time, the use of Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning (CRTL) in classrooms has also been a consistent point of discussion. We would like to clearly state that Critical Race Theory will not be taught in the Valley View School District. Neither the Illinois School Code, nor the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) requires that CRT be taught in schools. As for a Lesson On Critical Race Theory, scholars describe CRT as a practice not to be conflated with curriculum to be taught. Critical Race Theory may be an approach used to examine how racial dynamics implicitly or explicitly impact social structures, discourse, and practices that produce racial inequality. 

Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning is categorized as a professional practice that is grounded in neuroscience. As of February 2021, ISBE has approved Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning Standards to prepare future educators to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Additionally, CRTL positions current education practitioners to value, honor, support, and develop racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse learning environments. Creating educational spaces that are intellectually and emotionally safe is at the foundation of CRTL. As the asset of diversity continues to drive innovation in our nation, Culturally Responsive Teaching is necessary in order to develop every student to be an independent learner who takes responsibility for their own knowledge acquisition in partnership with educators. 

In Valley View School District, our core values of equity, continuous improvement, and partnership drive our decision making process and implementation of actions to achieve our three critical priorities: 

1. Responsive & Caring Culture
2. Learning & Growth 
3. Equitable Systems

Listed below are some fundamental, philosophical beliefs for the VVSD approach to provide equitable academic and social experiences for Every Learner: 

• Our mission is to provide equitable opportunities for Every Learner. Every Day.
• Every student is capable of reaching rigorous academic, social, and emotional expectations, and it is our responsibility to ensure their success.
• Every student must be viewed as an individual within the context of their family and community and should see a reflection of themselves in their learning environments.
• Learning must be centered around the experiences of all students present in our schools, including those students who represent traditionally marginalized communities.
• Every student is entitled to a learning environment that fosters respect for personal identity, recognizes students’ strengths, encourages academic risk taking and curiosity, and provides opportunities for self-advocacy.
• Successful students are capable of utilizing (developmentally appropriate) self-awareness and self-reflection strategies.
• Multiple lived experiences can exist among our school populations which contribute to multiple ways of understanding history, current events, issues, and relationships between people.

Terms & Definitions

Critical Race Theory
An approach used to examine how racial dynamics implicitly or explicitly impact social structures, discourse, and practices that produce racial inequality. 

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning
A multifaceted teaching approach to fostering higher-order thinking for every learner that simultaneously leads to disadvantaged students becoming independent learners.

The Equity Journey Continuum is an informational tool for districts to track their progress toward closing gaps in student achievement, opportunities, and supports. Through the lens of equity, the tool analyzes a continuum of district-level data points, already collected and reported to ISBE, to make that data more useful for improving outcomes for all students.

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) developed the tool using national research and examples from other states and refined the tool through a pilot with districts across Illinois. The equity elements included in the continuum are consistent statewide, measurable, and within each district’s control. These data points illustrate a district’s current progress in its equity journey — from Step 1 (large gaps) to Step 4 (minimal gaps) — in the three areas of ISBE’s strategic plan: student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators.

• The 2022 Illinois Report Card will publicly display a very high-level view of the Equity Journey Continuum: only the district’s step in each of the three broad categories of the continuum.
• The 2022 Equity Journey Continuum uses data from the 2018-19 school year (to account for disruptions in data due to the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years).
• The goal of the Equity Journey Continuum is to empower school communities to make informed decisions about their district’s equity strengths, speak effectively about where to invest their equity efforts and reso​urces, and develop creative strategies for moving forward in their unique equity journey.​​