A career educator and Texas native, Dr. Angela Ward currently oversees the Austin Independent School District’s focus on cultural proficiency and inclusiveness and restorative practices. According to a recent profile in Education Week (Blad, 2019),1“The aim [of Dr. Ward’s work] is to build stronger relationships in classrooms and to lessen the use of exclusionary discipline, like suspensions, which are issued to black students at disproportionately high rates. That program recently won a $3.5 million federal grant, which will allow researchers to evaluate its effects” (para. 7). Dr. Ward is a graduate of Saint Edward’s University, received her master’s in Education Administration from Southwest Texas State, and earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on cultural studies in education.
ALY HONSA: Thank you for your time, Dr. Ward. You’re currently serving as the race equity administrative supervisor for the Austin Independent School District. What would you say are the core responsibilities of this role?
ANGELA WARD: I oversee cultural proficiency and inclusiveness. My core responsibilities are to assist our staff in understanding who they are, and how their individual ways of seeing and experiencing the world influence how they are able to support our students and our families. My staff and I create professional learning opportunities that allow our staff to dig into their own racial identity and their experiences. We invite them to understand how their background has shaped them into the person they are today. We create the opportunities for them to, through their own worldview, look at our systems, our processes, and our protocols that have been created in our school system and critique whether or not we are implementing the type of processes and programming that are designed for the success of all of our students.
HONSA: The term “equity” is used so frequently in education, and it’s even part of the title of your role, but many people define equity differently. What does equity mean to you?
WARD: For me, we will have achieved equity when we can no longer predict failure based on a student’s, a staff member’s, or any person’s social categories, be it race, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religion. The list goes on and on and on. Because right now you can predict failure based on many of those categories, and when you layer some of those categories on each other, you can predict the success of a student in our system and in education nationally
HONSA: To what extent would you say your current job responsibilities align to this personal definition of equity?
WARD: It’s what I do every day, I eat it, sleep it, breathe it, think it.
HONSA: What do you think contributes to such strong alignment between your definition of equity and the work you do in your current role?
WARD: Basically, I built the work, it didn’t exist in our school district prior to 2010. We looked at our data and noticed that our teachers were largely White middle class, upper class in many cases, and our students were Black, Brown and lower socioeconomic. Alarmingly, our data was very disparate for Black and Brown students, specifically Black males. We were given the charge to help our staff develop diversity of thought as well as cultural proficiency. As we began, we were pushing our staff to think differently about their work. I had no clue what that looked like, what that sounded like. I did research on cultural proficiency and realized there was 30 years of research by people who work in education; they borrowed some of these ideas from the social services system. I really began to dig in and understand what it was, and it made sense that this is the work that we need to do, and this is how we should be doing it. My work aligns so well because I did all the research to figure out what we should be doing. And I worked with a group of staff and community members to frame what it should look like and what our charge should be as a district to address it.
HONSA: Districts across the country are beginning to establish chief equity officer roles. Sometimes there are different titles for this role, but they’re focused on equity outcomes. Many districts are trying to figure out how to design these roles and what the core of the work should include. Based on your experience and knowing you helped design this role yourself, what advice would you give to district leaders who are working to construct these positions from the ground up?
WARD: I think they should do more than just post a position. They should really understand who they are as district leaders, first because a leader’s disposition will greatly impact their will, skill, and passion to implement equity work in a meaningful and supportive way. I think district leaders should really understand what it means to do equity work. I think they should do their homework and talk to at least five different equity officers from five different school systems that are nothing alike to understand what goes into equity work. There are so many different ways to approach equity work. In my PhD studies I looked specifically at how to design and deliver professional learning. I think districts really need to understand their level of commitment, because when you bring in someone and their role is equity officer, you are giving them the permission to critique and to push the system to understand their role in student success from a very different lens than school systems are accustomed to.
HONSA: Are there any particular structures or supports you would advocate for districts to put in place so that roles like these can thrive?
WARD: They need staff, and they need a budget. You can’t hire an equity officer without making sure that equity officer has a specific budget line item that includes staff and resources. You can’t just provide a salary and benefits package. If there’s never been an equity office, there needs to be an equity office. They need to be able to hire people who have a developed equity lens. You are bringing them into a system that does not have a developed equity lens if this is the first time you’ve hired someone. Part of my research was talking to urban school educators around the country who are doing this work. Some of us are equity officers; some of us are professional learning directors; some of us, like me, are like four levels below the superintendent. One key piece was, the ones who had the most success had a close relationship with the superintendent, or the relationship was reciprocal. It was a give and take, and the superintendent was learning with the equity officer, the superintendent knows the system, the equity officer knows equity. That give and take has to happen.
HONSA: Building off of that, what do you see as one or two of the main challenges to doing this type of equity work?
WARD: People want to do the work the way it’s always been done because it’s the easy route, and people are not accustomed to having dialogue about themselves in professional learning. There are two very key things that have to happen. You have to reflect critically on who you are and the decisions that you make if you’re going to really do equity work. And you cannot maintain the status quo if you’re going to really do equity work.
HONSA: What do you see as some of the key leverage points to helping people to both do inward reflection and change practice?
WARD: They have to see reflective practice modeled by senior leadership, and they have to find a personal connection to the why. If they don’t know why they’re doing it, they’re less likely to do it. And the why has to connect to their daily work or at the very least for me, my daily life. My children are my why. My husband is my why. Because I want to make sure that I am creating the opportunities for and talk to at least five different equity officers from five different school systems that are nothing alike to understand what goes into equity work. There are so many different ways to approach equity work. In my PhD studies I looked specifically at how to design and deliver professional learning. I think districts really need to understand their level of commitment, because when you bring in someone and their role is equity officer, you are giving them the permission to critique and to push the system to understand their role in student success from a very different lens than school systems are accustomed to.
HONSA: Are there any particular structures or supports you would advocate for districts to put in place so that roles like these can thrive?
WARD: They need staff, and they need a budget. You can’t hire an equity officer without making sure that equity officer has a specific budget line item that includes staff and resources. You can’t just provide a salary and benefits package. If there’s never been an equity office, there needs to be an equity office. They need to be able to hire people who have a developed equity lens. You are bringing them into a system that does not have a developed equity lens if this is the first time you’ve hired someone. Part of my research was talking to urban school educators around the country who are doing this work. Some of us are equity officers; some of us are professional learning directors; some of us, like me, are like four levels below the superintendent. One key piece was, the ones who had the most success had a close relationship with the superintendent, or the relationship was reciprocal. It was a give and take, and the superintendent was learning with the equity officer, the superintendent knows the system, the equity officer knows equity. That give and take has to happen.
HONSA: Building off of that, what do you see as one or two of the main challenges to doing this type of equity work?
WARD: People want to do the work the way it’s always been done because it’s the easy route, and people are not accustomed to having dialogue about themselves in professional learning. There are two very key things that have to happen. You have to reflect critically on who you are and the decisions that you make if you’re going to really do equity work. And you cannot maintain the status quo if you’re going to really do equity work.
HONSA: What do you see as some of the key leverage points to helping people to both do inward reflection and change practice?
WARD: They have to see reflective practice modeled by senior leadership, and they have to find a personal connection to the why. If they don’t know why they’re doing it, they’re less likely to do it. And the why has to connect to their daily work or at the very least for me, my daily life. My children are my why. My husband is my why. Because I want to make sure that I am creating the opportunities for Understanding the racialized history of your schools, your school district, and the city around it should be required for anyone working in a school district. It should not be something that surprises people. My office developed a historical timeline of our district and our city including all the legal maneuvers that were done in our city to make it look the way it does. That timeline was included in required learning for the 10 principals who are a part of our culturally responsive restorative practices grant. Although what we shared is public record and public knowledge, they didn’t know any of it. They’re working in schools on the side of town that was gravely impacted by those legal decisions made by city leaders in Austin, Texas.
HONSA: Thank you for sharing so much about your leadership for equity.
*Angela M. Ward, PhD, “Interview with Dr. Ward", Alyson Honsa University of Washington ; June 13, 2020,http://2wardequity.com/interview-with-dr-ward/
