U46’s chief of equity, social justice speaks about position

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Ushma Shah is shown Monday at the U46 Educational Services Center in Elgin. Shah is the district's chief of equity and social justice. | Andrew A. Nelles~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: February 26, 2012 8:08AM

ELGIN — Ushma Shah invoked universal design in her debut before the School District U46 Board of Education at Monday’s regular school board meeting.

That’s the architectural idea that designing a building to be accessible for people with disabilities — “with the widest and most inclusive vision” — really makes it better for everyone who uses it, Shah said. Curb cuts aren’t just used by people in wheelchairs, she pointed out, but also by people pushing strollers or carts.

It’s also the idea behind Shah’s controversial position, created this summer, as the Elgin school district’s chief of equity and social justice.

“These ideas are beginning to be translated into the field of teaching and learning. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, universal design for learning asks, ‘How can we design curriculum and classroom experiences that are as effective and inclusive as possible?’ ” she said.

“When we do this in the design of our curriculum and how we design our classroom instruction, then we will serve the needs of more students and we’ll see better results for everyone.”

Monday night, Shah called her role a “facilitator,” a part of the national conversation about how to close the achievement gaps between white and mostly Hispanic and black students.

That’s not a position unique to U46, she told The Courier-News in an interview Tuesday. Similar positions are “beginning to pop up” in school districts in Highland Park and Boston, she said.

But it is one that has brought some controversy to Illinois’ second-largest school district, which created the position with a six-figure annual salary even as it has made some tough budget cuts. Those come as the state has reduced or fallen behind in its payments to the district in the past few years.

Setting priorities

Creating the position of the chief of equity and social justice was the “next step” after making the elimination of achievement gaps a priority for the school district, U46 Superintendent Jose Torres said in a written statement when Shah was hired in July.

That priority was set in Destination 2015, approved by the school board in December 2010. Destination 2015 is a five-year accountability plan to spell out a mission, vision, values and goals for the school district, as well as specific academic benchmarks and targets for its students.

One of those targets is to bring down the achievement gap on ACT scores to 2.1 points by 2015. That gap was 4 points in 2010, according to Destination 2015.

Closing those gaps is one of the goals (“Improve student and staff performance and eliminate achievement gaps.”) and beliefs (“We believe that race and culture exert a powerful influence on learning; we will close the racial/ethnic achievement gap through our behaviors and practices.”) of Destination 2015.

And it is written into the accountability plan’s mission: “U46 will be a great place for all students to learn, all teachers to teach, and all employees to work. All means all.”

Torres also was appointed to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission last February.

“We don’t have as many in our country examples of district-wide successes where this work is happening — where the sheer commitment to equity is operationalized far and wide across the organization. In order to do this, we need to a have a bold, integrated and systemic approach to closing the achievement gap,” Shah said.

“Destination 2015 holds us accountable to be one of the districts that shows how to do this work of closing the achievement gap to scale.”

Initial work

At Monday’s meeting, Shah talked about some of the work she has done in her first semester at U46.

She has convened four work groups to focus on transitions to and from alternative programs, drop-out prevention, teen parents and access to the district’s academy programs. That’s part of creating “Multiple Pathways to Graduation” to meet the needs of students who are not succeeding within existing structures, she said.

She also wants to recruit and strategically support students who are black in the district’s dual language program, because research shows black students in similar programs “significantly out-perform their peers,” she said. And she wants to embed “culturally responsive practices” into its behavior and academic interventions.

“It’s not about coming in and saying, ‘Here’s what we need to do,’ and, ‘Here’s what has worked in other places,’ ” Shah said. “The answers need to come from this time and place, with awareness of research and knowledge of local data.”

Shah came to U46 from the Chicago Public Schools. She previously worked as a consultant, coaching instructional leadership teams at schools that are on academic probation.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in educational studies and anthropology from Knox College in Galesburg; her master’s degree in education, curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Chicago; and her doctorate from Harvard University.

She hadn’t planned to go into education, Shah said. But Knox’s program was focused on how “schools create the vision for the society we want,” she said.

“I became really intrigued by the idea that our schools are the places to build the society we want to create. That’s how the program was constructed — around equity and social justice in teaching,” she said.

But, she said, she knows there also are “voices that come out to speak against the work of equity.”

“That’s perfectly valid. It’s their right in a democracy to do that,” Shah said. “What we’re trying to do is make sure everybody has an opportunity to be part of that democracy.”

Controversy

At the otherwise-brief August school board meeting after Shah was hired by U46, eight area residents expressed “outrage” over the creation of her position.

Some said her base salary of $120,000 could have gone to hire more teachers; others, that it could have gone to reinstate programs the district has eliminated.

At Monday’s school board meeting, Rick Newton of Wayne, who has spoken at several board meetings in opposition to Shah’s position, said, “I do appreciate that we finally got to hear from our chief of social justice, and it’s certainly given us plenty to talk about moving forward.”

But, Newton said, “This is very scary on so many levels. ... It was informative to hear, but to think the community is going to embrace this, I think, is naïve, truly.”

Still, Shah assured the school board, “There is a momentum of people in this district that has the larger vision of this work and that feels the weight and urgency of moving forward.”

And the five other public comments made about Shah’s position at Monday’s meeting were overwhelmingly positive.

Raheem Hasan of Hanover Park is the parent of a recent graduate and current senior in the district’s academy program. Hasan said he had two trains of thought on the district’s addition of a chief of equity and social justice.

One was “from the perspective a father, who also happens to be African American.” He credits his success to a similar program when he was in school in Ohio, he said, and he wants to give his children every tool to be successful as well.

“The other one, quite frankly is as a taxpayer,” Hasan said. “My hope — and I do think this is the case — is that real change is being driven into this district and into the classrooms, not only to help bridge the achievement gap for my children but for all kids.”

Others, such as Beth Kohler of Elgin, pledged their “unfailing support” for the district’s efforts to close its achievement gaps and thanked the school board for “putting your money where your mouth is.” Kohler is a mother of four, including three in U46.

“We need the help of someone like Dr. Shah who will identify the places we are failing our lowest-achieving students and the direction she will provide to rectify that situation,” Kohler said.

Shah admitted that if her work is successful — if it results in closing achievement gaps and creating that vision of an equitable society in every school — she could put herself out of a job.

And, she said, “That would be a fine thing to do. That would be a great accomplishment.”