The following products and services are related to implementing equity in education, an element of our Education team’s Equity-Building Framework: Assess, Implement, and Maintain (AIM).
Click here for more information about the framework.
Culturally Relevant and Equity-Centric Professional Development and Student Learning Sessions
Professional Development
We offer custom culturally relevant and equity-centric professional development programs: Offerings may include the following.
Culturally Responsive Leadership (4-8 sessions)
These professional development sessions are based on the Culturally Responsive School Leadership Framework by Muhammad Khalifa. Four areas of focus include:
- Self-reflective leadership
- Developing culturally responsive teachers
- Promoting culturally responsive school environments
- Engaging parents, students, and indigenous contexts
(This training is designed for school leaders.)
Foundations of Equity (1-2 sessions)
These professional development sessions help leaders to increase their understanding of equity and recognize systemic inequities within education in general or within their own school. In addition, the program assists leaders with creating conditions that support students’ access to equitable learning opportunities necessary for academic and emotional success.
(This training can be designed for teachers or leaders, or a session can be designed for both teachers and leaders to attend.)
Understanding Bias (1-2 sessions)
These professional development sessions explore what we understand about bias—how it is formed; how it stays in our consciousness; its role in our individual beliefs and actions; and its presence within the school setting.
(This training can be designed for teachers or leaders, or a session can be designed for both teachers and leaders to attend.)
Culturally Responsive Instructional Practices (4-6 sessions)
Cultural responsiveness is an approach to viewing students' culture and identity (including race, ethnicity, multilingualism, and other characteristics) as assets and creating learning experiences and environments that value and empower them. While experts caution against providing specific culturally responsive strategies because all situations are different, during these sessions, the following key competencies will be areas of focus:
- Reflecting on one’s cultural lens
- Recognizing and addressing bias in the system
- Drawing on students’ culture to share curriculum and instruction
- Bringing real-world issues into the classroom
- Modeling high expectations for all students
- Promoting respect for students’ differences
- Collaborating with families and the local community
- Communicating in linguistically and culturally responsive ways
(This training is designed for teachers, but leaders, especially those focused on curriculum, can participate is some or all sessions as well.)
Equity Planning Goals and Strategies (1-2 sessions)
As leaders and teachers create equitable organizations, an understanding of how to create equity-centric goals and gauge the effectiveness of equity-centric efforts is required. These professional development sessions include an overview of ways in which leaders and teachers can implement and sustain equitable practices using data and various strategies. The following topics are addressed:
- Reviewing data from an equity lens
- Creating specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, timely, inclusive, and equitable (SMARTIE) goals
- Implementation planning and creating a roadmap to success
- Creation of equity plans and/or programs
- Managing the successful execution and maintenance of an equity plan
(This training can be designed for teachers or leaders, or a session can be designed for both teachers and leaders to attend.)
Introduction to Gender Equity (1 session)
Students, including students as young as kindergarten, notice differences in social expectations for gender roles. The ways teachers interact with students have great impact on students’ ability to participate in their education. These interactions also create long-lasting effects in other areas of their lives. At times, they limit students’ self-image and their perception of the opportunities that are available or appropriate for them. This introductory workshop focuses on gender equity within schools and provides strategies for encouraging and promoting gender equity within the classroom.
(This training can be designed for teachers or leaders, or a session can be designed for both teachers and leaders to attend.)
Student Learning Sessions
For students, developing a comprehensive understanding of anti-bias, anti-racism, and social justice principles is critical for navigating the world socially, politically, and economically. This is true for students of all cultural backgrounds and identities. To develop a culture that supports diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), PCG offers student learning sessions in the following areas:
- Insight: personal awareness and reflection
- Connection: cultural competence, empathy, and perspective taking
- Collaboration: relationship building, decision making, and conflict resolution
- Critical thinking: leadership, analysis, and problem solving
Insight
The journey to anti-bias education begins with the learner's understanding of their own personal bias—its origins, impact, and ways to counter it in interpersonal relations. Before they can fully understand how to foster diversity in ways that ensure others are able to be included and have a sense of belonging, students will need to become more aware of the ways in which they experience inclusion/exclusion and belonging in their environment.
Connection
The overarching goal of learning how to foster DEIB is relational: becoming better and better at how we relate to those around us. Students will engage in activities through the lens of historical marginalization of cultures to develop their perspectives of others with different lived experiences and improve their own capacity for empathy, thereby increasing their cultural competence. Increased cultural competence is essential for servant leadership and successful engagement with peers, teachers, and staff in learning environments where DEIB is highly valued.
Collaboration
Once students have made connections between their lived experiences and identit(ies), this knowledge can translate to strengthening relationships among and across diverse peer groups. Within these groups, the foundation of cultural competence can help to inform mindful decisions and be leveraged in resolving conflicts (racial, gender, and otherwise) that arise.
Critical Thinking
In this section of learning, students will synthesize what they learned when developing their profile as a student leader, focusing on the ways in which they will approach existing conflicts and challenges in the current school environment. This learning is based on the belief that every student has the capacity to lead from their unique perspective and relationship to their peers.
Peer Facilitation
Students will facilitate similar DEIB training for their peers, working through exercises that build their capacity for and understanding of best practices for facilitating conversations. Foundational skills include setting agreements and norms for conversation; mindfulness to foster engagement; dealing with disclosure; disagreement; and debriefing discussion peacefully. Students will also continue to explore effective models of peer leadership to address topics that can contribute to marginalization of others.
Direct Student Services
Our in-person and virtual academic tutoring services through University Instructors, a PCG company, are part of TutorED™ and designed for students in kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12). They encompass four main components:
- Diagnostic assessment of student skills
- Development of actionable student academic growth plans in English Language Arts, Mathematics, or other subjects specific to gaps in knowledge
- Delivery of systematic, clear instruction by highly qualified instructional staff who work in conjunction with schools and families of students to provide a cohesive and comprehensive service
- Definitive elaboration of student progress, program impact, identified data sources, and optimal service delivery methodologies
These services are uniquely designed to meet the needs of each district and can include:
- Extension of learning recovery and enrichment outside of the instructional school calendar
- In-person instruction on specific subjects, additional enrichment activities, and social-emotional learning (SEL) for K-12 students—to address learning losses and negative impacts students have experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Prioritization of students with disabilities or students most at risk
- Outreach to families and students to increase participation in programs offering a fun, positive environment with enrichment activities. The goal is to counteract the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ social interactions and development
- Credit recovery for students to meet instruction and graduation requirements for core and elective courses
Behavioral Threat Assessment
Our behavioral threat assessment (BTA) solution for students uses a case management approach and offers multiple pathways to manage threats to others and threats to self.
We offer out-of-the-box configurations for student threat assessment aligned to state and local guidelines for:
- The Salem-Keizer Student Threat Assessment Team (STAT) model—endorsed by John Van Dreal
- The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services model
- The Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG)—endorsed by Dr. Dewey Cornell
This scalable solution works to support large school districts in counties such as Broward County and Hillsborough County in Florida. We also support various small districts and charter schools across the nation.
Equity Playbook for Leaders
Now more than ever, it is essential for education leaders to focus on policy and practice to develop a culturally and linguistically responsive environment where students have access to equitable instruction—evidenced through measurable outcomes.
The Equity Playbook for LeadersTM is a robust collection of targeted resources, tools, and professional learning activities designed to help district and school leaders drive sustainable equity initiatives.
This playbook will help education leaders overcome underlying issues of inequity, such as:
- Achievement gaps in Math and English Language Arts outcomes
- Over-identification of discipline infractions
- Lack of alignment and representation in allocation of resources
- Limited access to high-quality instruction and programming
- Presence of implicit and explicit cultural bias
Special Education Playbook
Special education teachers and leaders need support and development to build successful schools, but sustainable professional learning opportunities are hard to find—especially those that address real world challenges and fit into real world schedules. That’s why Public Consulting Group (PCG) created Special Education Playbook.
Special Education, Inclusion, and Intervention Projects
We strongly believe in high-level achievement for students with disabilities through optimal services and supports and equitable access to high-quality instruction in an inclusive environment.
Our special education consulting work focuses on the following key areas:
- Special education program and process reviews to help states and districts improve special education and equitable outcomes
- Student outcomes strengthened by improved program delivery and capacity building through inclusive education
We help educators meet the unique needs of students with disabilities through implementation of best practices in areas such as:
- Universal design for learning
- Collaborative supports for inclusion in the general education setting
- Assistive and instructional technologies
- Standards-based/instructionally appropriate individualized education programs (IEPs)
- Co-teaching models
- Research-based intervention aligned with student skills
- Assessment to measure student achievement and effective progress monitoring
- The Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS)
Our philosophy for guiding the transformation of special education in schools and districts is driven by the U.S. Department of Education’s Results Driven Accountability (RDA) framework1 and key tenets of the Equity in Special Education Placement: School Self-Assessment Guide for Culturally Responsive Practice2 developed by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt) and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). Our approach is multi-dimensional in scope and designed to increase the use of prevention and early intervention strategies. It guides schools to be culturally responsive in their programming and instruction. The goal is to optimize achievement for all students, including students with disabilities and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
EDPlan™ Case Management
EDPlan Case Management is PCG’s web-based special education case management tool. It is used by school districts spanning 30+ states across the U.S. With this solution, districts can achieve and maintain federal and state compliance and improve processes and procedures for special education, Section 504, intervention, and behavioral programs.
EDPlan Case Management’s flexible, user-friendly design is both convenient and efficient.
It features:
- Customized dashboards that give each user access to the exact data they need when they need it
- Compliance alerts that are embedded throughout the special education process, notifying users of key events and due dates that align with federal and state regulations
- Special education processes that are clear and manageable
- Robust, actionable, flexible reporting options at all levels
As part of our Education team’s commitment to equity for each student and to support our clients with countering bias when serving students with disabilities, EDPlan Case Management also features:
- A function for a nickname to be entered or uploaded within a student’s profile, so they can be referred to by their preferred name if they have not yet changed their name legally
- The gender identification fields in students’ IEPs in the system have been disabled for all forms that are generated/printed for each state
Equity, Cultural, and Linguistic Competency Programs
Our Education team offers these programs to provide educators with critical knowledge to enrich their cultural understanding, address equity, and support them in becoming culturally and linguistically responsive educators.
These programs build educator knowledge and skills through instruction that meets a wide variety of learners’ needs and cultivates meaningful engagement in the classroom. They also provide strategies shown by research to be effective in educating diverse student learners from racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse families and communities.