Oct. 31 Monitoring Progress on Diversity
I love the opening paragraph of this chapter about “projectitus” where in diversity activity is equated with diversity progress. The author goes on to mention that leaders (and I would add ‘others’) grow tired of “spending time on yet another task force”. Continuing on, the author reiterates, “campus reviews of diversity often consist more of information on activities than on institutional change.” In the same section the author asserts, “it appears that the impetus to reflect on the status of diversity often tends to be reactive, as a response to external requirement, as a response to a call to ‘demonstrate’ (and sometimes prove) the effectiveness of a single program in a highly politicized context, or in response to a campus incident.”
These comments hit directly on the head of the question I have often held. This is a problem beyond the higher education realm. It’s the problem, in P-12 education, and our society at large. There are a lot of people, organizations, and causes throwing a lot of ‘fixes’ at the issues of diversity, underrepresented, oppressed, less-abled, you name it. This is a particularly onerous problem in the schools. Plans, programs, policies, are instituted and implemented, before careful examination of the effectiveness of the current plans, programs, and policies. The new plans, programs, policies, are begun before carefully considering their potential effectiveness, or problems which would render them ineffective. In an effort to be politically correct, in line with policy, within the standards, complying with the requirements, poor thinking and evaluation goes on. When this happens change is implemented that never really addresses the problem. Hence, the same issues are revised year after year with little change.
To quote the author again, “numbers do not exist in a vacuum.” Further, “…caution must be used to make sure that data do not become removed from context or used to make the issues so complex that no meaning can be developed. Data and data requests can also get out of control and proliferate to the point of meaninglessness.” The data needs to be carefully and thoughtfully reviewed before it can be used to address the strengths or weaknesses of the institution. I found the section called Orienting the Data to be especially helpful in the process of reflecting on data and the nature of change before decision-making. I also found the webs on 264-268 to be helpful guidelines which could easily be adapted for P-12 use. I dog-eared those pages for possible future reference.
