VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, Mandilee. Thank you, Mandilee. And thank you all for joining us this afternoon for our session "Equity in California Adult Education" based on the research brief presented by CALPRO. My name is Veronica Parker, coordinator with the CAEP Technical Assistance Project. And I will turn it over to my colleague and friend, Sudie Whalen, who will give us greetings and introductions. 

SUDIE WHALEN: Thanks so much, Veronica. And just ask everybody to give me grace. I am a little under the weather, so I might sound a little more nasally than usual. But I am here, and I am present. I'm really excited to share with you all not only some of the information included in the research brief, but also the link to the brief so you can access it. It is out there and available. And so let's first get into welcome and introductions. 

My name is Sudie Whalen. I'm the deputy director at CALPRO, the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project, that provides professional development to all of our CAEP, and WIOA funded agencies in adult Ed across the state. And I'll let Veronica-- like you kind of just introduced yourself. Anything else you'd like to add, including some of your expertise in this area? 

VERONICA PARKER: No, just that I am super excited to be here to share this information with you all. I'm also extremely grateful for the opportunity to be a co-author of this research brief. This information is very near and dear to my heart. I'm extremely passionate about it, and want to keep the conversation going as it relates to equity in California adult education. So very excited to share this space with you all, and to present the presentation on the research brief. So thank you all, again, for joining us this afternoon. 

SUDIE WHALEN: Yes, thank you, everyone, for joining us. And so like I said, my name is Sudie Whalen. I've been developing and working in the area of adult education equity for a number of years. You might know me from some of my greatest hits, like Successful All Learners Through Equity, which is a CALPRO professional development training that you can take virtually or in person. I'll give you some contact information at the end if you'd like to request that. 

I've also done some development of content for the LINCS project. We just released the diversity, equity, and inclusion course that came out I believe last week, which also includes a lot of really cool tools and equity audit, specifically for adult Ed. Yes, please, nice to have that, right? So lots of really cool things that we've been working on. 

But one of the things I'm really excited about right now is this research brief because it's California focused. It thinks when it takes into consideration some of the historic contexts that have caused inequities and some of the current context in which we find ourselves needing to revisit and continuously think about equity, as a state, as programs, as individuals, and where we live within that. And so I'm really excited to share some of the research that's around that. 

So for those of you who are here on with us, feel free to turn on your webcams. We love seeing faces. And then also go ahead and feel free to pop into the chat your name and where you're from. We want to hear from you. We want to see you. 

Hi, Kim. Hi, Rachel. Nice to see you all. I see a couple of known names on here, Sue Pon, hi there. Lourie, hello. Shididi, hello. Shididi was one of our awesome CDE reviewers and helped us get this to the finish line. So it was really exciting to see his name on here. Hi, Pat. Hi, everyone. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for joining us on cam. Hi, Kristen. 

So let's talk about some of the objectives for today. We're hoping that by the end of the session, that you'll kind of understand the historical context of inequity, identify the adult education population demographics within the state, and then also understand the impact of inequity on society as a whole, and lastly, articulate some actionable activities to further equity at your site. 

One of the things that we did differently this year with this research brief, that we have historically not done before with CALPRO, is we included action steps and things that you can do to move equity forward. Because we thought it was important not to just give you the research and the information, but to give you some things that you can do to move the needle so you can get a little bit more done at your own agencies. 

So when we're thinking about equity, the definition we're relying on is educational equity is achieved when all students receive the resources, opportunities, skills, and the knowledge that they need to succeed in our Democratic society. We're talking about all of this when we're talking about equity. 

So at this point, I'm going to turn this over to Veronica, who's going to give us a little bit of the historical context. I do want to state that the research brief goes much farther in depth to studies that happened 40 years ago, to studies that were more recent. So we see a lot of parallel and things that are consistently happening. And we don't have time to go into every single one of these studies. So you're just kind of getting a snippet of some of the different contexts and the different things that we thought about and considered as we were developing the brief. 

VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, Sudie. So we'll move into anti-literacy laws. And so as a mechanism to disempower Black free and formerly enslaved individuals, anti-literacy laws were put in place to legally prevent these individuals from obtaining an education in terms of reading and writing. 

So for example, it was considered a crime for free Black individuals to learn how to read and write. Because it was considered a threat to slave owners and their economic potential. But free and Black individuals with the support of white allies created secret schools in which they were able to learn how to read and write, and took that risk for the greater benefit of themselves, although it was considered a crime at the time. 

So next we have immigration and assimilation. So as Mexicans, Asians, and others were allowed to immigrate into the United States, instead of honoring their native culture and language, America used persuasive tactics to push to assimilation and erasure. 

So for example, a tactic was English-only education and the development of Anglo-American traditions. The poster that is on this particular slide was an actual flyer that was given to immigrants and encouraged them to learn what was dubbed as "our language" and the principles for good citizenship. 

So the next area is history changing legislative acts. So the immigration and assimilation as well as the anti-literacy laws were used as a mechanism to keep our learners from attaining education, but we do have history changing legislative acts that move to advance some of the equity that we are seeing present day. 

So in 1967, a Senator by the name of Ralph Yarborough of Texas introduced a bill which proposed to provide assistance to school districts in establishing educational programs specifically for English language learners students. 

And among the recommendations of this bill were the teaching of Spanish as the native language, and the teaching of English as a second language. And programs were designed to give Spanish-speaking students an appreciation of ancestral language and culture. So this bill was used as a way to allow our Spanish-speaking learners to continue to honor and learn their native language. And that's where English as a second language came into place. 

And then we have the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. So this particular law was signed into law on January 26, 1990 by President George W. Bush. And ADA is one of America's most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation. And it prohibits the discrimination and guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else, and be able to participate in mainstream American life. 

So those areas include employment opportunities, the purchasing of goods and services, and participation in state and local governments and programs and services. And this was modeled after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 

And then we have the Brown v Board of Education 1954. And this was a Supreme Court ruling. And it ruled that schools segregated based on race was unconstitutional. And although it did not specifically mention Hispanics or other ethnic minorities, the ruling stated that it applied to others similarly situated. And so while this ruling did not affect the education of non-English speaking minorities directly, it introduced a new era of American Civil rights, and led to the subsequent legislation that would create programs for the disadvantaged. 

So two pieces of legislation, as well as the ruling, was an opportunity for us to move towards establishing equity in our education system by giving rights and privileges to those who otherwise did not have prior to the establishment of these legislation and rulings. Next slide, please. 

And so The Freirean Influence. So this quote here, which I will read it to you all, is "Freire's main concern is how to educate people to emancipate themselves from the culture of silence, and to meet the needs of humanity and develop a more just society." 

So as we begin to look at the ways in which we address inequities, Freire wanted us to look at ways in which we can help teach individuals to emancipate themselves from silence to meet the needs of humanity and the needs for a more just society. And so that's one of the ways in which we see in education present day, specifically adult education. We have helped our learners educate them on how to emancipate themselves from a culture of silence. 

SUDIE WHALEN: And if I can just add. One of the fascinating things about Paulo Freire, and you won't see much about him other than a citation maybe within the research brief, but in terms of education and educating adults and things like project-based learning and problem-based learning and those kinds of things, it was really fascinating how he kind of changed how we think about how adults really learn through problem solving, how they need education that helps them apply what they're learning directly to their lives. And he thought of this as a civil rights issue, as a way for them to further their own lives and to get to where they need to be. 

If you think about what we do for those agencies that WIOA funded, WIOA is all about helping students, and adults specifically, earn a sustainable wage and life sustaining wage, a way to be free, if you will, right? And so Paulo Freire really kind of was thinking about this before it was cool, before anybody else was really having those conversations. 

And so it's really interesting when you go back to his work and then you start looking at things that came later, Malcolm Knowles, and that kind of stuff. It all kind of connects together in terms of that thinking about adults having a necessity to learn something to meet a specific need so that they can better their own lives, right? 

And we're encouraging our adult learners to stand on their own two feet, and to take ownership of their own lives, and to take ownership of where their path leads them. But we also have a job to do in terms of creating a path that they can walk down, to open those doors for them to walk through. And that's where equity comes in and where inequities create barriers. 

VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, Sudie. And so in California in particular, there are additional legislation that address some of the inequities that we had seen previously. So the first one is AB-60 Driver's License, which was signed into law in 2013 by Governor Brown. 

And so this directs the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue driver's license to any California resident who is eligible regardless of immigration status. And so this means that an applicant who is undocumented can receive a driver's license under AB-60. 

And so this is one of the ways in which California addressed some inequities, because we want to be able to provide even our undocumented learners in particular a driver's license so that they're able to travel to and from work, to pick up kids from school, to maintain their lifestyle, come to our adult education agencies, and so on and so forth. 

And then next we have SB-1159 Career Licensure. And so this particular legislation, which was signed in 2014, it offers professional licenses to anyone who completes the necessary training and other state certification or licensing requirements regardless of immigration status. So applicants without a social security number can provide their individual tax identification number when seeking a particular license. 

And so this was important, especially in adult education, when we have our adult learners who are undocumented, but they are going through some type of vocational training and want to obtain a license in order to work in a specific industry and earn a livable wage. And so this paved the way for them to obtain that particular license, although they may not have citizenship in America. 

And so the next one is the Installation of a Director of Immigrant Integration. And this was passed in 2016. And so the California legislature passed this law creating a position of Director of Immigrant Integration in the governor's office. And this particular position or this office coordinates the immigrant services and monitor the implementation of immigrant immigration assistance programs. 

And then next, the Immigrant Integration Framework, which was published in 2017. This particular framework, which was produced by ALLIES, reviews how immigrant success must include more than just the acquisition of English language skills. And the proposed framework suggested that a broader, more balanced set of goals and associated metrics can be more accurately record an immigrant's progress. And this particular framework was foundational in supporting individual immigrants more historically, as well as assessing the capacity of programs to serve immigrants and identify support gaps in individual communities. 

And last, we have AB-2098, which was the Immigrant Integration Measures in Data Collection, which was passed in 2018. And so this requires the partnership between the Chancellor's Office as well as the CDE. It requires them to identify common measures for meeting the needs of immigrants in adult education and refugees adults seeking integration. 

And so the specific common measures, including English literacy and civics, so EL Civics education from a civic objective and additional assessment plans under Title II of the WOIA program. And the requirements was to define a specific data each consortium may collect and establish a menu of common assessments and policies regarding placement of adults seeking immigration integration into adult education programs to be used by the consortium to measure educational needs of adults and effectiveness of the providers assessing these particular needs. 

And so again, as we mentioned before, this is not an exhaustive list of legislation that address inequities, or even an exhaustive section of history that is included in the research brief. However, it's just to give you an idea of where we were, and then where we are now, and some of the legislation that has been passed nationwide, as well as in the state of California, to address some of the inequities. And so I will turn it back to Sudie, who will address the adult education population. 

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you. So I think it's important for us to think about who our population is. And one of the interesting data points is the vast difference between California population of citizens as a whole, and the difference between our adult education population. 

And so when we look at the California demographics, we see that the primary demographic is 61.6% White. This is based on the 2020 census. And we know that not everyone did the census. But based on the data available, this is what we know. We've got 12.4% Black alone, 18.7 Hispanic, 6% Asian alone, 1.1% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 8.4% some other race alone, and then 10.2% of two or more races, is what the California overall demographic looks like. 

But then when we look at the California Adult Education demographics, we see there's a much larger population of minorities. We have 67.19% are Hispanic or Latino. Then we have 12.78% are Asian, 10.58% White, 6.31% Black or African-American. 0.35% American Indian or Alaska native, 0.23% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and then 2.55% that are more than one race. 

Now part of the reason we bring these demographics up is, one, we want to know who our students are culturally. Who are the cultures, who are the ethnicities, who are the people engaging in our classrooms. Now this information, the census, doesn't necessarily tell us everything about their culture, but it kind of gives us a little bit more information about demographics. 

I'm going to give you some action steps later that you can look at that can help you dive deeper into the census information to identify languages spoken at home and that kind of stuff, which does give you a little bit more insight into the culture of the population surrounding you. 

The reason why this is important is because it's important for us to note as educators, the people that we may interact with in our local neighborhood, that we see at our churches, at the mall, the people that we see all the time, may not necessarily match up with the people we are serving with in our classrooms. And so it's also important to note, even if you are the same ethnicity or race of someone in your classroom, that doesn't mean that you understand their lived experience. Someone may have experienced different forms of challenges and a lack of privilege that you may not have. 

When I think about my time in the classroom, I grew up in the suburbs. I didn't have a whole lot of challenge growing up. I did experience racism. But I didn't deal with poverty or anything like that. So there are privileges that I had as an educated Black woman who did not grow up with a struggle and with any type of food insecurity, or things like that, that I had to understand that my students might have been experiencing that I was not. 

So we never want to assume that we know our students lived experience based on population or just because we might be similar to them. Audrey, you can definitely have a copy of this presentation. 

Another thing also to note when we think about the demographics is how different things and different forms of inequities impact various demographics of students. When we think about research that we've seen, and there's more about this in the research brief, we do know that non-Black teachers are more likely to hold Black students to lower standards than Black teachers of Black students. We also know that non-Asian teachers are more likely to assume Asian students need less help and support, therefore not providing it to them when they need it because of the, quote, unquote, "model minority myth." 

So there's just so many different facets of these things. And the sad thing is that studies that were done in the '70s and '80s that measured these particular data points when done again in 2016 and 2018, showed that these same two issues of holding Asian students to a higher standard or holding Black students to a lower standard still persist even today. And so that tells us that our work on addressing inequities is just not done. I'll get off my soapbox now and continue though. 

So then when we think about students by gender, we also know that we have about 38.3% male and 61.97% female, which is interesting when you start looking at the unemployment demographic data. There's a little bit of a mismatch there. 

Another thing to think about is the future returning citizens or the actual return citizens that might be in your communities. California Rehabilitation and Corrections department, or California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, CDCR, serves over 50,000 adult education students annually. That's a lot of students. 

As of 2017, African-Americans remained the most overpopulated and overrepresented population within prisons, despite the fact that they make up such a small percentage. So for example, 5.6% of the California population is male, but 28.5% of the prison population is male. In terms of females, 5.7% of the California population are Black females, but they make up 25.9% of the population within the prisons. 

Part of the reason why it's important to think about that is because these returning citizens end up in your classroom. These are people that you end up serving, that are in your reentry programs, that just stumble into your adult education CTE or ABE or GED, even ESL programs. And if you're with corrections, it's also important to note that all of these individuals are in your classrooms. 

Now it is also worth noting that there are some gaps in terms of the data and we know about all of our students in terms of inclusivity, diversity, and equity. There's no publicly available data that tells us the total number of students with disabilities. There's no publicly available data that tells us the total of LGBTQIA students, or non-binary and transgender students who have not legally changed their gender. 

The reason for this is because this is all self-reported information. Which means that the student has to self-disclose this for you to even know that. It's also not data that's collected at the National level by NRIS, or at the state level through NOVA or COSAS or anything like that. So there's no really place for you to plug that in as someone's receiving it. 

But that doesn't mean these are not questions worth asking. Legally, there are some things you cannot ask. Like can't go up to a student and be like, do you have a learning disability. There's a difference between disclosure and assessment and those kinds of things. And it's important to understand the law and what ADAA allows us to ask. 

But when it comes to understanding student identity and what they identify as and those kinds of things, you can absolutely collect data to find out what their government information is, and then also ask a simple question like, what name do you prefer to go by, what are your preferred pronouns, those kinds of things, just for the sake of inclusivity, and then honoring that when the student provides you with that information. 

So you don't necessarily need to collect that data, but some of the things that relate to the student's identity, their needs, accessibility, and things like that, it is good to know. And it's also just good to air on the side of accessibility in general, when you're developing PowerPoint slides, making sure-- or documents, papers, test, quizzes, making sure your color contrast compliance, your students can at least see it, right? 

Just being inclusive generally, making sure that the representation in your reading passages and imagery and things of that nature represent the type of students that you actually have in your classroom, based on gender, based on ethnicity, race, and age. 

Don't forget we have a wide breadth of age of students. People like to assume all adult learners must be middle aged. No. Some of them are really young. Some of them are middle aged. Some of them are older. One of my favorite students was a 72-year-old who just blew me away and finished like every tech program we had, so. 

Oh, and Veronica is sharing with me that Pat said that TE actually does collect non-binary and reports to CDE. So see, there you go. There are places to report non-binary. But again, these are the type of questions we can ask and we can get to know our students better if we're intentional about it. So I'm going to turn it back over to Veronica. And she's going to talk to us a little bit about the impact of inequity on society. 

VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, Sudie. So there is an impact on individuals when they experience inequities, which leads to economic inequality. So here's a list of some of the ways in which an individual will be impacted and experience economic inequality. 

So the first one, for example, reduced career opportunities. So we know that most jobs that pay a livable wage in certain markets, they require a certain level of skills, as well as a vocational certificate, or even a degree. And so without reaching the level of educational attainment, a learner may experience reduced career opportunities, or even have difficulty finding suitable employment, or maybe even advancement, because they don't have the ability to move past low and entry level jobs. 

And then also during the times of economic uncertainty, so during a recession, learners who have not reached a level of educational attainment may experience greater chances of termination or even being laid off from jobs, because of their lower-- or entry level jobs being the first to go when faced with budget cuts. And so these are some of the ways, again, that individuals could be impacted by educational inequity. 

The next is the economic impact. And so those who earn lower wages, not only is there an impact on individuals, but there are also an impact on families. And so the impact of having access to equitable educational opportunities span past just the individuals. 

And so we want to make sure that our learners have the ability to be self sufficient and not experience the economic impact. And so the second bullet, "access to adult education services can directly address these inequities in education level and career attainment." And so I will pass it back over to Sudie, who will talk to us about the action items toward equity. 

SUDIE WHALEN: I'm just queuing up my browser so I can show you all some of these things as we get to them. So action steps towards equity. So before starting the brief, one of the first things we ask you to do is just sort of take a moment and visualize who comes to mind when you think about equity, in thinking about, is it your students, all of your students, or is there a specific population of your students that really heavily are weighing on your mind that you want to serve better, like those kinds of things. And that's just a quick visualization exercise. 

And the reason we ask you to do that is so as you dive into reading the brief, you have what matters to you, in terms of equity, at the forefront of your thoughts. Now we all have some forms of bias. And so there may be an affinity bias that causes us to think about a specific demographic group. But start somewhere. Think about what specifically do you think the gaps are, what assumption do you have about where inequities could be. And think about the people that would be impacted by those inequities as you start going into reading the brief. 

The next thing we want you to do is really learn more about your population demographics within your community. And this is why I was opening up my browser, so I could have my link queued up. There we go. So when you go to this page, which is really great, it's really easy to explore the census data and information. 

So I'm just going to put in Sacramento. And we're going to go to Sacramento City instead of the County. I want to know about the city specifically. But you can look at your County, you can look at larger demographics and things like that. And from within this, you can look at data tables specific to race, age, and sex, and all these great things. There's so much information in here. --levels of education attainment, all kinds of great stuff. So this is a really great place to start if you're trying to see if you're serving the needs of your community. 

So for example, if you're looking at your student population and you're realizing the most common language spoken is Farsi, for example. But then you send all of your flyers and stuff out in English and Spanish and not Farsi, then you're not actually hitting the population that needs to hear about your program. And so looking at your census data helps you identify what is the population around me, what are the age groups, what are the gaps, and who are the people that we can serve within this community. 

So then our next action step is to think about the inclusive classroom self-assessment. The inclusive classroom self-assessment has you really dive into identifying various components of inclusivity when we're thinking about how we think about our students. 

And what's really great about it is it includes a couple of competencies at the very top that you can kind of familiarize yourself with. And then it gives you an opportunity to really think about, do I think about my own background and experiences and values and beliefs, and how that relates to my students. So many different things. And I'm not going to read you the whole form because I think they're really great. But this is something that you do individually and by yourself. I will go back to the slide in one second. 

And the reason why I say that is, I think if you're going to do something like this, like an inclusive classroom self-assessment or many classroom equity audits, it's fine if you have a professional learning community or something like that, that you would like to do this with and have someone to-- I'm going to go back to the previous one so you can scan that. --so that you can evaluate where you feel like things are going. 

But you want to do self assessments individually. Because they're an assessment of yourself. And then maybe debrief later. Not necessarily asking everybody to turn in their self assessments to you so that you can rate how they're doing, or necessarily feeling like you have to tell everybody how you did, but so that you can identify target areas for yourself and to decide as a group, where do we want to collectively focus, without having to dive really deeply into what our areas of growth are, especially if you're really new and having these conversations with your staff. 

Now if you're a staff that's been having these conversations around data, and around equity, and around student needs and demographics, and all these kinds of things, and you've been conducting these kind of audits in the past, you may actually be in a position where you can collectively have this conversation. 

But if you haven't, I really caution you to let people do their self assessments individually, and then reflect later together without asking people exactly how they did or what they did. You want to create a sense of safety and a sense of openness so people will get to the point that they feel trusting enough to share. 

The second link, there'se a scan up there for you. Again, the inclusive classroom self-assessment. That is there for you. And then let me know. And then I'm glad you like that QR code. Google Chrome lets you create those for free, and it puts a cute little dinosaur in the middle, and I thought he was adorable. 

All right, so I'm going to go to our next action step. If you're curious about cultural competence, there's a cultural competence self-assessment that you can take that really dives deeply into just thinking about how aware you are of the culture of others, how aware you are of how cultural identity impacts individuals, and then even thinking about your own culture and how much that matters. 

When we think about cultural competence, it's important in all aspects of education, but in adult education so much so. Because our adult learners, their lived experiences lend themselves to their learning. But if we remove their culture from their learning, we kind of create an area in which there may be a lack of comfortability, they may not necessarily feel welcome, all those kinds of things that really impact the educational environment and how receptive someone is to learning and persisting. 

And so we all know that when students feel welcome and embraced, they're more likely to stick around. How many of you on this call have had a student that wanted to be in your class forever just because they'd loved being in your class so much, right? They didn't even want to move on because they just liked being there. That's the kind of feeling that we want all of our students to have, that they enjoy being with us so much they don't necessarily want to move on, but we have to push them up and out to greatness. 

So that's the cultural competence self-assessment. I hope I gave enough time to scan this time. And so-- Oh. Didn't open my little window here. And so it looks like this. And I do also want to note that a lot of these tools that we included in the brief, which are really great tools-- They're fantastic. They come from wonderful sources. But some of these were actually given permission to the LINCS project to adapt specifically for adult Ed. And so those will be available relatively soon, and then we'll probably share that out once that happens, so that we can let everybody in California know what's now available nationally too. 

So then step 6 is investigating access and equity across usage on your own agency. And then we have what's called the "peeling back the wallpaper" tool. I'll come back to the slide so you can scan the QR code, but I want to spend a few moments here. 

So this is just a really simple tool to help get you started with evaluating how you are doing. So thinking about things like policies around academics, social emotional supports, college and career readiness-- You can take this and add as many boxes as you want, and rows, as you would like to add to things that you're thinking about. 

But the questions you're asking yourself is, who has access, who uses it and why, why do some people not use it, what are the rates of participation by gender, by race, by socioeconomic status, who is feeling supported, and who does not feel supported and why. 

Now this is information you are not going to get just by looking at your typical data reports. This is information you get by talking to your students, by looking at those contact logs, if you have a counselor, that students are engaging with to see who's going on the college tours, who's actually going on the job tours, who went to the union meetings, who's been offered the pathways. 

One of the things that were really common a few years ago, that thankfully has gotten a lot better because of IET becoming more popular, was ESL students were often not even told about career pathway options that they had because everyone just assumed that they just wanted to learn English. And sometimes that is the case, sometimes it isn't the case. But we want to give students all the options that are available to them. 

Now that IET has become more prevalent, and there's more ESL focus and civics focus within IET, we're seeing more ESL students being offered these career pathways. But it shouldn't necessarily require a specialized training model in order for us to be inclusive. So we want to make sure we're doing that. 

Another thing that came up a lot as we were developing the equity module a few years ago and talking with different types of staff was talking with people who have worked in the front office. And one of the things that one person shared that they heard quite often was other people just assuming if someone had an accent that they wanted ESL. And that was often sometimes not correct. Remember, accent does not equal fluency. So we don't want to make assumptions about a student's needs just based on how they speak or how they appear. 

So the other thing that you do after you evaluate all of this, if you do some surveying, some pulling up data and looking at things, is that you're going to ask yourself, what data can I use in order to peel back the wall paper. 

And the reason why we call it "peeling back the wallpaper" is for a couple of reasons. One, wallpaper has layers. And you pull the one piece back, and you might see some more wallpaper under there. And then it's like, Oh, let me get this off. And the other thing about it is sometimes when you pull back that really pretty wallpaper, something behind it is not all that pretty, and it might be a little bit ugly, and it might need some cleaning up. And so that's why we use that phrase. 

So you also want to think about what kind of data can I use. So if you're looking at these and you're like, I don't know who has access, what data do you need in order to find that out, who can you ask, how can you get that information. 

Then the last step asks after you've gotten your data and you've asked yourself all these questions, is thinking about are there any overt inequities in your agency. And to make a list of the overt inequities. And the next step is to then think, are there policies connected to those inequities. And how can I adjust those policies. 

One of the things for me that was really huge was when I was in the classroom, we had a very specific and very stringent attendance policy, which a lot of us in adult Ed do. And a lot of times, it's aligned to the K-12 district, the number of hours you're required to have in class. So you can't miss more than X number of days, et cetera. 

But what I was finding is my students weren't missing class because they couldn't come or they just were lazy or they want to be there, they had work, they had kids that they had to pick up and drop off, there was a change in their schedule, they had transportation problems. There were so many different things that were coming up that were creating barriers for my students to complete, not because they weren't getting their work done, they were, but because they were missing time in the seat. 

So one of the things that I worked with my administrator and asked about was, hey, can we see if there's another way we can do this attendance. Can we change it to where as long as they're getting their work done, and they're submitting everything, even if they're submitting online, and they're doing it on time, that they're still able to get credit. 

Now I've taught in a CTE program, which has a little bit more flexibility than some of the other types of programming. But that was a question that I just asked. And I was a relatively new teacher at the time in adult Ed. And I was like, is that a thing? Can we do that? And she said, well, let's just ask at the district office. And so we asked. And they went back and forth a bit and eventually adjusted it. 

What's really interesting, if you look at the research, one of the primary areas of inequity for adults in education, including K-12, adult Ed, community college, and post-secondary education, is attendance. It's attendance policies that penalize adult people, adult students, adult humans, for simply being humans with real lives, with real problems, with real families, with real work, with real challenges. 

Our students can't afford to quit their job to come to class. So it looks like they're just not persisting. But what they're really doing is prioritizing their needs and their family's needs. So that's often a really easy place to begin and look at, am I penalizing my students simply for being human and having human needs. And if that's the case, then that's something you can investigate and look at with your district with the powers that be. So that's that piece. 

Now the other action step that we have here sounds a little self-serving, but I'm actually really proud of it, our Success for All Learning Through Equity module. This is a train that CALPRO has been offering since 2020. We actually had just wrapped up pilot when COVID happened. Thankfully, we're able to do that in person. Then COVID happened. And then the murder of George Floyd happened. And then there was a lot of civil unrest. And there was a lot of really a reckoning within this country of there's just a lot of injustice and a lot of inequity that exists. 

And so we were really proud that when that happened, this was already developed. It was already ready to be offered and already out to the world. We had just wrapped up our training of trainers event, all of that. And so we've continued doing that training since then. We offer it in a number of models. You can get at 100% online with two, three-hour webinars. You can have it done at your site with two, three-hour trainings in person. You can also participate in it later this year as a four-week facilitated online course with shorter webinars. So we've tried to make it as accessible as possible so everybody has access to that. 

So that is available to you. If you would like to contact us to ask even about scheduling, or find out if anybody else is hosting and you can piggyback, or how you can sign up for the facilitated course that's already scheduled for this April, feel free to reach out to us and do so. 

Joy, I do see that you like the link. Thank you, Veronica, for clarifying. Yes, all of these, the slide deck and the links and everything will be posted. So you'll have access to that too. I actually just changed a couple of QR codes right before. So I'll send the finalized updated QR code to Veronica so that she can share the PDF of the slides and everything with you. 

So we are wrapping up our time, but not without mentioning the actual brief itself. So you can get to the brief by following this cute little QR code of the little dinosaur. Or there's a link on the slide too, if you'd like to share that. The Evidence to Action brief is out and available. It was published in September of 2022. 

We actually typically publish our briefs earlier in the year. But given the importance of this topic, we had a lot of fantastic reviewers within CDE that were really looking at this closely. We were looking at it closely. We were going back and forth on some things. Veronica and I had I don't know how many meetings, like should we include that, I don't know if we should include that. Maybe that's too much. Maybe it's not enough. 

So the brief did come out a little bit longer than it usually does. But because we didn't want to do it any disservice and not include really important information. And the important thing to think about here is that we think about all demographics within this brief. 

When we think about things like stereotype threat, we know that that impacts every demographic group. So we want to make sure that we're thinking about every demographic of students we serve, no matter what their ethnicity, no matter what their gender, no matter where they grew up, where they come from, where they live, how much money they make or do not make, how many kids they have, and what their age is. We care about all of our students. And we have such a diverse group of students within California Adult Education that it would be really silly of us to not take that into account and not be caring about all of them. 

So I am now going to turn us over for some questions. If you have any questions, feel free to unmute. Join us on camera. I'd love to hear your voices. My voice is really scratchy so I'm going to stop talking for a second. But if you have a question, please do ask. Oh Jenay, thank you. Glad you liked it. Thanks, Kim. Any questions? 

MIRNA PIERCE: I don't have a question, but I have a comment. And I'm raising my hand because I have my mask on and you can't see I'm talking. [LAUGHS] 

SUDIE WHALEN: No worries. 

MIRNA PIERCE: But I wanted to say that this is great information. It's something that's always like at the back of your mind. But to bring it up forward like this, I like the assessments. Gosh, it's just a matter of time, and a matter of dedicating yourself to this. But I could see myself bringing-- I'm not a teacher myself. I collect data and create data sheets for discussion in administration and for teachers. And this is something that I'm going to look at your brief. 

Yes, I would like a copy of the presentation, and just bring it forward to the teachers and have them start thinking about-- I like the assessment of assessing themselves with their students. Because sometimes they do get into-- Like the example of your attendance. As a matter of fact, that just happened this morning in one of our classes. A student just said, I just have some things I got to do. How can I make up the time. And that needed to be explained to the student. 

SUDIE WHALEN: Yeah. 

MIRNA PIERCE: So it's something that we're living on campus all the time. So thank you for the information. 

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you. Is it Mirna or Mirna? 

MIRNA PIERCE: It's Mirna. If you're like my mom, you say Mirna. [LAUGHS] 

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Mirna. Oh, I love what you said about just the need to bring this to the forefront of our thoughts. It's really easy for us to think about-- Because I think all of us can pretty much agree that we identify that there are inequities. We know that there's work to be done. But sometimes it's easy to know that and not actively do anything about it, and to move our consciousness from just awareness to action to actually acting on it. 

And it's also important to note that working towards equity is not like a one and done. It's not something you focus on one academic year, and the next year, it's all fixed, and we never have to do this again. It's something that you're ongoing and kind of cyclical and thinking about on a regular basis, and that you're acting towards regularly. And so I think for me, it was really working in adult education that made me become very passionate about this. Because I started seeing where so many adults were struggling. 

I'll just tell you a quick personal story. I had a student once who had finished literally every CTE program we had, like literally every single one of them. Like she went from medical, to phlebotomy, to accounting, to tech. Like she did everything. And so when she was getting ready to really be done, I was like, I can't wait to see you making more money than me in your McMansion and just doing great. And she's like, Oh, I don't want to make more money than you. 

And I was like, well, you don't know how much money I make. What do you mean? And she basically gave me a cap of the most amount of money she'd like to make. And I asked why that was. She explained to me that they had been on welfare as a child. Her parents were on welfare. Her mom got a really great job. They came off of welfare. They were doing really well. Her mom got laid off. And then they were homeless for a year when she was 15 years old, living in her parent's car. 

And so to her as a mother now, she never wanted her children to experience that. So she was afraid to step out of her comfort zone and come off of welfare, even though she had all these certifications, even though she had all of these skills. And so that what to me was a moment of identifying that sometimes these systems don't actually help get us out of the situation that we're in, and that it does require us to really understand who our students are. 

That was the type of poverty I'd never experienced, that I did not understand, until my student articulated it for me. And so what was really fascinating about working with her was the more cheerleading and coaching we did, that was great, but what she really needed was job stability. 

And so one of the things that became a huge passion for me was directly connecting my CTE students to long term jobs. She got a great job at Kaiser. She now makes way more money than I make. And she's doing fantastic. But it took that leap of faith, and it took that connection to having long term stable employment for her to make that step. 

And so there are so many things when we think about what impacts equity, what impacts inequity, what students have access to, what their hopes and their fears are, means really understanding where they come from. And that's the big piece that I'm really trying to push here, is understand where your students are coming from so you can meet them where they are. 

All right, so we've got a couple-- Working towards-- Oh, Veronica, thank you. Thank you, Shididi. Thank you, Kwasi. Thank you, Christine. I appreciate that. Did anybody else have a question or a comment? Thank you. Or just thoughts. Also don't forget to complete the evaluation. I didn't forget, CAEP tech host. 

All righty. So I think that's our presentation. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being change agents, for being actionable towards equity, and at least considering what are your next steps and what you can do. The presentation we'll send you will include a lot of research links and things like that. 

But if you really want to see more research than this, download that research brief. There are so many sources. And if you're a nerd like me who likes reading studies and data, that's a great place to find a bunch of them. You might end up a little heartbroken after reading some of them, but it'll make you feel more motivated to make change, at least that's how I felt anyway. 

So thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Sue, for being here always. You're great. Sue Pon never misses an equity webinar, I just want to point that out. [CHUCKLES] And I love her. All righty. Thank you, all. I'll stick around in case anybody has any questions before they close the room. Thanks. 

VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, all. 

TECH HOST: And as you guys filter out, I just want to say thank you for joining us on our first day of the summit. We have our next session block starting at 2:30. And you can visit our schedule where we will find all of the resources that have been shared here today tomorrow. All right. 

SUDIE WHALEN: All right, Veronica, and I'm emailing you the updated slide deck right now. 

VERONICA PARKER: OK.