Implementing Program Equity: Raising the Stakes for Educational Policy and Practice

Abstract

This article suggests some consequences of program equity for educational policy and practice. Consequences are described in terms of needed investments in policy and practice-the stakes-that are risked in order to achieve high minimum levels of student performance. Stakes go up for policy and practice both because program equity demands support for high minimum performance outcomes, along with a new and more challenging implementation standard, and because delivering these outcomes requires that implementing decisions and actions be coordinated across a fragmented educational system. Program equity implementation thus requires simultaneous top-down and bottom-up change strategies that promote goal alignment, capacity building, and direct support for change. Implementation contributions of various policy instruments and professional practices are explored. A new implementation structure-teacher networks-is proposed as a means of linking and managing top and bottom change strategies. The potential of networks rests on their ability to combine externally developed standards with classroom experiences to produce the incremental learning that improves both policy and practice, feeding back the problems of new standards to central authorities and facilitating teachers' learning and instructional practice.