Terrence Foushee - On eliminating the achievement gap (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): … in part to try to address the achievement gap, what else do you think needs to happen in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools system to reduce that gap and eliminate that gap in the future?

Terrence Foushee (TF): What I think, and I don’t know how this happens, but it’s the conversation around Black history that needs to be a part of American history. If we learned how to naturally celebrate Black history throughout the year, then we wouldn't need a separate month. I think that equity and inclusion is something that we work for and as a department do a lot of work for. I think that, in some ways, the rest of the district – and I’m not trying to say how people feel about equity and inclusion, but it’s kind of a lens. Let’s go ahead and do what we want and as we’re finishing the process of making decisions… oh and how do we also make sure this is equitable. It’s not from an equity lens from the beginning. Blue Ribbon has had to do a lot of work to make sure the schools and our system alone know we exist even though we’re a part of Chapel Hill - Carrboro City Schools. How, for me, it’s that everyone should know about this program. We shouldn’t have to do so much as far as reaching out to different programs to say, “How can we collaborate?” It should be more collaborative, where it’s not just us reaching out, but it should be them reaching out to us too. Before you start making decisions you say, “How can we bring this group to the table? How can we make sure that this has an equitable lens?” And not waiting until the last minute. Sometimes I feel like equity and inclusion is only included at the end. It’s not just naturally a part of the decision making process. To a certain extent it’s because some people don’t want it to be, or in some cases I believe that they wanted to be a bit more performative. To be able to say that they did include equity and inclusion but not for the long term. Not for the long term or with a solution oriented lens focused on fixing the problem wholly, so let’s have equity be at the beginning stage and not just to make sure people know that it was included along. Not for the long term

KW: Almost including it so they can check a box.

TF: Yes, so they can check a box.

KW: Rather than including it so it can be grounding of the whole solution.

TF: To a certain extent I think it’s difficult in a system where so many people are doing well. We have a large achievement gap, but we have such a high percentage of students doing well so it’s easy to say, “Why do we need to reach back when our numbers look better than so many other schools? So many of our students go to four-year colleges and so many of our students end up well off after they graduate from our schools. Why think about this small percentage?” Even though this percentage reflects a really big problem, a really big disparity shows that we’re not serving all of our students. There’s a specific set of students that you’re not serving. So it’s a problem and I think that working in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and being someone who graduated from these schools I can see some of the issues over the course of thirty years.

KW: Yeah, you saw it coming through the system and now you are trying to resolve it.