CASE STUDY
Supporting School Leaders in Developing Equitable Solutions
The National Policy Board of Educational Administration wanted to support educational leaders in utilizing their equity policy, PSEL 3. DC Design established the various stakeholder groups needed to understand the challenge educational leaders were facing, elevating the student voice early in the process as a powerful indicator of what would serve to create the best outcomes.
Social System: Education
Client Type: Non-profit
Deliverable: Platform
THE PROBLEM
Educational Leaders lack the capacity and knowledge to tackle the changing challenges of equity in their school systems.
Challenges that come up in our schools need solutions quickly. Without solutions, the children suffer the most from the poor outcomes. Leadership often does not know who to turn to for solutions and utilizes whatever solutions might be available to them without working to understand the unique context of their school.
THE PROJECT BRIEF
How might the National Policy Board for Educational Administration support equitable solutions?
Educational leaders are navigating some of the most challenging social problems in our school systems. For students, especially Black, brown, and low-income students to achieve their full potential, school leaders must make decisions that honor their individual needs as well as those of the surrounding community. But knowing how to make the right decision for such a diverse range of kids can be difficult. To address this challenge, The National Policy Board of Educational Administration (NPBEA) tasked DC Design with the creation of a solution that would enable school leaders to develop context specific solutions to the equity challenges in their schools.
OUR APPROACH
Elevated student voices while engaging with teachers, parents, principals, and superintendents.
For us to understand the challenges this community faces, we elevated student voices in the conversation while engaging with teachers, parents, principals, and superintendents. Multi-stakeholder engagement allowed us to understand the core issues that needed to be addressed through any given solution.
Leveraging student voice as well as that of the broader community within the strategy development process was foundational to the eventual development of a solution that could meet the needs of any school leader, allowing them to bring in local context and decide what is best for students, teachers, and families.
THE RESULTS
Over the course of 6 months, DC Design researched, strategized, and designed alongside NPBEA and communities across the United States. After engaging 71 students, parents, teachers, school leaders, and administrators around the country, DC Design developed the NPBEA Equity Workbook, an online website that school leaders can use to develop community-centered solutions to the specific equity challenges in their schools. This platform serves as a guide showing leaders how to engage with their community through a multi-stakeholder design process that elevates marginalized voices to generate solutions that serve all.
View the Equity Workbook platform here: https://platform.npbea.org/
LEARN MORE
Social problems are complex. They cannot be solved overnight. Our clients come from different backgrounds and are focused on confronting a diverse range of issues, but one thing that unifies them is the decision they’ve made to reach for outcomes that are better than “good enough.”
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