Copyright© 2007 by School Services of California, Inc.

                                      Volume 20                   For Publication Date: June 8, 2007             No. 13

Understanding the Achievement Gap—
The Equity Scorecard is a Process to Institutional Change 

While studies and reports will measure institutional success based upon student retention and graduation rates, they rarely measure an institution’s success in reducing educational inequities. With the lack of institutional research measuring equity in its relation to educational outcomes for specific groups of students, the Equity Scorecard was created in 2001 to examine this issue. The Scorecard is the brain child of Dr. Estela Bensimon, a professor of higher education and the Director of the Center for Urban Education in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California (USC). 

With countless reports on the achievement gap and the low retention and graduation rates of underrepresented students, there is very little research that can assist institutions in addressing this issue. The Equity Scorecard can help them address the problem of the achievement gap. 

The Equity Scorecard: 

• Fosters institutional effectiveness by increasing the capacity to interpret and share existing institutional data disaggregated by race and ethnicity

• Expands institutional knowledge about the underlying factors that result in inequities for students of color in access, enrollments, retention, achievement, and graduation

• Empowers institutions to ask questions about student outcomes, and use their existing data for developing strategies to achieve more equitable results

• Engages institution evidence teams in “fine-grained” analyses to develop equity oriented goals and benchmarks to achieve equity for students of color in all measurable areas

The purpose of the Equity Scorecard is to create awareness in institutional self-assessment, help institutions interpret and analyze the meaning of campus inequities, and build knowledge through the collection of information and data on the causes of the gaps in student outcomes. 

In the era of institutional accountability, the Equity Scorecard is invaluable to the research on the achievement gap because it assists institutions in viewing inequities in student access and success as a problem of institutional performance and accountability rather than as a problem due to student deficits. For colleges addressing student learning outcomes, the Scorecard is aligned with the WASC accreditation process and its findings can be incorporated into the accountability report. 

According to Dr. Benismon: 

Colleges and universities have frequently been found to make little use of assessment and accountability data.  One might therefore wonder what makes us think an approach centered on data collection and benchmarking will fare any better. The answer is that instead of just collecting data, we regard the act of developing equity indicators and creating the Equity Scorecard as the intervention. 

The Scorecard has been tested in California colleges since 2001. Project institutions include: California State University, Los Angeles; California State University, Dominguez Hills; California State University, Fullerton; Los Angeles City College; Los Angeles Valley College; Cerritos College; Santa Monica College; Riverside Community College; Whittier College; University of Redlands; University of La Verne; Occidental College; Loyola Marymount University, and Mount Saint Mary’s College. 

For additional information on this project, you can contact Dr. Benismon at bensimon@usc.edu.

—Jamillah Moore, Ed.D.