A school district in Pennsylvania has reportedly spent thousands of dollars to create an “equity dashboard” that broke down different categories of students by race.
In June 2020, Pennsbury School District in Pennsylvania approved a $95,000 contract with Qualtrics, a data analytics company, to get software that the school district used to create an “equity dashboard,” tracking students’ achievements and outcomes by race.
According to an archived version, the “equity dashboard” claims that a “discipline gap” is when there are “patterns of differences in behavioral outcomes and types of disciplinary responses across demographic groups.”
“The District contracted with Qualtrics on June 23, 2020, as a survey tool to get parent feedback during the pandemic to assist with decision-making for reopening schools,” Jennifer Neill, supervisor of public relations for Pennsbury School District, told the Daily Caller. “After the purchase as a survey tool, the district began to explore the use of Qualtrics as a data management tool to house data, starting with developing an equity dashboard to track our equity outcomes. The district found the product very difficult to work with, and using it for data housing, as well as the equity dashboard, was never fully utilized.”
From The Daily Caller:
While it’s not clear how the district used the dashboard, Pennsbury pushed several DEI initiatives following the purchase of the software. In April 2021, the district released an “educational equity audit report” that detailed its vision to make equity the “foundation of all decision-making.” The district’s report notes that as a part of its equity plan, the school system aims to maintain a diverse staff to teach a “culturally relevant” curriculum in an effort to “reduce achievement, discipline and opportunity gaps.”
