Kathryn Bell McKenzie - Community Equity Audits: Communities and Schools Working Together to Eliminate the Opportunity Gap

What Your Colleagues Are Saying

Eye-opening and thought-provoking, this is a book every school leader needs to read. Auditing for equity needs to extend beyond the walls of our classrooms to the communities our schools serve. Community Equity Audits pushes back on the notion that all students can achieve in any environment. If all really means all, it requires that we embrace the needs of the whole child, which includes meeting the needs of the whole community.

Jennifer Halter, Principal, Clay County District Schools, Jacksonville, FL

Building on the natural connections between schools and communities, Kathryn Bell McKenzie and her co-authors have put together a compelling and engaging book that lays out, step by step, how to conduct a community equity audit. If you want to know how civic leaders and educators can work together to address the opportunity gap, this book should be in your personal library.

Frank Hernandez, Annette and Harold Simmons Endowed Chair in Education Leadership and Policy, Simmons School of Education & Human Development, Southern Methodist University

Community Equity Audits provides an example of how to do this work, how to use the results, and how to make changes. This is important work, and the authors prompted me to think about gaps in my own community and what needs to be taken into consideration as we attempt to close those gaps. This book will help district and school leaders identify gaps and areas of need in their own systems and communities that they may not even be aware of. This work is needed in so many places!

Lena Marie Rockwood, High School Assistant Principal, Revere, MA

Moving beyond quick-fix approaches to address accountability issues, this book provides resources for getting at the heart of the most significant challenges facing education and student success: the influences of inequity within the surrounding community. If you are committed to truly making a difference in education, this book needs to be part of your library.

J. Kenneth Young, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Center for Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership, Lamar University

Community Equity Audits heightens our awareness of the chasm of opportunity gaps between students who have limited access to equitable conditions and those of privilege. The authors empower educators to influence the greater community around these equity issues and, most important, impact the learning of all students in a culturally responsive manner through the community equity audit process.

Deborah Childs-Bowen, CLO, Creative Mind Enterprise and Chair, Engaging Schools

This text outlines the strategic steps and guidelines for conducting a community audit in order to develop a plan for equalizing access to education. The goal of providing success for students who experience the opportunity gap comes from the realistic approach that schools cannot accomplish this alone.

Judith A. Hayn, Professor of Teacher Education, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

This book is dedicated to those who are committed to doing the sustained and challenging work of transforming communities and schools so that every child has the opportunity, preparation, support, and encouragement to live their dreamwhatever that may be.

Communities and Schools Working Together to Eliminate the Opportunity Gap