Shaker Rising:
A Sustainable Education for All Students
The Shaker Heights City School District is eliminating
racially segregated classrooms and ending the practice
of tracking students. These changes are aligned with the
District’s educational equity policy and will positively
impact students now and in the future.
By Jennifer Kuhel | Photography by Gus Chan
When David Glasner became Shaker
Heights Schools Superintendent
in the fall of 2019, he visited a
Woodbury core-level classroom with
the District’s Chief Academic Officer
Marla Robinson. Nearly all of the
students in the classroom were Black.
Robinson quietly asked one of
the students where all the white
students were.
“They’re in enriched,” the
student answered.
Glasner remembers the student’s
straightforward response as a sucker
punch to the gut. “We had to ask
ourselves, what are we doing to
students if we’re sending the message
explicitly and implicitly that white
students are enriched and Black
students aren’t,” he says.
Prior to Glasner’s
superintendency, the District formed
an equity task force, provided
equity training to faculty, staff, and
community members, and conducted
an anti-racist book study for faculty
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and staff. But Glasner’s Woodbury classroom visit – which mirrored his own
cumulative observations as principal at the Middle School and then as interim
principal at the High School – left him with an urgency to take action and
implement changes that he believes will improve outcomes for all students.
In his first year as superintendent, Glasner prioritized Black student
excellence, worked to create an Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI),
and ensured that the District’s Educational Equity policy was embedded into its
latest Strategic Plan.
At the start of the 2020-21 school year, Glasner announced that the District
would eliminate racially segregated classrooms, end its practice of tracking
(grouping students according to their perceived ability), and consolidate
honors- and core-level courses at the Middle School and the High School. He
adopted the theme “Shaker Rising” as the District’s call to action: Every Shaker
student would be provided an educational experience designed to help each
one rise and meet their potential.
Last November, the District received a $117,000 grant to begin the Grade
7-9 math-focused pilot project “Black Excellence and Inclusion in Mathematics”
as part of its efforts to eliminate racially segregated classes and advance
academic excellence.
And then in March, the Shaker Schools Foundation partnered with the
DEI office to launch the Educational Equity Fund to support key District-wide
diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
“We need to prepare students to go into the world and interact,
collaborate, and solve problems with people of different backgrounds,
experience and expertise, and that’s what our classrooms need to look like,”
Glasner says. “This commitment to equity and our decision to end racially
segregated classrooms is really about the sustainability of our students, our
community, and our economy at large.”
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