Confronting Equity Issues on Campus: Implementing the Equity Scorecard in Theory and Practice ed. by Estela Bensimon, Lindsey Malcolm (review)

Confronting Equity Issues on Campus: Implementing the Equity Scorecard in Theory and Practice, edited by Estela Bensimon and Lindsey Malcolm, affirms the argument that promoting equity on campus, and in our wider society, requires more than increases in access or representation for students of color. Rather, this text and the chapters in it argue that institutions must work together to promote equity in experiences and outcomes across student groups. The Equity Scorecard, developed by the researchers at the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at USC’s Rossier School of Education, is more than a data tool; the chapter authors throughout this text repeatedly remind that it is an agent for facilitating social change.

This text, which is organized into three sections, offers guidance regarding how to begin the process of organizational change to promote diversity and equity in higher education. Section 1 includes three chapters which document the development and evolution of the Equity Scorecard. Chapters 1 (Bensimon) and 2 (Lorenz) detail the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the Equity Scorecard, while chapter 3 by Bensimon and Hanson describes how the Scorecard process is implemented. In the second section, comprised of four chapters, examples from campuses like Occidental College (highlighted in chapter 5) and Loyola Marymount University (detailed in chapter 4) demonstrate how the Scorecard has been used and the learning which has resulted at the individual and institutional level. In the final section, three chapters chronicle the findings and outcomes associated with the Equity for All project, which documents the use and findings of the Equity Scorecard across a group of community colleges. The last two chapters offer the reflections of scholars and administrators who participated in the Equity Scorecard process.

There are multiple reasons for which one could find this text to be notable; however, there are three points in particular to which I would call attention. First, this text repeatedly highlights the importance of outcomes and process in terms of promoting equity on college and university campuses. Scholars and policymakers alike have long chronicled the challenges faced by students of color in higher education. Although this work has made a significant contribution to the field, institutional leaders are often left with questions regarding the extent to which the same problems affect their own campuses and what they are supposed to do make things better. While outcomes are addressed intermittently throughout this volume, the emphasis is placed on how institutions can come to their own conclusions and engage in the process of change.

Section 2 (specifically chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7) is especially helpful in this regard, offering insight into the challenges and triumphs within the campus evidence teams, the learning that took place for team members and how this related to their ability to foster learning and change at the institutional level, and how teams supplemented their knowledge with additional data collection strategies. Reading this text would provide institutional leaders considering implementing the Equity Scorecard (or other institutional change strategies for that matter) a detailed overview of the change process, informing them how to learn more about their own campuses and addressing the importance of developing unique strategies based on their respective goals, missions, and contexts.

Second, this text emphasizes the importance of data and theory in the organizational change process. While this may have been said before and widely encouraged by researchers in the field of higher education, this text makes this recommendation in innovative ways. It offers a template for how to use data readily available on most campuses, addressing common challenges and pitfalls. In addition to noting that data should be at the center of interventions, the authors make the distinction between data, information, and actual knowledge. They acknowledge the challenges associated with being data driven and translating data into knowledge, including challenges with interpretation, continued reliance on experiential knowledge, and shifting the identity of institutional researchers from...