Education Week - November 25, 2020 - 4

Training Bias Out of Teachers: Does It Work?
By Sarah D. Sparks
This summer, the Des Moines,
Iowa, public schools held a series
of anti-racist town hall meetings in
the wake of the police-led killings of
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor
and the disproportionate effects of
COVID-19 on people of color in their
community. But the conversation
rapidly turned to inequalities within
in the school system.
" I would describe it as a harsh look
into the current realities of what
our students and our families are
saying to us around anti-racism in
our schools, " said Goodrell Middle
School Principal Peter LeBlanc, who
noted the conversations are part of
the district's ongoing equity audit.
" The foundational finding, which we
call it, is our current school system is
perpetuating systemic racism. "
More than 6 in 10 students in the
Des Moines district are students of

color, while more than 9 in 10 school
employees are white, and both students and staff of color reported a
lack of diversity in staffing and curriculum, as well as inequitable school
policies and practices. Data backed
them up; for example, Black and Hispanic graduation rates in Des Moines
still trail those of white and Asian
students.
LeBlanc was tapped for special
assignment to lead the district's efforts to recruit more diverse teachers
and staff and to train existing staff
to avoid the unconscious racial and
other biases that could affect their
relationships with students. It's work
that thousands of districts have taken
up in the wake of rising calls for racial justice in the education system
and beyond. California's education
department announced this summer
it would require all of its employees
to go through implicit-bias training
and to provide guidance to districts

on doing the same. Michigan and
Kentucky are considering similar
training for their teachers.
There's just one problem: It's not at
all clear from research what kind of
anti-bias training works.
Several large-scale analyses of research on implicit-bias training suggest it more often changes short-term
knowledge about the vocabulary of
diversity than long-term changes in
behavior. Several specific common
strategies-such as thinking positive
thoughts about stereotyped groups,
meditating or making decisions
more " slowly " to avoid stereotypes,
or simply being aware of the possibility of implicit biases while making decisions-have all so far failed
to show benefits that last even a day
or two.
In some cases, diversity and antibias training can paradoxically lead
to more stereotyping, if participants
come to think of biases as common

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and uncontrollable, and can lead
white participants to feel threatened
without yielding benefits for participants of color. Rather, evidence suggests staff training can be helpful,
but only as part of a comprehensive
strategy that includes identifying
specific problems and strategies to
address structures that perpetuate
bias in a school system.
" We can't look at equity, not as a
standalone thing where we say OK,
let's do professional development
around equity, " LeBlanc said. " We're
mobilizing the anti-racist leadership team out of all of the different
departments to help look at current
practices, current processes, to see
how we can make improvements to
the system. "

How does implicit bias work?
More than two decades of research
has made clear that most people do
have unconscious or " implicit " biases, developed from years of social
stereotypes about race, gender, age,
or even which colors or foods typically go together. It's a kind of mental shorthand that can lead people to
think or behave in biased ways even
when they don't explicitly espouse
prejudiced ideology.
Regardless of intent, these unconscious biases can harm students.
Studies have found Black boys and
girls as young as 10 are routinely
seen as older, more sexualized, and
more likely to be guilty of crimes
than their white peers. In one experiment, white female college students
who were shown photos of Black
boys thought they were on average
4.5 years older than they were, and
when photos of children of different
races were shown with descriptions
of crimes, Black students were more
likely to be assumed guilty than
white or Latino students, particularly for felonies. Student-teachers, in
a separate study, were more likely to
view Black children's expressions as
" angry " compared to those of white
children.
Teachers are as likely to show racial
biases as any other American adults.
One large, nationally representative
study this spring found no meaningful differences in explicit or implicit
racial bias between teachers and
non-teachers. Over a series of experiments, researchers found as many as
77 percent of both groups held an unconscious preference for white over
Black people, and as many as 30 percent explicitly preferred white over
Black people.

If not anti-bias training,
what does work?
With the sheer number of districts
trying to use anti-bias training, districts may be able to help build better
evidence about what works by tying
their training programs to explicit
outcomes, such as more diverse staff
recruitment and retention or more
racially proportionate student discipline referrals. But in the meantime,

experts are also exploring other approaches to short-circuit the connection between the mental shortcut of
implicit bias and harmful discriminatory behavior.
Among all the anti-bias efforts that
have been tried and tested, some
more concrete and targeted interventions-as opposed to those targeting
general anti-bias awareness-have
shown evidence of effectiveness.
For example, people are more likely
to make decisions and act based on
unconscious racial biases when they
are stressed and when they have
limited other information about a
person. One intervention to address
this-which taught teachers classroom management techniques, selfregulation, and strategies to react
to misbehavior from students with
empathy-reduced disproportionate
numbers of office referrals for Black
boys by two-thirds and increased
Black boys' reported feelings of connection to the school.
Similarly, interventions designed
to increase teachers' empathy for
students in academic and discipline settings-rather than specifically focusing on teachers' potential
bias-improved particularly Black
students' academic effort and overwhelmingly reduced suspensions
among Black and Latino boys.
A nthony Greenwald and colleagues at the University of Washington are also exploring ways that
school districts can eliminate discretion in systems at times when it
might increase bias. That doesn't
mean ignoring a teacher's professional expertise, but it might, for
example, mean using technology
platforms to allow teachers to grade
students' work anonymously, or
allow groups of teachers to review
discipline reports without knowing
the identifying features of the students involved.
LeBlanc in Des Moines said he is
coupling staff training with teacher
and administrator equity groups
who are working together to use the
schools' data to identify how to diversify the teaching force with new
hires and to start working through
school policies around discipline
and other issues that may lead students to feel disconnected from
their teachers and schools. (The
work in Des Moines is supported by
the Wallace Foundation, which also
supports Education Week's coverage
of issues including education leadership, summer learning, social and
emotional learning, arts learning,
and afterschool.) Getting teachers
involved in the broader conversation of how to fix school policies
helps them feel more ownership of
the changes.
In a study of 30 years of data on
diversity initiatives from 800 U.S.
companies, analysts from the Harvard Business Review found mandatory or " controlling " training did
not lead to improvements in actual
behavior or diversity, particularly
when the training came in reaction
to a negative event (like a lawsuit or
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Education Week - November 25, 2020

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