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The Diversity Contradiction

By Shuja Khan posted 12-06-2021 04:52 PM

  
The Diversity Contradiction by Shuja Khan, Director of Enrollment Management at Rowland Hall


The question I was asked at my interview wasn’t even a question. It was a story. A handful of admissions representatives had gone to a local church to talk about the school and how to apply. The church was diverse in a way the school was not - though I sort of understood from the question that “diverse” was being misused. It was like the way people might call the elementary school where I went in Queens “diverse” when it was almost entirely black and brown kids and actually not very diverse at all.

A handful of families from the church applied. None of them were accepted. The interviewer asked for my thoughts.

A question like that is hard. We who do this work know that every applicant has a story, and it’s hard to speak about a particular situation without knowing the particulars. What I wanted to say was of course those kids didn’t get in. That’s why they never applied to begin with. If all they did was go out and drum up more “diverse” applicants, then how could the outcome be different? Nothing else had changed.

When it comes to the overlap between admissions and DEI initiatives, schools often take the approach of tasking admissions to find more diversity. In every other respect, admissions is meant to reflect the school. We think about ways to run open houses and tours not just so families get information but so the events themselves reflect the school and its values. If a school values personal relationships, then the admissions events should feel personal. If a school prides itself in the menu of options it has for kids, then the events should feel overwhelming, like there’s too much to see. 

Only, that’s not what happens when it comes to DEI work. Here, admissions is expected to be the leading edge of that conversation. To be the change instead of the reflection. Why do so many schools have admissions teams with vastly more people of color than the school itself? Don’t get me wrong, representation matters. And, also, it’s not enough. There are systems in place at schools, systems that need to be upended before admissions can go out and seek more “diversity.” It’s not the job of admissions to drum up more qualified students of color. It’s the job of the school, with the help of admissions, to change structures and shift cultures in a way that this work becomes unnecessary.

I worked at a school that was really two schools - one that offered a standard curriculum and another for students with learning differences. A place where students who needed it could get support ranging from extended time on tests to a modified curriculum. That was the intention. 

The school was also an athletic powerhouse, and the separate facility became a place where students whose talents extended beyond the classroom could take “easier” classes. Like many independent schools, the athletic programs had far more black and brown kids and far more socioeconomic diversity than the school as a whole. As a result, this school within the school was a great deal more diverse than the overall population. 

That segregation was an issue we wanted to address. The easy solution was to find the students who had been placed at the smaller school for the wrong reasons (because they played a sport, because they were on financial aid, because that’s where we had space, because of their race or ethnicity, etc.) as opposed to the right ones (because they had documented learning differences). If we looked at the population and saw kids with test scores and grades in line with the larger population, we moved them. Simple.

The results were a disaster. The kids and families were upset because they wanted to be with their teammates, with the kids who looked like them. The faculty was upset because they had internalized the stigmas about those kids and the minute one of them missed so much as a homework assignment, they were champing at the bit to get things reversed. The teachers didn’t want these kids moved, and the kids didn’t want to be moved, and it wasn’t shocking that things went badly.

What we’d done was put the cart before the horse. Most schools want to engage in DEI work yet most people have different ideas about what that work means or requires. There should be a vision, yes, but first you have to build consensus and then you have to provide skills, incentives, and resources. Miss any of those steps and you end up with confusion, anxiety, resistance, and frustration. 

As an admissions officer, I meet with our school’s DEI coordinator on a regular basis. The purpose of these conversations isn’t to create viewbooks in multiple languages (although that’s important) or to be aware of unique cultural practices (also important). It’s to examine the structures of the institution. To talk about policies and curricular choices. To understand the students’ learning experiences. To consider the school’s history and its present. To look at data with an eye for who the school is actually serving. To train admissions committees to see their biases. To question the systems that make us say “this is not what we want our school to be.” 

The admissions and enrollment teams should not be the leading edge of DEI efforts. We could see the disparity in diversity numbers between our two campuses and note it was a problem. But did all the constituencies see it that way? Did everyone - students, administrators, faculty members, parents - want to do something about it? Did they agree on what to do? Was there even a problem? It’s the work of admissions and DEI practitioners to present information, to start conversations, but it’s the job of the school as a whole to move where it wants to go. 

Go find more diverse applicants seems to be the implied responsibility of every admissions team. But shouldn’t we first ask why those kids aren’t applying to begin with?


Shuja Khan


Shuja Khan
Director of Enrollment Management
Rowland Hall

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