by Nicole Wesche, staff writer<\/p>\n
On May 2017, Dr. Michael J. Martirano was named interim superintendent of the Howard County Public School System. Martirano believes that the students should be the center of all decision-making, and is committed to giving every child the opportunity to succeed. This coincides with his emphasis on ensuring equity for every child. Equity is one of his main values that has been implemented into every classroom throughout Howard County.
\n\tEquity can be defined as giving everyone what they need to be successful while equality can be described as treating everyone the same. The goal of equality is to promote fairness, but this is not necessarily fair because not everyone starts from the same level of expertise. Some need different resources in order to reach the same finish line which is why Dr. Martirano pushes for equity throughout HCPSS.
\n\u201cEquity is giving each person what they need. Each person has different strengths and weaknesses and being equitable allows us to meet the individual needs of our students,\u201d explains Ms. Galbreath, a River Hill Assistant Principal. \u201cEquality would be providing the exact same supports to every student whether they need it or not.\u201d On the outside, it may seem unfair to give those who have more resources less help than others, but, in fact, the playing field is just being leveled.
\n\tLaura McAllister, a River Hill senior, defines equity as \u201ceveryone is given an acceptable chance to achieve greatness, even if it means giving them an extra push. Equality is treating everyone the same.\u201d The difference between them comes as equity provides everyone the various resources that they need to succeed while equality gives everyone the same resources and help.
\n\tMs. Galbreath states that at River Hill, \u201cWe are now more purposeful about being equitable.\u201d emphasizing that this will be accomplished by making an effort to build relationships with students. Galbreath also expresses \u201cwe are working to make sure that we are treating students and staff as individuals and are providing the supports each person needs to be successful.\u201d
\nBut, despite these promising changes, students think that equality is much more prevalent than equity specifically at River Hill. \u201cEveryone has the same resources to succeed,\u201d senior Sonia He claims. \u201cAt least from what I\u2019ve seen, there isn\u2019t anything pushing the students who aren\u2019t achieving at the same level to do more, so the \u2018over-achieving\u2019 kids take all the opportunities and keep rising\u201d while others who are less motivated continue \u201cto sit back and not take advantage of opportunities.\u201d So, promoting equity should give the students who need more of a push the resources they need in order for them to rise to the same level as other achieving students.
\nBut, the emphasis on equity is still new and River Hill students can still learn so much. \u201cIt is our diversity is what makes us great. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses and we need to tap into everyone\u2019s strengths,\u201d Ms. Galbreath continues. \u201cStudents should be proud of what they are good at and celebrate the strengths of others.\u201d
\nOverall, there have been no significant changes at River Hill so far due to the shift in emphasis from equality to equity. However, in the future, changes may be coming in order to ensure that every student across Howard County has an equal chance to succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Nicole Wesche, staff writer On May 2017, Dr. Michael J. Martirano was named interim superintendent of the Howard County Public School System. Martirano believes that the students should be the center of all decision-making, and is committed to giving every child the opportunity to succeed. This coincides with his emphasis on ensuring equity for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/IISC_EqualityEquity.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}