Building Just Education Standards
The Ethnic and Social Equity Standards Advisory Working Group was created by Act 1 of 2019 to review standards for student performance adopted by the State Board of Education and recommend to the State Board updates and additional standards to recognize the history, contributions and perspectives of ethnic and social groups.
Education Quality Standards
The Vermont Education Quality Standards act as a broad guide, highlighting important values for our schools and giving direction to school districts. The newly updated standards embed equity and inclusion across teaching practices, support services, accessibility, community participation, and professional development. You can see the newly revised EQS standards here and an older plain language version here.
The updated Education Quality Standards passed the State Board and the legislative rules committee in August of 2024 and they will go into effect in July of 2025.
We are doing work to support the implementation of these newly updated through our EQS Teaching Practices Toolkit and our Teaching Practices Course.
Vermont’s IRIS Ethnic Studies Framework
The Act 1 working group create the IRIS Ethnic Studies Framework as a framework to implement ethnic studies across the subject areas and grade levels. While this work has not yet passed at the state board teachers and schools across the state are already using the IRIS Framework to assess and transform their curriculum. You can check out a slide deck about the work here.
History of this work
The Ethnic Studies and Social Equity Working Group bill, H.3, became a law, Act 1, on March 29th, 2019. This is a historic bill with the potential to transform our educational system. The bill established an Advisory Working Group to review state education standards and recommended updates and additional standards to the State Board that fully recognize the history, contributions and perspectives of ethnic groups and social groups. This bill was passed by a broad intersectional coalition of organizations and individuals who helped start the Education Justice Coalition.
See the EQS Two-Page Overview:
Help implement the Inclusive EQS (Education Quality Standards) in your school!
This fall and winter we had 60 amazing educators participate in a course to learn how to apply the new EQS Teaching Practices. This course is called Applying Inclusive and Equitable Teaching Practices. Now we want to partner with school districts and schools to bring this PD (Professional Development) curriculum to their district/school next year. Supporting educators to shift their teaching practice is a crucial step in implementing the updated EQS standards.
We are hoping to offer a train-the-trainer model at no or low cost so district PD leaders can get trained up to help educators in their district/school shift their practice. We may also be able to provide trainers to lead the PD to educators in your district. If your school or district is interested in bringing this PD curriculum to your school or wants to learn more about this project please fill out this brief form so we can be in touch.
Advisory Working Group
The Advisory Working Group was composed community members that represent various social and ethnic groups and state stakeholders that med on a monthly basis. Thank you to all that participated!
Addie Lentzner – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Amanda Garces (Chair) – Vermont Human Rights Commission
Amanda Rohdenburg – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Barbra Marden – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Celilo Bauman-Swain – EdJ Coalition Appointee (Student Representative)
Chelsea Myers – Vermont Superintendents Association Appointee
Cynthia Reyes – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Heather Bouchey – The Secretary of Education Appointee
Heather Lynn – Vermont School Boards Association Appointee
Hiba Ali – EdJ Coalition Appointee (Student Representative)
Infinite Culcleasure – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Julie Hansen – Vermont Independent Schools Association Appointee
Joyce Lee – EdJ Coalition Appointee (Student Representative)
Lynn Murphy – EdJ Coalition (Abenaki Representative)
Mark Hage (co-chair) – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Maxwell Barrows – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Miakoda Schultz – EdJ Coalition Appointee
Michael Martin – Vermont Curriculum Leaders Association Appointee
Mike McGraith – Vermont Principals Association Appointee
Natasha Eckart Baning – The Vermont-National Education Association Appointee
Vera Sheehan – EdJ Coalition (Abenaki Representative)
Xusana Davis – Executive Director of Racial Equity