For more than 50 years, the RELs have collaborated with school districts, state departments of education, and other education stakeholders to help them generate and use evidence and improve student outcomes. Read more
Home Blogs Join the Making Equitable Schools Audit partnership!
Your district is invited to join the Making Equitable Schools Audit (MESA) partnership, which strives to ensure that all members of a school community—including students, teachers, and staff—experience a safe and supportive school environment. MESA is a yearlong facilitated and collaborative approach designed to help schools use existing data and leverage community-wide relationships to move toward more equitable and belonging-filled experiences for all members of a school community.
What are partners saying?
A school staff member called the equity audit collaboration with Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest a "milestone" of the year. The MESA partnership and its focus on equity, she explained, became "part of my development in keeping me going in the educational field, inspiring me, reminding me of where I'm at, how I got here, and why I want to stay."
A school administrator reflected on the MESA partnership: "[The REL Midwest team was] great to work with. I enjoyed the process. From an educator standpoint and a school leader, you want to hear how you can improve. And this made it very easy just to identify some of the work."
The MESA approach provides free, ongoing coaching and resources for school leaders plus support for a facilitated equity audit that includes representatives of the broader school community.
The approach includes the following:
REL Midwest developed the MESA approach in partnership with Akron Public Schools. REL Midwest is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
Districts that implement the MESA approach work in partnership with REL Midwest to integrate MESA's facilitated coaching and equity audit sessions into their schools' schedules. Districts agree to collaborate with REL Midwest to support schools as they participate in equity conversations, convene diverse members of the school community, and develop plans for policy and practice changes to support equitable school environments. Districts implementing the MESA approach also agree to work with REL Midwest to assess the success of the MESA approach in increasing student sense of belonging, reducing the use of exclusionary discipline, and improving the school environment through surveys, interviews, and administrative data. Districts not implementing the MESA approach may still join the partnership to learn more about the work and consider opportunities for participation in the future.
Activity | Timing |
---|---|
Districts join the MESA partnership. | March/April 2024 |
School principals attend onboarding sessions. | May 2024 |
Districts communicate with and distribute beginning-of-year MESA materials to staff. | Fall 2024 |
School leaders attend preaudit coaching sessions. | Fall 2024 |
Schools convene for equity audit sessions. | Winter 2025 |
School leaders attend postaudit coaching sessions. | Spring 2025 |
School leaders attend action and monitoring sessions. | June 2025 |
Districts communicate with and distribute end-of-year MESA materials to staff. | June 2025 |
We look forward to partnering with districts ready to cultivate lasting outcomes for their students. Please reach out directly to Melissa Yisak at relmw.mesa@air.org.
Author(s)
Iszy Hirschtritt Licht
Connect with REL Midwest