Speaker 1:

Welcome advocates to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast; A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. I've got a really exciting topic for today. Doctor Joshua Bornstein is here. And without further ado, Josh, thank you so much for joining us.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I'm so glad to be here. I've been a fan of the podcast for a while, I'm really glad to be a part of the conversation. So thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you're here. So we're going to have some fun. But before we get started to today's topic, I would love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Sure. So I've been at this public school education thing for just over 30 years now. I started as an elementary teacher in Prince George's County just outside of DC. And went from there, moved to upstate New York and was working in rural schools, and urban schools, and suburban schools as an elementary teacher and a union activist and eventually, principal. And actually, I even did a stint on the school board. So worn a lot of hats. The last place I landed as a principal was up in Syracuse. And I was hired as a turnaround principal for situation going on out there.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

In the last six years, I've moved over into higher ed and what I do now is I train the teachers who want to become principals. I'm at Fairleigh Dickinson University here in New Jersey, just over the bridge from Manhattan. And you know, as I said, we train the folks who want to become our school leaders coming up.

Speaker 1:

Nice. So you have an extensive career and you're impacting our future leaders. And I always say that the school leader is the Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer of any school building and so I'm just glad that you're here.

Speaker 1:

I want to jump into today's topic because I'm excited because it's not something that I've covered yet and so I'm going to throw out my first question right to you. How does ableism and institutionalized racism impact each other?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

That's a great question. So schools are very much built around the idea that there are a certain set of abilities that everybody kind of agrees on, like this is what it is to be a good kid, right? Here's what it is to be a smart kid. Here's what it is to be a good kid. And a lot of classrooms, and frankly most schools, are built around the idea that there are something that we could know as a normal kid, right? And that bell curve describes how we distribute human difference. There's a peak at the bell and then it distributes out. That whole idea that human difference has some kind of a norm to it and that's ableism right there, right?

Speaker 1:

Right.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

And so, we're very familiar with systems like special education, gifted and talented, all of those things that say if you're too far away from the norm, there's a separate space for you. There's a teacher over there who's going to work best with you, right? And we sort of ... Many of us accept the idea that a given classroom can only handle a certain band of difference amongst the kids. And so that's how we talk about the norm and the normal kids. And that's how ableism is functioning.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Where they intersect is to be a normal kid, an average kid, al these sort of mathematical terms, is effectively the same thing as being a white kid. Then normal and white come to be the same. And so what I've come to see in my work, working even with inclusive leaders is that ableism becomes kind of the polite face of institutional racism. I have not been ... I've been in a whole lot of schools. I have not been in any school that sends kids to that other classroom down the hall or out to the other school or whatever it is because they are a black or brown kid. No school does that. But, all the time they'll say, "Well, you know, they have the program you need down there, honey. You'll be fine sweetheart." It's that kind of paternalistic pat on the back, and so-forth. You're somehow a little bit too different for us to teach you right here. We're going to send you over there. And so that's one really powerful system of the way it works.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

It's also true in the discipline system. So that kids who are not fitting behavioral norm of the school wind up getting sent to the office. They get these number of office referrals. Often, they'll get suspended. And the dis-proportionality that we see in ... The racial dis-proportionality that we see in discipline is very much parallel what we see in special ed.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I will say, you don't see it in blindness. We don't see it in deafness. Where do we see it? We see it in learning disabilities, other health impaired, emotional behavioral disorders. All of those diagnoses that require an adult making the judgment of eligibility. I don't know any single kid that ever raised a hand and said please can I have an emotional behavior diagnosis. Right? None of the them.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So these are the ways in which they intersect and they come together. In my practical experience, I was a principal up in Syracuse as I mentioned before. So Syracuse, at the time that I was working there was being sued by the Attorney General for the State of New York for excessive and disproportionate suspension. And so I've seen these systems work up close and what I've come to see also is that a lot of times, the positive behavioral interventions and supports or it's newer incarnation rate, multi-tiered systems of supports. But the system keeps rolling on, it keeps changing it's name, [crosstalk 00:06:37] -

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, same thing.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Right. It's this triage system that actually comes out of public health so that schools can use that to deploy their resources the best way they know how. So that's why I think people keep coming back aside from the fact that it is the law. And often, schools will use that system as a way of dealing with this sort of excessive suspension problem.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

What I've come to see in my work is that, and working with, as I said, inclusive leaders from a variety of districts. Suburban ones, urban ones, rural ones, is that what often happens in that structure is that that's where the swap comes from bad kid to sick kid, right? And the thing about it is that the focus of that system is almost exclusively on the kid. It rarely, if ever, turns back on the individual teacher or on the teachers. And it never turns back on the system.

Speaker 1:

Can you explain, what do you mean by bad kid to the sick kid? Tell us more.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Right, I will.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So for those of us that may not be familiar with this MTSS system, the way it works is a pyramid of three tiers, usually. Some places have four but usually three. At the base level, we're doing the teaching and support and so-forth that we think is going to work for 80 to 90 percent of our kids.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

If a kid comes to our attention who's not succeeding in there and there may be some kind of data that we're keeping that tells us that kid's not doing very well. Maybe academic data, maybe behavioral data. In terms of behavior, it tends to be office referrals. Like attendance and office referrals. Those are the classics. Almost every school uses those.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

We get a certain amount of that data, and then we're going to step up into the next tier which is focused intervention. We're going to try to provide some supports for that kid. And what we're hoping is that those interventions are going to work to help turn the kid back down to tier one. Likewise, when you get into the upper tier, if those things are still not working, now we're going to provide more intense support.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So the actual trying to do those interventions, if they keep failing, school looks at those and goes, "Oh, well we keep doing our best. It keeps not working for you. You must have a real problem." And so it builds this diagnosis that there's something broken about the kid.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

The one piece that I think goes underappreciated is that when we talk about what that base layer is, what is it we're actually going for? And when I started to look at this more carefully in my work, I'm like, huh, the values that we're promoting in that base are really coming straight out of the code of conduct. And basically, when you look at it, it's about being responsible and maintaining an orderly classroom environment. And when you break it down, we're talking about being a compliant kid. And being a white version of a compliant kid. So that's what kicks off the whole system. And so if we're trying these other interventions up at the top, upper tiers, what are they trying to do? They're trying to return a kid to tier one. Basically trying to build compliance.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

And so the way I've been talking about this in my work is this whole system is really based on maintaining order, not necessarily building justice. And so it's a powerful system. There's a lot of schools using it. The focus to A, on orderly, compliant behavior, important one. Second, the focus on the kid being the problem is really where that label gets. Because we never take a step back and say well what are the adults bringing to this system? How are we setting kids up?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I'll give you an example that happened in the school board meeting I know about. Let me back up one second. We also never look at what's going right for the kid. What strengths are they exhibiting. It's always a deficit model. So here's an example from a school board meeting. New superintendent who's been hired to promote equity in the district. It's been a community value for a long time. They have a new superintendent that's finally going to bring it into being. And the high school team at one of the first meetings with the new super comes to the school board and reports on a PBIS, positive behavior intervention and supports success story. They had a big problem with kids cutting class at the high school. Lots of kids. And so many kids, when it's over a 10 percent threshold, then the school says, "Huh. We're looking at our data. It's over 10 percent of the kids who are having this issue. We ought to do something universally for all the kids." So that's what they did.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

And they put together an intervention plan where they put more monitors in the hallways. Checking passes, where you going? Where should you be? Let's get to class, that kind of thing. Basically, shepherding kids to class. And they come to the school board and they said, "Hey, this worked great. We got our cut rate down by 60 percent year over year." The school board's thrilled. And then one school board member says, "Let me ask you a question. And if you didn't ask this question of yourselves, let me encourage you to go back and ask it and then come back and talk to us." Board member says, "What classes were kids never missing? Because they're voting with their feet. They're telling you what's important to them." And the board member says, "Now I don't know why they're always getting to that class. I don't know if they love that teacher or scared to death of that teacher, that class is near the cafeteria. I don't know. But until you ask those questions, you're missing about half of what's going on in your school."

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

And so with that same idea, the way I've been trying to encourage school leaders, anti-racist and inclusive school leaders to use this whole MTSS system is to look comprehensively at the whole thing. Don't focus only on the kids. Don't focus only on the deficits that you think the kids are presenting. What are the adults bringing to the system? What are our assumptions in the way we set up our school that are setting our kids up in some way, perhaps. Then we start to have the kind of comprehensive analysis that will get us somewhere.

Speaker 1:

All right, thank you. Thank you for that. So I have some questions. As far as responsibilities of staff. So for example, you mentioned early on, as far as the if we're doing multi-tier, MTSS, how sometimes it shifts from the sick child to the bad child or vice-versa.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Right.

Speaker 1:

The question that I have is those are often referrals. So a teacher, school counselor, and then we go into the school psychologist does the testing and they do the whole gambit of evaluations on the student. And then ultimately it's decided whether or not eligibility, determination of eligibility, happens and then we decide whether or not the student's going to be placed in IEP or some sort of behavior plan, positive interventions, whatever, incentives, all that stuff that happens right after that. What role does a staff member from, we can even start from the initial referral maybe or we can look at some of the various positions that are impacting this child's whether or not they are entered into the tier one or ... Is it two, three? Tier one. I always get the pyramid [crosstalk 00:15:03] -

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Tier one is everybody, universal. Tier two is targeted, tier three is [crosstalk 00:15:07] -

Speaker 1:

Tier three. So what is it that will end up having that student end up in that tier three quadrant?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Well in that ... So generally what will happen to get a kid into the tier three quadrant, it's either they've done something so severe that we're just clearly this kid, in the opinion of school, really needs intensive intervention now. Or we've tried a number of other interventions, smaller along the way and they keep failing, and so therefore, that becomes diagnostic information. It's like we don't really know quite what's going on with you ... Like if I go to the doctor with some set of symptoms and they go, "Well, I'm not really sure what that is, Josh, but I'm going to try this medication with you. Or I'm going to try this therapy with you. And if that works, then I'll know what you got. And if it doesn't work, I'll try something else." And we keep trying things until we figure it out. That's a lot of the way that that pyramid works.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

The role of the individual educator, I think honestly, I'm going to go back to something you said when we started, really relies on having the principal being able to set up the discourse in which that educator's voice and perspective are honored. So we want an educator to be able to say just as rigorously what the kid's strengths as what their challenges are. We want the educator to be just as rigorous in terms of looking at themselves, self-reflectory. Here's what I've done that could have contributed to the problem but also has contributed to trying to help it. And to think, okay, so here's how our school structure or school expectations are doing that.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Another example that sometimes, an individual educator may not have the wherewithal to really see for themselves. But if we have a good community where people can kind of push each other a little bit, the teacher, and I'll say frequently a white teacher, will say typically BIPOC student, "Hey, do you want to move your seat?" Kid says, "No." And teacher writes up the kid for being insubordinate. Teacher says, "I gave him an order." The kid says, "She asked me a question." So what were the contributing factors there. There was clearly some cultural issues going on there in terms of communication. And even a teacher who thought they were probably being open and perhaps even polite. Do you want to do this? Not telling, move your seat. But being able to have that kind of 360 view of it is really important. I think that an individual teacher trying to do that is going to really struggle unless there's a principal in the building who's able to take that apart. Who's able to say, "We're going to look at all of these things." And so one of the things that I've been proposing to schools is a little data structural way they can do that or so they can look at it.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I will say that you mentioned the group of people who are going to be around the table. The psychologist, the speech therapist, and so-forth. And given my experience, and I think the experience of others and some of whom who've been here on your pod, are that the most privileged voices in that room are the people who have the most, with a small m, medicalized words in the school. The people who look closest to be being clinicians. And this is why I talk about the twin issues of institutional ableism and racism because that information seems to be the most authoritative than the cultural response [inaudible 00:19:24] that we know needs to happen. Can often look kind of cute and fluffy next to it instead of just as substantial. And so it takes leadership work to say, "Listen, we're going to really focus on all of this and that's going to be really important."

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So that's one of the reasons that I try to go out in both. I think it's a leader's role to deconstruct the ableism and the medicalization of kids that goes in that. Seeing kids as their diagnoses or seeing kids as their problems to allow that voice to come forward. Otherwise, we know they're going to get pushed to the margins.

Speaker 1:

Okay. And I'm glad you said that. So I have another question. So when we think about settings as far as where do we see this ableism versus institutionalized racism? Where do we see that as far as school settings, demographics go? Is that something that is predominantly of a certain race or is it a mixture of different settings? Where would you say your settings are?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Well, that's a really great question. It turns out that that is the most prominent in schools that are racially heterogeneous, actually. But it's not limited to that by any stretch of the imagination. So with that, marginalization is strongest in those schools. But you're going to find it in almost any school in which white cultural values are the same as what it is to be normal. We know that people's identity and their cultural responsiveness are not synonymous. They're just not the same. And so it takes being able to pull that stuff apart.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Interestingly, we're also finding out from the work of some folks who've been looking at this internationally that this is a dynamic that happens with dominant cultures and marginalized cultures around the world. So the Roma people in parts of Central and Western Europe are subject to the same kind of institutional racism and ableism in Spanish schools and French schools. As African American and Latinx students that are here. And it happened that that pattern seems to repeat itself around the world. This is one of the ways that a dominant culture really maintains its control in schools.

Speaker 1:

Do you think this is intentional or could implicit bias be playing a factor in this?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

[crosstalk 00:22:12] ask about implicit bias. Implicit bias is one of those things that gets under my skin a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Go for it.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

And the reason is, I think when we talk about it at an individual level, I think it's important to talk about it. I think it's important to expose it. I think it's important also not to let it be an excuse. Because it worries me a little bit that it gets back to, well you know everybody has their prejudices. I'm like, man, no. I can't go there. But, what I'm also trying to do is to say, we have some systems that are implicitly biased.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So when it is the same thing to be a good kid as it is to act white, that's an implicit bias that is structured. That's not about somebody's attitude, per se. The attitudes will align with it and will make judgements around that. But when we define what it is to be a good kid in those ways, or a smart kid in those ways, then you have systems that are structurally, implicitly biased.

Speaker 1:

I put you on the spot on that one. Okay, okay. So all right. Let's touch on the structural part because when we think about our ... I mean we talk about decolonizing our schools and how from Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and all those ... Like how our education, Industrial Revolution, how our educational system has been created, wasn't for people like myself. And so, we still continue to utilize a lot of that. You know, grading policies, tracking. I mean there's a lot of ... Discipline, right? And there's all these different things that are impacting what our educational system looks like.

Speaker 1:

I literally just got an email from someone the other day and they were at an international school, and they basically said, the people that are in charge of this international school, they felt like it's an assimilation process for the students that were entering into the school. Like this is our ... Almost like a glorified colonization approach to education. And we see this a lot that's happening. What are your thoughts on, because you mentioned on a global scale this is happening, what are your thoughts on these international schools that might have structural racism that is embedded within their school culture?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Yeah, that's a great question. I think you're right. I think that in many ways, in this respect, and go all the way back to where we started our conversation. In [inaudible 00:25:03], schools prioritize being normal. They are more alike than they are different. You tend to see that in rural, suburban, urban school. You tend to see that in private schools, public schools. You tend to see that, I think, in the international school, too. Again, the extent to which normal is the same thing as a particular culture or Eurocentric culture. I think you're going to see it there, too.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Let me tell you, I've been asked like a number of times. "So Josh, you've got this critique of the system. Sounds like it ought to go." I'm like, you know, I wrestle with that. I'll be honest with you. Because while I can see that, I started before that career that I explained to you at the beginning, I was a community organizer in Mount Vernon and Yonkers and the Bronx. And I come at this like a community organizer. And I'm like, we got to start where we are. And I'm reminded of something that Doctor King said in where do we go from here? Chaos or community? He was talking about welfare programs. And he was like, you know, we're going to have them. We're going to have them for now. He says, we require them. He says, but this was the [interesting 00:26:28] piece. He says, but not for use as [inaudible 00:26:31]. We need programs that mirror the aspirations of our followers.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So I don't think ... We're going to have the MTSS system. We're going to have these systems. We're going to have these grades. But I think at any individual school level, we can ask, does this mirror the aspirations of our students and their families? And even with our most benevolent intentions, are they in fact mirroring the aspirations of our families? And that's where some of the work that I've been encouraging schools to do around this is to open that whole process up. Do this democratically. Bring your community in to talk about what are the values that you want.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So we talked about tier one before. Suppose we were prioritizing in our school that we want all of our kids to be to belong, to be independent, to be generous, and to master their work. That's for example a model that's called the Circle of Courage. It's based on a Lakota model. If that were the case, we would promote different things in school. We would promote and we would record different data. We wouldn't just be using office referrals. And we wouldn't just ... What would be recorded to see if kids are in generosity or independence or belonging or mastering. We'd be looking for different things. And so this is the kind reform I think any school can take on, frankly. Any school in any community can do that.

Speaker 1:

They just have to want to do that, right? And again, it goes to the school leadership as well.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

That's right. And the willingness to share the power to do that with your community. To bring folks in. To look at the data together. Who are we referring? Who's doing the referring? What are the patterns that we're seeing?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I'll go back to Syracuse again. As we were in the midst of responding the subpoenas from the Attorney General. They would get us as principals, they would get us together twice a month. Once was to work on organizational stuff and other times, it's work on instructional leadership. Not surprisingly, the organizational meetings were mostly about responding the lawsuit. So they were having this gather up all kinds of data for the subpoenas, et cetera. A lot of my colleagues were really hating it because they had not been historically giving kids their due process and it was a horrible system. As Dan Losen said, he was the guy who did the report about it, he said the patterns and practices of the Syracuse City School District at this time shot the conscious. It was bad. They have improved. [inaudible 00:29:47], it's a while ago.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

But so one of the patterns that was showing up was that kids were being written up for insubordination, a lot. And they were being suspended for that. So two weeks later, we have our instructional meeting and we're talking about common core learning standards and how do we be good stewards of common core learning in our classrooms. And what they were talking about was kids need to be able to make an argument with evidence and support it with evidence and so-forth. And the key thing they wanted us to focus on in that meeting was that in order to do a good written argument, really it's good practice to do it orally first. And so they were trying to get us to look at teaching methods that would encourage that. And about halfway through this simulation, this [role model 00:30:37], I raise my hand I'm like, "You know what? I got to tell you. My head is kind of exploding here because Syracuse kids can argue all day long. Two weeks ago we were talking about throwing them out and today we're talking about that's an instructional strength. What do we actually believe?" How are we going to work?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

So it does take leadership to have that conversation because we know that conventional conversations around that tend to see it completely different.

Speaker 1:

Josh, this has been a very enlightening conversation and again, I was very excited when we decided on what we were going to talk about, to have you on. I definitely consider you as providing a voice in leading equity. What is one final word of advice that you can provide to our listeners?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Oh. Well, this may seem contradictory. First, some humility. Second, I think there's some compassion in understanding that everyone is doing the best they can even when that's not nearly good enough. And I will say, in my own life, I have a particular inclination towards being pretty judgemental so that's something I got to work on myself. But it has worked for me. And I know that the stuff I've been sharing with you over the last few minutes is tough. It's tough and it's necessary. We've got to do it. We've got to remain committed to it. And I think we need to do it with compassion. If this was easy, we'd have gotten it done by now. So it's going to be a lot of work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I liked, one thing that really stook out to me was when you mentioned are they mirroring the aspirations of our family? And I wrote that down because I said that is the overarching goal of the school. Are we mirroring what their aspirations are?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

Exactly. And I borrowed that from Doctor King. I'm not going to take any credit for that. That's ... Yeah, that's such a guiding light for me. And you know I'll say one last thing, in terms of that. There's a lot of effort these days to get everybody on the same page, get everybody on the same team. So my question to school leaders, is that team school or team kid? Which team are we on? I've always been trying to get us all on team kid.

Speaker 1:

Team kid.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I can be a [inaudible 00:33:12].

Speaker 1:

That's another ... We'll have to have you on again and that'll be how to be on team kid, that'll be the next show. So if we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach out to you online?

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I would encourage people to join ... I'm hosting a weekly gathering on Thursday evenings, 8 pm Eastern called Solidarity 4 Ed Leaders with the number four in there. So go to our website, solidarity4edleaders.com. You can register to join us on our Zoom meetings. Folks have been going to lots of webinars. This is not a webinar. It's a workshop. It's coming at you how to do the work together that we know that needs to be done. So yeah, folks could reach out there.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

I'm also [email protected] and I'm sure they'll see the listing, they'll see how to spell that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I will leave all the links in the show notes so that folks can connect with you. I think it'll be very valuable for them. So Doctor Joshua Bornstein, it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr.  Joshua Bornstein:

It's been great, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

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