Paritii | Understanding the root causes of inequity in student success

Case Study

Understanding the root causes of inequity in student success

Postsecondary education suffers from a “success gap” where specific student profiles are deemed less likely to succeed. We did a root cause analysis of what causes some students to disproportionately fail, withdraw and not complete. We delivered a blueprint to closing the gap using a whole systems approach to academic and social integration.

Problem

In America’s postsecondary education system, underrepresented and low-income students have consistently worse outcomes when compared to the higher-performing sub-population. For example, white students have a 64% chance of graduating within six years, compared to 54%, 40%, and 39% for Black, Latinx and Indigenous students. The reasons for this equity gap are historical and pervasive, and manifest as poor college readiness, tremendous financial burden, and a system poorly designed to meet their needs.

Solution

We have worked with postsecondary and other stakeholders to engage with the root causes of inequity in higher education by equity auditing processes, data collection, policies, technologies, epistemology, and teaching practices. We supported our clients to name, and engage the overt, entrenched, and insidious systemic issues which lead to biased institutional processes and education systems.

Impact

Paritii helped our client to identify why underrepresented students disproportionately drop, fail, incomplete, or withdraw from postsecondary education, and how to improve retention in a manner that actually addresses the root cause. Our retention solution involved academic and social integration within the college experience. This solution addressed the bridge to collegiate academic and social life, building of social capital, culturally responsive value systems. Our solutions engaged multiple levels and stakeholders, including policy, institutions, technologies, faculty and students.

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Addressing Underserved student barriers

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Equity-First Technology Solutions Rubric

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Stakeholder Relationships in Procurement

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Software Procurement at Post-Secondary Institutions

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Advising Technology Use Cases

‍With the move to Holistic Advising comes even more fragmentation of technology products that help students along their journey. To better understand how technology can enable student success, we interviewed a diverse set of students and advisors to prioritize their use cases and advise institutions on creating a technology procurement roadmap for Advising Software.

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Student Advising Taxonomy

In order to create Holistic Advising solutions that enable student success, it is important to ensure that all stakeholders are speaking the same language and have a shared understanding of what this truly means. To facilitate these discussions, we created an Advising Taxonomy that outlines what Holistic Advising means, how it is actualized, who does the advising, and where Advising occurs for students.

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Post-Secondary Student Support Ecosystem

The various support systems available to students are critical in enabling their success or failure in their post-secondary education. We created an ecosystem map to understand the human, process, and technological resources students turn to for advice before, during, and after their Post-Secondary journey.

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Understanding the Advising Journey of Underrepresented Students

Holistic College Advising is critical to the success of underrepresented students. We interviewed students and Advisors to understand what successful advising means to them, and which elements are most impactful at various points of the journey, in order to help craft meaningful interventions.

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Closing the Equity Gap using EdTech

We created the first blueprint for equity-first, digital learning solutions. Our solutions have culturally responsive UX/UI analytics, and a product development process like no other. We demonstrate that it is possible to not only close the equity gap using technology, but actually liberate all users from the processes that are holding them back.

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Perspective- Diversity and the product development lifecycle

There is a moral imperative to create products that work for all of us: presently inequity baked into the product development value chain limits the profiles of those who can benefit from innovation. We help our clients to unlock global participation and access, thereby improving their revenues and establishing trust.

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Monoclonal Antibody Treatment Centers

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Community Responsive COVID-19 vaccination programming

We created community-responsive COVID-19 vaccine education, and programming for low-income communities. Our customized public health programming increased uptake, restored confidence, and achieved better community health outcomes. We even supported the Biden-Harris Administration’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, helping others to replicate our success.