Tech Tools for Equity

Each year, the Carnegie Foundation’s Summit facilitates the sharing of improvement stories in education–what worked, what didn’t, and what was learned along the way. At this year’s summit, held in-person from March 27-29, 2022, researchers and practitioners from the UCLA Community School (UCLA-CS), UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA Center for Community Schooling will present “Tech Tools for Equity: How Improvement Science Helped a School Community Create a Technology Tool to Address Local Problems Related to COVID-19.” When UCLA-CS closed its physical doors in March 2020, UCLA-CS explored virtual ways for the staff to monitor, communicate, and collaborate around students who were struggling and disengaging with the school community. In response, UCLA-CS, with university partners, created a learning management technology tool called Community Integrated Database Systems (CIDS, pronounced as “kids”). The local and collaborative creation of CIDS turned out to be a multifaceted improvement and change management strategy. The school implemented cycles of improvement to develop CIDS—a radically different approach to developing an education technology tool—which addressed specific problems of the community and, in the process, improved the schoolwide systems of student supports, especially for students most impacted by COVID-19. Presenters include Rebekah Kang, Assistant Principal at UCLA Community School, Leyda Garcia, Principal at UCLA Community School, Mitchell Wong, Professor at UCLA’s School of Medicine, and Christine Liboon, UCLA PhD candidate.