Equity Statement

The Washington State Board of Education centers equity as a guiding principle in fulfilling its statutory charge, strategic planning, and policymaking.

The Board believes that the state’s school system exists to empower each student and ensure they are caring, contributing, and civically engaged community members.

The Board is committed to academic attainment for every student. This will require access and opportunity gaps to be eliminated in order to narrow academic achievement gaps and eradicate disproportionality and predictability in student outcomes by race, ethnicity, gender identity, caste, and socioeconomics.

To accomplish this, the Board will work transparently and consult with educational and community partners to:

• Ensure that equity in education is understood as a process to identify and eliminate structural and institutional racism manifested through existing policies, practices, and procedures that reinforce and perpetuate predictably disparate educational outcomes;
• Honor and actively engage with Washington’s underserved communities as partners in developing and advocating for equity-driven policies, practices, and resources that meet the needs of each student; and
• Use equity as a lens to continuously assess and improve the collective process of policymaking to support our school system’s commitment and ability to meet the needs of every student today and into the future.

View as a downloadable PDF. (Updated May 13, 2021)

See SBE Equity Lens.