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Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center

The Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP) is one of four regional Equity Assistance Centers, funded by the United States Department of Education under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The MAP Center provides technical assistance and training, upon request, in the areas of race, sex, national origin, and religion to public school districts and other responsible governmental agencies to promote equitable educational opportunities and work in the areas of civil rights, equity, and school reform. The Center serves 13 State Educational Agencies, 7,025 Public School Districts, and 11,249,050 Public School Students.**

Our Mission

Mission: Equitable, Responsive Education for All.

Core Activity Domains

To achieve our mission, we seek to:

  • Improve distribution of effective teachers and principals;
  • Improve school engagement, environment, and school safety, as well as family and community engagement in schools;
  • Increase and support data-based decision making related to use of research-based, culturally responsive curricula and instructional practices in classrooms, schools, and districts;
  • Build coalitions between higher education, PreK-12 systems, communities, and families;
  • Promote equity by addressing needs of historically underserved students, including students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds;
  • Address the disproportionate representation of minority students in special, gifted, and advanced placement (AP) programs as well as STEM education;
  • Support, develop, and disseminate effective approaches to school dropout prevention and reentry;
  • Support districts transitioning to unitary status in desegregation cases.

 

 

Tiered Service Delivery Framework 

Great Lakes Equity Center’s and Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center's approach to resource and service delivery is grounded in a multi-tiered framework of technical assistance. Our goal is to engage in well-defined, content-rich technical assistance such that knowledge and expertise are shared in a way that results in transformative systemic change, as well as personal reflection and growth. 

TIER ONE: EDUCATIONAL EQUITY RESEARCH & RESOURCES

We offer a variety of tools, publications, and resources to a broad public audience.

TIER TWO: EQUITY LEARNING NETWORKS

We bring together role-alike stakeholders across district and state boundaries, engage in short-term targeted partnerships, support peer-to-peer mentoring, and offer opportunities to share information quickly across individuals focused on similar problems of practice.

TIER THREE: SYSTEMIC EQUITY PARTNERSHIPS

We engage in sustained partnerships of transformative professional learning and improvement grounded in examination of local data and historical contexts and action-research case studies that bring practitioners and researchers together in inquiry. These partnerships are entered into through development of a formalized agreement with agency leadership, and include the development of a memorandum of understanding detailing the proposed project scope, timeline, and responsibilities of both the requesting agency and the Great Lakes Equity Center.
 
  

 

 

 

*US Department of Education (2016). Programs: Training and Advisory Services Equity Assistance Centers. Retrieved from: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/equitycenters/index.html

**National Center for Education Statistics, Elementary/ Secondary Information System Table Generator: 2014-15 State Data.