The Equity Scorecard: A Collaborative Approach to Assess and Respond to Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Student Outcomes

Despite recent efforts to increase accountability in higher education, racial/ethnic disparities in student outcomes are a reality at most of the nation’s colleges and universities (Bensimon, 2004). Disparate completion rates and a host of inequitable outcomes between racial/ethnic minorities and White students persist. Although most states have accountability systems, equity has not been incorporated as an indicator of institutional accountability or as an aspirational benchmark. Moreover, while many institutions monitor minute changes in the average SAT scores of entering firstyear students obsessively, they do not keep track of how effectively they are performing based on the production of successful outcomes for minority students (Bensimon, Hao, and Bustillos, 2006). Neither external accountability systems nor internal institutional reports incorporate measures that would enable policymakers or institutional leaders to answer questions such as, “What proportion of African American students who earned bachelor degrees in 2007 had a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or higher?” or “What proportion of a community college’s Latina/o students are in the honors program that guarantees transfer to selective four-year colleges?” Also, little attention is paid to how institutions can be more proactive in increasing the number of African American and Latina/o students who