Kurt Hatch Says Equal Treatment Is Not the Same as Equity in Schools
Dr. Kurt Hatch, retired Professor of Practice and Faculty Director of the Educational Administration program in the School of Education at the University of Washington Tacoma, pushes back on the common rule that fairness means treating every student the same way.
Washington, USA, November 11, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE, Dr. Kurt Hatch says that rule is where a lot of good intentions quietly go wrong. Sameness is easy to measure and easy to defend in a meeting. It is also, in his view, a poor stand-in for fairness.
“If two students arrive with different needs and you give them the identical response, you have not treated them equally,” he says. “You have just made sure the gap between them stays exactly where it started.”
Hatch points to multi-tiered systems of support as a case where this gets set...
