Learning Forward
Equity and excellence in teaching and learning.
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The Equitable Classroom
Cultural proficiency is a skill set that all American teachers must have
By Jon Saphier
December 2017
We are sliding backward. Our country’s schools are, in some cases, as segregated now as they were when Earl Warren’s Supreme Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision 63 years ago. In fact, according to new federal data, poor black and Hispanic children are becoming more and more isolated from their white affluent peers in our public schools. The data show that the number of high-poverty schools serving students of color has doubled in recent years. And since the 1990s, progress narrowing the achievement gap has plateaued nationwide and deteriorated markedly in urban schools (Reardon, 2013). How is that possible when schools have been instituting sweeping changes — some of them federally mandated — for decades? No Child Left Behind, Race
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References
Bellon, J.J., Bellon, E.C., & Blank, M.A. (1991). Teaching from a research knowledge base: A development and renewal process. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J.E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Reardon, S.F. (2013, May). The widening income achievement gap. Educational Leadership, 70(8), 10-16.
Saphier, J., Haley-Speca, M., & Gower, R. (2018) The skillful teacher (7th ed.). Acton, MA: Research for Better Teaching.
Steele, C. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
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