A Culturally Proficient Response to the Common Core

"The authors have ensured that the use of cultural proficiency by educators provides the Common Core State Standards with the ′step towards the place where equity and access are realized for all learners.′ Equity and access, two of the pillars of equity in education, are essential if meeting individual student needs are truly to occur." -- Kenneth R. Magdaleno, Ed.D., Associate Professor

"America’s goal to reach proficiency for all students cannot be achieved without equity and a lens of social justice in the classrooms. A Culturally Proficient Response to the Common Core: Ensuring Equity Through Professional Learning gives not only theory and rationale for this important change in thinking, but also the guided steps to collaborate and reflect as part of the change process."

-- Carol Van Vooren, Ed.D., Assistant Professor
"The dynamic shift within the new school community will task school leaders to approach CCSS through a culturally proficient lens in order to effectually reach the hearts and minds of the contemporary underserved student community. Cultural proficiency infused with CCSS will challenge educators to teach and lead differently to close the learning gap, bring about greater equity in education, and increase the possibility for greater human capital for the next generation of students. CCSS, with cultural proficiency, will allow educators to look at this new paradigm shift not from a deficit model, but rather from an asset perspective."  -- Joseph M. Domingues, Principal
"I commend the authors for their courageous leadership as they address the need for teachers to connect students to learning with the addition of equity in the Common Core State Standards. Teachers are called to action to self-reflect and to value cultural proficiency and advocacy as an integral component of daily instruction and philosophy of inclusion."  -- Jan La Torre-Derby, Ed.D., Retired Superintendent

"Successful rollout and implementation of the Common Core Standards in our schools in the coming years will be highly contingent upon our individual and collective capacities to view our historically underserved students and our schools through a Cultural Proficiency lens, and provide all of our students’ access to meaningful, challenging and engaging learning experiences in our schools.

 

The authors have for many years been on the forefront of helping all of us be better grounded in the critical interface between culture and learning, and this book is clearly designed to examine the day-to-day expression of our craft knowledge about what it takes to successfully reach and teach children who have traditionally underachieved in our systems.  Our challenge is overcoming our longstanding individual and collective beliefs about capacities of our diverse learners to learn at high levels of intellectual engagement. 

 

This timely book provides school administrators and classroom teachers an important and practical framework for personal and organizational reflection and action planning in building individual, collective confidence, and competence in reaching and teaching all children to high levels!"

-- Dr. Robert Jarvis, Director of Equity Leadership Initiatives