Today, the MCPS Board of Education will be discussing efforts MCPS is making to address cultural challenges (ex, race, language, home settings) the system faces with implications for reducing the stubborn achievement gap the system finds itself challenged by.\u00a0 Some of the editorial team members of the MoCoEdBlog have looked at this issue and some of the briefing documents MCPS is using and have a few comments to add to the discussion.\u00a0 This post is a synthesis of email conversations among some members of the MoCoEdBlog, specifically Joe Hawkins, Mike Petrilli, and Phil Piety who authors this post.<\/p>\n
There is general agreement that this is an important issue for MCPS.\u00a0 How well schools serve the needs of all students is a critical issue and the role of educators\u2019 attitudes and school culture have long been known to be keys to addressing these issues.\u00a0 One of the documents shared with BOE to prepare them for this discussion focused on helping educators to not blame children and their parents for school failures, but to look for what they can do to take responsibility. This reminds me of an educational equity scholar, Ron Edmonds, who in 1982 made a famous declaration about effective schools<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems to me, therefore, that what is left of this discussion are three declarative statements: (a) We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us; (b) We already know more than we need to do that; and (c) Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven\u2019t so far.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Edmonds was not saying poverty and home circumstances do not matter.\u00a0 How could he or anyone suggest that?\u00a0 What he was saying was that the solution lie not in focusing on those issues as determinants of results, but adults taking the responsibility for success in spite of those realities. Edmonds went on to provide six core recommendations for schools in achieving these ends.<\/p>\n In Edmonds framing, the culture is evidenced by actions, by deliberate things that include high expectations and strong instructionally focused school leaders.<\/p>\n Several readers of the MCPS briefing document noted the powerful rhetoric including this statement:<\/p>\n “In building upon the cultural synchronicity, demographic parity, and humanistic commitment dispositions, OHRD increased its recruitment effort with an emphasis on colleges and universities as the major recruitment source for new teachers.”<\/p>\n This kind of statement is rich with intention and inference.\u00a0 For the general public and for those intending to carry out this mission, what does it mean?\u00a0 MoCoEdBlog is not sure.<\/p>\n These kinds of statements are a reminder that it is all too easy to use the language of equity, but that this may not be the same as the actions.\u00a0 While a teacher or a school leadership team may profess commitments to universal success, this isn\u2019t the same as actually doing it.\u00a0 Despite the many problems with accountability and oversight, the unfortunate truth is it is needed in many cases as not all educators do the right things on their own.<\/p>\n Part of the plan MCPS is previewing involves finding teachers (ex: African American males) who are more like the kinds of students that are traditionally harder for school systems to reach.\u00a0 What does the research say about the selection of culturally connected teachers?\u00a0 Mike Petrilli points to a piece in EducationNext from 2004<\/a> that suggests that this is an area that can make a difference. This important paper highlights the many challenges to studying these populations, including student mobility.\u00a0 Incidentally, student mobility is much higher in higher needs populations and this complicates efforts to evaluate educators serving these students as well.\u00a0 The paper also provides a caution by saying:<\/p>\n \u201c[The] results clearly support the conventional assumption that recruiting minority teachers can generate important achievement gains among minority students. However, they also suggest that a typically overlooked cost of such efforts may be a meaningful reduction in the achievement of nonminority students.\u201d<\/p>\n A challenge for MCPS going forward is how will it know whether these efforts are actually yielding results.\u00a0 How will the system\u2019s leadership know that workshops are leading to actual changes in schools or just more opportunities for school leaders to find a new set of jargon to use while still treating students the same?\u00a0 As the MCPS Chief Community Engagement Officer has noted, communities with greater needs are also ones where family participation is difficult for many reasons<\/a>.\u00a0 If a privileged family believes there is an educational problem in their school they are more likely to advocate within the system and raise red flags for school system leadership. In disadvantaged communities there are both practical issues to parent advocacy as many parents are working hard at survival and even more cultural barriers that make family advocacy not assured.<\/p>\n In raising a few questions about these efforts, MoCoEdBlog recognizes this is not a trivial exercise.\u00a0 It is not a trivial issue.\u00a0 MCPS\u2019 efforts are not trivial and deserve attention and discussion.\u00a0 We invite additional commentary from MCPS and from others in the community to address these important challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, the MCPS Board of Education will be discussing efforts MCPS is making to address cultural challenges (ex, race, language, home settings) the system faces with implications for reducing the stubborn achievement gap the system finds itself challenged by.\u00a0 Some of the editorial team members of the MoCoEdBlog have looked at this issue and some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,11,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Rhetoric<\/h2>\n
Research<\/h2>\n
Results?<\/h2>\n