A Culturally Proficient Response to the Common Core: Ensuring Equity Through Professional Learning

Lead a Common Core implementation that closes achievement gaps!   Will your Common Core implementation promote equity, access, and inclusion?   This illuminating book shows how central Common Core tenets—rigor, meaningful curricula and assessment, and higher order thinking—can become educational realities for every child in your school or district.   Written by a team of respected authors known for guiding schools and districts towards cultural proficiency, this resource enables readers to Understand how underlying beliefs related to historically-underserved students may create roadblocks to effective instruction Create a school culture where diversity is valued, including developing relevant professional learning Compile and analyze meaningful data that enables faculty to better reach students from all backgrounds Advance the goal of college and career-readiness for all learners   With a compelling call to action and practical strategies, this timely book points the way to a Common Core implementation that benefits every student.   "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." —Dr. Kenneth R. Magdaleno, Associate Professor Kremen School of Education, Fresno State, CA   "This resource 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." —Dr. Carol Van Vooren, Assistant Professor California State University, San Marcos  

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Gail L. Thompson Acknowledgements About the Author Introduction Part I: Commitment to Equity, Transformative Change, and Implementation 1. Common Core and Cultural Proficiency: A Commitment Toward Equity 2. History and Hope for Changing Schools 3. The Tools of Cultural Proficiency 4. Promise of the Common Core 5. Leadership and the Common Core 6. From Stuckness to Implementation (or From Yikes to YES!) PART II: Culturally Proficient Professional Learning 7. Assessing Cultural Knowledge Through Collecting, Analyzing, and Using Data to Guide Decisions 8. Valuing Diversity by Developing Skillful Leaders to Create Support Systems for Professional Learning 9. Managing the Dynamics of Diversity by Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities 10. Adapting to Diversity by Applying Evidence-Based Approaches to Actively Engage Educators in Improving Practice 11. Institutionalizing Cultural Knowledge by Applying and Connecting a Commitment Toward Common Outcomes for All Students PART III: Move to Action 12. Ensuring a Culturally Proficient Professional Learning Plan Resource A: Book Study Guide Resource B: Cultural Proficiency Books’ Essential Questions References Index

About the Author :
Dr. Delores B. Lindsey retired as Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at California State University San Marcos; however, she has not retired from the education profession. Her primary focus is developing culturally proficient leaders. She helps educational leaders examine their organizations’ policies and practices, and their individual beliefs and values about cross-cultural communication. Her message to her audiences focuses on viewing, creating, and managing socially just educational practices, culturally proficient leadership practice, and diversity as an asset to be nurtured. Her favorite reflective question is: Are we who we say we are? Delores and husband Randall, her favorite Sage/Corwin author, continue to co-write about the application of the four Tools of Cultural Proficiency. Her most recent publication, which is on the Bestseller list from Corwin, is Leading While Female, A Culturally Proficient Response for Gender Equity, with Trudy Arriaga and Stacie Stanley. Raymond Terrell, EdD. retired as Associate Dean for Research and Diversity and member of he department of Educational Leadership at Miami University, Oxford< Ohio. He previously worked at California State University, Los Angeles where he served as Professor of Educational Administration and for five years he was the Dean of the School of Eduction. His journey in education began in a public school district where he taught English to junior and senior high students;. He also was a principal and an assistant superintend in the same district. Dr. Terrell is co-author on a number of books including , Cultural Proficiency: and a A Manual for School Leaders, Cultural Proficient Leadership. His books and numerous articles and life’s work have all focused  on issues of equity and inclusion Randall B. Lindsey is Emeritus Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He has served as a teacher, an administrator, executive director of a non-profit corporation, as Interim Dean at California Lutheran University, as Distinguished Educator in Residence at Pepperdine University, and as Chair of the Education Department at the University of Redlands. All of Randy’s experiences have been in working with diverse populations and his area of study is the behavior of white people in multicultural settings. His Ph.D. is in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University, his Master of Arts in Teaching is in History Education from the University of Illinois, and his B.S. in Social Science Education is from Western Illinois University. He has served as a junior high school and high school teacher and as an administrator in charge of school desegregation efforts. At Cal State, L.A. he served as Chair of the Division of Administration and Counseling and as Director of the Regional Assistance Centers for Educational Equity, a regional race desegregation assistance center. With co-authors he has written several books and articles on applying the Cultural Proficiency Framework in various contexts. Email – randallblindsey@gmail.com Website - CCPEP.org Twitter - @RBLindsey41

Review :
"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." "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." "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."  "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."  "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!"