The Culturally Proficient Professoriate 51Banks, Asa Hilliard, Sonia Nieto, Michael Fullan, Richard DuFour, and Rosemary Papa
among others in doing the work of improving our schools for all learners.
You will hear me use the word ‘we’ in my comments this morning. If so, it is
important to know that my comments today represent several co-authors in my community of
practice—administrators, psychologists, teachers, professors, and one minister! Please know
the illustrations I use in my comments this morning weave back and forth between our work
as Education Administration faculty and our relationship with our P-12 colleagues.
CHANGES IN EDUCATION LEADERSHIP
It is my opinion that being a professor of education administration, or education
leadership, has changed dramatically during my 4-decade career. No longer can diversity or
equity be relegated to one course in a program to be taught by only faculty members who are
men or women of color. For that reason I am pleased, no enthused, at the leadership provided
by ISLLC, NPBEA, NCATE, and Educational Leadership Constituency Council (ELCC)
members with regard to issues of diversity and equity.
The ISLLC standards and, now the ELCC, are based in assumptions that are measured
departures from our curricula and practices in higher education through the second half of the
20 th century. The new standards focus on, among other things:
- The improvement of teaching and learning.
- Concerted focus on the morality and ethical frameworks of our profession.
Similarly, I strongly support one aspect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), as well as
many similar state measures, namely making the achievement gap a central subject of our
work. Though the achievement gap has been well documented by the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) since 1971, NCLB has provided us in the education profession
no excuse for continuing to turn a blind eye to disparities in student achievement.
The achievement gap in public education is NOT new. The revelation of it through
mandated (such as NCLB) disaggregation of data has put the spotlight on educational access
and achievement gaps. The general public now knows of the gaps that exist between white
and Asian students on the one hand and African-American, Latino, English Learners, Native
American, and students from low socio-economic communities on the other hand.
I have observed that our P-12 schools work well for the children and youth for whom they
were designed. Our role, then, seems clear and may be shaped by our response to this
question:
- What gap exists between the professoriate and our students who teach and lead in
communities pressured to close the achievement gap?
To that end, Cultural Proficiency is the approach that I have chosen to guide my work. It
is not the only approach to addressing issues of equity and inequity. I commend Cultural
Proficiency to you today for your consideration as a way to frame our work as teachers, as
researchers, and in service of our communities and our profession.