An excuse-free, multicultural educator: moving beyond blame of uninvolved parents for deficient student learning.

"Beware of causal explanations for correlational data," warned Gerald Bracey, author of Phi Delta Kappan's "Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," at a recent leadership workshop for the Minnesota Staff Development Council. His words clarified for me how I could help an educator colleague understand that levels of student achievement cannot be explained solely by parent priorities.

It was obvious to me that using a single independent variable--the degree of a parent's involvement in a child's education--to make such a fatuous assertion to explain a highly subjective and complex matter was absurd. Yet I struggled for the precise words, perhaps because of my agitation over such an obdurate stance that is especially insulting to parents.

My colleague's declaration was as entertaining to me as some claims that enrollment in music classes raises students' academic achievement. Assuredly, a significant correlation exists between marching band students and high academic achievement--just as there is between parental involvement and high achievement. But to use one or the other as the single explanation is nonsensical.

Misguided Blame

Alarmingly, my colleague's belief is a notion shared widely by educators. In a 2004 poll commissioned by Education Week, 85 percent of responding teachers recommended increased parent involvement to close the achievement gap. In the newspaper's analysis of the survey's findings, Rossi Ray-Taylor, executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network, cautioned it has become a cliche for teachers to point to more parental participation as the solution to the achievement disparity among student subgroups. She calls this a "narrow look at education."

Even if it were magically true that parent participation was the principal causal factor for academic performance, why aren't we doing things differently in schools, given our knowledge about the reality of parental roles today? One can plan to overcome barriers but perpetuating a helpless attitude and relinquishing responsibility for achievement to parents is not acceptable.

Schools say that they want the parents to be involved, but in his book, Black Students: Middle Class Teachers, author Jawanza Kunjufu raises an astute question: "(Parents) involved to do what ... make baked goods and sell raffle tickets ... or become assistant teachers and tutor kids on materials not covered in school?" He correctly observes that many parents themselves never mastered the curriculum, let alone have the time to teach their children, given their own work priorities to support their family's basic needs. I have a difficult time criticizing those priorities.

What type of parent involvement are educators really receptive to? Would educators respond to parent suggestions to abandon the norm to deliver a more diversified curriculum using differentiated instructional strategies to meet the needs of all learners? What type of parent involvement are we referring to in our blanket answer for the achievement gap? Which parents do we seem to usually allude to as being uninvolved?

In Leadership on Purpose: Promising Practices for African American and Hispanic Students, authors Rosemary Papalewis and Rex Fortune point out that the relationship of family with school is too often raised as an excuse when the students come from culturally diverse or working-class homes. In these cases, the families are mistakenly blamed for the academic underachievement of the students.

While our nation's history suggests public schools were organized to be congruent with the ideals of the white majority, our ready-made excuse of parent involvement does not acknowledge the cultural gap that exists between families and schools. As educators, we must acknowledge the fact that cultural discontinuities exist between many of our families and the schoolhouse. The reality is that educators won't accept families assigning the sole responsibility of the learning gap to schools, therefore educators can't accept assigning the sole responsibility of the gap to parents. Neither group has the right to assign complete responsibility to the other.

Today's Reality

In drawing national attention to the achievement gap, the federal No Child Left Behind Act will lead even our most prestigious and well-funded school districts to discover they are failing certain student subgroups in meeting minimum proficiency standards. While the legislation remains too punitive and has numerous faults, it is now forcing our nation to focus on the long-neglected issue of ensuring every student achieves academically in school.

What I find most discouraging is the "can't-do-it" attitude I hear from educator colleagues, with associated comments such as "We're all going to be on the AYP list; it's just a matter of time!" or "This isn't fair; some kids are just never going to make it!" and my favorite, "Are they kidding us?"

These common remarks are troubling because they go beyond voicing rightful concerns about NCLB and carry a strong undertone that the educator believes certain subgroups of students cannot perform at an acceptable academic level. I often wonder what white parents would do if their kids were the ones failing. Would they be described as complainers--as people of color sometimes are? Would they be outraged if the school's teachers and administrators were resigned to the belief their kids just can't master the work? Or would white parents' expressions of their dissatisfaction of service and advocacy for their children classify them as involved?

At the Minnesota Staff Development Council workshop, Bracey warned that if we continue at the same rate of achievement, by 2014 some 80 percent of schools will be failing. In order for all students to reach proficiency, he contends it would take 4th graders 57 years, 8th graders 67 years and 12th graders 166 years to do so.

As John Maxwell, author of Getting Over Today's Success, explains, "If we keep on doing what we've always done, we're going to keep on getting what we've always gotten." So if we continue to deny the effect of culture on learning and continue to deliver instruction using the same traditional methods, then I'd agree we can't do it for all K-12 students--and given the nation's rapidly changing demographics, perhaps not even in 166 years.

In "Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution," the National Association of Secondary School Principals states that teachers have "lamented but accepted" the failures of students and must prepare themselves to take on the challenges of lifting their learning levels. Teachers are working diligently to deliver what is currently expected of them and those expectations need to be raised by educational leaders to ensure the learning levels of all students are lifted.

Education Secretary Rod Paige says, "Nothing else matters if we don't believe that all kids can learn." With NCLB accountability drawing national attention to our performance disparities, we must acknowledge the gap and invest in doing things differently to close that gap. Overwhelmingly, educators care for and believe in the value of all children, but they don't necessarily believe we can reach all kids. Almost every educational leader wants to do the right things for all children but may feel paralyzed by the status quo or misled by traditional models and expectations.

Joyce Epstein, director of the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University, has identified specific keys to involvement that truly engage families in partnership with schools. These elements of involvement are more meaningful than the simple presence at school events expected of parents that educators cite for contributing to the learning gap. Epstein writes about six types of involvement that move parents beyond bake sales to meaningful engagement at multiple levels.

In addition, to fully address the learning gap, multicultural educators have scripted the best practices of things we should be doing to help all kids succeed--policies and practices that will lift the learning levels of students of all races and backgrounds. The methods of multicultural education consider several variables when serving students to achieve different and better results than the traditional approaches currently yield.

Power to Act

As educators, we must relinquish our comforting excuses that we've formed from what feels like the constant berating we receive and begin to do things differently. "We're avoiding the hard issues of what we can do differently in classrooms and schools," advises Rossi Ray-Taylor, a former superintendent.

When we apply what's been learned about multicultural education, we may truly experience success with all of our students.

I see school leaders who feel compelled to perpetuate faulty systems. Some even supplant categorical funding that could be used innovatively to remedy specific issues. Instead, those funds are used to sustain status quo efforts that clearly aren't working given the changing student populations in many communities. I also see leaders who allow territorialism and threatened egos to get in the way of what it is we collectively need to do to help all students be successful.

Finally, I see district after district release declarative statements about their commitment to diversity but instead of those districts choosing applicants at all levels who possess skills in multicultural education for working with today's culturally diverse students, school districts promote tradition-bound practices that bear traditional results.

We should stop making excuses for a flawed system. What we have now is a good educational system that serves most of our white students well, but by 2035, children of color will be the majority population, according to the Frederick Patterson Research Institute. We must overcome our nostalgia so that we can move on to a great educational system that serves all of our students well.

Pedro Noguera and Antwi Akom, in their article "The Significance of Race in the Racial Gap in Academic Achievement" for In Motion magazine, remind us that the achievement gap should not drive us into greater disparity about achieving racial equity in America. Rather, these scholars say, the learning gap should help us to recognize that the ideal of equity is more likely to be achieved in education than any other aspect of public life because "public education remains the most democratic and accessible institution in this country."

As educators, we should feel enabled. We are endowed with the power to make societal change that will benefit all of us. We must value our role in closing the gap as a privileged opportunity to change history and empower ourselves with different views, those of a multicultural educator.

Transition Into Multicultural Education

Tania Chance offers district leaders these action steps to begin the transformation from traditional education models into offering multicultural education to improve educational outcomes for all students.

Multicultural education is a comprehensive reform of policies and practices that help to reach more students, more often. A plan for multicultural education that is comprehensive and systemic will address the content, the learner and the classroom environment.

* Start the conversation.

District leadership must begin discussions with staff at all levels about multicultural education to gain buy-in. Unfortunately, the reality is there are many misguided educators and consultants who have been peddling soft approaches to multicultural education that lack academic value and focus on what the field refers to as "fun, food and fabrics." Charlatan programs such as these have alienated many educators from the topic of multicultural education so it is important to begin the reform with accurate information in hand to promote proper understanding.

An understanding of multicultural education should be promoted as an amalgamation of themes from the four major curriculum theories that were formed by liberal education, the scientific curriculum makers, the develop. mentalists and the social meliorists. When framed within a culturally relevant context, practical elements within each theory can produce a set of best practices to address the content, learner and classroom environment.

An understanding also can be gained by an extensive review of the literature and reflection in focus groups. Some of the best works to consider at the outset are the work of scholars: Geneva Gay's Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, & Practice and James Banks's Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.

* Identify a suitable leader of reform.

To reap the full benefits of multicultural education, school districts should consider the appointment of a high-level administrator with knowledge of and experiences with domestic race issues, best practices in multicultural education, data-based decision making, staff development and collaboration in an education setting. The leader must be lent the full support of the school board and superintendent and given the authority to effect systemic change through policies and procedures.

Working with local universities that have professors of multicultural education on staff can help districts to identify campus resources and possible leaders of the reform. The National Association for Multicultural Education can also act as a most valuable resource in identifying practitioners in the field.

* Create a districtwide strategic plan.

School districts today are trying piecemeal approaches that won't yield comprehensive results. In Kentucky, however, the state board of education has developed one of the more expansive implementation plans for multicultural education. Kentucky's plan includes detailed guidelines and program scope.

A district's plan should be based on disaggregated data that identifies areas of opportunity that can be intentionally addressed within the school organization. Measurable objectives and time frames should be set to assess gains, and data should be benchmarked against like institutions to establish the significance of those gains.

Resources

Tania Chance recommends the following books and articles on multicultural education:

Black Students: Middle-Class Teachers by Jawanza Kunjufu, African American Images, Chicago, Ill.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice by Geneva Gay, Teachers College Press, New York, N.Y.

Leadership on Purpose: Promising Practices for African American and Hispanic Students by Rosemary Papalewis and Rex Fortune, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action by James A. Banks, Teachers College Press, New York, N.Y.

"The Significance of Race in the Racial Gap in Academic Achievement" by Pedro Noguera and Antwi Akom, In Motion Magazine, June 19, 2000, www.inmotionmagazine.com

Tania Chance is director of multicultural education of the White Bear Lake Area Schools, 4855 Bloom Ave., White Bear Lake, MN 55110. E-mail: [e-mail]