Cutltural Diversity Issues

This analysis examines the importance summer break has on a growing gap in mathematics proficiency between students of differing socio-economic status.

This analysis examines the importance summer break has on a growing gap in reading proficiency between students of differing socio-economic status.

This current report takes us through the 2006-07 school year, using the most recent federal data. It shows a continuing surge in minority students, yet another increase in racial segregation of African American and Latino students, the extremely large proportion of American students who are growing up in poverty, and the development of multiracial schools in many parts of the country. This report is about the students in school during the year the Supreme Court heard and decided the voluntary integration (PICS) case in 2007

The main purpose of this research is to explore whether the proper strategies to deal with cultural diversity in school is being implemented, and to assess how cultural diversity is addressed in our school.

What drives people to discriminate? Economists focus on two main reasons: "taste-based" and "statistical" discrimination. Motivated by a growing body of psychological evidence, the authors put forward a third interpretation: implicit discrimination. The authors argue that discrimination may be unintentional and outside of the discriminator's awareness.

This was a historic meeting among developers of evidence-based programs, leaders of various cultural, racial, and ethnic professional associations, and representatives of family associations. Evidence-based program implementation and cultural competence in human services have had parallel paths with limited intersection and dialogue.

The summary can be found on the "Resources" tab of the Active Implementation website.  

The authors tested the effectiveness of 2 alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs among inner-city minority 7th-grade students (N = 639) from 6 New York City public schools.

Although the scholarship on race in education is vast, the authors attempt to review some of the most pressing and persistent issues in this chapter. They also suggest that the future of race scholarship in education needs to be centered not on equality but rather on equity and justice. 

This paper predicted that out-group empathy would inhibit inter-group harm and promote inter-group helping, whereas in-group empathy would have the opposite effect. In all samples, in-group and out-group empathy had independent, significant, and opposite effects on inter-group outcomes, controlling for trait empathic concern. 

This paper examines the effects of school characteristics on both the probability of dropping out and the strongest predictor of dropping out-absenteeism.

In most schools, resources are shrinking as the student body becomes more diverse and challenging. Yet if teachers advocate too loudly for additional resources or more support for education from the home, they are criticized for making excuses rather than solving problems.

This paper advances the discussion of the achievements differences between the higher and lower social-class groups were increasing, particularly between children in the highest income group and everyone else issue by analyzing trends in the influence of race/ethnicity, social class, and gender on students’ academic performance in the United States. This paper also explores the ways in which English language ability relates to Hispanics’ and Asian Americans’ academic performance over time (Nores and Barnett 2014). 

In this article, the author argues convincingly for a view of American's cultural diversity as a self-evident reality - one that must be effectively addressed by inservice and preservice teacher education programmes.

Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong pre‐service qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. 

This book synthesizes and assesses existing research on teacher education, as well as
providing a rigorous and even-handed analysis of the weight of the evidence about the
impact of teacher education and pre-service education.

The purpose of this study was to investigate gender and ethnicity disproportionality among students identified as having emotional disturbance (ED) and relationships between identification and sociodemographic factors.

This report examines key indicators on the educational progress and challenges students face in the United States by race/ethnicity.  The report also has special sections on public school teachers by race/ethnicity and characteristics of post-secondary institutions serving specific minority racial/ethnic groups. 

The authors developed a multi-faceted prejudice habit-breaking intervention to produce long-term reductions in implicit race bias. The intervention is based on the premise that implicit bias is like a habit that can be broken through a combination of awareness of implicit bias, concern about the effects of that bias, and the application of strategies to reduce bias.

This book discusses findings and recommendations of the Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education of the National Research Council. 

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between school climate and children's academic and social development in the early elementary school years, controlling for maternal education and family resources, and to determine whether factors underlying school climate influence those outcomes. 

Research suggests students of differing racial groups are unequally impacted by school disciplinary interventions. This study examines whether teachers who self-assessed their own use of culturally and contextually relevant practices would implement a class-wide behavior plan with high levels of implementation fidelity. Results indicated that teachers who engaged in self-assessment and training did implement the plan with high levels of implementation fidelity, particularly when given performance feedback.

The publication of this report marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. This report shows that the growth of racial and economic segregation that began then has now continued unchecked for nearly three decades, placing the promise of Brown at grave risk. Research shows that segregation has strong, negative relationships with the achievement, college success, long-term employment and income of students of color. 

The primary focus of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a classwide peer
tutoring program in reading for three learner types: low achievers with and without
disabilities and average achievers. 

This study examined the effectiveness of innovative curriculum-based measurement (CBM) classwide decision-making structures within general education mathematics instruction, with and without recommendations for how to incorporate CBM feedback into instructional planning.

In this article, a case is made for improving the school success of ethnically diverse students
through culturally responsive teaching and for preparing teachers in preservice education
programs with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to do this.

Combining insights from multicultural education theory with real-life classroom stories, this book demonstrates that all students will perform better on multiple measures of achievement when teaching is filtered through students’ own cultural experiences. This perennial bestseller continues to be the go-to resource for teacher professional learning and preservice courses.

Geneva Gay is renowned for her contributions to multicultural education, particularly as it
relates to curriculum design, professional learning, and classroom instruction. Gay has
made many important revisions to keep her foundational, award-winning text relevant for
today's diverse student population, including: new research on culturally responsive
teaching, a focus on a broader range of racial and ethnic groups, and consideration of
additional issues related to early childhood education.

Despite a significant drop in the use of corporal punishment in schools, a recent study finds corporal punishment is currently legal in 19 states and over 160,000 children are subject to corporal punishment in schools each year. This policy report examines the prevalence and geographic dispersion of corporal punishment in U.S. public schools. The research finds corporal punishment is disproportionately applied to children who are Black, to boys and children with disabilities. Black students experienced corporal punishment at twice the rate of white students, 10 percent versus 5 percent. This report summarizes sources of concern about school corporal punishment, reviewing state policies related to school corporal punishment, and discusses the future of school corporal punishment in state and federal policy.

This two‐level study of child welfare and juvenile justice case management teams addresses construct, measurement, and composition issues that plague multilevel research on organizational culture and climate.

This article assesses these differences using data from 981 Black and White male and female adolescents and latent variable structural equations techniques. 

The document contains the final report of a project to determine the factors that account for disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs, especially programs for mentally retarded students; and to identify placement criteria for practices that do not affect minority students disproportionately

A meta-analysis was undertaken to synthesize research results about the effectiveness of mainstream service programs for minority juvenile delinquents relative to White delinquents.

In this study, the authors examined whether students of different racial-ethnic groups vary in attachment and engagement and whether properties of schools (eg, racial-ethnic composition) influence these outcomes over
and above individual characteristics. 

This study examined the development of literacy in one elementary school with a large minority, low socioeconomic status population. The reading and writing development of 54 children was followed as they progressed from first through fourth grade

This comprehensive review provides a framework for the expanding body of literature that seeks to make not only teaching, but rather the entire school environment, responsive to the schooling needs of minoritized students

This article attempts to challenge notions about the intersection of culture and teaching that rely solely on microanalytic or macro analytic perspective

In this article, the author claim that judges and jurors unknowingly misremember case facts in racially biased ways.  Drawing upon studies from implicit social cognition, human memory research, and legal decisionmaking, I argue that implicit racial biases affect the way judges and jurors encode, store, and recall relevant case facts. 

This meta-analysis of behavior management strategies includes single-subject designed studies of 838 students from 22 studies for K-12 classrooms. The study finds the behavior management strategies are highly effective for improving student conduct. Interventions that used an individual or group contingency demonstrated large effects and were the most common behavior management strategies used. The study finds few studies included diverse populations other than African-American students.They also find a need to improve upon the quality of available studies on the classroom management strategies.

This report provides a detailed analysis of long-term dropout and completion trends and student characteristics of high school dropouts and completers. The first measure examined was the “event dropout rate” which is the percent of students who drop out in grades 10-12 without a high school diploma or alternative credential. The event dropout rate for SY 2015-16 was 4.8%, which translated into 532,000 students.

This report uses statistics to examine current conditions and changes over time in education activities and outcomes for different racial/ethnic groups in the United States. This report shows that over time, students in the racial/ethnic groups of White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Two or more races have completed high school and continued their education in college in increasing numbers. The indicators in this report show that some traditionally disadvantaged racial/ethnic groups have made strides in educational achievement over the past few decades, but that gaps still persist.

This REL Northwest guide is designed to help educators use data to reduce disproportionate rates of suspension and expulsion based on race or ethnicity. It provides examples of selecting and analyzing data to determine whether racial disproportionality exists in a school or district’s discipline practices. 

The Good Behavior Game: A classroom-behavior intervention effective across cultures

This report examines: (1) patterns in disciplinary actions among public K-12 schools; (2) challenges selected school districts have with student behavior and how they approach school discipline; and (3) actions the Departments of Education and Justice have taken to identify and address disparities or discrimination in school discipline.

This report provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.

With an unprecedented data set, Stanford researchers review more than 200 million test scores to spotlight communities with the nation’s worst academic achievement gaps. The research also revealed that nearly all U.S. school districts with substantial minority populations have large achievement gaps between their white and black and white and Hispanic students.

The authors estimate racial/ethnic achievement gaps in several hundred metropolitan areas and several thousand school districts in the United States using the results of roughly 200 million standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests administered to public school students from 2009 to 2013. They show that the strongest correlates of achievement gaps are local racial/ethnic differences in parental income and educational attainment, local average parental education levels, and patterns of racial/ethnic segregation, consistent with a theoretical model in which family socioeconomic factors affect educational opportunity partly through residential and school segregation patterns.

In this paper, we analyze racial differences in the math section of the general SAT test, using publicly available College Board population data for all of the nearly 1.7 million college-bound seniors in 2015 who took the SAT. The evidence for a stubborn race gap on this test does meanwhile provide a snapshot into the extraordinary magnitude of racial inequality in contemporary American society. Standardized tests are often seen as mechanisms for meritocracy, ensuring fairness in terms of access. But test scores reflect accumulated advantages and disadvantages in each day of life up the one on which the test is taken. Race gaps on the SAT hold up a mirror to racial inequities in society as a whole. Equalizing educational opportunities and human capital acquisition earlier is the only way to ensure fairer outcomes.

This article show the evidence for a race gap on the SAT math score and some big issues at stake including: the value of the SAT itself; the case for broader policies to take into account socioeconomic background in college admissions; the obsession with four-year college degrees; and the danger of college as a “bottleneck” in the American opportunity structure. 

Drawing on normative, empirical, and critical literatures, this review explores the role of school administrators in responding to the needs of diverse students. Three administrative tasks are highlighted: fostering new meanings about diversity, promoting inclusive school cultures and instructional programs, and building relationships between schools and communities. 

This article considers culture within the context of School-wide Positive Behavior Support. The paper provides an overview of culture and working definitions to assist educators to more effectively implement evidence-based practices.

The US Government Accountability Office has recently released a new report evaluating the disproportionality in discipline in K-12 grades.  The racial and gender gap persists in spite of efforts to remediate.  African-American youth, boys, and individuals with disabilities are more likely to receive any type of discipline than are individuals in our sub-groups than would be predicted on the basis of their percentage of the population. In this evaluation, the disproportionality existed even though economic level of the student was controlled for.  Previously, it had been argued that the disproportionality was a function of poverty rather than race and gender.  This study challenges that argument.  These data highlight that as a society we still have a great deal of work to do to overcome racial and gender biases in this country.

Research shows that diversity in schools, including racial diversity among teachers, can provide significant benefits to students. While students of color are expected to make up 56 percent of the student population by 2024, the elementary and secondary educator workforce is still overwhelmingly white.

Within the context of widely documented racially disproportionate discipline outcomes, we describe schoolwide positive behavior support (SWPBS) as one approach that might provide a useful framework for culturally responsive behavior support delivery.

This research looked at test score gaps for a range of populations: between boys and girls; between black, white, and Hispanic children; between the children and the mother’s education; between children in poor and nonpoor families; and the gaps between high-poverty and low-poverty schools. They wanted to know whether gaps grow faster during summer or the school year. They were unable to answer this question as the results were inconclusive. Although, von Hippel and Hamrock did find the total gap in performance from kindergarten to eighth grade, is substantially smaller than the gap that exists at the time children enter school. The conclusion is that gaps happen mostly in the first five years of life. study suggests students who are behind peers at the time they enter kindergarten should receive early remedial instruction as the most efficacious way to improve overall performance.

A meta-analysis of the data from empirical investigations of diversity in work groups was used to examine the impact of two types of diversity attributes, highly job-related and less-related, on work group cohesion and performance. 

This paper looks at the disproportionality of consequences for disciplinary infractions between these groups of students. 

In this video from Cool Reading Facts, Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, discusses significant factors key to success in reading comprehension. His analysis suggests that educators frequently miss the critical role that basic knowledge plays in successfully interpreting and understanding passages in reading texts and that reading comprehension tests are actually knowledge tests in disguise. He makes three important points: (1) Students must have the basic decoding skills to translate print into meaningful information, (2) having a basic familiarity with the subject matter is of prime importance in comprehending what the writer is trying to communicate, and (3) providing students with an enriched knowledge base through the school’s curriculum is especially important for students from disadvantaged circumstances, whose only source of essential background information often is school. In contrast, children from privileged circumstances may be introduced to essential background information away from school.