Dropout Prevention & Student Engagement
Summit
February 18, 2011
Welcome!
Using the Equity Toolkit in Building &
Maintaining a Positive School Climate
2
Bill De La CruzDe La Cruz Consulting Inc.
b.delacruz@comcast.net
303-875-0070
Rachel Heide
Greeley-Evans District 6
rachel.root@du.edu
rheide@greeleyschools.org
Introduction
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Personal background
•Interest in the study
•Goal of the study
•
•
Perhaps a heightened
level of awareness will
lead to a more culturally
proficient teacher and
stronger relationships
between the teacher, their
students, and the school
community.
The key here is not the kind
of instruction but the attitude
underlying it. When teachers
do not understand the
potential of the students
they teach, they will
underteach them no matter
what the methodology.
--Lisa Delpit (1995,
p. 175)
Research Background and Rationale
4
Educators cannot escape the growth of diversity within the student
population and the accompanying inequities that are present in our
schools and communities
•
2000 U.S. Census revealed an increasing number of minority groups
in the U.S
•
Many teachers and administrators in schools have a limited
awareness of how their class, gender, race, and bias impact their
work
•
These limited, or uneducated, views may also contribute to the
achievement gap that exists between students belonging to the
minority and non-minority groups
•
Demographic Chart
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http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde_english/download/Res
ources-Links/Equity%20toolkit%20Final_2010.pdf
Reflection
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The positive or negative
manner in which educators
and community members
respond to the cultural and
racial diversity present within
schools has extensive impact
on students’ self-esteem and
academic success of students
from varied cultural
backgrounds (Phutsog,
1999).
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In order to effectively teach
a diverse population of
students, teachers need to
examine their own
classroom practices and
reflect on the contradictions
that may be influencing
student’s abilities to learn
(Delpit, 2006, Beegle,
2003).
Need for the study
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Closing the achievement gap could be viewed as the
Civil Rights Movement of our time
•
A key element to bridging the achievement gap is to
remain student-centered by connecting learning to
students’ lives through the students’ culture,
strengths, goals, dreams, and interests as a starting
point for learning rather than focusing on the students’
deficits (Williams, 2003).
Access and equity in education for all students
Participants
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Multi-site design comparing four public middle
schools in Greeley
•
•
John Evans MS, Heath MS, Franklin MS, and
Brentwood MS
104 participants took the self-assessment from the
CDE Equity Toolkit for Administrators
•Focus groups- A minimum of five teacher participants
and a maximum of eight were gathered for three of
the four sites
•
District Information
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Approximately 19,851 students served in grades K-12 in Greeley-Evans District 6
Approximately 2,900 students in Middle School grades 6-8
Demographic Data
•
Approximately 57.93% Hispanic
•
Approximately 37.53% White
•
Approximately 1.42% Asian
•
Approximately 1.32% African-American
•
Approximately 0.36% Native American
•
Approximately 0.27% Pacific Islander
•
Approximately 1.17% Two or more demographic identifications
Socio-Economics
•
Approximately 53% eligible for free/reduced price meals
Individual School Information
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J Evans I.B. Middle School
• 674 total students
• 73.3% Hispanic
• 26.7% Non-Hispanic
Brentwood Middle School
• 655 total students
• 68.9% Hispanic
• 31.1% Non-Hispanic
Heath Middle School
• 781 total students
• 63.4% Hispanic
• 36.6% Non-Hispanic
Franklin Middle School
• 751 total students
• 77.7% Hispanic
• 22.3% Non-Hispanic
Data Collection and Analysis
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Quantitative data
•
•
•
Survey data
Discipline data
Qualitative data
•
•
•
Focus group
Reflective journal
Over/Under
Representation Analysis
•Pearson’s Correlation
and Spearman’s Rho
•Coding using a Priori
themes
•Inductive Coding
•
Survey Scoring
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Possible answer choices:
•
•
•
Most of the time= 3
Some of the time= 2
Never= 1
Individual answers added
together for one final
score
Cultural Proficiency- 75 and
above
•Cultural Competence- 6574
•Cultural Precompetence55-64
•Cultural Blindness- 45-54
•Cultural Incapacity- 35-44
•Cultural Destructiveness34 and below
•
Cultural Proficiency Continuum
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Culturally destructiveness: negating, disparaging, or purging cultures that are
different from your own.
•
Cultural incapacity: elevating the superiority of your own cultural values and
beliefs and suppressing cultures that are different from your own.
•
Cultural blindness: acting as if differences among cultures do not exist and
refusing to recognize any differences.
•
Cultural precompetence: recognizing that lack of knowledge, experience, and
understanding of other cultures limits your ability to effectively interact with them.
•
Cultural competence: interacting with other cultural groups in ways that recognize
and value their differences that motivate you to assess your own skills and expand
your knowledge and resources and that, ultimately, cause you to adapt your
relational behavior.
•
Cultural proficiency: honoring the differences among cultures and viewing diversity
as a benefit, and interacting knowledgably and respectfully among a variety of
cultural groups. Lindsay (2005, p. 54).
•
Findings
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Average Cultural Proficiency Score by School
School Identification
M
Proficiency Level
MS1
59.6
Cultural Precompetence
MS2
58.0
Cultural Precompetence
MS3
62.0
Cultural Precompetence
MS4
62.1
Cultural Precompetence
July 12, 2016
Findings (cont.)
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Over/Under Representation Analysis for Dichotomous Student
Groups at Each Site
School IdentificationHispanic
MS1
-2.92
MS2
-11.53
MS3
9.30
MS4
-12.79
Non-Hispanic
2.92
11.53
-9.30
12.79
Findings (cont.)
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Pearson’s Correlation and Spearman’s Rho
•
Spearman’s Rho not statistically significant at the 0.05
level [r(104)= 0.118, p=0.234]
•
Pearson’s Correlation was also used and was also not
statistically significant at the 0.05 level [r(104)=0.106,
p=0.286]
Findings (cont.)
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Journals
•
•
Reflective
Participants identified
past experiences which
influence their current
perspective and
understanding of race
and culture
Findings (cont.)
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Focus group
•
•
•
•
•
Bias
Discrimination/Harass
ment
Community and
Family Engagement
Identify current reality
Plan of action
Findings (cont.)
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Recall your table discussions around the Over/Under
Representation Analysis
•
Focus group data gave insight into why the
inequalities represented in this data may be occurring
•
•
“Deficit Descriptors” for Hispanic students
Findings (cont.)
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I don’t really know how to put [this] in words but I think part of this has really
opened my eyes to a lot of different views and issues. Part of it has made
me a little bit more uneasy about things too that there is such a problem and
we right now don’t have anything really concrete in place to deal with it. But
I think this was just very beneficial, opening my eyes to what’s going on here
and especially the big change since I’ve been out in the classrooms…it’s
enlightening really just eye-opening.
And that affects me and how I tell that poor Hispanic student about their ‘C.’
And it might affect how I tell the not so poor Anglo students about their ‘C’
because of how I might forecast their future. And is that okay? As an
educator noticing those things has a tendency in me, I just really have to
consider those, whether that’s a good thing or not.”
July 12, 2016
Findings (cont.)
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I don’t think we really know the culture that students are coming
from as a staff. I don’t think we do. We have some snippets
but we’re always—I think that as a staff, we are really in the
process of just starting to perceive the culture we’re teaching
and comparing it to the one that we came from and pointing out
the way that they should be so that we can teach them the way
that we teach. And I think that’s where there is a disconnect…I
think that it’s very easy to want to expect students to change so
that they can learn from us and not expect us to change so that
we can teach them how they are.
Conclusion
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