Culturally Responsive Practices

Racial disparities in school discipline have garnered recent attention in national reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education and Justice (U.S. Department of Education, 2014; Gregory, Hafen, Ruzek, Mikami, Allen, & Pianta, 2016). Suspension rates Black students are two to three times higher than those from other racial and ethnic groups. Various research has documented that Black students remain overrepresented in school discipline sanctions after accounting for their achievement, socioeconomic status, and teacher- and self-reported behavior (Gregory et al, 2016). There is a difference as to the reasons why White students are sent to the office versus Black students. Black students are sent to the office for subjective reasons such as “disrespect” and “perceived threat”, while White students are more than likely to be referred for more objective reasons including, smoking, vandalism, and leaving school without permission. (Gregory, et al, 2016). African Americans and especially African American boys, are more likely to be disciplined and often receive more out-of-school suspensions and expulsions than white students (Todd Rudd, 2014). Suspending students is taking away time from them being in the classroom. Students who receive suspensions, lose instructional time, fall behind on course work, become discouraged, and ultimately drop out…recent research has shown each suspension a student receives can decrease their odds for high graduation by any

Zero tolerance policies are the catalyst for the School-to-Prison pipeline. The problem with zero tolerance policies rely on several different factors. Even though, the vision for zero tolerance policies is clear in the sense that safety is a main priority, A ten year study of zero tolerance policies conducted by the American Psychological Association concluded that the use of these overly harsh policies "did not improve school safety." Since these policies are not increasing school safety it is a clear indicator that change in disciplinary methods is necessary. Additionally, these overly harsh policies create racial disparities mainly focused on minorities. The reason for these racial disparities particularly arise from implicit bias. Unfortunately, student of color and minorities are disportionately represented in suspensions, expulsions, and arrests. Exclusionary discipline principles disproportionately lead the youth, particularly minorities, from classrooms to court and prisons. Racial disparities within school’s disciplinary actions is clear when looking at discipline rates. The Civil Rights Data Collection, gathered by the US Department of Education, graphed suspension rates and disparities in a national test sample during 2012. Figure 1 portrays the ratio of white students that constitute for a little more than half of students enrolled in school while black and hispanic students constitute for less than

This report is, by no means, intended to be a comprehensive study but an indication of one part of a problem. Understanding the dimension and quality of African American overrepresentation is a first step toward resolving the problem. So, to better understand the problem and its roots, more research should be conducted which more critically explores a greater range of possible causes and subsequent outcomes and which utilizes individual student records as the primary unit of analysis. Researchers should examine more closely the decisions made by the school personnel referring the students for corporal punishment, in different districts, because it appears that race may be as much a factor in the classroom as it is in the administrator’s

The following discussion of practice and policy related issues found within the article puritan to a “qualitative” study “conducted in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area from September 2009 to May 2012” (Gibson & Haight, 2013, p.264). The main objective of the study was to evaluate the “culturally nuanced” definitions and perceptions on out-of-school suspensions; In hopes of discovering new ways in which “schools and families can work together to decrease racial disparities in out-of-school suspensions” (Gibson & Haight, 2013, p. 263). Thirty participants were interviewed within their own homes through “in-depth, individual, and audiotaped interviews.” (Gibson & Haight, 2013, p. 263). In reviewing the study interviews, a few practice-related issues were discussed, concerning educators lack of understanding of cultural diversity among their students, as well as school personnel 's failure to fully listen to each individual 's concerns when addressing discipline issues.

After reading Geneva Gay’s article Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching I realized my pedagogy is culturally responsive in many ways. For one, I always

In Boston, Black girls enrolled are three times than the white but they eleven times more subjected to disciplinary actions than the white girls. In New York, Black girls are subjected to discipline eight times compared to white girls despite being twice times enrolled. In expulsion terms, ninety percent of black girls are expelled in New York and no white were expelled while in Boston Black girls were expelled ten times more than the white girls. During the same period, Black girls are ten times more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts while in Boston, they were suspended twelve times more than the white

Cultural responsiveness is an ever-present challenge faced by professionals in our field. Due to the opportunities and freedoms our nation offers, the influx of diverse individuals and accompanying challenges will only increase. Culture is a lens through which we each filter our personal experiences. Because each of us possess our own implicit biases, it is critical that as clinicians we routinely conduct self-assessments in order increase our awareness of them. Throughout my practice and clinical training I have continually conducted personal needs assessments to target potential areas for personal growth. I believe that my efforts to do so have furthered my mission to provide culturally sensitive services.

Throughout the “Suspension Trends” findings the authors stated that although suspension rates have declined over the past couple of years, they are still a problem. Within the past years, districts like LASUD have attempted to end willful defiance suspensions because they believed to only provide academic loss for the students. Although suspensions declined from “709,580 to 503,101”, Losen found that black students (went from “33% to 25.6%) still held the highest suspension rates in comparison to their white peers (who went from 3.4% to 1.8%). Thus, this raised the question of whether or not there were deeper problems, such as “emotional disturbances” within their private lives that may be affecting their ability to perform well in their academic

Again and again, educators get a lopsided offer of the fault for issues like high dropout rates, the racialized accomplishment hole, and the school subsidizing emergency. At the point when these issues are intensified by developing ill will toward instructor unions and an educator assessment/remuneration framework based intensely on state sanctioned test outcomes, it is not hard to comprehend a developing sense of disappointment among government funded teachers, advisors and other faculty. These weights combined with developing classroom requests may leave lacking time for instructors to intentionally consider their own racial mentalities and how these demeanors might affect their understudies. What's required is an extension of formal social competency preparing to incorporate data about understood inclination and its outcomes. On the off chance that instructors and school directors know about their racial inclinations, they will be better prepared to push back against these unsafe mentalities. The issue of racial and ethnic disproportionality in school control is not new. In 1975, in one of the soonest examinations of school disciplinary approaches and practices, the Children's Defense Reserve uncovered that suspension rates for African American understudies were somewhere around two and three times higher than those for White understudies (Drack ford, 2006). Progressing research demonstrates that in numerous places, this issue has intensified, altogether. Our ability to address this and other "racialized" issues in the Nation's government funded training framework is affected by long standing racial separation what's more, verifiable racial inclination. To proactively address racial unevenness in school discipline, we should keep on

The article defined what it is to be culturally diverse as well as cultural competence as related to the growing population of students. This article also uses these terms to relate how education system is/is not culturally responsive to our students with challenging behaviors. According to the Carrero and Lusk, they researched key words regarding culturally diverse students with

The main points of the action research and study was to train prospective Social Studies teachers to be culturally responsive. The goal was to see if training teachers in cultural differences allowed them to be more culturally aware. The research included several learning outcomes. The features of culturally responsive education was collected under three dimensions. The three dimensions were

Jacqueline Jordan Irvine starts off the video talking about culturally responsiveness and how people react to it. She talks about the reason that people relate everything to culture. World views, beliefs, language, values, morals, and more. Geneva Gay says that culture is a filter that we, as humans, make sense of the ordinary things. She says that culture can be grouped into two categories: visible and invisible. Visible culture relates to craft, music, art, and technology. They are considered important according to Geneva Gay, but she thinks the invisible cultures are more important. The Invisible cultures consist of values, beliefs, feelings, opinions, perspective and assumptions. The video then asks the question “Why is culturally relevant

Discrimination in education goes further than the theory of the school to prison pipeline. Discipline in schools raise several questions but one in particular, are minority children punished more harshly than white children for the same infractions? Most parent’s response to that question would be home school. Common among white Americans, is showing an increase among African American kids. The government play a huge role in education, however what role does the government and the Obama administration play in the matter of discrimination in schools? School discipline, the law, and racism, how do they contribute to discrimination of education in the public school system?

A major part of the teachers practice that lacked cultural responsiveness was that she did not accommodate for the students lack of comprehension when given instructions. The teacher needed to make the instructions easier for the student to follow or produce a way for them to understand. A more responsive way to help her student would be to write down the instructions on the board in a simpler format for him to follow or to get another student to simplify them for him and then check for clarification. Writing down the instructions would provide a way for the student to check that they are doing the correct thing. The other option of having another student to help him for instruction clarification would provide him with a way to check he is doing the correct thing and would also help to build a working relationship with some other students which could also form friendship.

American public schools currently instruct an estimated 50 million students. During the 2011-12 school year, 3.5 million students were suspended in-school and another 3.45 million students have been suspended out-of-school. According to the Department of Education, 130,000 students were expelled over the course of the 2011-12 school year. Among those expelled include students with disabilities and students of color. The disproportionate impact suspension and expulsion practices have on students of color are resulting in devastating consequences. According to the Civil Rights Data Collection 2016, African-American students were suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than white students. Furthermore, students with disabilities are twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension as their non-disabled peers. Because of the vast disparities between students of color and their white peers, educators need to re-examine the discipline practices to ensure equitable discipline for all students. By reevaluating current disciplinary practices, administrators can reduce the amount of dropouts and involvement with the juvenile justice system.