The Opportunity Gap and Instructional Design

By Sarah Dahl &Tanisha Champagne

A. Closing Opportunity Gaps• The focus of providing quality

education to all students and believing that all students can learn regardless of race, ethnicity, or background is a main concern in our education system. Despite this belief, “Washington test scores provide strong evidence that academic achievement is highly correlated to students’ race, ethnicity, and economic circumstances.”

• How can we as educators ensure that all of our students are receiving quality education and that we are actively working to decrease the achievement gap?

http://www.k12.wa.us/Cisl/pubdocs/AgapLegReport2010.pdf

Closing Opportunity Gaps• Committee Recommended

Strategies~ Supporting & facilitating parent and community involvement and outreach.~ Enhancing the cultural competence of current & future educators and the cultural relevance of curriculum and instruction.~ Expanding pathways and strategies to prepare and recruit diverse teachers and administrators.~ Identify data elements and systems needed to monitor progress in closing the gap.~ Make closing the achievement gap part of the school and school district improvement process.~ Explore innovative school models that have shown success in closing the achievement gap.

B. Recommendations• Address Teacher Quality

and Effectiveness.~ Teachers should expect success for all children regardless of their ethnicity, primary spoken language, socioeconomic status, family configuration, age, religion, ability, gender, and physical characteristics.~ Create positive family and community relationships.~ Know your students' cultural background and incorporate within the classroom.~ Use multiple teaching styles to support students’ different learning styles

• Teacher and Instruction~ Require all future teachers to develop competencies related to meeting the instructional and socio-cultural needs of ELL students. ~ Require current teachers to participate in cultural competence training

Recommendations• Foster Culturally Responsive

Approaches~ Develop & implement a strategic plan that encourages the cultural responsiveness of the school system to all racial and ethnic minority groups so the system is positive, individualized, free of stereotypes, and views them as assets.• Establish collaboration

between higher education and school districts

~ Establish collaboration between higher education and school districts to co-create and co-deliver programs on school climate, engaging diverse classrooms, and instructional strategies for diverse students.

Teaching and Learning~ Students need rigorous and relevant curriculum that engages, challenges, and connects them to the world they know with the world they need to know.

C. New State Standards: Education for Environment and Sustainability • How does this set of curriculum

standards differ from other standards that you have experienced? 

The biggest difference between these standards and others we’ve experienced is that the Environment and Sustainability standards are combined and aligned with our current state standards, as well as being aligned with the state’s Indian Education curriculum (http://www.k12.wa.us/EnvironmentSustainability/pubdocs/ESEStandards). This set of Environment and Sustainability standards lists the appropriate state standards, predominately focusing on Science and Social Studies.

New State Standards: Education for Environment and Sustainability• What opportunities does it offer teachers

as instructional designers? The Environment and Sustainability

standards offers teacher the connectedness and interweaving of thematic units without all of the jumping around and extra steps required to make sure the standards and expectations are aligned. This document has the alignment already done as well as has the information broken down by grade level bands to make it easier to quickly align a project or assignment.

New State Standards: Education for Environment and SustainabilityHow teachers approach the

new standardsHow students are responding

• Teachers are creating classroom projects that are utilizing these standards and are infusing projects with technology, public speaking, and other core subjects and state standards.

• Teachers are able to have interconnectedness in teaching science and social studies at a time when testing scores put pressure on getting all state standards taught.

• Students create their project while also using their knowledge to share this information with their families, peers, and community. Access of these projects are online on the school’s website as well as showcased by students to the community in our districts’ Technology Expo.

D. Research• Recommendation at

School Level~ School-wide sense of community~ Empower others to make significant decisions~ Instructional program coherence~ Develop and implement strategic school improvement plans

Successful leadership in diverse cultural and socioeconomic contexts calls for the integrated use of implementing policies & initiatives that are implemented equitably. Some practices may include providing parent education programs, reducing class sizes and building rich curricula delivered through sustained discourse structured around powerful ideas.

• Recommendation at the Classroom Level

~ Intentional student grouping~ Effective culturally responsive instruction~ Reduced class size to approximately 15 students~ Balancing teacher workload~ Highly supportive classroom environment~ Engaging & challenging curriculum

What other research can you read on the one topic that interests you the most?

Differentiated instruction is an area of interest for us, because previous studies have suggest that differentiation strategies of choice and interest play a vital role in student achievement (Dunn, Griggs, Olsen, Beasley, Gorman, 1995

E. Additional Resources

• Boon, R., Spencer, V. (2010). Best practices for the inclusive classroom: scientifically based strategies for success. Prufrock Press Inc, Waco TX.

• Hughes, E., Winerman, K. (2009). Learning language: listening and writing with diverse young children. Dimensions of Early Childhood, v. 37, n. 2. Southern Early Childhood Association, Little Rock, AR.

• Mitchell, L. (2009). Becoming culturally responsive teachers in today’s diverse classroom. American Educational Research Association Meeting, San Diego, CA.

• Santamaria, L. (2009). Culturally responsive differentiated instruction: narrowing gaps between best pedagogical practices benefiting all learners. Teachers College Record, v. 111, n. 1. Teachers College, New York, NY.

• Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners.

• Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. • Wright, S. P., Horn, S. P. &, Sanders, W. L. (1997). Teacher & classroom context

effects on student achievement: Implications for teacher evaluation. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 11, 57-67.

These are additional resources that we can use as we deepen our understanding of differentiated instruction and being culturally

responsive instructional designers.