Culturally Responsive Instruction

Jones, Shelly, "Culturally Responsive Instruction," Leadership. November/December 2007

The article begins by characterizing the education system as one being designed to server a select group of the population--that not including minorities. With this it begins a discussion of the NCLB Act as having noble goals and philosophy, yet failing to serve students that need its support the most. The article then makes the jump to CRSBI (culturally responsive standards based instruction) as being the solution. CRSBI is broken down into a set of behaviors. The first two are caring and communication, which is the demonstration of consideration for students' feelings and communicating in a way that considerate of their cultural background. The next two are curriculum and instruction, which essentially are inclusion of cultural consideration in creating curriculum content and instruction style. The final behavior is that following standards based instruction, which will lead students to become productive and prepared members of society--with the support of an emphasized assessment system. These behaviors, the article implies, are sufficient to support academic success in those groups that have been left behind education. There is a slighting statement to teachers which almost says: yes, though their going to be stragglers with NCLB but what teacher wouldn't break their neck trying to bring them up. I think the article does a good job of discussing some of the behaviors that could prevent cultural bias in the application of NCLB, but it fails to address the greater bias of NCLB--students that can learn/succeed under its education style and students that cannot.