Organization and Management

The schools we want will incorporate the principle of equity in hiring, placement, and advancement policies and practices, breaking the traditional pattern that concentrates power as the prerogative of white males. Freed of a strangling centralized office bureaucracy and custodial monopoly, schools with adequate budgets and budgetary discretion could guarantee the safety and cleanliness of their plant and provide adequately for programs and processes to meet clear and high-level curriculum, opportunity to learn and assessment standards. They should have in place resource standards for identifying the technology, computer and lab equipment and library materials required for effective learning of their chosen curricular content.

Partnerships in governance could give successful teachers meaningful influence in the classroom and the school. Committees for curriculum, instruction, school climate and discipline can include teachers, students and parents. Creative pairing of successful schools, programs and teachers can help to make capacity building an ongoing management function. Teacher and student learning teams should be interdisciplinary, thematic and multi-year, and assign each student an adult advisor/advocate. Schools should function within community learning environments characterized by collaboration with museums, businesses and other local institutions and social service agencies. Thus, they would serve as vital community resources, linking students to health services information, and linking families to social and community services and training such as literacy, early parenting, and English language learning. To engage families in the education of their boys and girls, school policies, programs and procedures. They can involve parents in school governance and offer families opportunities to fulfill meaningful and positive support roles as mentors, tutors, student advocates, and local culture/history resources.

The schools we want demonstrate flexibility of organizational structure in such matters as length of instructional day and year, class size, grouping and student assignment, providing - for example - for mixed age-grouping, mixed ability grouping, and cross-cultural or culture-specific grouping. Their organizational structures permit flexible and "alternative: programs such as student participation in other schools and other grades for particular classes. They accommodate a variety of tutoring and mentoring approaches, such as peer and adult tutoring. Internships, apprenticeship programs, independent study and the use of technology for management, teacher training and instruction should be some of the schools' repertoire of approaches.

Curriculum

Common sense dictates that for schools to teach successfully the curricula must actually lead to established learning goals, must square with the information presented in textbooks and other resources, and classroom teaching must square with both. And that for testing to be even nominally fair, children must be tested on what they have had an opportunity to learn, and must be tested without language, culture or gender bias. To meet the requirements of educational excellence on the principle of equity, however, curricula must be evaluated for more than alignment with instructional goals, textbooks, instructional practices and tests.

In the schools we want, curricula will be interdisciplinary and developmentally appropriate. Curricula will be designed, as needed, to support equity/excellence goals such as inter-gender understanding, cross-cultural communication and interaction, English-language acquisition and development, bi- and multi-lingual fluency and equal access to "gatekeeper" courses (e.g., algebra), honors studies and advanced placement studies. Curricula will integrate the development of listening, reading, writing and speaking skills and will teach writing across the curriculum. Curricula will be multicultural across disciplines and will provide for learning bias analysis, conflict resolution, critical thinking and problem solution; promote self-esteem and confidence in boys and girls; and teach health and well being (including topics critical to sexual safety and freedom from unplanned pregnancy and motherhood/fatherhood responsibilities). They will promote character- and community-building. Curricula will be reviewed for gender, racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and disability bias, and where the use of biased materials cannot be avoided, specific strategies for using the biased examples to teach bias analysis will accompany them.

Instructional Strategies and Classroom Management

Common sense and research again come together to emphasize the effect on learning of the personal interactions that occur daily in real classrooms. Nel Noddings (1986) examines the positive effects on students' learning and behavior when they learn to care for others and for themselves; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986) argue for classrooms that emphasize collaboration and provide space for exploring diversity of opinion. A growing body of research (Cotton, n.d.) documents the barriers posed by a belief that poor and minority children are unable to achieve high levels of learning. Brophy's research (1992) points out that the teachers who consistently elicit greater gains in students are those who (also consistently):

• Place strong emphasis on expectations, on mastery of content, and on allocating the most available time for activities that accomplish mastery;

• Are effective classroom organizers and managers;

• Maximize time on task and in interactive lessons;

• Encourage teacher-student discourse, reduce time spent on seatwork and increased time spent in active learning.

Berryman and Bailey (1992) find that:

How content is taught makes all the difference in whether the content is understood, retained and appropriately learned. If we are looking for improvements in learning, they lie, not solely, but importantly, in pedagogical changes.

In the schools we want, teachers establish rewards and incentives for positive achievement and behavior. They involve students in establishing rules and discipline standards consistent with school policy, especially with respect to inter-personal and inter-gender behaviors. The teaching style used at any given point is one of a variety, matched to specific student characteristics and appropriate to the subject content being learned - content over which the teacher her/himself has a demonstrated mastery. Students are the center of interactive learning; they are provided with hands-on experiences bolstered by field trips and the experience of mentors and real-world exploration. In classrooms of diversity, the teacher's own messages about differences - expressed through his/her own interactions and demonstrated expectations - are respectful and affirming. Such teachers are likely to use heterogeneous grouping, peer tutoring and team learning to enhance learning and to foster inter-gender and cross-cultural communication. Subject matter is organized and taught in ways that encourage students to develop cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, to think creatively and critically, and to identify and solve problems.

A supportive school administration will participate actively in the professional development of school staff, including teachers, in such areas as:

• Subject content;
• Interdisciplinary applications;
• Appropriate assessment and the use of assessment information to improve instruction;
• Higher cognitive and meta cognitive processes related to subject learning;
• Diversity in learning styles and cross-cultural communication - and their implications for learning diverse subject content.

Effective support will also include resources to provide teachers with the time to increase their involvement in school governance, participation in curriculum and instruction development, and collaboration with parents.

The Challenge

We, as a nation, must assert that the sorry and inequitable state of public education is not inevitable and will no longer be tolerated. Equity depends on how much more than access to schools and their offerings. For example, we know a good deal about what drives poor and minority youth out of school - our schools can stop doing those things. There are effective pedagogies that involve students in active, creative learning - we can make their use routine rather than exceptional. We know that critical thinking is more important, more useful and more exciting than rote memory recital - we can engage all students in the fullest use of their minds. Abandoning the piecemeal approach to meeting the needs of historically marginalized students, we can restructure our schools to make them places of excellent learning opportunity for all. Incorporating the following ten principles permits schools to achieve equity in excellence as integral element of their structure:

1. School governance and administration are committed to the integration of equity and excellence. All decision-making considers the potential impact on the learning opportunities of all student groups. Publicizing disaggregated school data regularly permits comparative monitoring and evaluation of learning opportunities and outcomes by race, national origin, language background, gender, disability and socio-economic status.

2. Every school program is accessible to any student who can benefit from participation and is not based on race, national origin, gender, disability or socio-economic status. All students have equal opportunities to make informed choices about program entry and to prepare adequately for program participation. Schools and feeder schools meet their shared responsibility to plan for and to prepare students to participate in challenging classes.

3. All students attend school in a climate of respect, trust, and regard that is safe and free from discrimination, bias and harassment. Curriculum content, instructional materials and teaching methods acknowledge and value all students' cultures and languages.

4. The school has resources adequate to provide all its students with meaningful opportunities to meet the highest learning standards established by the school, its district and its state. The resources provide for a satisfactory physical plant and match the needs of the students. All students have equal access to learning equipment and technology.

5. The curriculum provides a progressive sequence of interdisciplinary, multicultural content aligned with the highest district, state and national content standards. It is active, cumulative and inclusive of all cultures and both genders; it reaches beyond understanding content to the development of skills for evaluating and using information; it includes exposure, instruction and experience in the fine and practical arts of diverse cultures.

6. The school involves all students in a variety of active, student-centered instructional methods. Instructional fosters independent and cooperative learning, mastery of learning skills, higher order thinking and second languages; it recognizes and responds to variety in learning styles, including those which may reflect culture and gender.

7. The school assesses student learning on a frequent and continuing basis for the primary purpose of improving teaching and learning. Assessments are aligned with learning opportunities, are conducted in a variety of formats, involve the student in self-appraisal, reflect understanding of multiple domains of intelligence and academic learning, and have equal consequences for all students assessed.

8. The school provides a variety of co-curricular and enrichment activities to meet the academic, vocational and personal interests and needs of all students. It actively encourages the participation of all students and all groups of students and is active in identifying and removing barriers to students' involvement.

9. The school makes effective partners of the parents of all student groups. It informs parents of educational rights, student progress and options; consults them on policy matter; recruits them as cultural and local-history resources; welcomes them as program volunteers; and consistently involves them in short- and long-range school-wide planning and implementation.

10. The school is an important link in a school-community network that supports a safe, caring environment of continuing and stimulating experience for children. It provides early educational services; provides or collaborates with daycare programs; provides parenting programs for community adults; and it collaborates with community agencies and groups through referrals for health, social, recreational and cultural programs and services.