• Parents are expected to provide well for children and make sacrifices to do so.
• Children are expected to be obedient and respectful and to study hard.
• All family members are expected not to bring shame into the family, which puts a lot of pressure on many children and can lead to emotional and behavioral problem.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Chinn is a professor emeritus in the Division of Special Education,
California State University, Los Angeles. He serves as the director of the Asian/Pacific Center for the Alliance Project, a federally funded technical assistance project. Chinn is the co-author with Donna Gollnick of Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society (6th Edition), Merrill/Prentice Hall. Until his recent retirement, he served on the NCATE Board of Examiners, served as vice-president of the National Association for Multicultural Education, and as a Commissioner on the California State Advisory Commission on Special Education. He served as co-editor of Multicultural Perspectives, the journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education from 1997–2001. This year, the National Association for Multicultural Education honored him by naming their Multicultural Book Award in his name.

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Ms. Kathy Froelich
Sitting Bull College

Ms. Sandra Wolf
Sitting Bull College

See Me, Hear My Voice

Kathy Froelich discussed several maxims that have impacted her experience, and stated that in the Native American world, people are seen as spiritual beings trying to be human, whereas in the non-Native world, human beings seek to be spiritual. She related her own experience as a Native American child in elementary school, where she learned that by keeping quiet she could slide through the system. This experience impelled her to encourage students to give voice to issues important to them and to model such behavior.

Ms. Froelich’s work is at Standing Rock Indian Reservation, in North and South Dakota. She touched on several aspects of American Indian education:

• American Indians have the lowest levels of educational attainment of all racial and ethic groups in the United States.

• Only half of American Indian students complete high school, and they are only half as likely as white counterparts to attain college degrees.

• The grim statistics have led tribal institutions to develop their own teacher-training programs in order to reverse low achievement rates by making teacher education accessible, meeting state and regional accreditation standards, and producing new teachers who are sensitive to the needs of American Indians and committed to the communities.

A teacher-training program at Sitting Bull College has succeeded in producing 21 graduates, all of who teach on Standing Rock reservation. These teachers have the skills needed to teach in the schools, and honor Lakota-Dakota traditions, history, and values. Elements of the program include the following:

• Curriculum integrates Lakota-Dakota history, language, culture, and values

• Small classes, cohort models, maximum personal contact with faculty, and a strong focus on the development of each individual student

Sandra Wolf discussed the relationship between Sitting Bull College and urban American Indian education, noting the cultural confluences that occur at each. Her research took place at Medicine Wheel School, where she undertook a study using ethnographic methods of participant observation, interviews, artifact collection, and journal-keeping, all standard research practices. She discussed:

• The characteristics of Medicine Wheel School—urban, public, magnet school, K–8, designed as an American Indian school.

• The school’s mission statement, “We are all related,” the use of the circle as a theme in organizing school activities and mindsets, and the concept of the medicine wheel as it represents a world view and impacts relationships within the school.

• The use of practice theory in her study, which examined what American Indian students do and say, and allowed her to study how American Indian children construct meaning about what they do well.

• Wolf’s study of student participation in National History Day building on strengths of agency, identity, and relationships in an exploration of American Indian history underscored the importance of building on American Indian students’ identity, and not reliance on academic intensification, to foster achievement.

The research techniques in her study were employed carefully to avoid violating cultural nuances.

Schools can be dangerous places for children, and particularly so for children of color, when schools require them to compete against one another, ensuring the failure of some.

Dr. Geneva Gay

Reversing Trends of Students in Urban Schools Through Culturally Responsive Teaching

Dr. Gay and partcipants raised several issues regarding the achievement of African American children:

• People do not understand that African-Americans occupy a unique and particular position in American society.

• Looking at the history of this country and race and culture is an important part of the pursuit of addressing the needs of African-American children.

• There is tremendous struggle involved, both personally and in relation to others, in engaging in the work.

• Raising the issues diligently and consistently and confronting the opposition to these issues is an important and arduous task

Participants discussed with Dr. Gay the tensions brought out by scholarly researchers who fear unpopular political stances and myths popularized by the media, such as:

• The perpetuation of intellectual inferiority messages

• The role of cultural code and its influence on media portrayal of African-American students

• The importance of understanding school as a cultural construction, and examining that construction

• The neglect of an understanding of African-American contributions to culture
• The hostile school environment many black children face
The panel discussed potential research directions to benefit African-American children and education issues they would like to see pursued:

• Positioning children at the center of the research by asking the children what should be done and tracking the effectiveness of those suggestions

• Exploration of cultural capital teaching and the impact of that on indicators

• Analysis of effective environments for black children’s achievement

• Examination of HBCUs that produce success and transferring those environments and methods into more general educational practice

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Gay is professor of Education at the University of Washington-Seattle.
She is the recipient of the 1990 Distinguished Scholar Award, presented by the Committee on the Role and Status of Minorities in Educational Research and Development of the American Educational Research Association, and the 1994 Multicultural Educator Award, the
first to be presented by the National Association of Multicultural Education.

She is nationally and internationally known for her scholarship in multicultural education, particularly as it relates to curriculum
design, staff development, classroom instruction, and intersections of
culture, ethnicity, and learning. Her writings include more than 135
articles and book chapters, including Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Practice, & Research which received the 2001 Outstanding Writing Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).

Dr. Pedro Noguera
Harvard University

Creating Conditions that Promote Student Achievement

Inspired by previous presenters, Dr. Noguera presented a study that he is conducting in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, that places student experiences at the center of evaluating school reforms. Selected students were shadowed by a researcher who assessed the students’ experiences in all aspects of school and through ongoing interviews, as well as through interviews with teachers and adults in the students’ lives. Findings include:

• Kids point to their parents as the main source of their motivation and support.

•  Kids state that the most effective teachers are those who exhibit caring for the students, but who also have high expectations of the students and an active approach to teaching.

•  Kids say that their peers do not hold them back, but it is problems at home that prevent student success.

• The strongest endorsement for more multicultural, culturally affirming curriculum comes from the students.

•  An orderly environment without disruption is important to kids.

•  There is a tremendous gap between what teachers and administrators think they are doing, and what the kids are actually experiencing.

•  Although schools are claiming success, the measures they take toward achievement fall short due to low expectations, wasted classroom time, and a focus on rigid rules that push problem students out of school.

•  There is very little teacher support for reforms.

•  The most successful schools continuously seek to improve through constant assessment and by imparting a sense of future to the children.

Dr. Noguera described seven essential principles to realizing the goal of combining equity and excellence in education:

1. Unless we challenge complacency about failure in schools, nothing will change.
   
2. Students who have less must be given more if they are going to have a chance to succeed.
   
3. Teachers have to see teaching and learning as a reciprocal and related activity.
   
4. Academic standards must be used to measure the quality of education students receive.
   
5. All people involved in student’s education have to be accountable, teachers, students, parents, and administrators.
   
6. Knowing more about students allows us to serve them better.
   
7. If we focus only on changing the way schools are organized and without addressing the culture of schools, nothing will change.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Noguera is the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously he was professor of Social and Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Education and the director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the ways in which schools respond to social and economic conditions within the urban environment. He has engaged in collaborative research with several
large, urban school districts, and he has published and lectured on topics such as youth violence, race relations within schools, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, factors contributing to student achievement and secondary issues resulting from desegregation in public schools. He has authored several books including The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada. His most recent book Confronting the Urban: How City Schools Can Respond to Social Inequality will be available in January 2003.

Dr. Alba Ortiz
Professor in the Department of Special Education, in the College of Education
University of Texas at Austin

Spanish-Speaking Students with Reading-Related Learning Disabilites

Dr. Ortiz described a study conducted at the University of Texas, Austin. This study sought to provide a profile of English language learners, and specifically Spanish-speakers with learning disabilities, in order to make recommendations about pre-referral intervention, referral assessment, and special education placement. The study also:

• Identified best practice, following students in classrooms and observing how bilingual education teachers were addressing student needs

• Interviewed teacher perception of alignment of instruction and practical applications

• Compared teacher and parent perceptions of student disabilities and the goals of special education

• Developed recommendations for improving practice

• Resulted in the following observations:

• There are multiple paths into special education
• There are several student subgroups within the special education population, some with disabilities, some with other problems:
  • Testing is often inconsistent with the language of instruction
  • Assessment results often did not match teacher concerns
  • Over-representation and under-representation were both apparent and point to a complex scenario of assignment of students to special education

In discussing the results of their research, Dr. Ortiz spoke about the importance of considering the following:

• The student’s current level of performance with teacher observation and parental input

• The presence of other disabilities that may otherwise explain difficulties the student is having

• Teacher biases, expectations, and inabilities to teach the student

• General education alternatives and evidence of their success

• Does the full and individual evaluation incorporate best practice?

Assessment results should clearly state the reasons for referral, the alignment of assessments with the stated reasons, the outcomes, and the corroboration of the assessment with the presenting problems

The final part of the process should be

• To identify student's strengths and weaknesses in reaction to the areas of concern

• To note remaining questions that haven’t been explained by the multi-disciplinary team process of referral and following up on those areas

• To conclude with an assessment of whether or not a student is eligible and explain why

• To suggest general education efforts that can solve the problems if the student does not qualify

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Alba A. Ortiz is a Professor in the Department of Special Education, and Director of the Office of Bilingual Education, in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin. She began her early career as a speech pathologist in San Antonio, Texas and went on to become a teacher educator after earning her doctorate at UT Austin in Special Education Administration. She returned to UT as a faculty member after teaching at San Jose State University in California and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She has been at UT since 1980.

Dr. Ortiz is currently involved in two major research projects: one focuses on how Spanish speaking students learn to read in Spanish and in English and another is a study of bilingual education students with reading-related learning disabilities in Spanish. She has written extensively on such topics as English Language Learners with language and learning disabilities, and prevention and early intervention for second language learners experiencing achievement difficulties. Her most recent publication is a book, co-edited with Alfredo Artiles and entitled, English Language Learners with Special Education Needs: Identification, Assessment, and Instruction which was published this fall by the Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems.

In 1992, Dr. Ortiz served as the President of the Council for Exceptional Children, the largest professional organization in the U.S. for special education teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and parents. In 1994, she was awarded the President's Achievement Award by the National Association for Bilingual Education for her contributions to the development of the bilingual special education field and for her advocacy on behalf of Hispanic students with disabilities. At UT Austin, she is the holder of the President's Chair for Education Academic Excellence, an honor bestowed in recognition of her research, teaching, and service contributions to improving educational opportunities for American youth, but specifically for her work in the fields of bilingual education and special education.

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Dr. Theresa Perry
Associate Professor of Education
Wheelock College

Thinking about African American Achievement in the Post Civil Rights Era: Theory and Practices

Dr. Perry argued that the nature of achievement for African Americans is shaped by their social, racial, and cultural identity as African Americans. As a result, it is a fundamentally different task, not just different at the edges, from the achievement of other groups. She listed several dilemmas that are distinctive for African Americans because of the pervasive ideology that they are intellectually inferior:

• How do I commit myself to work hard over time in school and aspire towards excellence if I cannot predict if, when, and under what circumstances this work will be acknowledged and recognized?
• How do I commit myself to work that is based on the belief in the power of the mind when African American intellectual inferiority is so much part of the notions taken for granted in the larger society that individuals who claim to be acting on my behalf routinely doubt my intellectual competence?
• Can I engage my full personhood with all of my cultural formations into my class and school if my teachers and other adults are both attracted to and repulsed by these cultural formations, e.g., the way I walk, my language, my physicality?
• Can I commit to working hard over time if I know that no matter what I or other members of my reference group accomplish, these accomplishments are not likely to change how we are viewed by the larger society or alter our position in society?
• Can I commit to work hard in school when cultural adaptation serves as a prerequisite for skill acquisition if the price is separation from the culture of my reference group?

African Americans developed a philosophy of education to respond to these dilemmas. It asserted freedom for literacy and literacy for freedom, racial uplift, citizenship, and leadership. This philosophy, and practices that developed from it, countered the ideology that American Americans were inferior. They were intentionally taught in Black segregated schools during the pre-Civil Rights era when unequal education was an uncontested reality.

In the post-Civil rights era, the ideology of Black inferiority is still present. However, it is much more difficult for students to deal with because no one talks about it while people do speak of openness and opportunity. In addition, there is little attempt to pass on the positive messages of the African American philosophy of education.

Dr. Perry concluded by listing some things that African Americans can do to deal with this situation, including:

• Families and communities need to figure out how to develop identities of achievement in African American children and youth
• Create an external review process whereby a school is assessed for how it reproduces the ideology of African American intellectual inferiority and is helped to develop ways to create identities of achievement among African Americans.
• Provide intellectually challenging curricula to African American students
• Give African American children strategies for coping with the situations they will face where they are thought to be intellectually inferior.
• Develop a system of supplementary education through which African Americans are taught the empowering African American philosophy of education.
  

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Perry is associate professor of Education and Vice President for Community Relations at Wheelock College. From l986–l997, she was under-graduate Dean at Wheelock College. In this position she led the faculty in the introduction of race, class and gender content throughout the curriculum, and in increasing the full time faculty of color to twenty five percent. She is co-editor with James Fraser of Freedom’s Plow, Teaching in the Multicultural Classroom, editor of Teaching Malcolm X, and co-editor with Lisa Delpit of The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language and the Education of Black Children. Along with Asa Hilliard and Claude Steele, she is one of the authors of the of the forthcoming Beacon Press book, Young Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Children. Her areas of expertise include culturally responsive practice, school/college partnerships, teacher education and African American Achievement..

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Dr. Francisco Rios
University of Wyoming

Ethnic Minority Teachers and Public Policy: Do These Increase Success for All?

Francisco Rios discussed various issues concerning the education of ethnic minority students that impact families, communities, and nations. Dr. Rios described his own cultural background and his experience in a largely Latino public school in Denver, Colorado. He discussed the political activism of the Chicano students and the students’ successful efforts to hire Chicano teachers and incorporate Chicano studies into the curriculum.

Dr. Rios explored issues concerning education and serving cultural and ethnic minorities as well as the poor, unemployed, and underemployed. He specifically addressed the importance of ethnic minority teachers to facilitate success of ethnic minority children. Advantages of these teachers include:

• Their ability to relate to children they teach by having shared cultural and social experiences, and ability to reflect on these experiences

• Possession of cultural assets, such as skills at crossing cultural borders, commitment to student academic and personal success, ability to teach fellow peers and to serve as cultural mediators, empathy with student struggles combined with positive but realistic expectations, knowledge of how to motivate and empower caregivers and students, and likelihood to access community resources

• Ownership of political assets, such as coping and resistance strategies, ability to identify racist school policies and practices, interest in advocacy for students of color, and likelihood to hold themselves, colleagues, and institutions accountable for ethnic minority student failure

• Studies demonstrate compelling evidence that ethnic minority teachers make a positive difference in minority suspension rates and math and reading achievement

The reasons behind the lack of ethnic minority teachers in education was discussed through four case studies that highlighted obstacles such teachers face, such as:

• Lack of programs that feed minorities into the teaching profession

• Insufficient preparation for working with ethnic minority students in teacher education programs

• Alienating field experiences

• Standardized testing for teachers

• Work settings that do not sufficiently address education’s responses to the needs of ethnic minority children in urban contexts

Dr. Rios discussed a number of trends in education, such as standardized testing, the diminishment of bilingual education, funding cuts, abolishment of affirmative action, and the emphasis on scientific research that dismisses the cultural realities of peoples lives as contributing to the challenge of education in increasingly diverse schools and communities. He stressed the political nature of these developments and explored the ways that politics finds its way into the classroom and impacts those who are there to learn.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Rios is a professor at the University of Wyoming where he also serves as chair of the Educational Studies department. He has over 30 publications that focus on various aspects of multicultural education. His recent interests focus on Latinos in education, second language acquisition, and multicultural education. He currently serves as the senior associate editor of Multicultural Perspectives, the journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education. He has worked with
schools and teachers on diversity related issues in Milwaukee, San Diego, Los Angeles County, Santa Barbara, and now in Wyoming.

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Reality Luncheon

LASER hosted “reality luncheon,” which highlighted the impact educators have on students and focused on the question, “What are we bringing to the classroom that are helping children to succeed in the classroom?” Many topics were addressed:

• Teachers’ inability to address the needs of children and the correlation with their inability to meet their own needs

• The importance of mentors and validation in the education process

•Passion, motivation, encouragement, and involvement in professional organization as motivating factors in the educational process

• One student’s sense of urgency drawn from the circumstances of individuals and from family and community

• The strength students derive from one another as peers engaged in similar pursuits

• The importance of accountability and the debt educators and researchers owe to children

• Special education research seeks to redefine the meaning of special education so that the services, rather than the children, are labeled

• The importance of making sure that children maximize their learning potential

• Research has a domino effect and changes what it touches

• It is important for educators to get involved with parents

• The ways educators factor social justice into research methodologies and research topic choices

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Town Meeting

Dr. John Johnson facilitated LASER’s town meeting. This meeting began with a brainstorming session to bring forth many ideas, followed by a discussion of some of the topics. The topics included the following:

• Problems with an emphasis on solution-oriented thinking and the value of drawing out more complex ideas

• The value of building greater awareness as discussed at the conference

• Seductive systems in neighborhoods

• Passionate involvement in an issue involves standing up and taking responsibility for the issue

• Bringing social justice into the educational system

• White teachers’ prejudice and the importance of admitting their prejudice

• Attracting applicants of color and bilingual applicants in teacher education programs

• Sources of illiteracy in African American communities

• Failure to adjust curricula to student abilities

• Working to destroy the capitalist class system in schools and throughout the nation

• Teacher expectations and prejudiced impressions and its negative impact on children by watering down the curriculum

• Concerns about the standards movement

• Need for program participants to understand historical, social, cultural, and political contexts in which education exists

• How schools can promote positive racial and social identity

• Issue of race fatigue and how this fatigue stands in the way of making changes

• Inconsistencies in school systems between what administrations say will happen and what actually does happen

• Broadening agendas to include changing the entire right wing agenda

• Funding for urban schools and urban communities

• Peer influence and pressure

• The importance of action to address the issues raised and how to go about taking action

• Tensions between researching issues, collecting and analyzing data, and developing movements to do something about an issue

• Issues of prejudice and who wields the power within the political structure

• Lack of critical mass in Native American communities to organize

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Johnson is professor emeritus of Education, University of the District of Columbia. He is an educational psychologist who is highly recognized and respected internationally for his work in special education for the emotionally challenged, counseling and mental health, and process-oriented conflict resolution. Dr. Johnson recently served for two years as Artistic Director of DC Playback Theater Company in Washington, D.C., where he continues as an actor and is currently a Fellow in the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute.

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