NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

School/Community Relations

• Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race & disability in schools
  Scholars have discussed the overrepresentation of minority students in special education programs for high-incidence disability categories since long before the first federal law P. L.
• Proactive Culturally Responsive Discipline
  This exemplar was produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). The ways that schools intervene with students' challenging behavior have been historically "reactive, exclusionary, and ineffective." Traditional reactive discipline interventions include detention, suspension, and expulsion, all of which punish students by excluding them from school and limiting opportunity to receive positive support for behavior change.
• Determining Policy support for Inclusive schools
  This document was designed to help teams of policy-makers, practitioners, and advocates implement inclusive practices. There are six sections in this guide, each representing a policy area.
• Urban school reform from a student- of-color perspective
  The author of this article looks at one school community's efforts to fundamentally alter the structure, curriculum and instructional practices in ways that would help to provide greater educational opportunities for all students.
• Teachers Leading Teachers: Enhancing Multicultural Education through Field-based Partnerships
  The authors argue that partnerships between early childhood teacher preparation programs and public school teachers will strengthen the discourse on multicultural education and its institutionalization. They present strategies for gaining a personal connection to multicultural education ideals, including developing cultural biographies, examining stereotypes and prejudices, examining the construction of a personal identity, and critically examining the media.
• School-Based Management: Reconceptualizing to Improve Learning Outcomes
  The authors examined educational decentralization efforts in both developed and developing countries, guided by two questions: (1) under what conditions does school-based management (SBM) produce best results and (2) what are the roles and relationships of the school/community and of the region/center. The authors summarized, from recent literature, reasons for the usual failure of SBM and identify the conditions under which SBM works, noting school/community relations and external infrastructure as important factors.
• Legal Rights: The Overrepresentation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in Special Education
  This paper is one of the practitioner-oriented briefs produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). It applies to all parents and teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse students who have been or will be placed in special education.
• 10 Things Any School Can Do to Build Parent Involvement... Plus 5 Great Ways to Fail!
  Getting parents involved in their children's education is not just a "nice idea." Schools can't do their job without parents' help. This guide gives ideas for parent involvement work: in any school, with very little money, using proven , and tested ideas.
• What High School Students Think about Their Families Being Involved in School?
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). Schools are changing the way they understand and think about family involvement.
• Racial Disproportionality in School Disciplinary Practices
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner-oriented pamphlets produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). This practitioner brief is for all parents, teachers and school leaders interested in understanding how we as educators can identify the overrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children in special education and monitor the extent of it.
• Suburban Bigotry: A Descent into Racism & Struggle for Redemption
  One New Jersey school district responded to racism and educational bias by implementing prejudice reduction initiatives. The community had been all white until the mid-1990s, when it became one-third minority.
• Cultural Identity and Teaching
  The authors of this practitioner brief suggested that understanding your own cultural background, and connecting that background to that of the students in your classroom as you explore the connections you have and the different ways you might look at things creates a rich learning environment in which the teacher and students can all participate, be valued, and learn.
  Download the document here.
• Recognizing and responding to cultural differences in the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners
  The author described a variety of ways that culture influences teacher-student and teacher-parent interactions and provides recommendations to help educators respond to the educational needs of CLD students with and without disabilities.
• Schools on move: Stories of Urban Schools Engaged in Inclusive Journeys of Change(JC Nalle Elementary School in Washington, DC).
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). This story depicts a school in the midst of exciting changes and renewal.
• Including Gypsy Travellers in Education
  The authors examined the educational exclusion and inclusion of Gypsy Traveller students, exploring how some Scottish schools responded to Traveller student culture and how this led to exclusion. Interviews with school staff, Traveller students, and parents indicated that continuing prejudice and harassment promoted inappropriate school placement and persecution.
• Already Reading Texts and Contexts: Multicultural Literature in a Predominantly White Rural Community
  The authors examined how the inclusion of multicultural texts played out in one predominantly white rural community, focusing on repercussions of a key event that set off conflict in the community and describing how various interpretations of this event haped teachers' and community members' beliefs about the selection, interpretation, and teaching of multicultural literature.
• Professional development for urban principals in underperforming schools
  Principals in America's lowest performing urban schools face many challenges, including public scrutiny as a consequence of being identified as such by state and federal legislation. These special circumstances have implications for the professional development of the leaders of these schools.
• What we mean by "family and community connections with schools"?
  This paper is developed by the National Institute of Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). It is about family involvement.
• Immigration Then and Now: Old Face, New Story
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets called On Points produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). The current wave of immigration is creating such an upheaval, and caught in this emotional jumble are first generation immigrant students.
• School consultants working for equity with families, teachers, and administrators
  In this commentary, the authors summarized four major themes related to collaboration between school consultants and families with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds : (a) Consultation with minority families involves empowering parents to navigate the public education system, integrating cultural considerations into consultation and intervention, and educating families and school personnel; (b) a participatory process that brings together families, school personnel, and community stakeholders is critical to achieving educational equity; (c) a cultural mediator is necessary to assist stakeholders in bridging cultural gaps and achieving shared meanings; and (d) educational equity is a complex, long-term process involving numerous individual, relational, organizational, community, and societal factors. The authors pointed out school consultants can play a central role in facilitating inquiry, negotiation, consensus building, and individual and systemic change to achieve cross-cultural collaboration and educational equity.
• Parental school involvement and children’s academic achievement. .
  This article outlines some of the mechanisms through which parental school involvement affects achievement and identify how patterns and amounts of involvement vary across cultural, economic, and community contexts and across developmental levels.
• Voices of parents and teachers in a poor white urban school.
  This case study consists of interviews with teachers and parents about school/family relations in an all white urban school. Themes of separation between home and school, the function of parent volunteers, structural barriers to more family involvement, friendship between teachers and parents, service to the school, teacher attitudes about parents, and parent attitudes about teachers are explored.
• Pathways to Inclusive Practices:Systems Oriented, Policy-Linked, and Research-Based Strategies that Work
  This guidebook was developed by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI) for parents, practitioners,administrators, and policy-makers seeking to make schools and classrooms more responsive to the educational needs of all students,including those with disabilities.
  Download the document here .
• Disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education: Measuring the problem
  This paper is one of the short practitioner-oriented pamphlets produced by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt). This practitioner brief is about racial disproportionality in school disciplinary practices.
• Creating Culturally Responsive, Inclusive Classrooms
  The author of this article provided the following guidelines for creating culturally responsive, inclusive classrooms: use a range of culturally sensitive methods and materials, create a classroom atmosphere that respects individuals and their cultures, foster an interactive classroom learning environment, employ ongoing and culturally aware assessments, and collaborate with other professionals and families.