Culturally Responsive Practice

This binder is a one-stop tool for protocols, resources, and guiding materials to support school-based design teams in meeting the needs of their school communities. These resources help educators respond to the constraints placed on them by local and state policies and health concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visit the Fall 2020 Back to School Planning Resource Binder

This guide provides educators with a framework for driving equity-focused, innovative school change—along with the tools they need to bring this to life in their own school settings. Our framework aims to bind together the personal learning, process considerations, and design principles that drive sustainable, equitable school change.

Visit the Building for Equity home page
Download the guide

In this white paper, learn how the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) has taken the first steps to build stronger statewide assessments that engage students and determine school success based on multiple, rich criteria. Hear how teachers at an elementary school in Revere, MA made the switch to school-wide implementation of performance assessments, and gain valuable background on the development of MCIEA's School Quality Measures Framework.

Standardized testing remains the predominant proficiency measure for students and schools, placing teacher and student focus on test-prep and lower order skills while maintaining achievement gaps that penalize underserved students. The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Assessment seeks to close this gap and change assessment measures on a state level by training teachers to become leaders in implementing student-centered performance assessments and encouraging state legislators to consider alternative, forward-thinking accountability systems.

This issue is an online supplement to VUE 46, which addressed the topic of performance assessment – a personalized and rigorous alternative to standardized testing that allows teachers to build on individual students’ strengths and foster more equitable learning outcomes.

VUE 47 adds current materials, offers opportunities for additional voices, and provides more examples of performance assessment. Because performance assessment is an active national conversation, the work continues; following VUE 46’s publication, important national conferences and other milestones occurred that we’re able to share here. This issue of VUE was produced as a partnership between the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Center for Collaborative Education.

Against a backdrop of the opportunities provided by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the challenges posed for education by the new federal administration, this issue of Voices in Urban Education (VUE) proposes performance assessment as a personalized and rigorous alternative to standardized testing. Performance assessment provides an opportunity for educators in public schools and districts to more equitably meet the needs of students through the use of more relevant, engaging curriculum and instruction. This VUE issue was planned and produced as a partnership between the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Center for Collaborative Education.

Recent data from Boston Public Schools revealed policies that perpetuate academic gatekeeping along racial lines as well as an absence of culturally responsive curriculum. See how the district is reforming to promote equity in learning opportunities and learn recommendations for any district confronting similar challenges.

Historically, urban high schools have proven to be the most challenging educational institutions in which to affect lasting reform. Yet policymakers and practitioners in Massachusetts have had insufficient evidence to guide their decision making on the conditions that work to improve student achievement at this level. This report explores this critical issue and generates discussion around possible strategies for leveraging best practices used in Massachusetts urban high schools that are improving.

In response to Joan Vennochi's column (“Students should know about Boston Latin’s up escalator”), Dan French's letter to the editor calls into question the author's suggestion that Boston Latin School is the only path to upward mobility in the Boston Public Schools, and that black and Latino students are underrepresented at BLS due to lack of knowledge about the school. Dan writes, "This disparity is not due to lack of communication; rather, systemic district policies ensure that BLS serves a predominantly white, Asian, and middle-class student population."

"All of us must work harder to create schools that embrace students and families of all backgrounds, rather than places where some are asked to leave their cultures, languages, and experiences outside the schoolhouse door."

Dan French and Warren Simmons write a commentary on urban education.

To improve educational – and life – outcomes for Boston’s Black and Latino males, we must use a systemic, equity-focused approach.

The second of a pair of studies commissioned by Boston Public Schools (BPS), examines four Boston public schools in which Black and Latino male students are doing comparably better than their peers. It features case studies that identify promising educational models, policies, and practices associated with increased engagement and improved outcomes for Black and Latino males in BPS.