Overview
The purpose of this applied research study was to recommend to the administrators and teachers at Urban Elementary School in possible solutions to the problem of low SOL scores of minority students in this school. The problem that this research addressed was that African American students at the urban elementary school historically had lower academic achievement than other students, as measured by SOL scores. First this chapter provides a list of five recommendation for the administrators of the Urban Elementary School in Norfolk County, Virginia, and justifies the recommendations based on the results of this research and the findings of previous studies. Second, the chapter discusses roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in implementing these recommendations. Third, the chapter discusses resources needed to implement the recommendations in the school. Fourth, the chapter provides a timeline for implementing the recommendations with specific dates and supporting details. The chapter is concluded with a summary of findings.
Recommendations
The purpose of the study was to provide recommendations to the administrators and teachers at Urban Elementary School in possible solutions to the problem of low SOL scores of minority students in this school. The research question this paper aimed at answering was “How can the problem of low SOL scores among minority students at an urban elementary school be solved?” A list of five recommendations was created to answer the research question.
- Conduct diversity training among the instructional staff to decrease teacher bias and help them understand the differences in situations that minority students face in their lives.
- Provide extra-curricular reading courses for the minority students to improve their reading skills.
- Conduct instructional training among teacher to help them learn culture-sensitive instructional practices for the minority students.
- Collaborate with teachers and community to address the needs of minority students outside school.
- Actively advocate for changing the curriculum for elementary school t accommodate for the needs of minority students.
Diversity Training
The need for diversity training among teachers was suggested by both literature review and the results of this study. The interviews revealed that teacher bias was one of the most frequent themes among the participants concerning the reasons for low achievement among minority students. In particular, the participants stated that since the majority of instructional staff are Caucasians, they have preconceived opinions about the abilities of minority students due to the inability to understand the socio-economic and cultural differences between the minority students and their White counterparts. Bowman et al. (2018) stated that the problem of race-related bias among teachers and people in general was the key to low achievement of minority students. For instance, many teachers and students perceive the dialect of English that African Americans speak as “bad English” (Bowman et al., 2018). King (2017) also stated that bias among teachers and lack of the ability to acknowledge the cultural differences is on of the central reasons for minority students’ underachievement. Thus, it is crucial to address this problem through diversity training among instructional staff.
Extra-Curricular Reading
The suggestion of extra-curricular reading courses is associated with the concern that the current curriculum is not adapted for cultural minorities. The analysis of data received from all three data collection methods suggests that the current curriculum is meant for Whites only. It does not accommodate for the cultural differences of the minorities. The findings of this research suggest that minority students of the Urban Elementary School experience significant social-economic pressures that reduce their ability to learn, which is supported by findings of previous research for other schools (Gilar et al., 2019; Guo et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Pant, 2020; Wang et al., 2018). Moreover, the findings of this research suggest that the minority students often lack parental support, which is also supported by previous studies (Bowman et al., 2018; Castejón et al., 2016; Gilar et al., 2019). Since administrators cannot change the core curriculum on the local level, it can help the minority students by providing extra-curricular courses. Reading skills was mentioned as one of the major problems of the minority students. Thus, organizing extra-curricular reading courses is expected to improve the current situation with the SOL scores of minority students in the Urban Elementary School.
Instructional Training
The problem with instructional training was also cited as one of the central issues associated with achievement gap between the minority students and their White counterparts. In particular, the results of the survey demonstrated that instructional practices in school may have been the central reason for low achievement among minority students. The interviews also suggested that the instructional practices are not tailored for the needs of the minority students. Previous research also suggests that improving instructional practices among teachers is the key for addressing the achievement gap (Atlay et al., 2019; Bowman et al., 2018; Yue et al., 2018). Thus, conducting instructional training among teachers to help them learn to diversify instructional practices to meet the special needs of cultural minorities is expected to reduce the achievement gap among the minority students and their white counterparts.
Collaboration
This study suggests that it is crucial to use the resources available in the community to improve the academic achievement of minority students. This study suggests that current lack of parental support affects the academic achievement of students negatively. Moreover, this study suggests that the lack of African American community in the area is one of the reasons for the lack of support for the families. These findings are coherent with the results of previous research that emphasize the importance of family and community resources in helping the minority students improve their academic achievement (Gilar et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2018). Therefore, administrators should try to involve parents in their children’s learning process. Moreover, administrators should try to use all the community resources to help the families overcome any social, economic, or health problems they face to improve the achievement of minority students.
Advocating for Curriculum Change
It has been mentioned above that this study along with previous research demonstrated that the curriculum is currently not adapted for the minority students (Gilar et al., 2019; Guo et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Pant, 2020; Wang et al., 2018). Therefore, administrators should actively propagate curriculum change to help the minority students improve achievement. This study suggests that the curriculum should be changed to acknowledge the socio-economic difficulties of the minority students and help the related to the material the study at school. Moreover, this study suggests that administrators should advocate for reducing the importance of SOL testing and changing the test’s format, as many students are not prepared for taking long tests from the physical, emotional, and psychological viewpoints.
Roles and Responsibilities of Stakeholders
Diversity Training
- Administrators. The role of administrators in organizing the diversity training programs will be to select the courses among the available courses in the area provided by third parties and create a schedule so that all the teachers can attend the courses in time. The administrators may also choose develop unique diversity training courses to tailor them for the local peculiarities.
- Teachers. The role of teachers will be to attend these courses and use the knowledge they receive during their classes. The teachers need to acknowledge their personal biases they may have toward minority students, learn how they affect their everyday practice, and try to transform these practices and attitudes in the best interest of the minority students (Bowman et al., 2018).
Extra-Curricular Reading
- Administrators. The role of administrator in organizing the extra-curricular reading classes it to ensure there are enough teachers for these activities. Introduction of additional courses may involve hiring instructional staff to ensure that the teachers are not overwhelmed with new responsibilities, which will be associated with HR-related costs. Additionally, the administrators should schedule these courses so that it is convenient for all the stakeholders and advertise the courses to the children and their parents to maximize the benefits from the endeavor.
- Teachers. The roles of teachers will be to identify the students that are in most need of the additional reading practice. The instructional staff will also be responsible for teaching the reading classes and assessing their effectiveness.
Instructional Training
- Administrators. The role of administrators in organizing the instructional training programs will be to select the courses among the available courses in the area provided by third parties and create a schedule so that all the teachers can attend the courses in time. The administrators may also choose develop unique diversity training courses to tailor them for the local peculiarities. One of the possibilities may be contacting Virginia Board of Education to assist the school in instructional training with methodological support.
- Teachers. The role of teachers will be to attend these courses and use the knowledge they receive during their classes. The teachers need to learn how to tailor their instructional practices for the minorities students and ensure that they use this knowledge to help the students improve their academic achievements.
Collaboration
- Administrators. The administrator will be responsible for elaborating a plan for collaboration with the local authorities and instructing the teachers about the goals and methods for collaborating with teachers. In particular, the administrators will determine what community resources are available for families with different social and economic problems and disseminate the knowledge about it among all the families of children studying at the Urban Elementary School in need of such support. The dissemination strategies may include sending emails, notes with children, phone calls, or meetings (Epstein, 2018).
- Teachers. The role of teachers will be collaborating with the parents to improve the academic achievement of students. In particular, the parents will be responsible for assessing the needs of students and parents and helping them to overcome their problems in communication or external problems by referring the parents to the relevant community services. The teachers will also be responsible for helping the administrators in disseminating the knowledge about the community services available for families in difficult life situations.
Advocating for Curriculum Change
- Administrators and Teachers. The role of the administrators and teachers in this endeavor will be similar, as they have a similar influence on the decision-makers concerning the curriculum. The suggested advocating strategies are listed below:
- Determine who are the curriculum decision-makers and build relationships with them;
- Conduct an official curriculum review to determine how culturally responsive the current curriculum is;
- Explore best practices concerning the lessons plans that promote diversity practices;
- Participate in curriculum meetings and promote books and materials that can be recommended in the new curriculum;
- Create presentations that explain the reasons for the curriculum changes;
- Create and sign petitions for curriculum and SOL changes in the area.
Required Resources
Diversity Training
Diversity training will require financial resources. According to https://www.coursera.org/, which is the website of one of the diversity training providers, diversity training costs around $1,250 per seminar. Considering that the school will need at least 3 of such seminars, the approximate accounting cost of the endeavor is $3,750. However, there are also implicit costs, such as the lost the time of teachers’ work, if the administrators decide to conduct training during the working time of teachers.
Extra-Curricular Reading
Extra-curricular reading classes will be conducted for all grades (1-5) two times a week in two groups. This implies that at least 20 hours of working time will be needed to provide the courses. This will round up to approximately $2,500 per month plus any hiring costs that will be needed, if the school decides to hire a teacher for these courses.
Instructional Training
Additional instructional training may be conducted online. Average instructional training course is expected to cost around $50 per teacher. Since there are 40 teachers in the Urban Elementary School, the overall cost of the initiative will be around $2,000 plus any implicit costs associated with lost productivity of teachers during the training process.
Collaboration
No additional resources are required for collaborations with the local community services. All the collaborations will be conducted withing the regular budget of the school.
Advocating for Curriculum Change
Advocating for curriculum change will not require any explicit financial resources. However, the administrators and teacher may want to use some materials, like posters and brochures to promote the idea of curriculum change among colleagues and decision-makers. However, overall cost of such material is unlikely to be above $500.
Timeline
Diversity Training
Extra-Curricular Reading
Instructional Training
Collaboration
Advocating for Curriculum
Summary
The purpose of this applied research study was to recommend to the administrators and teachers at Urban Elementary School in possible solutions to the problem of low SOL scores of minority students in this school. The problem that this research addressed was that African American students at the urban elementary school historically had lower academic achievement than other students, as measured by SOL scores. First, the paper provided five recommendations for the administrators of the Urban Elementary School and provided detailed justification for them. Second, the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders were described for every recommendation. Third, the required resources for every initiative was described. Finally, the paper provided timelines for the implementation of all the recommendations. The research established the importance of diversity training, extra-curricular reading classes, additional culture-sensitive instructional training, collaboration with parents and the community, and advocating for the curriculum change for improving the SOL scores of the minority students in Urban Elementary School.
Recommendations
Epstein, J. L. (2018). School, family, and community partnerships in teachers’ professional work. Journal of Education for Teaching, 44(3), 397-406.