Leadership magazine Sept/Oct 2015 V45 No 1 | Page 11

Unaddressed bias can interfere with the process
of closing the achievement gap and transforming
a school community for optimal
student outcomes.

gaged in professional development sessions
with powerful speakers such as Jeff Duncan
Andrade, who speaks to the need for us to
be culturally responsive to our communities
where our students come from. Some have
engaged in “white privilege” activities, the
“step-in” activity with consultant Swinder
Cooper, or simply have gone out of their
comfort zone to shop in a poor, urban setting. Some have even gone as far as trading
places for a period of time with someone who
comes from a different ethnic background to
try to understand the world they live in.
All of these activities bring a level of discomfort to us; however, they don’t compare
to the daily discomfort our underserved and
oppressed students feel as they strive to gain
the status that most educational leaders have.
School leaders are evaluated on standards
that speak to our ethics and integrity, making it not just a moral imperative – it’s an
expectation of our profession. The California Professional Standards for Educational
Leaders were revised to reflect the following in Standard 5: Ethics and integrity. The

expectation in meeting this standard is that,
“Education leaders make decisions, model
and behave in ways that demonstrate professionalism, ethics, integrity, justice and
equity and hold staff to the same standard.”
Element 5B states ethical decision making encourages leaders to “guide and support personal and collective actions that use
relevant evidence and available research to
make fair and ethical decisions.” Among the
example indicators suggested, leaders would
identify “personal and institutional biases
and remove barriers that derive from economic, social-emotional, racial, linguistic,
cultural, physical, gender, or other sources of
educational disadvantage or discrimination.”

Self-assessment
Understanding the need to be culturally proficient is just the beginning of one’s
walk in leading for equity. Being aware of
the research and data behind equity issues
is also a key element in moving along this
journey. But knowing is not enough; a deep
self-assessment of one’s core beliefs and val-

ues around being culturally proficient is also
required. There are numerous ways to selfassess using rubrics and assessments that already exist. Many have assessed themselves
using the Cultural Proficiency Continuum,
a rubric that assesses policy, practice and behavior of individuals (Lindsey et.al, 2003).
The six levels assessed include cultural destructiveness, cultural incapacity, cultural
blindness, cultural pre-competence, cultural
competence and cultural proficiency.
As district and site leaders, we also must
consider the need to assess our current systems with regard to policies, community
relations, student achievement and school
climate.
During this process, it is important to
identify the individual equity challenge that
has the most impact on our work. This is
critical as we move to practical steps as individuals. Examples of individual equity challenges include the following:
• A school leader has a bias learned from
childhood upbringing and inf luenced by
spiritual beliefs that interfere with him/her
September/October 2015

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