Going Deeper: Tools of Cultural Proficiency

Assessing Culture (One’s Own and Others)

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

The extent to which the leader uses personal experience to develop, maintain, and provoke a moral imperative (passion, knowledge, wisdom, diligence, and courage) for making positive changes that benefit underserved stakeholders in schools and in the community.

Leaders rely on a narrow definition of “American culture” to develop and justify policies and procedures and resource allocation to those they believe are more entitled or capable than others to receive those resources while denying or restricting resources to those deemed “unworthy” or incapable of achieving success in America.

Leaders tolerate diversity in schools but believe that the perspectives and attributes of the dominant culture are superior to those of other cultures. This belief justifies policies and practices that maintain the status quo and benefit those that reflect the attributes of the dominant culture while limiting the leader’s motivation and resolve to make changes to benefit underserved stakeholders.

Leaders demonstrate managerial competence by supporting and being supported by agency policies and practices that support a culture of continuous improvement for all students regardless of their cultural backgrounds and experiences. Evidence of effectiveness is limited to single measures, such as agency-sanctioned standardized test scores, which reinforce the belief that “some students just do better than others.”

The extent to which the leader perceives aspects of culture as assets and strengths (not deficits) to harness and optimize for effective teaching, learning, and leadership.

Leaders believe that displays of culture are barriers to their progress and the progress of others.

Hence, such displays are repressed, discouraged, disparaged, or punished.

Leaders disavow the influence that culture has on learning and/ or one’s professional actions. They promote assimilation to the dominant culture of society, school, or the organization, often downplaying or hiding aspects of culture, believing them to reflect negatively on one’s leadership capacity and competence.

Leaders promote programs that aim to

Leaders believe that culturally defined aspects such as “motivation,” “talent,” and “diligence,” not culture, influence learning, performance, and success. Focusing on aspects of culture is an unnecessary distraction or excuse for not learning or not being successful and may deter one’s advancement or promotion.

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Leaders are compassionate, caring, diligent professionals whose backgrounds compel a narrow focus on serving a particular cultural group, often the same culture as the leaders’. Such a focus may limit the leaders’ cultural capacity to advocate for all underserved students and reinforce a belief that minority leaders are more capable of developing relationships with and addressing the needs of minority stakeholders.

Leaders are compassionate, diligent, and skilled professionals whose experiences have led to a profound understanding of long-term, systemic educational inequity. This understanding compels a relentless, fervent professional and personal commitment to challenge and break down barriers to educational access, opportunity, and success and close gaps for historically underserved stakeholders.

Leaders are compassionate, diligent, and transformational professionals who understand that inequity in school is a microcosm of inequities in society. Such understanding compels a relentless commitment to educating all stakeholders about educational and social injustice, while also breaking down barriers to success for historically underserved stakeholders.

Leaders support programs, scholarships, networks, sponsorships, recruiting, hiring, promoting, and allocating resources for one or more cultural groups but such resources may be single or short-term opportunities intended to ensure success for stakeholders who  need on-going support to navigate next steps toward success.

Leaders proudly assert their culture and culturally induced core values of courage, persistence, resiliency, risk taking, and self- determination while seeking and providing nurturing and supportive relationships, stewardship, and mentoring of other minority leaders and advocating for recruiting, hiring, and promoting other minority leaders with the passion and capacity for closing equity gaps for underserved stakeholders.

Leaders from both minority and majority cultures understand how cultural identity (membership and status) can influence learning and success. Leaders embrace and leverage attributes of their and others’ cultures as assets to achieve organizational goals while accelerating progress and closing gaps for historically underserved groups in schools and in the community.

Assessing Culture (One’s Own and Others)

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

remediate or assimilate underperforming students, limiting student access and progress, and often exacerbating access and achievement gaps.

Valuing Diversity

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

The extent to which the leader is aware of, values, learns about, supports, and promotes her culture and the culture of others.

Leaders are fearful or discouraged about or disparaged for promoting and demonstrating aspects of culture.

Leaders avoid making reference to their own or others’ cultural perspectives and behaviors and assimilate to the expected roles of the organization. Leaders expect others, including community members and students, to assimilate to be successful in school and in society.

Leaders do not believe there is any value to understanding culture to enhance or promote staff, leader, or student performance and success.

The extent to which the leader seeks, respects, and values multiple diverse ideas, opinions, cultural perspectives, experiences, and styles to inform decisions for the good of the organization and the community.

Leaders promote/ display dominant group values and behaviors, ignoring or excluding diverse perspectives and often making decisions that only benefit stakeholders from the dominant culture.

Leaders solicit input and participation from diverse community members to comply with agency or funding source requirements for participation and representation of diverse groups.

Leaders believe ones’ education and experience has adequately informed her decisions and actions. Soliciting community input is a polite political distraction but yields little toward attaining one’s leadership goals.

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Leaders consider the cultural backgrounds of others when recruiting and hiring, and may have been hired because of their cultural background, supporting a belief that minority cultural group staff and leaders are more capable of understanding and addressing cultural minority stakeholder needs and issues.

Leaders understand the influence of culture on learning, teaching, and leading, and promote culture as an asset to performance and success.

Leaders promote cultural pluralism as a way of meeting the needs of all stakeholders, not only those with the loudest voice, and to promote distribution of political, societal, and economic power among diverse groups, not just among an entitled electorate.

Leaders assign others or are assigned to work with stakeholders from their culture(s) because it is believed that being from a particular cultural group can better foster understanding, trust, and buy-in into the goals, policies, and decisions of the organization.

Leaders promote and model learning about the community in authentic ways for all stakeholders so that the specific cultural perspectives, issues, and needs of all community groups can be better understood and addressed by all in the organization.

Leaders promote community building to exchange data and information to collaborate on common goals among disparate constituents and share resources for closing educational, societal, and economic gaps.

Managing the Dynamics of Difference

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

The extent to which the leader solicits diverse points of view, opinions, learning, communication, and leadership styles to promote flexibility in meeting organizational goals and to make decisions, which reflect stakeholder issues.

Leaders make unilateral, authoritarian decisions with little or no input about stakeholder needs.

Leaders may solicit particular perspectives to justify decisions or to withhold or deny programs, services, or resources to some stakeholders. Leaders’ inflexibility and adherence to the structures and styles of the dominant organizational culture discourage participation of diverse stakeholders leading to policies and practices that ignore or exclude their needs and issues.

Leaders may solicit input from diverse cultural groups, often only to comply with program regulations and not to incorporate diverse perspectives into decisions.

Leaders attempting to manage the status quo and preserve tradition are not open to alternative ways to achieve goals and/or to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders.

Hence, leaders make decisions or take action that misrepresents, disrespects, or trivializes the perspectives and issues of diverse stakeholders.

Leaders believe they are effective when they can prevent, mitigate, and avoid dissonance and conflict, especially conflict rising from diverse cultural perspectives. Few attempts are made to solicit diverse points of view, thereby reducing the opportunity for conflict and considerations of diverse perspectives. Leaders may facilitate consensus or bring multiple issues to a vote, often excluding diverse stakeholders’ ideas and issues.

The extent to which the leader embraces risk to make decisions and take actions, which may not be popular with dominant cultures, anticipates criticism, persists in the face of criticism, inertia, barriers or reversals, and accepts personal and professional consequences advocating for underserved students and other stakeholders.

Leaders’ ambiguity about who they are and why they are in the role results in passivity and conformity to low-level expectations and responsibility. Leaders lead without a moral purpose or imperative. In the face of conflict or criticism, leaders assert authority, withdraw from or totally ignore it.

Leaders from minority cultures are expected to maintain the status quo. Such leaders are professionally intimidated from taking risks or challenging the system. Innovation, creativity, and trailblazing are encouraged and rewarded for leaders from dominant group members to preserve a dominant cultural perspective in all leadership policies and practices.

Leaders believe it is organizationally expedient and encourage others to promote ideas and decisions that are popular and supported by the dominant or the majority groups, hence avoiding taking risks or being criticized for challenging the system.

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Leaders may consider input from majority stakeholder groups and/or one or few minority stakeholder groups depending on which stakeholders proactively assert their ideas and opinions.

Leader may wrongly assume that stakeholders who do not come forward to make their needs known are satisfied with the status quo.

Leaders encourage diverse opinions and perspectives and facilitate conversations across cultures and viewpoints in productive, noncontentious and nonpolarizing ways. They engage in on-going dialogue between and among groups to help the organization develop a customer-service orientation and challenge the status quo by promoting organizational flexibility to meet diverse customer needs.

Leaders use conflict as a catalyst for dialogue to deepen personal, organizational, and community understanding about educational and societal injustice. Leaders use data to help stakeholders understand patterns of underperformance and underutilization of resources for some groups and to shift deficit thinking about diverse stakeholders to shared responsibility for better meeting their needs.

Leaders take calculated risks, perhaps in favor of a particular issue or demographic group but not consistently for all underserved stakeholders or for all issues that require advocacy from an organizational leader. Leaders avoid taking risks or being criticized if they perceive personal, professional, or political threat or negative consequences.

Leaders embrace risk, make decisions, and take action, which may not be popular with dominant cultures. They anticipate criticism; persist in the face of criticism, inertia, barriers, or reversals; and accept personal and professional consequences for their advocacy for underserved students and other stakeholders.

Leaders embrace risk and criticism as necessary on their leadership journey and on their quest for what is right and just. Because failure is not an option and professional goals and personal goals are the same, persistence and progress, however challenged or challenging, empower leaders as lifetime agents for equity and social justice.

Adapting to Diversity

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

The extent to which the leader facilitates an understanding about the truth of an organization’s effectiveness in achieving equitable outcomes.

Leaders do not collect, share, or disaggregate data that shows patterns of performance for underserved groups. Leaders may misuse disaggregated data to reinforce deficit perspectives about some students/ parents to justify withholding resources for some groups. Data is used to conceal or manipulate the truth.

Leaders use data to develop programs and services that focus on intervention or remediation but limit student access to further learning opportunities needed for educational success or post-school options. Data is used to obscure the truth and serve the organization’s needs but not challenge its capacity to adapt to meet stakeholder needs.

Leaders primarily use norm-referenced test data to sort, select, and track students into programs. Improvement for all groups is the focus rather than closing data-informed gaps. Leaders believe that standardized test scores present an objective picture of the range of ability and the inevitable performance “curve” of diverse students.

The extent to which the leader (1) helps others understand the sources of assumptions that may obscure the truth about the organization’s effectiveness and diminishes personal responsibility for achieving it and (2) builds capacity to transform the organization’s ability to achieve outcomes for equity and justice.

Leaders do not use data to create an understanding of the school’s effectiveness with specific populations nor do they use data to inform conversations and decisions. Prevailing assumptions and biases go unchallenged.

Leaders expect students and their parents to take advantage of existing school opportunities, which they believe, are effectively meeting the learning needs of underperforming students. Leaders and staff cannot be held responsible if students and parents do not participate in or complete such programs.

Leaders believe and promote that there are factors that influence student performance that are beyond the purview of the school. Therefore, there is only so much outcome data for which the school can and should accept responsibility.

The extent to which the leader manifests and develops in others a congruence between personal identity and purpose and vocational identity and purpose (leadership integrity).

Leaders’ identities and actions are disconnected from the moral purpose of school, often leading to passivity, cynicism, and unethical or unjust leadership.

Leaders’ identities and actions are congruent with a deficit perspective of diverse students and a well-intended vocational purpose to remediate and assimilate them “for their own good.”

Leaders’ identities and actions are congruent with a pedagogy for equality but not equity.

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Leaders may use/share data to highlight disproportionate outcomes and access to services. If they do, leaders may limit focus to one underperforming group over others or direct efforts at raising test scores without necessarily removing barriers to student learning.

Leaders use/share multiple sources of data that clarify disproportionate pattern over time for demographic groups. Leaders examine not only achievement data but also access and opportunity data to close gaps sooner rather than later when disparities show up in test-score data.

Leaders share data with other organizations to build understanding about cross-organizational effectiveness in meeting underserved stakeholders’ needs. From this, leaders forge a cross-agency vision and commitment to sharing resources to build organizations that change people and their capacity to structure society for socially just ends.

Leaders respond to legal mandates to reduce disproportionality in specific programs or across the system. Often the measure of compliance is in the development of a plan or the delivery of a program or professional development but not in the reduction of the disproportionality.

Leaders challenge and encourage others to challenge policies, programs, and practices that correlate with disproportionate educational outcomes. They model and encourage risk taking and thinking outside of the box while holding themselves and others accountable for adapting, learning about, and applying new programs, structures, and practices that show evidence on multiple measures of narrowing educational gaps.

Leaders challenge and encourage others to challenge and dismantle legal mandates within and outside of the educational system that create barriers to success. Leaders form coalitions to lobby for legislations that ensures equitable access and outcomes for underserved stakeholders.

Institutionalizing Cultural Knowledge

Informed by Barriers to Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Blindness

The extent to which the leader communicates openly, frequently, and effectively with all stakeholder groups and creates a culture of community collaboration and inclusive decision making focused on meeting the needs of underserved students and their parents/ guardians.

Leaders avoid or resist communicating openly and effectively with all stakeholder groups believing some will not understand or are not worthy or capable of understanding the goals or policies of the organization. Decisions are made to intentionally thwart or exclude some voices that would require the organization to reallocate resources for underserved stakeholders.

Leaders communicate frequently with stakeholder groups with the loudest or most influential voices. Decisions are made unilaterally or by a few top school leaders, believing they know what is best for all groups, without seeking input from the communities that will be affected most by the decisions.

Leaders provide equal opportunities to give and receive communication from all groups but do not see the need to accommodate the context, environment, nuance, or language for the needs of some stakeholder groups. Leaders comply with decisions made by state/federal agencies and a few top administrators believing them to adequately benefit all stakeholders regardless of their cultural needs and styles.

The extent to which the leader promotes a persistent vision of education as the vehicle for closing societal gaps, makes a difference in the lives of others and creates support networks and structures for mentoring greatness in others.

Leaders use their position to acquire and assert authority, politicize education, and foment negative attitudes about some stakeholder groups in the school and community. Leaders use their authority to limit the power of others, grow their power, and use it to distort information and withhold resources for some groups. Leaders intimidate others to adopt and act on the leader’s political values.

Leaders use their authority to ensure that others comply with state and district policies and procedures, believing them to adequately meet the educational needs of most students. Leaders ignore or attempt to remediate students with special needs, limiting their future educational options and success. Leaders seek success by assimilating to the dominant culture’s standards for school leaders and expect others to do the same.

Leaders use their position to reinforce the meritocratic nature of school, being unaware or ignoring of disproportionate opportunity gaps experienced by some students. That some students succeed is evidence that the system is fair. Leaders see themselves as enforcers and maintainers of current educational policy not challengers of it.

Informed by Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency

Cultural Precompetence

Cultural Competence

Cultural Proficiency

Leaders may translate communications for some stakeholder groups but not others. Leaders may accommodate communication strategies consistently to ensure effective cross-cultural communication for all groups. Leaders may seek input from cultural affinity groups but may not do so consistently for all cultural groups. Well-intentioned leaders may extrapolate information from a few members of one cultural group and assume it applies to all members of that group.

Leaders model effective and polished oral and written communication in the languages of the community while accommodating the context of the communication to meet stakeholder needs. Leaders seek input from multiple and varied stakeholder groups even if some groups do not assert their voices or perspectives. Decisions are made that consider all stakeholders’ input, but the leader is not afraid to make a decision that primarily supports underserved stakeholders.

Leaders collaborate with community organizations to develop and use cross-cultural communication strategies to solicit stakeholder input, develop goals, and take action, which enhances multi-organizational credibility, trust, and effectiveness in meeting the needs of stakeholders. Leaders facilitate an understanding among all in the community that meeting the needs of the underserved contributes to the common good.

Leaders may use their position to make others aware of the equity gap for one or a few specific demographic groups. Often such leaders become outspoken advocates for a specific underperforming group, using their position to reallocate resources for such groups but not necessarily taking the risk to remove systemic barriers for some or all underserved groups.

Leaders use their position to inform stakeholders about the organization’s effectiveness in meeting the needs of underserved stakeholders. Such leaders facilitate an understanding that transforming the system requires changing the service paradigm from equality to equity and replacing pedagogy for continuous improvement for all to pedagogy for closing gaps for the underserved.

Leaders inspire and are inspiring. They use their position to influence state and federal policy and resources to level the educational and societal playing field. Their wisdom and beneficence develops moral purpose in others, and empowers and rewards others’ leadership successes. The fulfillment of contributing to the success of others grows the leader’s capacity for enduring greatness.

Teach all subjects from a culturally inclusive perspective.

Use conflict as object lessons.

Learn your own instructional and interpersonal styles.

Develop processes to enhance them so that they meet the needs of all students.

Assess the culture of the school, and articulate the cultural expectations to all who interact there.

Articulate a culturally proficient vision for the school.

Work with educators and staff to establish standards for

Provide training and support systems for conflict management.

Examine policies and practices for overt and intentional discrimination, and change current practices when appropriate.

Model and monitor schoolwide and classroom practices.

District Administrators: Implement policy

Provide resources for developing and establishing new conflict management strategies, including culturally specific mediation techniques.

Share with school personnel parent and community perceptions of the school’s culture and practices.

Assess culture of employees as support personnel and connections to community.