Now, more than ever, public school educators must become trained and prepared to create classrooms and learning experiences that center their students and honor who they are. This is especially true for those serving in predominately Black communities. While the research and work in the field of culturally relevant education (CRE) has been around for decades, it is frequently on the heels of an American white lash like the presidential election of 2024 that Black folks become more acutely aware of the duty we have to safeguard and nurture our kids, as they are entrusted to educational institutions that were not engineered with their unique challenges in mind.
Private schools and homeschools may be a viable option for some Black parents looking to provide their children with tailor-made educational opportunities. Still, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, public schools serve 84% of Black students, as most parents don’t have the privilege of selecting such options.
This is evident in the numbers: 8% of Black students attend private schools and 16% are homeschooled. Even with the growing conversations about school choice and voucher options, two truths remain: 1. If you gave every Black student in America a school voucher tomorrow, the private schools available to them do not have the capacity to hold the 7.4 million students attending public schools. 2. Vouchers are not full-ride scholarships. The need for families to come up with the money to pay the difference between tuition costs and voucher allocations remains.
There are many theories and terms that may be used to describe educators’ ability to teach effectively and center historically marginalized students in their classrooms. Four teacher behaviors that characterize CRE classrooms are:
- Using culture as a bridge to connect to academic skills and concepts.
- Facilitating students’ critical reflection of their lives and society.
- Building students’ cultural competence to take pride in their culture.
- Critiquing discourses of power to challenge the status quo.
In response to the historically daunting disparities between students of color and their white counterparts, CRE provides educators with direction toward facilitating more equitable classrooms and communities. While many justice-minded teachers may readily leverage these approaches, historically marginalized communities demand a new standard whereby their local schools make such teacher practice non-negotiable.
Seventy years post Brown v. Board of Education, our public schools remain highly segregated. Sean Reardon, professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education, explains, “Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities.”
In many areas that serve large demographics of Black and brown students, we are starting to see campus and district administrators embracing historically marginalized aspects of the community that their students come from, thereby allowing schools and classrooms to welcome their authenticity and curate learning environments that are welcoming and affirming. In such warm and culturally inclusive environments, Black and brown students have the best chance of learning and achieving better outcomes.
It’s time to prioritize learning opportunities that ensure teachers are prepared in the art and science of CRE in teacher prep programs and school district professional development opportunities. When these practices become regular behaviors, research suggests that students have increased attendance, less behavioral referrals, and improved academic outcomes. Perhaps most important is how students report feeling valued and seen by their teachers and administrators when culturally relevant approaches are employed and embedded in practice.
Although policymakers who do not appreciate best practices in education may continue to push for their own best interests, local school boards and community members must be resolute in their fight towards implementing what decades’ worth of research has taught us and what many of us knew all along: Centering our students, communities, and history is essential to ensuring Black and brown students receive equity in schools. They are worth the fight.
Dr. Stephanie R. Boyce is an Edupreneur driven by her passion to reshape the educational landscape by making culturally responsive teaching a way of life.