Teaching for Equity in Complex Times : Negotiating National Standards in a High-Performing Bilingual School

In schools serving high concentrations of bilingual learners, it can be especially challenging for teachers to maintain commitments to equity-minded instruction while meeting the demands of new educational policies, including national standards. This book details how one school integrated equity pedagogy into a standards-based curriculum and produced exemplary levels of achievement. As the authors illustrate, however, the school’s dual commitment to bilingual education and standards-based reform engendered numerous complex tensions. Specifically, the authors describe teachers’ attempts to balance demands for rigor and content coverage within their high-performing school and with their diverse student population. They identify specific tensions that emerged around the following issues:

• the degree of academic struggle that is generative for student learning and the point at which such struggle becomes counterproductive
• the holding of high expectations for all learners and the provision of differentiated, student-centered learning experiences
• the CCSS emphasis on engaging students around more complex text and the contested determination of what constitutes complexity in text and in teaching
• the influence of high-stakes accountability on school norms and practices, including teachers’ interpretations and enactment of new national standards
• the performance pressures placed on teachers in today’s educational policy context

This timely book illustrates what can happen when a school’s teachers embrace equity pedagogy while navigating policy-related pressures. It offers a cogent counternarrative to traditional accounts of standards-based reform, especially for emerging bilingual students.

Jamy Stillman is an associate professor of educational equity and cultural diversity at the University of Colorado Boulder. Lauren Anderson is an associate professor of education at Connecticut College.