Teaching for Equity in Complex Times: Negotiating 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 book offers welcome guidance on dialogical teaching to socially committed teachers and teacher educators."

—Linda Valli, University of Maryland

A must-read for those interested in transformative teacher learning."

—Kris D. Gutiérrez, Carol Liu Professor, GSE, University of California, Berkeley