Education Commons^™

Four Steps To A Paradigm Shift: Employing Critical Perspectives To Improve Outreach To Low-Ses African-American And Latino Students And Their Parents, Michael J. Smith

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Access to American higher education is increasingly becoming a privilege for upper-class youth while low-socioeconomic status (SES) youth are increasingly marginalized and unable to compete in the college choice game. In order to increase parent involvement in college choice for low-SES African-American and Latino parents, a paradigm shift must take place. Specifically, these parents must be acknowledged for how they are already involved, and encouraged to convert their non-college aspirations for their children into college dreams. This paper argues that, for this to happen, admission and outreach offices would have to approach outreach and recruitment to this demographic as service …

A Cultural, Linguistic, And Ecological Framework For Response To Intervention With English Language Learners, Julie Esparza Brown, Jennifer Doolittle

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article presents information on Response to Intervention (RTI) strategies for English Language Learners. The authors present a cultural, linguistic and ecological framework for RTI and suggest that RTI needs to account for each of these factors in order to be effective. They note the importance of understanding a student's language proficiency in their first and second language as well as the context that they acquired those language skills in. They examine the tier approach involved with RTI and explore how to incorporate their framework into this structure.

Partnerships To Recruit And Prepare Bilingual Teachers, Julie Esparza Brown

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

To address the need for teachers with the skills to effectively teach English Language Learner (ELL) students, Portland State University (PSU) collaborated with three Portland area community colleges and 17 school districts to develop a program to recruit and prepare bilingual/bicultural teachers. This nine-year-old program provides a career ladder for education paraprofessionals. Candidates begin their work at the community colleges or at the upper division or graduate levels at PSU depending upon their backgrounds. This article describes the program, assessment of the program, and lessons learned. To date, over 190 candidates have completed the program and 99 percent have been …

Crossing Borders, Building Bridges, Gayle Y. Thieman

Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article is derived from the presidential address delivered at the NCSS Annual Meeting in San Diego on November 30, 2007.

Through collaboration and involvement, we can meet the five critical challenges facing social studies educators today.