CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP FOR CULTURALLY DIVERSE STUDENTS

Achievement disparities exist in schools across the nation. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require students to engage in analytical, argumentative writing and reading. Curriculum and instructional strategies should reflect cultural populations in schools as statistical information conveys the diverse ethnicity within U.S. schools is dramatically changing. To ensure academic success, curriculum and instruction need to reflect cultural populations in schools. Cultural differences are relevant, and percentage rates are not decreasing. Effective instructors acknowledge various cultures and appreciate individual strengths.

Purposeful learning must be prevalent in the instruction. Teachers provide clear objectives, use multi-modalities, connect curriculum to real-world scenarios, and align curriculum to performance-based standards to improve academic achievement.

Suggestions to help in improve learning for all students:

• Teachers provide students with the opportunity to gain knowledge from the instructor and peers with cooperative learning activities. Study comparisons indicate traditional teaching methods has shown less effective that cooperative learning. Cooperative learning can enhance students’ learning positive attitude for better learning outcome and knowledge comprehension (Tran, 2019).

• Technology

• Cooperative learning

• Syntactic Awareness (Deacon & Kieffer, 2018).

Purposeful learning must be prevalent in the instruction. Teachers provide clear objectives, use multi-modalities, connect curriculum to real-world scenarios, and align curriculum to performance-based standards to improve academic achievement. Most importantly, teachers provide explicit reading instruction. Students should take responsibility for their learning, share and expand their ideologies with others, and perhaps generate new information or philosophies with best instructional practices.