This book provides the practical strategies, tools, and resources school leaders need to fully implement cultural proficiency throughout the organization. Cultural Proficiency enables educators to value diversity, honour it with integrity, and preserve the cultural dignity of their students. Failing this places many of our students at risk of being excluded from the benefits and opportunities of being well educated. Culturally Proficient leaders embrace diversity and respond to it in ways that acknowledge and esteem cultural differences while simultaneously valuing and supporting similarities. Cultural Proficiency enables educators the knowledge and understanding of how to interact effectively with people in their environment who differ from them. Educators have a choice-they can either contribute to the academic achievement gap or challenge and change the conditions that support the inequities that created and perpetuate the gap. This book offers leadership strategies that are sensitive to how and why some children and youth fail in our schools and why others succeed. The authors also address accountability and data-based decision making.

Foreword - by Flora Ida OrtizIntroduction
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Part I: Cultural Proficiency and the Achievement Gap
1. Why is Culturally Proficient Leadership Important?
Part II: The Tools of Cultural Proficiency
2. What Does Cultural Proficiency Look Like in Practice? The Guiding Principles
3. The Inside-Out Process to Becoming Culturally Proficient: The Cultural Proficiency Continuum
4. Standards for Leadership Behavior: The Five Essential Elements
5. Overcoming Self-Imposed Barriers to Moral Leadership
Part III: Professional Development for Organizational Change
6. The Art and Science of Conversation: A Crucial Skill for the Culturally Competent Leader
7. Leading in a Culture of Learning And Transformative Change
Resource: List of Maple View Case Study Characters
Bibliography
Index