Multicultural education: approaches and implementation

¶ … No Child Left Behind Act will affect multicultural education.

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The No Child Left Behind Act will provide unprecedented changes in the K-12 educational system that will allow all school age children to benefit from the various educational programs available. Children will be provided with a multicultural education that will improve the quality of education overall for children across the country.

On January 8, 2002, President Bush enacted the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which was the most comprehensive educational reform act since 1965. The act redefines the federal government's role in K-12 education and will help close the performance gap that currently exists between disadvantaged and minority children and their peers.

The Act provides the framework for improving the performance of America's elementary and secondary schools while providing guidelines for ensuring that no child is trapped in a failing school that does not meet the stipulations of these resolutions.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the act was based on four basic principles: stronger accountability for results, increased flexibility and local control, expanded options for parents and finally, an emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven to work.

The act will further strengthen Title I accountability and ensure that a statewide accountability system covers all public schools and all students.

The objective is to provide all students with the opportunity to reach proficiency within 12 years. The evaluation of results will be broken out by poverty level, race, ethnicity, disability and limited language proficiency to be sure that no one group is "left behind." Because the act provides for equal opportunities for all students, it is the perfect venue for implementing multicultural education programs.

Because the No Child Left Behind Act is designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of America's schools, areas that may have subsequently been ignored will now be addressed in the country's educational system and this includes the importance of multicultural education programs.

Many schools have recently developed multicultural education programs in conjunction with the No Child Left Behind Act to:

Make learning more interesting and reflective of student's lives

Provide students with the opportunity to share information about their heritage

Help them learn about the different cultures that make up their classroom and their country

Encourage respect for all cultures

Empower all students

The real goal of multicultural education is to promote social harmony and an understanding of our country's diverse cultures. The idea of the No Child Left Behind Act ties in very well with multicultural education programs because the goal of both is to implement strategies and programs that recognize the knowledge and skills of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures and how this can strengthen the skill base of the classroom, the community and the country.

There are essentially three types of multicultural education programs and all of them can easily be incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act. A school may offer all or one of them and receive state and federal aid to implement them.

Programs Focusing on Information. These programs teach about different cultures by adding assignments to the standard curriculum to enrich students' comprehensive education.

Programs On How Students Learn. This program is key because it differentiates between schools, locations, curriculum and students performance. It specifically focuses on raising the achievement levels of students who are linguistically and culturally different, both of which are often minority students. The "left behind" act will assess schools across the country to be sure they are meeting the progressive objectives that have been set by the Act. In additional, the local educational agencies must allow low-income students to use supplement state and federal services that are selected by the school, the parents and the students.

Programs That Address Social Issues. These programs are designed to improve the cultural and political environment of the schools and this is highly supported by the resolutions provided in the Act. This program emphasizes human relations and tries to create an atmosphere of tolerance and learning. As with the Act, it supports using minority teachers and fosters a cooperative learning environment that helps students learn to work together as a team.

The Act has been a definite boost to multicultural programs. According to the Statement of Purpose of the Act, "this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments."

Multicultural programs will benefit from the grater flexibility that is incorporated into the Act to allow schools to the use of Federal education funds for their determined needs in exchange for greater accountability in obtaining results.

Culturally, students will be able to relate to their ethnic backgrounds and traditions while learning the necessary skills to improve their performance. By using what they are familiar with, many students will be able to achieve higher scores and not feel inferior to their peers. The programs for both the Act and multicultural programs will attempt to meet the needs of low achieving children in the highest poverty areas, children whose native language is not English, children with handicaps, Native American children and children with discipline/delinquency problems.

It is important that there is an emphasis on helping children through an English as a Second Language (ESL) program and to provide some input on languages that are part of the community. The curriculum should be multiculture based on the student population and there should be a program of communication with parents who represent diverse cultures and linguistic backgrounds. All of these elements are part of the infrastructure of the No Child Left Behind Act, which will provide an unprecedented change in American educational practices.

Another aspect of the Act focuses on providing vocational education and training and making these programs accessible to all students.

But most important of all is that the Act has been and will continue to be a catalyst for implementing multicultural programs. It will also foster meaningful and effective communication and cooperation between the Federal, state and local governments to work together toward a common goal of educating every child so that they can reach their peak achievement and performance levels, regardless of the school they attend.

Another key factor about the Act and why it will be beneficial for multicultural education programs is that it provides more resources to schools, allowing them to spend more on the needs of individual students. According to the No Child Left Behind Act, a large portion of the funds under Title I are for improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged and are awarded to state and local education agencies to help schools improve education for disadvantaged students and turn low performing schools into schools with better performance records.