Welcome School Leaders

The rubrics in this section of the website are designed for you to explore different aspects of your and your school’s engagement with cultural responsiveness. The rubrics are intended to be used as formative feedback to learn about your efforts and what you might work on during the next stage of your efforts. We do not advise you to use them for accountability or any other purpose.

Instructions

For the pilot study, please follow these steps:

  1. Complete the individual intake survey.(~10 min)
  2. Complete the individual rubrics for Welcoming and Affirming Environment and Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment. (~20 min)
  3. Meet with your leadership team to discuss and complete the team rubrics for Welcoming and Affirming Environment and Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment. Only one member of the team should submit the team rubrics. (~30 min each; break into two meetings, if needed)
  4. Complete the individual exit survey. (~10 min)

Once all rubrics and surveys are completed and received by our team, we will send you your honorarium within 10 business days, a school summary of feedback, and some resources to help you take the next steps on your CRS journey.

Structure of the Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS) Rubrics

The Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS) Rubrics are designed to help different school education partners (leaders, teachers, students, parents/caregivers) learn about key aspects of cultural responsiveness and to gauge their current levels of cultural responsiveness with a series of self-assessment rubrics.

There are four rubrics which characterize four main school areas of cultural engagement:

  • A Welcoming and Affirming Environment reflects the physical and social climate of the school where all cultural identities (including race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, language, religion, socioeconomic background) are affirmed and valued. 

  • High Expectations and Rigorous Instruction creates learning conditions that are academically challenging and intellectually demanding, while also considering the different ways that students learn. Instruction includes opportunities to use critical reasoning, take academic risks, and leverage a growth mindset to learn from mistakes. Messages encourage positive self-image and empowerment to succeed.

  • Inclusive Curriculum and Assessment provides the opportunity to learn about perspectives beyond one’s own experiences and elevates historically marginalized voices. It includes opportunities to learn about power, bias, and inequity and empowers learners to be agents of positive social change. 

  • Ongoing Professional Learning creates continual opportunities for school community members to develop and sharpen a critically conscious lens toward instruction, curriculum, assessment, history, culture, and institutions. 

There are separate rubrics for each area for leaders, teachers, and students, while parents/caregivers have one combined rubric. Students do not have a rubric for ongoing professional learning. 

Each rubric contains about 8-12 central components of cultural responsiveness for that area, broken down into Commitments, Empowerment, Relationships, and Collaboration. Some of the components are unique to a particular education partner, while others ask about the same area from the perspectives of multiple education partners, which allows you to compare the perceptions of different people about the same area. 

Each component starts with a guiding question that can help you think about that component in your school. After the guiding question is a Progression of CRS Engagement that asks you to assess your/your school’s current level of engagement with that component. 

The Progression goes from Exploring to Growing to Utilizing to Transforming, like this:

Rubric Progression of Engagement: Exploring, Growing, Utilizing, Transforming

Below the progression for each item is a nine-point scale where 1 is Early Exploring, 2 is Solid Exploring, 3 is between Exploring and Growing, 4 is Solid Growing, etc.  

Below the progression is a place for you to take notes if you wish. The notes will be saved or printed when you submit the rubric. 

Range slider nine-point scale; Selected Rating: None, and an open-ended text field labeled Notes

Who Should Complete the Rubrics

For the pilot study, the school’s leadership team should complete two rubrics, first as individuals and then collectively as a team.

Examining the Results

Once all the members of the school (leaders, teachers, students and parents/caregivers) complete the rubrics, we will send you a report that shows the results for each group so you can compare the views across the school members. The report will also include links to CRS resources that you can use for your ongoing work. Please be assured that the report will contain only aggregated data and will not identify any individuals.