Culturally Proficient Inclusive Schools: All Means ALL!

This book is directed toward including all students in education rather than segregating those with special needs. The first section (Ch. 1-4) contains a lot of the thinking behind this approach and includes discussion questions and principles to reflect on in order to evaluate your own attitudes and those of your educational institution. The second section (Ch. 4-8) include the topics of assessing cultural kmowledge, valuing diversity, managing diversity and adapting to diversity. She includes dialogues that represent these principles in action. Finally in the last section (Ch. 9-10) she deals with how to take action.The content is good, but in a way reading the book made me sigh because I have been around the block a lot of times teaching at different levels and different institutions. There is always a new idea, a new book to read. I honestly don't have any reason to doubt the veracity of the material. What is lacking to really sell the ideas is any school-wide or district-wide results that show how inclusive schools are doing a better job of educating all students. Without that, this is one more good idea--somebody's thesis that hasn't been widely implemented.So if you are already inclined in this direction, this book may give you some tools to go further, but is this is going to be implemented on a school-wide or district-wide basis, there needs to be more hard facts to sell it.

I'm a bit torn on this book...as someone that has worked with educational professionals for two decades, there is a strong need for true inclusion. Additionally, the overall attitude and mindset of this book hits the proverbial nail on the head - it's excellent and exactly the mentality hoped for when it comes to creating culturally proficient schools. Having said that, this tends to be generic. I kept waiting for the hard hitting objective, data driven research, protocols or standards but instead, found a great deal of generic, motivational and "feel good" concepts. All in all this isn't a bad book but it simply doesn't set itself apart.