Using Professional Teaching Standards to Promote Culturally Responsive Teaching

Since the 1990s, professional teaching standards have played an important role in the way teachers are prepared and developed. Today, all 50 states use professional teaching standards to articulate what teachers in their state should know and be able to do.¹ States rely on professional standards to anchor teacher preparation coursework, pre-service field experiences, licensure assessments, induction programming, systems of evaluation, and professional development requirements for in-service growth and licensure renewal. Given their important role, professional teaching standards offer an opportunity to ensure a strong focus on culturally responsive practices throughout teachers' careers. Several national organizations have made progress in embedding responsive teaching practices into their own professional teaching standards. For their part, a few states have developed free-standing standards explicitly focused on teachers' cultural competencies. This section provides an overview of these efforts.

In 1992, the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) articulated the Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing, Assessment and Development: A Resource for State Dialogue. These standards were revised in 2011, as the InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards, to define what all teachers "should know and be able to do to ensure every K–12 student reaches the goal of being ready to enter college or the workforce in today’s world.”² In 2013, the Learning Progressions for Teachers were developed to supplement the InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards by describing levels of teacher practice across a continuum of development, from beginning to advanced teaching.³

It is notable that the InTASC Model Core Teaching standards include a strong focus on teaching diverse groups of learners. Standards now describe desirable teacher behaviors such as demonstrating respect for children’s cultures, offering classroom instruction that accommodates the cultures of the children in it, and avoiding personal bias when interacting with learners. The InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards have gained currency in the field and are used by the majority of states in some way. For example, some states draw from these standards in developing their own, while others adopt these standards with no significant changes (see Appendix B for a list of standards reviewed for all 50 states). The national accrediting body, Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), endorses the InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards, ensuring all CAEP accredited preparation program across the country are aligned to these standards.⁴

To a lesser extent, standards developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) have also informed the development of states’ standards. Based on a comprehensive set of standards established in the late 1980s by the NBPTS, initial National Board Certification is a rigorous process that requires teachers to submit extensive evidence (videos, lesson plans, student work, reflections, etc.) of their positive effect on student learning to an external assessor—a much higher bar than other teacher licensure requirements in nearly every state.⁵Developed for all grade levels and disciplines, the standards are based around five core propositions that “describe what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do to have a positive impact on student learning.”⁶ Current National Board propositions, updated in 2016, advise teachers to embrace diversity in the learning environment, connect students with cultural experiences, and recognize their own biases.⁷

Alaska and Washington State are unusual in that they have prioritized CRT by developing and implementing a stand-alone set of teaching standards that focus on the knowledge and skills that are crucial to culturally responsive teaching. While Alaska and Washington take different approaches to how standards are embedded into their state's programs and policies, both states’ CRT-related standards are intended to reach all teachers throughout their careers.

Alaska’s State Board of Education & Early Development adopted the Cultural Standards for Educators in 2010. These standards form part of the Alaska Standards for Culturally-Responsive Schools, developed in 1998 by the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRI).⁸ Regulation requires that the Cultural Standards for Educators are integrated into teacher preparation programs, and four of the five standards are linked to teacher evaluation processes. In 2012, the Guide to Implementing the Alaska Cultural Standards for Educators was developed in collaboration with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, the Alaska Comprehensive Center, Alaska Native Educators, and Education Northwest to support school leaders and educators in implementing the standards. This guide includes rubrics to support teacher self-reflection and is not intended for evaluation. ⁹ An additional guide, Culture in the Classroom: Standards, Indicators, and Evidences for Evaluating Culturally Responsive Teaching, published in 2015, does includes rubrics and guidelines to support evaluation.¹⁰

In Washington, the state Legislature charged its Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) with identifying model standards for cultural competency, in partnership with the Education Opportunity Gap Oversight and Accountability Committee in 2009. This partnership yielded the Cultural Competency Standards, which were adopted by PESB in 2010 and integrated into educator preparation programs as well as standards for teachers and school leaders.¹¹ Legislation also requires that standards for cultural competency be linked to the continuum of teacher preparation, induction, and career-long development.¹²

It is critical to note that while all state teaching standards offer an opportunity to better prepare and develop teachers to employ culturally responsive teaching, standards that form part of an aligned, coherent system of pre-service and in-service training offer the most powerful opportunity. Unfortunately, variation exists in how states use their teaching standards and how embedded they are into their system of teacher preparation and development. Though a few states have taken steps to ensure standards are part of an integrated, coherent system by extending them across a teacher’s career (see Alignment Spotlight for details), in many states teaching standards are not well integrated across the career continuum. For instance, a 2016 New America review of 21 state-developed teacher evaluation systems found that less than half of states provide resources that highlight how teaching standards are integrated into their evaluation systems for in-service teachers.¹³