Moving forward on complex social and educational problems isn’t easy—and in schools, “complex” usually means the stakes are high and time is short. When results aren’t where we want them, it’s understandable to look for the contributing factors and build a plan around them. The challenge is that a diagnosis can sound right and still leave teams wondering what to do differently on Monday.
Take a common scenario: test scores drop. A school might conclude the “real problem” is motivation or parenting and respond with incentives or a new family-engagement push. Those efforts can help and are often rooted in good intentions, but they may still miss what’s getting in the way of learning, such as everyday attendance patterns, early reading gaps, limited tutoring time, or a curriculum that doesn’t match where students are starting from. Meanwhile, teachers are doing the hard work of meeting students where they are with the same planning time, the same pacing pressures, and the same mix of needs.
A narrow focus on contributing factors can also quietly drain a staff’s energy. Teams can spend months debating which factors are most responsible—culture, management, trauma, family stressors, or something else- and still land on a plan that feels too general to change daily practice. Then the cycle repeats with the next problem. Even when we agree on key contributing factors, the next step is still a design choice: if absenteeism is tied to transportation, the best response might involve bus routes, transit passes, family outreach, a schedule change, or a thoughtful combination. What schools deserve is a process that respects educators’ time and turns what we already know into concrete, testable actions.
A Practical Way to Strengthen Culturally Responsive Education—and Reduce Racialized Outcomes
This article is for school administrators, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders who want culturally responsive education to be more than a value statement—and who also want the work to feel doable in real schools. You’ll find a straightforward process you can run with your staff to notice what’s already working, make it easier to reproduce across classrooms, and connect day-to-day teaching moves to the systems that shape patterns in discipline, grading, and course access.
Why conversations about contributing factors stall out?
Contributing-factor conversations usually start with a good impulse: people want to understand what’s driving an outcome, so they don’t waste time on surface-level fixes. The problem is that in schools, the factors are almost never just one thing. It’s a tangle of learning history, relationships, expectations, curriculum, time, and policy—all interacting with students’ identities and lived experiences. When teams try to reduce that complexity to a single explanation, the conversation often becomes abstract (“it’s motivation,” “it’s culture,” “it’s trauma,” “it’s families”), and the next steps remain vague. Even worse, this kind of talk can unintentionally place the burden on students, families, or individual educators rather than prompting system-level design choices that leaders can actually change. The result is a lot of careful discussion with too little relief in day-to-day practice. A more helpful next step is to start with concrete examples of when things are going well and build from there.
What to do instead: use a future-oriented inquiry cycle.
So, what’s the alternative if “find the cause” doesn’t reliably lead to “find the fix”? Try a future-oriented inquiry cycle that starts with real examples of culturally responsive teaching that students and families can name—and then builds the conditions that make those examples common, not occasional. Many teams find this approach practical and energizing because it stays grounded in daily instruction and school routines, while still keeping equity goals front and center. (This approach aligns with appreciative inquiry methods used in organizational and school improvement work; see Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005; and for an explicit antiracist lens, see Gebhard et al., 2024.)
Why a future focus? Because schools improve faster when adults can picture the next, better version of practice and then make deliberate choices to get there. Future-oriented problem solving supports better planning, clearer tradeoffs, and quicker learning from feedback. In other words, it helps a team move from “What’s the problem?” to “What will we try, how will we know, and what will we adjust?”
How the cycle works in practice.
Start by gathering a small set of concrete stories—especially from students of color—about times they felt respected, challenged, and supported. In team meetings, stay close to the details: what was happening, what adults did, what peers did, what materials were used, and what norms made it safe to participate. Then turn the themes into a shared description of what culturally responsive teaching looks like in your building, written in observable terms (what you would see and hear in classrooms and hallways). Next, pick one or two conditions you can build into routines within the next six to eight weeks—such as a common way to structure discussion, a simple lesson-design check for representation and relevance, or a grading-clarity check—and decide who owns implementation and how practice will be supported. Finally, run short cycles, gather quick feedback from students and teachers, and remove barriers (time, materials, coaching) so the work becomes easier to do than to skip.
To gather strong input quickly, use questions that invite specific examples—and signal that you plan to act on what you hear. Ask students and families to describe a recent time they felt known and respected at school and what an adult did that mattered. Ask when they feel most comfortable participating or taking academic risks, and what makes that possible. Ask whose histories, languages, and experiences show up in learning and how they can tell. When conflict happens, ask what responses actually repair relationships while keeping expectations high. And ask staff and students what regularly gets in the way—time, routines, materials, or policies—so the work targets barriers the school can control.
Culturally responsive education reduces racialized outcomes when it is treated as a core instructional and operational expectation—not an optional set of “nice to have” strategies (Gay, 2018; Khalifa, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995). A future-oriented inquiry helps you spot what works, but the real leverage comes when leaders make those conditions easier to deliver consistently through scheduling, coaching, policy, and shared tools.
To connect CRE to systemic racism, look at where inequity is produced by the day-to-day machinery of school. Start with discipline: examine referrals by race, grade, and teacher, clarify what labels like “defiance” mean in practice, and check whether restorative responses are consistently supported (Gregory et al., 2010; Skiba et al., 2016). Look at grading next: confirm criteria are clear, late-work rules are workable, behavior isn’t quietly driving academic grades, and reassessment is accessible. Then examine course access: who gets advanced coursework, intervention, and enrichment—and how those decisions are made. Review curriculum for representation and rigor, including whether students have structured opportunities to connect content to community knowledge and lived experience (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Finally, check adult learning conditions—coaching time, PLC focus, and what gets reinforced—because that’s how strong practice spreads.
A few common pitfalls can slow this work down, and most are easier to prevent than to fix later. One is keeping things “positive” in a way that sidesteps racism; instead, name racialized harm directly, ask what has helped repair it, and connect what you learn to policy and practice (Gebhard et al., 2024). Another is collecting powerful stories without changing the structures that keep the same barriers in place; when time, grading rules, or referral routines repeatedly show up, that’s a signal for leadership attention. It’s also easy to rely on hero teachers; building shared routines, common tools, and coaching helps students experience culturally responsive teaching more consistently across classrooms (Khalifa, 2018). Finally, remember that data and stories serve different purposes: disparity data shows where inequity shows up, and lived experience helps explain how it feels and how it happens (Skiba et al., 2016). The goal is steady learning—small cycles of practice, feedback, and adjustment—rather than a single training that everyone is expected to “implement” perfectly.
How my evaluation services support this work
If it would help to have an outside partner who can bring structure, neutrality, and momentum, my evaluation services are designed to make culturally responsive education visible, measurable, and improvable—without turning it into a compliance checklist. Schools typically reach out when they want a clear picture of what students are experiencing, where adult practice is already strong, and which system barriers are making equitable outcomes harder to achieve.
In a typical engagement, I gather student, family, and staff perspectives through listening sessions or structured interviews, using clear protocols so findings are trustworthy and easy to use (Hood et al., 2015). I pair that with classroom walkthroughs focused on culturally responsive “look-fors,” including relationship moves that support identity safety, academically productive talk, and meaningful participation. Alongside the qualitative work, I review equity-relevant data—discipline, grading patterns, course access, and attendance—to help teams see where the system is producing uneven experiences. From there, I synthesize what I’m hearing and seeing into a concise memo or report that highlights strengths to build on, barriers to remove, and a small set of high-leverage design moves. When helpful, I facilitate a planning session so leaders and teacher teams can turn findings into a short-cycle action plan with clear evidence you’ll monitor.
If you’re ready to move from big conversations about equity to specific, testable improvements in daily practice, this future-oriented approach can be a supportive place to start. It keeps the work grounded in what students’ experience, focuses staff energy on what can realistically be built, and helps leaders remove barriers that make culturally responsive teaching uneven. If you’d like support taking stock of where your school is now and choosing the highest-leverage next steps, I can help you scope an evaluation that fits your timeline, capacity, and decision-making needs.
Dr. Sharpe-Taylor, APPP Trainer/Consultant, CPPE, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, a Clinical Neuropsychologist with Psychological Network, Inc., and a Pediatric Psychologist with SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. For more than 20 years, she has partnered with school systems and community agencies to conduct program evaluations that support effective, equitable practice. Her work bridges clinical practice, neurodevelopmental and neurological conditions, and applied evaluation—helping teams understand how individual needs, social and cultural context, and system design interact to shape student outcomes.
References
Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2005). Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Gebhard, A., Allen, W. S., & Pino, F. (2024). Antiracism in appreciative inquiry: Generative tensions and collective reflexivity. Action Research, 22(4), 345–361. doi:10.1177/14767503231210418
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The achievement gap and the discipline gap: Two sides of the same coin? Educational Researcher, 39(1), 59–68.
Hood, S., Hopson, R. K., & Kirkhart, K. E. (2015). Culturally responsive evaluation: Theory, practice, and future implications. In K. E. Newcomer, H. P. Hatry, & J. S. Wholey (Eds.), Handbook of practical program evaluation (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Khalifa, M. (2018). Culturally responsive school leadership. Harvard Education Press.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
Skiba, R. J., Mediratta, K., & Rausch, M. K. (Eds.). (2016). Inequality in school discipline: Research and practice to reduce disparities. Palgrave Macmillan.
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