Equity Partnerships: A Culturally Proficient Guide to Family, School, and Community Engagement

How often do you hear, “The only parents who showed were the parents who didn’t need to be here.” 

But how often do you consider time of day, lack of child care, cost of dinner, transportation, lan­guage of the presentation, even relevance of the topic—all real-world barriers for families of our historically underserved students. 

Here at last is a resource that will open up access and reveal all-new ways to forge more culturally inclusive partnerships with families and communities . . .  partnerships that extend well beyond parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, and the occasional bake sale. 

The two big services Equity Partnerships provides? Using the Tools of Cultural Proficiency, you’ll

1. Discover new concepts and strategies to engage families and communities—and reduce, if not eliminate, barriers--through four essential principles: communication, connection, collaboration, and community
2. Engage in frequent opportunities to reflect on your own assumptions and values, then collaborate with colleagues to co-create systemic practices and policies for devising, implementing, and assessing family and community engagement actions in your schools and districts

We know inherently that family and community engagement is critical to the success of our stu­dents. Let Equity Partnerships be your go-to tool for breaking down the walls that for too long have limited all of us.

“Raising the next generation is a shared responsibility and privilege. These authors have been first responders for decades by pro­moting Cultural Proficiency as a means to ensure equity and access for all. In Equity Partnerships, they identify the powerful and critical link of family, school, and community engage­ment to strengthen families, build community support, and increase student success.” 

--TRUDY ARRIAGA, Associate Dean for Equity and Outreach, California Lutheran University, and Coauthor of Opening Doors

Dr. Angela Clark-Louque is Professor and Department Chair of Educational Leadership and Technology at California State University, San Bernardino.  She has served in several educational capacities during her career.  This year, she was chosen as the Outstanding Faculty in Research and Scholarly Activities and in 2015 she was the Outstanding Faculty in Teaching

 

At the university level, she has served as an associate dean of academic affairs, director of graduate studies, department chair of doctoral studies, director of educational administration, and director of teacher education.  At the community college level, she served as a counselor and mathematics faculty, and at the K-12 level, she served as an administrator and mathematics/social science teacher.

 

Dr. Clark-Louque continues to teach advanced human resources, qualitative research methods, and leadership courses to aspiring and practicing school leaders. Her research activities include peer-reviewed publications, grants, and reports. She has co-authored a book entitled, “Exposing the ‘Culture of Arrogance’ in the Academy: A Blueprint for Increasing Black Faculty Satisfaction in Higher Education” (2005), and served as the co-editor and editor of the Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research (2007-2010) through the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

 

Her qualitative and quantitative research has focused on culturally proficient leadership, African Americans in educational leadership, developing and mentoring culturally proficient school leaders, and parental engagement. In 2010, she graduated from the Thomas Lakin Institute for Mentored Leadership, a national network of African American Community College CEOs. She was appointed the Committee Chair of Political Activism for the NAACP – Southwest Riverside Region and was asked to serve on the Los Angeles Committee of Honor for the Freedom’s Sisters exhibit and tour, which pays homage to a group of extraordinary African-American women who have shaped the spirit and substance of civil rights in America.

 

Dr. Louque is a native of Memphis, Tenn. and is a graduate of George Washington Carver High School, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Loyola Marymount University (LMU).  She earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership: Institutional Management from Pepperdine University and has credentials and certifications in teaching: mathematics and social science; and administration: preliminary and professional (Tier I and Tier II).
 

Randall B. Lindsey is Emeritus Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He has served as a teacher, an administrator, executive director of a non-profit corporation, as Interim Dean at California Lutheran University, as Distinguished Educator in Residence at Pepperdine University, and as Chair of the Education Department at the University of Redlands. All of Randy’s experiences have been in working with diverse populations and his area of study is the behavior of white people in multicultural settings. His Ph.D. is in Educational Leadership from Georgia State University, his Master of Arts in Teaching is in History Education from the University of Illinois, and his B.S. in Social Science Education is from Western Illinois University. He has served as a junior high school and high school teacher and as an administrator in charge of school desegregation efforts. At Cal State, L.A. he served as Chair of the Division of Administration and Counseling and as Director of the Regional Assistance Centers for Educational Equity, a regional race desegregation assistance center. With co-authors he has written several books and articles on applying the Cultural Proficiency Framework in various contexts.

Email – randallblindsey@gmail.com
Website - CCPEP.org
Twitter - @RBLindsey41

Dr. Reyes L. Quezada was born in San Juan De Los Lagos, Jalisco, Mexico. His family of 8 immigrated to the United States and settled in Southern California in a farm near the Mexican border by Brawley. He was seven years old.  His father was a farmworker and participated in the Bracero Program (Guest worker) in the early 1960’s, his mother was a stay home mom who provided a caring and loving environment for his brothers and sisters. He has been a teacher, community college counselor and teacher educator for the past thirty-eight years, twenty of those years as a professor.  He joined the University of San Diego, San Diego California in 1999. He has been a professor at the University of Redlands, and California State University Stanislaus. He holds Community College credentials in Counselor Education, Supervision, Psychology, and a California Multiple-Subjects Bilingual Emphasis Teaching credential-Spanish.  His degrees include a Bachelor of Arts from San Jose State University and a Minor in Mexican American Studies, and holds four Advanced Degrees-a Masters degree in Education from the University of San Diego, and a Masters degree from San Diego State University, a post Masters degree-Educational Specialist degree from Point Loma Nazarene College and a doctorate from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona.

 

Dr. Quezada has presented at international, national, and state conferences (France, Spain, South Africa, Mexico, Costa Rica, Middle East, Italy, England, Colombia, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Czech Republic, Greece, Ghana, and in Israel). His teaching, research and publications are on issues of cultural proficiency, equity, international education, diversity, family school and community engagement, bilingual education and migrant education.  His publications include four books, twenty journal articles and eleven book chapters. He has edited five themed journals on internationalizing colleges and schools of education for the Catholic Education Journal, Teacher Education Quarterly, and in Teaching Education, as well as on Family, School and Community Engagement and Partnerships in the journals Teaching Education and Multicultural Education.

 

He is on the board of directors for state, national and international organizations including the national Council of Educator Preparation Programs (CAEP), the American Association for Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), and the current Chair of the International Council for the Education of Teachers (ICET). He was the Co-chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing-Committee on Accreditation (COA), and was Associate Editor for Teacher Education Quarterly, and sits on many editorial and review boards including the Annual Editions of Multicultural Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, Issues in Teacher Education, the School Community Journal, the Journal of Hispanics in Higher Education, Educational Research Journal, Teacher Education Quarterly, Horizon, the Journal of International Studies, and Issues in Teacher Education. He was on the San Bernardino County-Third District Supervisor Representative to the Equal Opportunity Commission, and former School Board President and current member for Real Journey Academies Charter School in San Bernardino, California.

 

Cynthia L. Jew, Ph.D. is a professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, CA. Dr. Jew teaches in the Counselor Education program focusing on Field Experiences and School Systems as she prepares School Counselors.  She is co-author of Culturally Proficient Inquiry: A Lens for Identifying and Examining Education Gaps (Corwin, 2008) and Culturally Proficient schools: All means All. (Corwin 2017) She also serves as a consultant to the Santa Clarita Valley International Charter schools focusing on the areas of Student Support and Inclusiveness.  She is a Licensed Psychologist and Certified School Psychologist.  She has two daughters, Kiera and Jordyn, who is Deaf and wears Cochlear Implants.