Multicultural education ensures that all learners have the opportunity to learn, are held to high expectations, and curriculum and instructional practices are culturally relevant.  Regardless of a student's culture, race, or background, schools work continuously to eliminate inequities and persevere in serving students to improve learning outcomes.  

I would place my district as a whole somewhere between the monoculture and tolerance levels on Nieto's (2008) continuum.  Though we are a small district (3,700 students), the majority of our students are white and the community is conservative.  The district has had an intense focus on equity work over the last three years, including several days of professional development.  Through this process, the district has created a list of equity non-negotiables to change instructional practices.  However, each building is at a different stage of this change process.  The high school has done impressive work moving to a co-plan to co-serve model from a traditional model to serve special education students, while elementary schools still service students with IEPs outside of the classroom. Foreign language courses are offered to all students beginning in 6th grade, almost every AP course is available at the high school for all students, but tracking still exists in mathematics.  Across the district, at least 95% of the staff are white and mostly female.  Though the organization is creating positive change in systems and structures, there is still much work to do. 

Given the mission of the school, the curriculum is designed to ensure that every student is accepted to a four-year university. There is a graduation expectation for all students to take at least one Advanced Placement course before they graduate. Again, this could be interpreted as monocultural because the curriculum is representative of a single college-preparatory track reflecting the dominant cultural view that AP courses are "best" for students. However, within the curriculum, there is acceptance of the fact that not every student has similar academic interests and abilities. There is a wide range of AP courses offered in the school: World History, US History, US Government and Politics, Calculus, Statistics, Literature, Spanish, Biology, Seminar, Research, and English Language and Composition. As a result, students are able to choose AP courses which suit their interests and their future aspirations. The culture of the school does not fully affirm the choice not to take AP because there is a general attitude that AP courses are preferable because of their favorable view by most colleges and universities. Therefore, the curriculum falls somewhere between monocultural and accepting of various academic pursuits.

These examples demonstrate that any school can fall anywhere along Nieto’s (2008) continuum depending on the unit of organizational analysis under consideration. The examples above highlight the importance of evaluating a school, through the lens of multicultural education, across multiple dimensions, to arrive at an organization that is generally characterized by affirmation, solidarity, and critique. Nieto’s (2008) illustrative example of a school characterized by affirmation, solidarity, and critique implies a form of leadership that considers every dimension of the organization through the lens of multicultural education. Perhaps one way to improve the multicultural education orientation of an organization might be to conduct an audit of multiple dimensions of the organization along this continuum. I'm not sure if this approach would create clarity or not, but it might reveal interesting patterns and a better overall sense of the multicultural state of an organization. I'm curious to hear other perspectives about this idea.

Regarding my professional practice, I work at an education membership organization whose members are professionals that assist students in the transition from high school to postsecondary education. Multicultural education manifests itself in my professional context because our members work with students from a variety of backgrounds whether ethnic, socioeconomic, and so on. Therefore, they are forced to consider the whole person when helping students through the college-going process. It’s not a one-size-fits-all process.