Meetings embrace school diversity

Around 250 Utah educators, community leaders, college students and even parents will gather this weekend to share notes and learn more about including students from different, cultures, races and religions both inside and outside of the classroom.

The seventh annual Utah Chapter of the National Association of Multicultural Education, Utah NAME, conference is being held this weekend in Logan and aims at creating dialogue and practices to capitalize on what leaders say is the "opportunity of diversity."

"Students are marginalized because of many attributions — race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation— and they find themselves not fitting with the mainstream of schools," said Martha Whitaker, president of Utah chapter of NAME. "The achievement gap is bottom-line evidences of that."

She said the achievement gap, the gap in proficiency between whites and minority and low-income students, is about students' test scores. But the larger issue is, 'why does it exist?"' she said.

"It's not just about how can we get test scores up but how can we create an environment where students can be included and academically successful," Whitaker said.

She said research suggests there are plenty of ways to do it, but teachers have been slow to be provided with background and information and best practices. That's where NAME comes in.

She said the conference provides a space for important, complicated, challenging, supportive conversations about the opportunities that exist as a result of our responsibility to provide equitable educational opportunity to increasingly diverse groups of students.

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