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Abstract
The demographics of public schools in the United States have changed immensely since the peak of the Civil Rights Era in 1968 from a majority White population to a nearly 50% heterogenous mix of Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Culturally and Linguistically Diverse students face longstanding issues of inequity within public schools in the United States. Culturally responsive school leadership is one method to address and redress the longstanding inequities for CLD students. School counselors are uniquely positioned to bridge the multicultural and social justice leadership practices to traditional models of school leadership based on their training, access to school-wide data and infusion of Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts and Greenleaf, 2017). This conceptual article seeks to promote school counselors as culturally responsive school leaders by revealing their training and skillsets through a Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies framework.
Keywords: Culturally Responsive School Counselors, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, Educational Leadership
Introduction
Since the peak of the Civil Rights Era in 1968, the demographics of public schools in the United States have changed immensely from majority White to a more culturally and linguistically diverse student population. Over the last 50 years, the demographics shifted from a majority White student population to a more heterogenous mix (Orfield & Frankenberg, 2014) where culturally and lin- guistically diverse (CLD) students comprise nearly 50% of K-12 public school students (U. S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2016). Concurrent with the shifting demographics, the prevailing notions in the post-Civil Rights Era in the U.S. shifted to minimize the impacts of race (Bonilla-Silva, 2015). Public school systems, in aggregate, serve the most racially, linguistically, and ethnically diverse students in their histories (Ford, 2012). The increasing diversity does not intrinsically pose a problem; the problem lies within the persistent disparities in educational outcomes for CLD students. As public schools continue to diversify, research outcomes continue to show that students' identities often influence their educational outcomes more than the students' performance in school (Kramarczuk Voulgarides et al., 2017).
Historically oppressive systems and structures work to disadvantage CLD students (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016). Research done on school outcomes for CLD students over the last 50 years has shown that the disparities experienced by CLD students...