The Educational Achievement Gap Between Minorities And Non Minorities

This paper is intended to explore and report upon the topics posited by Tyrone C. Howard in his book, Why Race and Culture Matter in Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap in Americas Classrooms. Closely examining each and every chapter as they come and how the structure of this book gives a detailed framework and guidance system for novice and experienced teachers to take their pedagogical skills to more diverse and multicultural levels. Also, this paper will review a few lessons or projects that can be adapted and used within my personal educational institute in order to create

Schools systematically subjugate minority and black students when a school’s enrollment contains a huge racial majority. If students have no exposure to persons of different ethnicities, cultures, races, and religions, then these students will experience culture shock when they confront “other” people. Even in our class, we talk about black and minority students as another group, one that differs from “us.” We think about the inequalities in school systems as problems we need to fix, not as problems that have influenced our thinking and affect us as prospective teachers. For example, a white graduate student with

African American students account for the larger majority of minorities in public schools in the United States. Most areas in the northern part of the United states and coastal areas are ethnically diverse. However, down south this is not the case. Students of color will experience a harder time in the education system. African American students meet the obstacle of educators who will not want them to succeed based on a preconceived thought. In fact, Caucasian teachers make up for 85% of all

African Americans are not the only ethnicity group to be singled out with behavior. Racial and ethnic minority students report experiencing low teacher expectations, having less access to educational resources, being placed on lower educational tracks, and being steered toward low-paying employment (Kozol, 1991; Olsen, 2008).This low expectation is causing

This paper includes a reference list of literature relating to the impact socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity has on academic achievement and what can be done to combat the achievement gap. In general, the literature seems to indicate that socioeconomic status has a greater impact then race or ethnicity on achievement. However, these constructs are often intertwined. The greatest source for combatting the achievement gap are teachers high in self-efficacy, strong and well directed principal leadership, having a positive and accepting racial climate, smaller class sizes, less harsh discipline with more support

Currently, general education classrooms have increasingly become diverse with both disable students and students from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In order for educators to ensure that they effectively teach these classrooms, meet the needs of each student both successfully and individually, effective research that is based on strategies need to be implemented. The U.S. Department of Education suggest that, the current school-age population is becoming more diverse as time passes, yet, majority of the teachers in these schools are white non-Hispanic women. According to another report by The Condition of Education in 2006, American schools are portraying increased diversity and growth. The report suggested that, forty two percent of students in public schools were ethnic or racial minorities in the year 2003; this increased from twenty two percent since 1972. Owing to these reasons, teachers in these schools are expected to educate a diversified class of students including those that come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Teachers are therefore, required to implement a number of key strategies that will ensure that every student in specific classroom feels that he or she belongs there (Worrell, 2010).

A study shows that race severely impacts the classes students are allocated to. The study compares White, Black and Latino students and in all the results provided, White students are far more likely than the others to be allocated a a class with a higher advantage- including teacher skills and resources. Clear results show in studies that race does determine membership to the most disadvantaged classes. Black students are more likely than White students to be assigned classes with more disadvantages than to classes with higher advantages. Latino students were also more likely than White students to be assigned to disadvantaged classes. The

Everyone should be treated fairly and respected with race or gender having nothing to do with how you approach a human being. Yet, in urban areas across the country there are many teachers who cannot relate with the struggles their students face. Cannot relate with the living environment students from all racial backgrounds are coming from. For example, when I was in the Fourth Grade there was a white teacher, she was genuinely nice and tried her very best with the classroom or generally all minority background. The problem was that she couldn’t relate to us in most aspects of our living outside the school. She gave us a list of things we needed for the classroom in which the parents couldn’t afford. None of the students seemed to connect with her because the

To understand the lack of African American teachers, an exploration of Black teacher’s reasoning and experience when going into teaching can be beneficial. A study conducted by Farinde, LeBlanc, and Otten (2015) sought to understand what contributes and hinders Black females from pursuing a career in education. They found an assortment of factors positive and negative that lead to their decision to becoming a teacher. However one of the most hindering factors contributing to a lack of diversity came at an institutional level. From a policy standpoint, more institutional support within teacher education programs is needed in order to increase the pool of Black female teachers, lack of institutional support…obstructs the pipeline from teacher education program to K-12 classroom, with little or no support in higher education, the number of Black female teachers will either remain constant or will gradually decline (Farinde, LeBlanc, & Otten,

Williams (2012) conducted a study which explored the perceptions and lived experiences of African American male teachers. Using purposeful sampling, the researcher conducted interviews with 15 African American male teachers from elementary teachers through high school in a southeast Georgia school system having 19,000 students. The ethnic diversity of the school system included about 50% African American, 40% Caucasian, 5% Hispanic, 4% multiracial, and 1% Asian students. Fifty-six percent of these students were considered economically disadvantaged and received free or reduced lunches. About 35% of the school 48 teachers in this system were African American which is five times higher than the national average (Synder, 1999 as cited in Williams,

Teaching in racially diverse classrooms often leaves educators feeling uncertain about how to proceed and how to respond to historically marginalized students. There is pressure to acknowledge and accept students of color with different perspectives, to diversify the syllabi, be more aware of classroom dynamics, and pay attention to how students of color experience the learning process.

The first article I read was titled “What Does Teaching for Social Justice Mean to Teacher Candidates?” I learned that its not the gap between age of the student and teacher, but the main problem is the teachers entering the field have limited to no experience or understanding of different races, backgrounds, culture, and class. Because of this, teachers are having a harder time working with diverse learners, and its common to see teachers holding grudges on these students or having poor attitudes towards this population. In this same article, they talk about this gap a little bit more in depth by saying “The academic achievement gap among different racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic status groups of students is exacerbated by inequitable educational opportunities and resources, access to highly qualified teachers, and access to proper pedagogy and pedagogical resources.” From this reading, I have learned its very important to know my students and get to know a little about bout where they come from and their backgrounds to better be able to

Furthermore the questions that guide this study are: “(1) how and why teachers participate in practices and policies that may undermine minority students’ academic achievement, (2) how elementary students respond to these practices and policies, and (3) the implications of

As minority students increased in urban public schools, they have now become the majority of the school population and have brought difficult topics to the surface; race and ethnicity. In Another Inconvenient Truth: Race and Ethnicity Matter, Hawley and Nieto published their beliefs on how cultural differences are not to be tucked away and hidden in an educational setting, but embraced and celebrated to promote education by the teacher in an academic journal: Educational Leadership. Their appeals and claims provide various instruction to guide professional educators to overcome the achievement gap.

Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Teachers College Record. Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education, 97(1).