The Black White Achievement Gap

Contemporary education reforms study on the continuous black-white achievement gap in the public schools, in America. In the book, “Multiplication is meant for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other people’s Children, Lisa Delpit focuses on these reforms and informs educators that education gap does not exist at birth.. Through her experience in the field and as a mother, she gives strategies for raising the expectations of minority or underperforming children especially the blacks. The book has many references of elementary to university success stories of mentioned practitioners.

The achievement gap is defined as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade point averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement gap is a critical issue in modern society’s education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguous—therefore presenting a significant challenge in

The “achievement gap” in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. The achievement gap is shown in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, among other success measures. It’s most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and latino students, towards the lower end of the performance scale, compared to their white peers, and the similar academic differences between students from low-income families and those who are privileged. In the past decade, scholars and policy makers began focusing their attention on other achievement gaps, such as those based on sex, English language and learning disabilities.

How should society handle the perceived differences between races when it comes to education? The goal of both researchers is to narrow the academic gap between white and black students. Both authors attribute the gap between the academic scores of black and white students from opposite sides of racial identity. As Dr. Beverly Daniels Tatum, President of Spelman College and clinical psychologist has written an article entitled “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” Her approach is from the perspective of the student and how they perceive their role and upper limits while maintaining their place in their peer group's expectations of their race. Dr. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, has written an article entitled "The Facts about the Achievement Gap.” Her approach is from the perspective of how schools and society implicitly or explicitly cast students into achievement tracks based on their race. Both approach the same idea about racial identity, but they have different solutions, such as peer groups, the school board, and who is right about the solution.

Are Black Americans Dumber than White Americans? Can it unequivocally be stated that European Americans hold more intelligence then African Americans? Are African Americans genetically wired to have a lesser mental capacity then European Americans? For a long time this was the explanation to a burning problem. African Americans score lower than White Americans on vocabulary, reading, and mathematics tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence. “This gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood. The typical American black still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized

Racial disparities exist in every aspect of our society. It exists in religion, socioeconomic status, life-chances, media, etc. It affects everyone even if they realize or not. Education is one of the things that are also affected by the racial stratification occurring in the United States. In this paper I will look in to whether Tennessee is better or worse for educational advancement by comparing four races and their high school graduation rates on the national and state levels. The four races used will be; Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and White. I will then tie specific theories to why these disparities may exist. This will hopefully give insight in to this touchy topic and provide a starting point for correcting the gap.

Ultimately the lack of reliable resources and preparation from underfunded schools leads African American students into being unprepared for college and jobs, once again reinforcing a vicious cycle of poverty within the community. Gillian B. White, a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, wrote a chilling article regarding the systematic racism that is deeply embedded in the American school system. In the article The Data: Race Influences School Funding, White states “At a given poverty level, districts that have a higher proportion of white students get substantially higher funding than districts that have more minority students” (White). In this quote White explains the clear correlation of race and inadequate funding in the American school

Education and economic justice were two forms of systemic inequalities that make inequality difficult to talk about. Education is a requirement if someone wishes to have a better life, but not everyone has access to quality education. In the U.S there has always been a battle, people of color have fought to be able to access quality education, (Philips, 2016: 130) they are constantly attending inferior and ineffective school where there are many distractions for students to be fully successful in the classrooms. Often these schools where children of color attend lack quality facilities, educational resources, and qualified teachers. Someone can’t help to notice that in general such unqualified schools are mostly in color people’s neighborhoods.

the term receivement gap is useful because it focuses attention on educational inputs-what the students receive on their educational journey, instead of outputs-their performance on a standardized test. This refocusing also moves attention away from the students as the source of these disparities, and toward the larger structure and forces that play a role in their education and development (p. 417). Venzant-Chambers (2009) asserted the issue of the Black and White achievement gap must be viewed through other lenses opposed to the single view of Black students cannot perform as well as White students. Venzant-Chambers (2009) offered other avenues by which to examine the achievement gap such as school tracking, examining the

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as part of his “war on poverty” in hopes of closing the achievement gap between low income schools, which typically house larger percentages of student of color, and their more affluent counterparts. The act has been redefined and reauthorized every five years since its original enactment. However, despite the last 50 years of education reform, the disparity amongst high and low poverty schools is as large as it ever was. In turn, the disparity between students of color and white students has only grown. Clearly, the one size fits all approach to education America has been using does not work. The U.S public education system is broken and, as a country, very

The “gap” as referred to in the title, is the distribution of the scores on achievement tests that differ between black and white students in the United States. The purpose of this study was to record the degree of the gap in achievement scores, decide how much of the racial gap is due to social-class, how the gap differed in the 30-year period, and how that which is credited to the social-class has changed over the years.

Ever since the establishment of equal education in the United States, there has been a disparity in academic success between children of different races. The education of African American children has become a prime example of this. As discussed in the historical text, A Letter to My Nephew, which was written during the time of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, African Americans were not given equal opportunities to succeed educationally and could do little to change their futures for the better. They had to work much harder than whites to receive even a portion of the recognition and success that whites achieved (Baldwin 1). Although many today believe America has overcome this problem, it still remains a pressing issue in many aspects of society, arguably the most important being education. The racial achievement gap, an important term to familiarize with when discussing this topic, refers to the disparity in educational performance between students of different races (National Education Association 1). As of now, although the education achievement gap has been narrowing, there still remains a large disparity between African Americans and their racial counterparts. According to a study by Roland G. Freyer and Steven D. Levitt, professors at Harvard University and W.E.B Du Bois Institute, respectively, African American students enter kindergarten already significantly behind children of other races, and their test scores continue to drop

The pressures of racism on today’s society are being perpetuated by socioeconomic shaming against less fortunate black schoolchildren to look to the future of becoming less successful than the more financially stable white schoolchild sitting in the next classroom. The most unfortunate part about the white-black achievement gap is that there is no easy solution to solving it. One large proponent of the achievement gap between all schoolchildren is the factor of wealth and affluence in their homes. The racial achievement gap compared to the wealth achievement gap is quite staggering. Diane Ravitch states that “in contrast to the racial achievement gap, which has narrowed, the income achievement gap is growing…[and is] nearly twice as large

The NACCP has changed and expanded the opportunities in education to all races. Yet there are many injustices, former president Obama explains a few such as the educational system not always being fair to all people because of their differences. To elucidate this Obama says “All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from the cradle through a career.” The education of an African American isn't always the same of the education provided to a white person. This is evident in schools everywhere. Obama also states, ”African-American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math – an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way on

In chapter 8 “Educational Inequality”, it is discussed that before the Brown v. Board of Education decision, people of color were systematically prevented from attending white schools under a doctrine called “separate but equal” (Golash-Boza, 2014). Since this 1954 decision, there has been progress to form equality in the schools. For example, there are no longer any all-white universities and colleges are working harder to encourage a diverse college campus, but there is still set-backs from being completely equal. The book “Race & Racisms” states that there is the achievement gap in America’s school systems. The achievement gap is the disparate educational outcomes of whites, Asians, blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans (Golash-Boza, 2014). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2010 there was recorded that 29.3% of white people with their bachelor’s degree or higher and only 17.7% of black people with this achievement. Also stated in the surveys was that the average GPA of a white person was 3.09 and the average GPA of a black person was 2.69. There are multiple explanations on where the racism or inequality occurs in society that causes such a difference between the outcomes of black people versus white people, however it comes down to the same conclusion; there is inequality in the school