As long as the school system has been in existence, there have been many cases of discrimination in one form or another. Blocked opportunities for students of a certain race and or in a lower socio-economic group have always existed. Many school officials, including various faculty members, have been responsible for rerouting minority students suggesting less demanding classes with the belief that these students could not handle the more advanced course work. This particular form of discrimination has been labeled tracking. For many years, racial minorities have been battling, and at times succumbing, to this form of discrimination.
Tracking involves dividing students based upon their learning capabilities and placing them in specific classes that will fit their particular needs. For instance, if a student does well in placement testing, they are placed in advanced classes that prepare them for college. On the other hand, if the student performs poorly on placement testing, they are placed in classes that are supposed to help the students in the areas that they are lacking.
Placement testing is not the only way of dividing up these groups. Sometimes a student’s race or socio-economic background is taken into consideration. Hispanic and African American students are usually the groups that are negatively affected by the process of tracking. “Thus, the practice of tracking places large numbers of students who are already economically disadvantaged at risk of being educationally disadvantaged” (Risley, 1999:1).
Tracking began back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Risley, 1999:1). It was created to fulfill the needs of the education system in response to the increasing number of European immigrants and ...
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...etrieved October 10, 2002 from http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/hill/papers/tracking.html
McNulty, J. (2002). New book reveals conflicted racial identity among white youth. U.C. Santa Cruz Currents, Retrieved October 10, 2002 from http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/01-02/04-01/identity.html
Orozco, L., Ph. D. (2002). To Track or Not To Track. On Line Lecture Series, Retrieved October 10, 2002 from http://hdcs.fullerton.edu/faculty/orozco/lecturetracking.html
Risley, B. (1999). The Inequality of Tracking: Implications for Minority and Lower Socioeconomic Status Students. Retrieved from http://horizon.unc.edu/edsp287/1999/team/tracking/tracking.html
Walker, T. (2001). “Something is Wrong Here” Denver students confront racial Tracking at their high school. Teaching Tolerance, Retrieved October 5, 2002. From http://tolerance.org/teach/printar.jsp?p=0&ar=321π=ttm
Tatum examines what “Blackness,” means in a predominately white society and explores reasons why black adolescents begin to believe that they are inferior or in other words “not normal” in society, especially in academics where some black adolescents claim that “doing well in school is often identified as being White” (para. 30) which leads them to not give their education their maximum effort in the fear of being labeled as “too white” or simply just “not black”. She uses her son’s personal experiences as well as typical stories of how blacks are misunderstood in order to educate the reader as to how black people eventually develop a self-identity based on the implications of society and the situations that surround them. This can be seen when she says, “The stereotypes, omissions, and distortions that reinforce notions of White superiority are breathed in by Black children as well as white” (para. 10). In this quote Tatum further examines what “Whiteness” means in the same context and explains that since American society associates White people to be the normality, they are not able to create a well-balanced self-identity without it being based off of racial
Tracking is where students are identified as gifted or placed in remedial classes. By doing this, students learn about their overall success and achievements in comparison to the other groups. In the documentary, the principal, Rob Gasparello, addresses why their school is not the greatest. He states that their school has a “terrible reputation” and that the numbers do not lie. Looking at the data would assume that the overall success rate is not as high as other schools. By knowing this, it can be detrimental to the students’ education. This can be detrimental because students who attend this high school may start believing that they will never be successful so why bother trying. Other students who do not attend this high school may not have respect for these schools and assume they are better because they believe that they go to a better school. This is an example of inequality in education and studies have shown that while education benefits everyone, it does not benefit everyone equally. An inequality in education mirrors and inequality in
The difference between a services company and a merchandise company income statements centers on how the company’s profitability or net income is determined. To determine the net income for a service-based company, the total expenses incurred during an accounting period are deducted from the earned revenue. A merchandise company is a more complex operation; therefore, it would have a more complex method of getting to its net income. A merchandise company deducts from its revenues, the cost of the goods sold (the amount of the product) to reach its gross margin. Then the expenses (operating cost) are deducted from the gross margin to reach the net income. These are three component help create a merchandise company net income or net loss that shows the company’s profitability.
Race can be a factor in obtaining a college degree. Some minorities, especially Hispanics and African Americans, are at greater risk of not obtaining a college degree (O’Keefe, 2013). The Department of Curriculum and Instruction created the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Students Committee (RRMSC) in the spring of 2000 to evaluate methods for the recruitment and retention of minority students. Minorities identified were African American, Afro-Caribbean, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino and Native American (Hobson-Horton & Owens, 2004).
Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of race in the college admissions process in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. Since then, affirmative action has become a big issue in the media; however, many people still do not even know what affirmative action is. Affirmative action is a policy to prevent discrimination on the basis of “color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Overall, it favors minorities that are often discriminated. It might sound like an excellent policy; however, the use of this policy in the college admissions process is prejudice. In the college admissions process, affirmative action lowers the standards for some races, while raising the standard for other races. For example, an Asian might need a SAT score of 2300 to be considered for admission at a top school such as Yale and a white applicant might need a score of 2100, while an African American or Hispanic only needs a score of 1700. While affirmative action provides equality in the workplace, it has no place in the college admissions process and should, therefore, be abolished and replaced. This type of policy can be repealed completely, replaced with a college admissions process that favors first generation college applicants, or replaced with a policy based on an applicant’s socioeconomic status.
For my summary, I am writing to teachers who will relay information back to high school students through the addition of racism to their cirriculum. My purpose is to convince the teachers that racial identity is a crucial topic that high school students need to be more aware of. The advantage of informing high school students of the role that racism plays throughout society is to assist the students in being less racist and treating non-whites fair. Racial identity is a very secluded topic among people today. For this reason, many students are not aware of racism or the effect it may have on the relationships between blacks and whites. Through my summary I am hoping to be able to help my audience talk about racial identity in the least offensive
In the rapidly developing field of computer science, there is no more controversial issue than encryption. Encryption has become a highly contested issue with the broad use of global networks including the Internet. As more and more sensitive documents are being placed on computer networks, and trusted information is being sent from computer to computer throughout the world, the need for encryption has never been greater. However, the effects of encryption on our lifestyle and the government's role in encryption has been (and will continue to be) debated for years to come.
“When Race Becomes Even More Complex: Toward Understanding the Landscape of Multiracial Identity and Experiences”
I mentioned earlier that within my own school, we have a problem with segregation between students that take different classes. While not an official program, my school system does have a practice of tracking students together based on achievement levels. Starting in elementary school students tend to grouped based on their academic ability. Often times you will see students of color and students from low-income families in what are often called the “bottom” classes. The students many times are then stuck in the classes that do not have the same high expectations as the one or two classes of our “top” students. Those “top” classes are often times over represented by the white students as well as students from more affluent families. Going back to Orfield, et al (2010), one way to keep this from happening is by “detracking” students (p 25). Oftentimes students are labeled at a young age and sent on track that will carry on all the way through graduation. Minority students, ELL students and students from low income families generally do not test well at young ages and then are put on track of education that has lower expectations than their peers that are from affluent white families. According to Orfield, et al (2010), schools that use detracking strategies for their students often see increased
Affirmative action has been a controversial topic ever since it was established in the 1960s to right past wrongs against minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and women. The goal of affirmative action is to integrate minorities into public institutions, like universities, who have historically been discriminated against in such environments. Proponents claim that it is necessary in order to give minorities representation in these institutions, while opponents say that it is reverse discrimination. Newsweek has a story on this same debate which has hit the nation spotlight once more with a case being brought against the University of Michigan by some white students who claimed that the University’s admissions policies accepted minority students over them, even though they had better grades than the minority students. William Symonds of Business Week, however, thinks that it does not really matter. He claims that minority status is more or less irrelevant in college admissions and that class is the determining factor.
Computer science is a vast field that includes nearly everything relating to computers. Everyday there is information transmitted all over the Internet. Pictures are uploaded, transactions are made on thousands of online retail websites, and banking transactions take place everyday on the Internet. All of these transactions have created a need for secure communications. People wish to keep things like banking, medical, and political information from the eyes of unwelcome parties. This has created a need for cryptography. Cryptography is the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, especially code and cipher systems, and is used by everyone from the average citizen to the government and military.
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"nonstandard, adj. and n." OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2013) [accessed 14 January 2014].
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My career choices have changed through the years from mother and housewife through architect, accountant, or teacher, finally I have arrived at a computer career. The following is an idea of the path I have followed.