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Socioeconomic status and academic achievement
Social inequality between blacks and whites regarding education
Socioeconomic status and academic achievement
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This is not to say that Black students do not face problems in private school settings. As many of these schools are predominately White, including the faculty, staff, and student population, certain challenges inevitably surface. Black youths face a hard challenge when their loving, well-meaning educational leaders, maintain a trend of racial inequities simply due to ignorance, and research reveals the negative impact of the same (Stevenson & Arrington, 2010). Not only educators, but also the school itself, by way of simple racial makeup, has proven to be problematic for Black students especially concerning geographic situations and socioeconomic statuses (Arrington & Stevenson, 2010; Orefield & Lee, 2006).
Another school in the same district is located “in a former roller-skating rink” with a “lack of windows” an a scarcity of textbooks and counselors. The ratio of children to counselors is 930 to one. For 1,300 children, of which “90 percent [are] black and Hispanic” and “10 percent are Asian, white, or Middle Eastern”, the school only has 26 computers. Another school in the district, its principal relates, “‘was built to hold one thousand students’” but has “‘1,550.’” This school is also shockingly nonwhite where “’29 percent '” of students are “‘black [and] 70 percent [are]
Thornton Fractional South High School represents a diverse school building in the South Suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We consist of a traditional 9th through 12th grade building with the exception of busing students to the District 215 Tech Center for vocational classes. We share these resources with our sister school TF North. Although we consistently outperform TFN, we are behind the state averages on both the ACT and the PSAE. On the ACT, we are below the state average on the composite score as well as on all three recorded sub-categories. We were closest to the state average in Science and the furthest in Reading. As for the PSAE test to measure those students meeting and exceeding standards, we are again behind the state average. TFS averaged 40.5% of students tested to meet or exceed standards. Meanwhile, the State of Illinois average was 53%. Currently, we are on the Academic Watch Status year 2. We were unable to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) or the Safe Harbor Target Goal for Reading and Mathematics which are the two target areas. Our goal as a school is to reach the AYP and attempt to reach and exceed the state averages on the ACT and PSAE.
More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)
The second is the concern over segregation and the effect it has on society. Mr. Kozol provides his own socially conscious and very informative view of the issues facing the children and educators in this poverty ravaged neighborhood. Those forces controlling public schools, Kozol points out, are the same ones perpetuating inequity and suffering elsewhere; pedagogic styles and shapes may change, but the basic parameters and purposes remain the same: desensitization, selective information, predetermined "options," indoctrination. In theory, the decision should have meant the end of school segregation, but in fact its legacy has proven far more muddled. While the principle of affirmative action under the trendy code word ''diversity'' has brought unparalleled integration into higher education, the military and corporate America, the sort of local school districts that Brown supposedly addressed have rarely become meaningfully integrated. In some respects, the black poor are more hopelessly concentrated in failing urban schools than ever, cut off not only from whites but from the flourishing black middle class. Kozol describes schools run almost like factories or prisons in grim detail. According to Kozol, US Schools are quite quickly becoming functionally segregated. Kozol lists the demographics of a slew of public schools in the states, named after prominent civil rights activists, whose classrooms are upwards of 97% black and Hispanic — in some cases despite being in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. It has been over 50 years since Brown vs. Board of Education. It is sad to read about the state of things today.
Parenting alone is not to blame for poor school performance of African American children. The size of a school affects their student’s dropout rate. When school size increases the quality of education decreases. As stated by Velma Zahirovic-Herbert and Geoffrey
African Americans who came to America to live the golden dream have been plagued with racism, discrimination and segregation throughout a long and complicated history of events that took place in the United States dating back to slavery to the civil rights movements. Today, African American history is celebrated annually in the United States during the month of February which is designated Black History Month. This paper will look back into history beginning in the late 1800’s through modern day America and describe specific events where African Americans have endured discrimination, segregation, racism and have progressively gained rights and freedoms by pushing civil rights movement across America.
Data proves that America does not have enough African American males teaching in today’s schools. As a matter of fact, only 2% of America’s nearly five million teachers are black men (Bryan 1). In our American society, more and more African American females are fiercely taking over both public and private classrooms. Although this might be a great accomplishment, school officials believes that if more black males teach, it would reduce the numbers of minority achievement gaps and dropout rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 44% of students nationwide are minorities, but nearly 90% of teachers are white. Polls and surveys further read that if there were more African American male teachers, the dropout rate would decrease while the graduation rate increases. In urban societies most African American teens would be more likely to succeed if there were more black males instructing secondary classrooms.
In Topeka, Kansas, the school for African-American children appeared to be equal to that of the white school. However, the school was overcr...
The problems currently arising are “not really in the debate over instructional methodology, but rather in communicating across cultures and in addressing the more fundamental issue of power, of whose voice gets to be heard in determining what is best for poor children and children of color” (Delpit 19). Administration must be able to respectfully gather information about a student in and out of school to help understand where they need the most structure and guidance and when to let them work independely. The current educational system in place has a mold that students need to fit, and for students of lower income familys, that mold is often expects less of them so naturally, the type of schooling provided for racial minorities is [they] one that prepares them for their respective place in the job market.” (Ogbu 83). Social reproducation is not a reality that society must accept and best try to break without a complete solution, but instead one that can be broken by a refocusing and recommittment to the students that often need the most guideance and resources for them to succeed and break social
Almost every person who has stepped foot in a college classroom has experienced ethnic diversity within the students in the room. This has not always been the case however. Up until 1954 blacks and whites attended different schools and weren’t allowed the same schooling opportunities. It took a young girl, Linda Brown, and her father, Oliver Brown, as well as many other courageous African American families to stand up to the old law of “separate but equal”, decided in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1892, and fight for equal educational rights for whites and blacks. Even though the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Brown family in 1954, this did not mean that everyone was so eager to accept integration so readily. In fact, right away things hardly changed at all, especially at the higher levels of education. It took a man by the name of James Meredith, the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, to further expand what the Brown’s had started and further break the racial boundaries put around education. Presently school integration has greatly improved but there is still definitely room for improvement. Baldwin was accurate in describing his present day conditions of school segregation in that it was almost a joke and that no “progress” had been made but he was wrong to say that, “the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems” (Baldwin 336). It is American good will and unity that has brought all races together to improve integration in public schools and although there is still room for improvement everyone’s attitudes have shifted to make schooling improved for all students.
America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s problems. Most important, money cannot influence student, parent, teacher, and administrator perceptions of class and race. Nor can money improve test scores and make education relevant and practical in the lives of minority students.
For centuries African Americans have fought for equal rights, one of them being an opportunity for the chance to get an equal education. Many people believe that African Americans have an equal or better chance at getting an education than other students. This is not the case when in fact, it is actually harder for these three reasons: African American students tend to come from harsh, poverty stricken atmospheres. Shattered family lifestyles that make it difficult to pursue a higher education because they have not received the proper information. Secondly, just because African Americans are minorities does not mean that they receive a vast amount of government assistance or financial aid to pursue a higher education. Lastly, African American students do not receive the same treatment as other students when they attend predominantly white colleges and universities.
A perfect example is the case between Normandy and Francis Howell School Districts in Missouri. Normandy, a school district that is majority of black kids, is not doing its job to educate the students. As Nikole H. Jones, a report of The New York Times, states, the district earns in total 10 out of 140 points, none of which are for academic subjects (This American Life, 2015). Normandy eventually loses its accreditation, forcing the students to go elsewhere for schooling. This is where a personal story of one of the students of Normandy comes into play. An honor roll student, Mah’Ria Pruitt-Martin, is one of many students who chose to continue their education at Francis Howell. Francis Howell, a majority white school, is another school district that is
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2004) reported that Black students continue to trail White students with respect to educational access, achievement and attainment. Research on the effectiveness of teachers of Black students emphasizes that the teachers’ belief about the Black students’ potential greatly impacts their learning. Teachers tend to teach black students from a deficit perspective (King, 1994; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Mitchell, 1998). White teachers often aim at compensating for what they assume is missing from a Black student’s background (Foorman, Francis & Fletcher, 1998). The deficit model of instruction attempts to force students into the existing system of teaching and learning and doesn’t build on strengths of cultural characteristics or preferences in learning (Lewis, Hancock...
“It is doubtful that any child can reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.” This was announced by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 (Thompson, 170). It would stand to reason that to live up to this decree, the child’s way of thinking, and quite possibly life, changes in the process of gaining said education. This is especially true of a black student attending a predominantly white school. I believe that the effect of black students gaining an equal education as their white counterparts improved their lives in many ways. The minority student is coming from a school that was more than likely a substandard facility that provided students with out-dated textbooks and little, if any, supplies for the learning process (Brown Case – Brown v. Board). They usually live in the poorer neighborhoods and direct contact with whites is limited to supplying labor. This accounts for some of the differences between an African-American person leaving their own social community and venturing off to a desegregated school. Not only would they be mentally unprepared educationally, but they also come face to face with an unfamiliar race and their beliefs and practices. African-Americans and whites need to learn to accept each other, and each other’s culture, if both attend the same schools and have equality in education.