Diversity In Schools

Water Fields, one New Jersey parent, believed that his own African-American daughter

would get the recommendation from a teacher to take the higher-level math class because she

had good middle school grades and standardized test scores as required. Unfortunately, when

Fields registered his daughter to classes for new school year, his daughter got denied entry to the

advanced freshman math class. “The stubborn achievement gap in the U.S. educational system”

has limited Fields’ daughter to improve her academic performance (Kohli). In 2013, the U.S.

Department of Education estimated, in South Orange Maplewood School District’s 8th Grade in

New Jersey, the total enrollment included 2,920 White students and 2,516 Black students, but

there were 2,137 White

students being accepted to take an upper level math while only 276
Black students were allowed to move to an higher level math (Kohli). According to a study
pioneered by economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University for linking trends in student
achievement to growth in GDP, McKinsey estimated, “If the United States had closed the racial
achievement gap and black and Latino student performance had caught up with that of white
students by 1998, GDP in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher.”
Low-achieving performance can tremendously impact on minority students’ life outcomes because poor academic achievement is highly correlated with low educational degree, low
wages, and high unemployment. Without access to the necessary tools that would narrow the
achievement gap between minority students and White students, inevitable harm befalls not only
the financially disadvantaged individual lives of minority students but also the economy of the
country as a whole. I am advocating for a comprehensive four part intervention which begins
with passing H.Res.315: “Waiving points of order against the conference report to accompany
the bill (H.R. 1- No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) to close the achievement gap with
accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind.” This legislation will be
supplemented by inculcating minority students with long-lasting learning interest throughout
their lives through the program “Project-based Learning,” as well as improvement in student
achievement by increasing teacher and principal effectiveness through the program “Teacher
Incentive Fund” which is operated by the Office of Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality
Programs at the U.S. Department of Education. Legislation complemented by student and
teacher focused programs must also be enhanced by promoting family and community structure,
and I am advocating for the program “Improving Ethnic Minority Parent and Community
Engagement.” This program has been established by the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund and the National Education Association with a purpose of “improving
communication and strengthening relationships between ethnic minority parents and schools”
(“Minority Parents and Community Engagement”).

Because one primary cause of achievement gap is the cultural differences between white

teachers and minority students, which detrimentally affect teaching and learning progresses, the

solution I am advocating for establishes the Office of Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Programs at the U.S. Department of Education called “Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF),”

that aims to increase teaching effectiveness as well as improve student performances. Teachers

and students with the same racial or ethnic background have more positive interactions, which

motivate students to achieve higher academic performances. According to the summary paper,

Student Motivation: An Overlooked Piece of School Reform, “Students are more motivated by

teachers whom they perceive as caring,” therefore, when white teachers show less interactions

with minority students, students become less motivated and unwilling to engage in class

activities. The TIF program will increase the teachers’ effectiveness by supporting the

teachers
with “performing-based compensation,” such as “robust career ladder opportunities,” “peer-to-
peer coaching” as well as “job-embedded professional development” (“Teacher Incentive
Fund”). As the educators’ effectiveness escalates, the students’ performance will improve. Under
the performing-based compensation systems, student academic performance and classroom
evaluations will be conducted multiple times during each school year and “provide educators
with incentives to take on additional responsibilities and leadership roles” (“Teacher Incentive
Fund”). Under TIF program, compensation systems are reformed so that teachers who raise their
students’ academic growth will get additional pay, thus narrowing down the achievement gap.
Furthermore, the TIF program also helps to “increase the number of effective teachers teaching
poor, minority, and disadvantaged students in hard‐to‐staff subjects (“Improving Student
Achievement and Closing the Achievement Gap”). This system will hold white teachers who
may have biased teaching behaviors toward their minority students to highly effective and
responsible educators whose career pathways will be recognized, developed and rewarded as
they advance through various career stages (“TIF”). The goals of TIF outlined above, if
successfully accomplished, will effectively counteract the cause of the cultural differences
between white teachers and minority students and more importantly, close the achievement gap
between white students and minority students.
Early school education (ESE) strategy is basically invested as a way of preventing the achievement gap for most advantaged minority children, not remediating the problem like TIF program does. According to Professor James Heckman, a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, “small investments start by addressing a major root cause of inequality- disadvantaged early childhood,” therefore, the most productive way to address the problem of educational achievement gap is to build up the skill base before the school life begins, and eventually the learning skill will percolate through the children’s life cycle. Professor Heckman argues that “minority white schooling gaps are not mainly due to income but to ability,” and these “ability gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged open up early in the lives of children” (“Return on Investment: Cost vs. Benefits”). When the children get into the adolescent years, it is more difficult for them to develop their abilities to control “socio-emotional skills, physical and mental health, perseverance, attention, motivation, and self-confidence” which are very important determinants of their success (Heckman). Based Figure 1 of rate of return to investment human capital, there is much higher return rates to investment of programs which target towards the earliest years (0-3 years old) or preschool programs for 4 or 5 year-old kids compared to school or post-school periods. The data significantly shows that the earlier society starts to intervene in the life cycle of minority children, the less costly it is to remediate the disadvantaged problem. In a recent research at National Institute for Early Education in the State University of New Jersey, Professor Steven Barnett reported in “Expanding Access to Quality Pre-K is Sound Public Policy,” “By third grade, children who are reading at grade level are four times more likely to graduate from high school than students who are not proficient readers,” and “95% of CA kindergarten teachers say students who attended preschool have stronger social and academic skills.” When the children are motivated to learn and engage on their early lifetime, they will have better opportunities to be successful once they become adults. In addition, a research from Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute reveals that if the children start their learning habit early during their
lifetime, this high-quality early education will be tremendously beneficial for their quality of
later life, especially to disadvantaged minority children; as stated by the principal investigator of
FPG’s Educare Learning Network Implementation Study, Boreen Yazajian, “more high-quality
early education and care can narrow the achievement gap before children reach kindergarten”
(“Early education narrows the achievement gap with younger starts and longer stays”). Thus we
can see that ESE is a useful preventative tool to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged minority children and white children by motivating and stimulating the children to
get involving in academic pathways early in their life.
One of the most significant costs of ending the achievement gap is the tremendous sum of
financial support required for renovating schools, reducing class sizes and reforming teaching
systems, but this financial sacrifice will ultimately be offset by improving people’s living
standards because they will make more money, that will pay more in income tax which benefits
all taxpayers. Robert Lynch who is the Everett E. Nuttle professor of economics in the
Department of Economics at Washington College is dedicated ending the achievement gap,
argues that closing the gaps “is not only key to fulfilling the potential of people of color; it is also
crucial to the wellbeing of our nation” because it helps to increase the size of the U.S. economy
by raising incomes as well as tax revenues (Lynch 1). He notes that “there are a wide range of
public policies [such as access to child care and preschool programs, school reform, etc.] that
could help narrow educational achievement gaps (Lynch 1).” According to Kevin Carey, who
researches education funding and low-income/minority children, “to achieve any given level of
educational outcomes costs two and a half times as much money as required to educate a regular
student;” thus the foundation need for implementing educational programs, including early
childhood education, improving teacher quality and class-size reduction, for minority children
will come at a significant cost (Carey). For instance, the legislation which was passed by the
Maryland legislature and enacted in law in May 2002 calls for $1.3 billion in new education
funding, supporting low-income/minority students; begun in 1996, the Student Achievement
Guarantee in Education program provided small class sizes of 15 or fewer high-poverty/minority
students with initial funding of $2,000 per student (Carey). But without this expense, the
likelihood that disadvantaged minority students will give up achieving high academic
performance, get involved in violent and criminal activities and contribute to economic damage of the United States will ultimately create an enormous cost to the society. In 2016, Peter
Hancock, a politics report for Lawrence Journal-World, reported in “Cost of closing achievement
gap could be staggering” that “much of the district’s recent $92.5 million bond issue focused on
renovating schools and reducing class sizes in schools where most of the district’s low-income
and minority students are clustered” (Hancock). Thus, while these educational funding programs
deemed crucial for the ending of the achievement gap between disadvantaged/minority students
and advantaged/white students may seem like a cost too steep to justify advocating for programs
like ESE and TIF that demand to improve teaching quality or early education intervention as
foundational needs, if this cost if not covered, American people will ultimately shoulder a more
tremendous financial burden in the long run in the form of the handling of many criminal cases
as well as economic damage caused by declined GDP, incomes and taxes.