Diversity In The Classroom

Diversity in public school classrooms has always been present to some extent, students have never all been the same. In the last fifty years or so we have seen an exceptional growth in the number of distinctive groups, and therefor distinctive needs in the class room. Much of this was caused by policy change, such as integration of African Americans and greater emphasis on including women and those with exceptional needs. While integration increased, America's family values changed, divorce increased, as did out-of-wedlock pregnancies. This paper will focus on the correlation of traditional and nontraditional family structures to educational achievement. The data I am primarily relying on is from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and is controlled for age, race, and family income. It uses four different family structures: intact, that is, having both biological parents, single parent, step family, and other. For the purposes of this paper I will be mostly ignoring “other,” since it can represent many unknown structures. The data is further broken down to the mother's educational achievement: high school dropout, high school graduate, and college graduate. All that said, the proportion of students who go on to complete college is clearly correlated with family structure. A student in an intact household, who's mother graduated from college had about a two out of three chance to go on to complete college, the best odds in the

Of course a teacher will dedicate much time to student's academics, but a teacher can also be dependable, and have clearly defined expectations, giving students a sense of stability. Giving care to being understanding, and resolving conflicts by working together, both by modeling that with colleagues, and in interactions with