Each year, children are failing in school. As the years progress, the number of children failing keep rising. In "Closing the Achievement Gap", Kati Haycock, the Director of the Education Trust at the American Association for Higher Education, states " Between 1970 and 1988, the achievement gap between African American and white students was cut in half, and the gap separating Latinos and whites declined by one-third. That progress came to a halt around 1988, however, and since that time, the gaps have widened" (6). As a result, people are doing studies and have come up with several theories that exist on how to address the achievement gap. These ideas have been categorized below to establish the issue to show causes for failure to achieve, to describe the consequences for students who are not achieving, and to suggest possible solutions.
Causes for Failure to Achieve
There are many causes for failure to achieve in students. Claude M. Steele, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, claims that the reason for student failure is a combination of "stereotype threat". Steele's definition of stereotype threat is "a situational threat, in general form, can affect the members of any group about whom a negative stereotype exists" ("Threat" 614). He believes that the stereotyping towards minority students and women, in certain fields, affects their performance to a high enough degree that they could and do fail. Steele included statistics of the lower achievement scores of African Americans in colleges as compared to white students. If the stereotype threat shows up often enough, those being stereotyped could internalize the stereotype. That would mean that students would always think that they...
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...nderlying effects to prove that it is not. My next paper is going to touch on the topics as to why teachers have changed their curriculum over the years and if the added laws, such as "No Child Left Behind" has anything to do with the change in curriculum.
Works Cited
Berlak, Harold. "Race and the Achievement Gap." Rethinking Schools Summer 2001. 7 September 2004
Haycock, Kati. "Closing the Achievement Gap." Educational Leadership March 2001. 27 September 2004 .
Steele, Claude M. "A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance." American Psychologist. June 1997: 613-629.
---. "Thin Ice: "Stereotype Threat" and Black College Students." Atlantic August 1999: 44-54.
"The Texas Miracle". 60 Minutes. Host Dan Rather. CBS. 25 Aug 2004.
Wax, Amy L. "The Threat in the Air." Keep Media Opinion Journal 18 Apr 2004. 19 May 2004 .
Steele, C. M. (1997). A Threat In The Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity And
Stereotypes are everywhere and can often create problems for people, however they become even more detrimental with teens, especially at schools. Writer and science correspondent for the NRA, Shankar Vedantam, in his article, “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance,” explains that stereotypes can hurt the performance of the one that it is associated with. He supports his claim by first explaining that how well people do on tests are determined on who administers the questions, then he explains that studies show that when people take tests and they are reminded of negative stereotypes that associate with them, then they don’t do as well, and finally he states that the studies are being widely ignored by all the people which should take heed of the findings, such as test makers and college acceptance people. Vedantam’s purpose is to tell you about the research conducted by Huang in order to inform you that stereotypes can affect performance on tests.
A substantial amount of educational and psychological research has consistently demonstrated that African American students underperform academically relative to White students. For example, they tend to receive lower grades in school (e.g., Demo & Parker, 1987; Simmons, Brown, Bush, & Blyth, 1978), score lower on standardized tests of intellectual ability (e.g., Bachman, 1970; Herring, 1989; Reyes & Stanic, 1988; Simmons et al., 1978), drop out at higher rates (e.g., American Council on Education, 1990; Steele, 1992), and graduate from college with substantially lower grades than White students (e.g., Nettles, 1988). Such performance gaps can be attributed to any number of factors, such as socioeconomic status, academic preparation, and educational opportunities; however, Steele (1997) pointed out that even when background factors are held constant, subsequent achievement remains lower for minority students. Moreover, much research in this area has focused on how African American students’ lack of motivation and negative attitudes contribute to their inferior academic performance (Ogbu, 1990); yet many Black students often report high educational aspirations (Fordham, 1996; Fine, 1991; Ogbu, 1987, 1990; Hauser & Anderson, 1991), even higher than White students of comparable class background (MacLeod, 1995). What remains certain is the urgent need to explain what accounts for the persistent academic underachievement of Black students.
The first issue that has been identified as a significant problem involved in the Achievement gap, is that it is partially the fault of America's educational system. Because of the suffering economy that has spurred the increasing lack of basic necessities in schools across America, there are an increasing number of children who are not being properly educated. Whether it is a deficiency in supplies, poor teacher selection, or administration and staff who are indifferent to the students at their sch...
Achievement gaps in schools across America impinge on racial-ethnic and socioeconomic status groups. For generations school systems focus on improving the achievement gaps for low-income and minority students. Statistics have provided evidenced that the school systems made enormous progress between 1970 and 1988, but came to a halt thereafter. Presently in the 20th century the gap has widened and the need for improvement is challenging for the school administr...
Izumi, Yutaka and Frank Hammonds. "Changing Ethnic/Racial Stereotypes: The Roles of Individuals and Groups." Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal (2007): 845-852.
Inzlicht, Michael. Stereotype threat: theory, process, and application. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Vescio, T. K., & Biernat, M. (1999). When Stereotype-based Expectancies Impair Performance: The Effect Of Prejudice, Race, And Target Quality On Judgments And Perceiver Performance. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29(7), 961-970.
People often subject others to a variety of stereotypes, accusing them of being a certain way without regard to what kind of person they actually are. Stereotypes are one or many generalizations of a group of people, whether negative or positive, founded on the basis that a majority of them share said characteristic (McLeod). Though people have come to realize the dastardly consequences of labeling, stereotypes have persisted in our culture, unrelentingly. Why? Stereotypes, whether racial, gender-based, religion-based, age-based, etc., continually permeate our society because it is difficult to undermine the psychological aspects of stereotyping, because of the media, and because it’s easier for people to cope with certain situations when they can generalize a group of people.
As humans in our society, we are categorized by stereotypes everyday, I never considered that just mentally identifying with these stereotypes can unconsciously affect my performance. Researcher and author, Shankar Vedantam, in his article suggests that reminding people of their stereotypes can negatively affect their academic performance among other things. He supports this claim by providing data collected from experimental trials, statements from scientists studying the theory and finally real life situations where the theory applies. Vedantam’s purpose is to use the information he found to give notice to the phenomenon. He adopts a didactic tone for the readers of the Washington Post.
Women are not as smart as men. Men are strong and do all the work. Americans are tolerant but arrogant. All African Americans outside of the United States are poor. Black people are stronger than white people. These are some famous stereotypes representing conventional and oversimplified beliefs about specific type of individuals or groups. Contrary to common perception, stereotypes may be a product of prejudices and exaggerations rather than truth. Harold Evans in this regard said, “Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and clichés.” ("Harold Evans Quotes - BrainyQuote."). This gestation of Evans’ is in close proximity with truth because stereotypes are mere oversimplified generalizations. Even though, certain segments of society would argue that stereotypes are based on truth because certain scholarly researches and confirmatory biases prove the veracity of stereotypes, nevertheless, stereotypes have no grounding in truth because they are based on biased media reports, hasty generalizations and lack of social and cultural knowledge.
S, Toronto Life, and Mourshed. M. Has very profound reasons on the achievement gap begin to close. Well according to the Washington post as well as Kimberly Dogget students should attend after school programs, and ask teacher, and councils for help when they need it. I agree to what the Washington post, and Kimberly Dogget are saying about how students should take education into their own hands. Nevertheless, teachers can get a better understanding of the students learning style. As well as help parents not worry about their kids homework if there are a single parent and have a lot on their plate, because it will already be done if they were to attend the after school
Throughout the nation, education inequality affects many minority students that have low-income which reinforces the disparity between the rich and the poor. The amount of children that have a socioeconomic background of poverty in the United States is estimated to be 32.4 million (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2011). Since many of these children are from
There are several factors that play a role in the development of stereotypes. The biggest learning of stereotypes come from family influences. Young children don’t see color or hold beliefs about culture and religion, but as they grow up, their ideas about people change with the people that they are surrounded by and associated with. Stereotypes also come from the media and social categorization (Ferguson). In young l...
Early production-function research, modeled on classical economic theory, tried to correlate a set of educational "inputs" to a single "output." Most of these studies were inconclusive. Because of the complexity of the schooling process and factors (like child poverty) outside schools' control, it has been difficult to isolate statistically significant one-to-one correlations between inputs and student learning.