The article I chose to research is entitled Cultural Code-Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap by Jennifer Morton. It was published in September 2014 and placed in the journal of political philosophy, with regards to education as well. The goal of the article was to point out the inequality that comes with the educational achievement gap and how to begin to fix the issue that has arisen. Morton explains that political, institutional, and structural factors lead to the segregation of poverty in minority communities because of their lack of access to educational and health service, reliable public transportation, and job (Morton 275). Morton recognizes that the achievement gap goes much deeper than the education realm and she believes
However, the students that are on the lower end of the achievement gap are caught between being members of a disadvantaged community and aspiring to be a part of the middle class. This causes them to have to adapt to the communities that they are a part of. This act of adapting to the difference in normative expectations is what Morton refers to as “straddling the gap” or “code switching”. These students not only have to navigate differences in language and dress codes but they have to switch dispositions to ones that are unfamiliar to them, which can come into conflict with those at home (Morton 276). There are benefits to the code-switching that these students do. For example, multicultural societies are characterized by the intermingling of cultural communities and the students who belong to different communities have the greatest position to help new relationships form between them (Morton 277). However, educational systems are being used to potentially alienate the students from their communities values and relationships in order to form them for a labor market. Morton believes that “whether educational institutions are justified in undertaking the task of rectifying this injustice by shaping a
However, she points the fact that for many students, code-switching is a necessity born of unjust socio-economic conditions. That is to say that there are some students and citizens that don’t have a choice to code-switch or not if they wish to rise in the socio-economic class. Although the ability to encourage students to code-switch in their educational realms seems to be the remedy for the achievement gap, it can be dangerous. If the students engages in compartmentalization of their cultures, it shields their behavior and is easily swayed by the demands of the job market, even if the beliefs and customs of the job markets do not line up with the values of the home (Morton
The first element of Kozol’s article is the reality of urban public schools and the isolation of their students. Jonathan Kozol illustrates a grim reality about the unequal attention given to urban and suburban schools. The article explains how Kozol specifically looks at how they reflect institutional discrimination and the failure to address the needs of minority children. The article notes that these are the inequalities of the title, seen in the way schools in predominantly white neighborhoods are more likely to have sufficient funding, while schools in poor and minority neighborhoods do not. Kozol shows everyone involved in the education system that public schools are still separate and, therefore, still unequal. Suburban schools, which are primarily made up of white students, are given a far superior better education than urban schools. These urban schools are primarily made up of Hispanics and African Americans.
She argues that segregation has larger implications than just material goods, so programs that merely redistribute these goods do not fully solve the problem. She discusses three additional effects that only integration can mitigate: “ social/cultural capital inequality, racial stigmatization, and anti-democratic effects” (Anderson 2). Anderson points out that members of isolated communities do not receive similar opportunities, “[undermining] disadvantaged groups’ accumulation of the cultural capital needed for advancement” (2). In addition, she argues that geographic isolation reinforces negative stereotypes, functioning to stigmatize minorities or members of out-groups in general. Racial stigmas do not just occur only with extremist thinking. Anderson points out that, “even people who consciously reject anti-black stereotypes have been found to discriminate against blacks” (17). She finally argues that segregation causes a lack of “both communication and accountability” between political elites and isolated minorities (17). Not only are these three effects byproducts of community separation, but they cannot be fixed simply by moving resources around. Anderson contends that integration is the only answer and is enacted through stages of formal desegregation, spatial integration, and formal social integration. These steps are the only way to ensure that isolated minorities will have equality under law, sharing of public institutions such as schools, and cooperation within those institutions leading to better
However, Dr. Mubenga’s research does not take account of how neighborhood plays its role on education, and specifically, how poorer neighborhoods lead towards poorer, unsuccessful schools. An Editorial from the New York Times points out how African American neighborhoods became poor in the first place, and it draws a connection between that and its effect on education.
In her article she points out how social class has become the main gateway to opportunity in America. The widening academic divide means that kids who grow up poor will most likely stay poor and the kids who grow up rich will most likely stay rich. About fifty years ago the main concern about getting a good education relied on your race but now it's about your social class. Researchers are starting to believe that children who come from higher income families tend to do better in school and get higher test scores.
Lacking the necessary support, many start to devalue the importance of doing well in school deciding that perhaps school isn’t part of their identity. In Susan’s case she’s eliciting multiple forms of subordination, and within each dimension she’s being subjective to different types of oppression; racial oppression, gender oppression, and class oppression, she’s experiencing cultural alienation and isolation and is not only based on her ethnicity as a Latina but is also influenced by how she is treated as a female, as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, and in relation to her English language proficiency, and even her perceived immigration status. In this sense, students like Susan experience different forms of discrimination or marginalization that stems from
For some students it is difficult to get a good education. These students live in a poor community and are required to go to schools that have a low graduation rate. These schools have a certain reputation such that other students refer to it as the “ghetto school”, “where the pregnant girls go”, and the “dropout factory”. This
The achievement gap is defined as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement gap can be observed through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade point averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement gap is a critical issue in modern society’s education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguous—therefore presenting a significant challenge in regard to the most effective way to close the gap. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood (Jencks 1998). Since 1970, the gap has decreased about 40 percent, but has steadily grown since. Theories suggest the Black-White achievement gap is created by a multitude of social, cultural, and economic factors as well as educational opportunities and/or learning experiences. Factors such as biased testing, discrimination by teachers, test anxiety among black students, disparities between blacks and whites in income or family structure, and genetic and cultural differences between blacks and whites have all been evaluated as explanations for the Black-White achievement gap (Farkas 2004). The research that follows will elaborate on these factors as they affect the decline in academic performance of black males—particularly the literacy achievement of black males.
The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the reality of inner-city public school systems, and the isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems.
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...
America demands that all youth receive an education and that its educational system is free and open to all—regardless of class, race, ethnicity, age, and gender. However, the system is failing. There is still inequality in the educational system, and minorities’ experience with education is shaped by discrimination and limited access, while white people’s experience with education is shaped by privilege and access. The educational experience for minorities is still segregated and unequal. This is because the number of white children that are withdrawn from school by their parents is higher than the number of people of color enrolling. White parents are unconsciously practicing the idea of “blockbusting,” where minorities begin to fill up a school; whites transfer their children to a school that has a small or no minority population. They unconsciously feel like once their child is in a school full of minorities that school would not get the proper funding from the federal government. Bonilla-Silvia (2001) states that “[i]nner-city minority schools, in sharp contrast to white suburban schools, lack decent buildings, are over-crowded, [and] have outdated equipment…” (97). The “No Child Left Behind” Act, which holds schools accountable for the progress of their students, measures students’ performance on standardized tests. Most white children that are in suburban schools are given the opportunity to experience education in a beneficial way; they have more access to technology, better teachers, and a safe environment for learning. Hence, white students’ experience with the education system is a positive one that provides knowledge and a path to success. Also, if their standardized testing is low, the government would give the school...
Richard Rodriguez’s The Achievement of Desire puts a very unusual point of view on how to look at the education system and how it affects the everyday person. Rodriguez talks immensely about the term he uses called “The Scholarship Boy.” He claims that the scholarship boy is technically defined as a student who is extremely talented but is changed by the school environment. This means that they (the students) can be extremely cultured at home but as soon as they start learning about other cultures through the education process, they change remarkably. Doing this can cause a lot of things to go right or wrong in the ones culture back home. It can cause problems between the kids and parents, siblings and siblings or even the parents at each
Although discrimination against minorities, such as Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans exists, residential segregation is imposed on African-Americans at a highly sustained level, more than any other racial or ethnic group in American society. “Blacks continue to live apart from whites; of all minorities, blacks are most segregated from whites. ‘They are also more segregated from whites than any other ethnic group has ever been segregated. The most well-off blacks find themselves more segregated than even the poorest Hispanics’” (Swain 214). Thus, it is evident that segregation imposed upon African-Americans subsists at a level that is not comparable to that experience by other minorities.
Through programs that directly fuel desegregation in schools, our educational systems have become a melting pot of different races, languages, economic status and abilities. Programs have been in place for the past fifty years to bring student that live in school districts that lack quality educational choices, to schools that are capable of providing quality education to all who attend. Typically the trend appears to show that the schools of higher quality are located in suburban areas, leaving children who live in “black” inner-city areas to abandon the failing school systems of their neighborhoods for transportation to these suburban, “white” schools. (Angrist & Lang, 2004)
Diversity among students including differences in culture, language and socioeconomic stance is not a new trend. The difference, however, is that today, the school system realizes that all students, including those who differ in some way from the "average" student, or those “at-risk” must be provided with an equal, opportune education (Morris, 1991).
Three structural inequalities that are in affect are education, income and the justice system. All three of these inequalities play a functioning role together and ultimately can ruin or cause hardship in a person’s life. The group that is mostly affected with these inequalities are African Americans and Latinos/Latinas. The first of these inequalities is education. Education is a serious structural inequality because now days it affects the majority of how you are seen in society and how you do financially. One of the problems with education is quality of the schools in poor neighborhoods. The schools in poor neighborhoods are unfit for learning. These “Schools in poor districts have inadequate facilities, materials, and personnel” (Wood).