Closing the Academic Achievement Gap Crisis in America The Achievement Gap in America has separated and divided America's youth into more or less, two different cultures of socioeconomic placement. The first being the predominantly Caucasian students at American elementary schools, high schools, and colleges that excel greatly in their education. Most of the time earning them middle to upper class jobs in the economy, the aforementioned group contrasts significantly with its opposite culture of American youth. The second culture, the population that is mostly made up of the minority races, takes it's place in the American education system as the population of students who are less interested in getting a decent education and taking advantage of the resources that are offered, for various underlying reasons. This in turn manufactures less people of this type of culture to be readily available for higher paying jobs, and often times unemployable for a job at all. The Achievement Gap in America is influenced by many cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic factors that separate lower and higher achieving students based on these factors, and leave a high amount of unemployed Americans as a result, if not incarcerated or deceased. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...ell can work together to solidify the learning environment for the student in need and create a better learner as a result. In conclusion, the Academic Achievement has been fueled by society's presets, minority students' lack of effort, and the failures of the schooling system in America. There has been some challenging setbacks, but the Gap can be fixed to create a common ground for all prospective members of America's society to excel on equally. By realizing that change can be achieved, there are little to no limits for minority students to create a better mindset towards education. Students, parents, and teachers have to be willing to work together, as well as tackle obstacles upheld by society, and the economic deficiencies that effect schools across America. This will, in turn, take America one step closer to closing the Academic Achievement Gap in America.
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.
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.
A key to ending the cycle of poverty, is educational equity. In America today, public education is unequal racially and socioeconomically (Honda 11). Internationally, America is not excelling academically. When looking closely at American student’s Program for
The United States is a country known for its diversity; so when it comes to the diverse classrooms of today many would not think there would be an issue. However, many schools face a multitude of problems that affect pupil’s education. Roughly twenty-seven percent of Hispanic, Latino, and African-American students in the state of Louisiana fall within the poverty level and unfortunately do not obtain a decent quality education. In addition, only seventy-four percent of those Louisiana students go on to graduate high school (Spotlight on Poverty, 2015). The core portion of the issue concerning poverty in relation to education is due to the economy, work availability, and
The Achievement has been a reoccurring issue for many years within the education system. Achievement gaps refers to the academic performance within a set of students. The most vital indicators pertaining to the achievement gap is reviewing standardized tests, course selection, dropout rates, and college completion rates (Morris 227). This issue has been reoccurring because of the various attempts of reforms to close the gap. Some of the reforms to decrease the gap is “No child left behind act 2001”, recovery act, P-12 reform, and many more. It can be argued that these first reforms changed the education system to any extent. However it is evitable to find the most successful reform for the United States increase economically. Which is why this topic is important for North Carolina. The achievement gap is sustainably defined by the differences among not only racial groups but subgroups as well.
One important lesson of the past decade, however, is just how difficult it is to close longstanding achievement gaps experienced by students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English Learners, and racial and ethnic minorities. We know from research that these gaps often start during the first years of life, even before children enter our education system, with children from low-income families starting kindergarten, on average, 12 to 14 months behind their peers in language development and pre-reading skills.
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.
Although we still see issues in education with race/ethnicity, opportunity and inclusiveness has certainly improved from the 1950’s after minorities were desegregated around 1954. In 2012, around 51% of black males graduate high school nationally. However, in some places such as Newark New Jersey, white and black male graduation rates in high school have become similar, with black students even surpassing white male students. However, the gap between black and white males has slightly increased from 2009 to 2013. White males are still generally placed in gifted and talented programs three times as much as black male students. In the 1960s black students accounted for one percent of students in predominantly white schools in the south. By 1986, black students accounted for around 40 % of students. However, this number dropped to about 30% by 2000. These trends show that even with major improvement in racial equality in education, there are still major issues impacting minority’s success in education and opportunities when compared to Caucasians. Nationally there is around a 20% difference in graduation rates between African-American students and white students. Under represented minorities made up around 30% of the population in 2006, but only accounted for less than 20% of engineering and science
Low-income and minority students are the individuals and groups that are the most negatively affected by the United States educational failure. The number of Hispanic students in the United States is expected to grow 33 percent by 2020 and the number of multi-racial students are expected to grow 44 percent, however their educational future does not look bright. Historically, minorities are the most likely to be impoverished. Dozens of policies have been drafted and implemented in order to fix this problem, however the solutions have not worked, since at least 50 percent of elementary school students are now attending schools where the majority of students are low income and minority. The high poverty, educational environment the students are in leads to less high school graduation and college attendance, thus in turn will lead to a large population that will burden the United States economy later on in areas such as healthcare and welfare.
However, the attainment gap “blame” can be placed on students, inadequate academic backgrounds, not enough knowledge base which results in falling behind peers. Reading and writing are not efficient among African-American students.
In the United States today, there are inequities that exist in education and access to resources for low income minority students. During a time where education is more important to an individual’s success than ever before, at-risk poverty and minority students are being disadvantaged in the current school system. It is imperative that students receive all of the resources that they need in order to advance through the educational system regardless of their socioeconomic background. The inadequate distribution of federal and state funding and insufficient access to resources, as well as adequately skilled teachers, are factors that contribute to the lack of support that low income students receive. By ensuring the proper allocation of funding
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...
Since the induction of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, our nation continues the endeavor to provide fair and equal opportunities for all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, native language, or disabilities. Along with this undertaking is the emphasis of accountability, testing, and new standards that aim to prepare students for college and career readiness. The biggest challenges teachers face is how to meet the needs of all students and how to close the gaps in student achievement. Lacina and Griffith (2016) state, “over the last decade, school demographics have shifted; many countries have been in turmoil because of war, and poverty continues to be one of the greatest challenges to students
Opportunity and learning are two of the gaps in education that are used to describe gaps. Achievement gap is the third gap used in educational terms. Achievement gap is a term used referring significant and racial economic inequality in academic performance between different groups of students. These groups can be racial such as white students and minorities or gender male and female students. Theses groups can also be economical meaning student from higher income and students from lower income households and communities. It is actually impossible to determine all the factors that contribute to the persistency of these gaps. Closing achievement gaps has been considered to be a major challenge in the education community. Educators, elected officials, policy makers, and others have put this issue at the top of their priority list. The technology we use today has given us the luxury to be able to track school information and we are now able to identify or even expose achievement gaps that in past decades may have been overlooked, ignored, or
In society, education can be seen as a foundation for success. Education prepares people for their careers and allows them to contribute to society efficiently. However, there is an achievement gap in education, especially between Hispanics and Blacks. In other words, there is education inequality between these minorities and white students. This achievement gap is a social problem in the education system since this is affecting many schools in the United States. As a response to this social problem, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed to assist in closing this achievement gap by holding schools more accountable for the students’ progress. Unsuccessful, the No Child Left Behind Act was ineffective as a social response since schools were pushed to produce high test scores in order to show a student’s academic progress which in turn, pressured teachers and students even more to do well on these tests.