Educational Problems of Minorities

Unfortunately these ‘assumed’ behaviours one must possess in order to succeed in schooling are not obtained by every individual especially by those of different races – with a different ‘hidden curriculum’. The hidden curriculum is an unwritten, unofficial and often can consist of unintended lessons that students learn in schools. These are often unexamined, and because of this these skills remain the status quo. The issue with this in regards to race is that many people may not possess the assumed knowledge therefore educators with have a lower expectation of minorities or immigrants and this will lead to a negative effect on their academic achievement. Many children from different races and cultures are not fully aware of how to read, and answer test correctly and do not understand many other concepts that are assumed in most educational system.

For instance, learning about different cultures may change the feelings of students towards a certain culture. Integrating students into the environment with students from different racial and ethnic background can also lead to prejudice and discrimination among them. This is thus disadvantageous to the students who are of ethnic minority communities, and it may inhibit their academic achievement. It justifies the parents who prefer taking their students to the schools that have their children’s race as the dominant one. Students who learn in schools that have their race as the predominant in the institution are also likely to do better (USA Today, para

Introduction The theme of the research is to discover why there is such a vast educational gap between minority and Caucasian students. Many American are unaware that such an educational gap actually exists among today’s students. This article informs us of alarming statics, such as of African American students representing a majority of the special education population, despite only making up roughly 40% of the student population. It also breaks down key events that contributed to the poor education that minority children are currently receiving. For example, in the past, it was illegal to educate African Americans and when it became legal to blacks were treated as second class students.

Minority students may be unserved or receive services that do not meet their needs. Testing constraints such as high incidence of ethnic or linguistic minorities and low socio-economic status can lead to minority students not receiving services that meet their needs. Research shows that socio-political factors such as social deviance variables (eg. school suspension and corporal punishment) and school violence also lead to minority students being unserved in special education. Identification and placement practices have caused problems with identification because of the vagueness of the criteria for elegibility (Artiles, Aguirre-Munoz, Abedi, 1998).

I suppose this happens due to the stereotype of minority students not being capable of the educational work as that of other students. Classroom behavior toward minority students may be shown in appropriate, and/or unrecognized. For instance, a teacher may call on a non-minority student before a minority student. The teacher may pick on the non-minority due to a belief that these students care about their schooling, whereas minority students are being pre-judged without the chance to really learn. Some people even believe that combining the different minorities may cause problems.

The lack of appropriate assessment strategies unfairly puts cultural and language diverse students at a disadvantage. These types of tests are geared towards assessing the majority of the population, not the minority. This poses a serious problem when trying to correctly identify students who may have learning or behavioral problems (Ralabate, & Klotz, 2007). Socioeconomic barriers can limit a student’s success due to a lack of resources, and lower parental involvement. This can impact a student’s performance in school, indicating a possible disability when there might not be one.

Why are there few minority teachers in schools? Why are minority parents not involved in the education of their children? Clearly, there is no one easy answers to these questions, but some people argued that race and class differences are fundamentally caused by genetic dynamics and consequently in their essence are unchallengeable. Others reasoned for their scholastic malfunctions continue to be seen as partially environmental and social racism. Resource scarcity and lack of opportunity repeatedly are presented as the only conceivable explanations for poor performance in education.

While the minority is placed in the lower tracked class, they are given the lower quality education that they do not deserve (Enns 2015). Nevertheless, according to Paton (2012), the mixed approach was thought to have a its disadvantage because it might put high-ability children at a disadvantage. Parents were scared that the lower-ability children would hold their high-ability children back academically (Paton 2012). Having said that, the parents are wrong, as it is not another child’s fault in why their children are not pushed to their full potential. It is the teacher’s responsibility to provide more challenging lessons for the more intelligent children.

They claim children with a disability should receive equivalent access to public education and not be left behind because of an impairment. Many also dispute attempts should be made to develop tests to measure academic achievement. Aron and Loprest state “Reforming special education cannot be done in isolation; it requires integration with reforms being made in general education” (116). However, there are many problems the education system is going to face if children with a disability are integrated into standard classes. If children with disabilities are not isolated then behavioral problem... ... middle of paper ... ...nt tends to be extremely lower than the average student their age.

One of the opportunities we can provide for those children is school choice. Some people argue that they pay high tax to provide quality education for their children, and others do not have the right to share with it. If we follow the system thinking, this belief is a fallacy because we can not separate one from others in a system. In the long run, school choice can create success for children from the low SES family. In other words, if we can help those children succeed in the school and society, they will produce less problems to the society, and we can build up a better environment for everyone.