What's the source of the achievement gap between minority students and white students in the classroom? Is there only one cause or several causes that have contributed to the gap's growing rate within the past years? There are several theories in the world that try to explain the main cause of the gap. One theory is that minority students lack proper and up to date technological resources that white students have in their public school systems. Another theory is that middle/lower class minority students seem to have a lack of parental structure at home and in result they don't have resources more privileged students have and are less likely to get help from parents with their homework. Some say that many minority students live in single family households and that single parent is having to work much harder to provide for the family, so the child(ren) is/are left to fend for themselves more often. Some theorists say that minority students (mainly Hispanic and some African-American) have too different of a culture at home to relate to the culture of their white peers at school and sometimes they lack adequate vocabulary from a young age. This lack of good grammar only grows larger as the child gets older. Students with parents who have immigrated to the United States from another country may face problems with a language-barrier. Some theorists say that minority students have less motivation to do their best on standardized tests (MCAS for Mass and the SAT/ACT tests). This could possibly be because the SAT/ACT test seems to have a bias towards White/European Americans. Minority students may feel as though they aren't supposed to succeed on these test and therefore begin a self-fulfilling prophecy begins - they purposely don't try as hard because they only can imagine failing or not doing well.
Possible causes go on and on for the reasons behind the achievement gap between white and minority students - I have yet to conclude with what reason I believe in the most.
Kayla: some interesting thoughts here, but I'm not sure if these are your ideas (as they seem to be) or a reading response to the last 50 pages (which it needs to be). Please clarify. Again, the ideas are interesting, but I need to know what you're reading and what you're learning from your reading.
ReplyDeleteWebsites used:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/achievement-gap/
2-3pgs
http://www.dallasindicators.org/Portals/8/Reports/Reports_Internal/AcademicAchievementGap.pdf 13pgs
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/achievement-gap/the-social-cost-to-academic-ac.html 1-2pgs
http://www.examiner.com/urban-education-in-baltimore/the-african-american-academic-achievement-gap-still-looms-maryland 1pg
Book Used: The Black-White Achievement Gap by Rod Paige and Elaine Witty pgs 13-20