SAGE Article pt. 1

I'm currently reading an article titled, "Discovering Self: Relationships Between African Identity and Academic Achievement." It's by written by two professors at the University of Miami.

First, the professors talked about what individual academic performance is - It's compared to a standard to determine a person's level of accomplishment or success. In America, it's usually measured by comparing Black academic success to White American success. Tests show that African-Americans often score lower on reading, vocabulary and math exams as compared to whites.

It's been noted that tests that measure intelligence according to this standard may be skewed to primarily measure the learning experiences of white middle-class Americans are aren't a valid measure of intelligence in Blacks.

The authors mention several different stats including, "The reading and math skills of a 17-year old black students are comparable to those of 13-year old." "A black boy today has a 1 in 4 chance of dropping out of school before high school graduation and 1 in 12 chance of graduation from college."

The authors then give four possible reasons for the poor performance amongst African-Americans in school. I believe ALL these reasons ARE causes for the academic achievement gap in a town such as Brookline, versus the city of Boston. The four reasons offered are: the victim-blame approach, the cultural difference approach, the cultural deficiency approach, and the social structural approach.

The victim-blame approach or the person-centered approach, presumes that a person's low academic performance is a consequence of the individual or of the deficiencies of his or her life experiences.

The cultural deficiency approach suggests that maladaptive and inappropriate behaviors and attitudes acquired from the impoverished backgrounds of African-Americans conflict with the attitude and behaviors that are needed to excel in school.

The cultural difference approach suggests that because schools' curricula aren't adjusted to accommodate the African-American culture, African-American students are performing poorly.

The social structural approach suggests that the school system's teachers relate to black students according to the negative stereotypes that the larger society holds of African-American students.

The article goes more into each theory (and I will get to these in my next post). But I believe the theories offered here are the EXACT reasons for the gap in Brookline, as opposed to the gap in Boston Public Schools (which I believe is more or less due to insufficient funds in the school system and home/personal issues that interfere with learning in the classroom.)