Racial Disparities Essay

These claims have been well documented. However, the connection to the graduation gap may be clearer with an answer of how other factors such as financial and other family problems brought about by poverty affect them. The rest of the book provides possible solutions to questions of invisibility such as respecting and valuing black students. Another solution is removing remedial programs for challenging curricula and supports that are appropriate.

This chapter elaborates on how racism has a negative impact on African American education, in which has been happening for many decades and is currently taking place. Furthermore, it speaks about segregation and how it currently exists in different ways. Additionally, it speaks on how segregation not only exist in one school, but it likewise exists across the school districts. It speaks on how segregation in these schools has a negative impact on students’ academic success and future success.

For generations African Americans have been disadvantaged in America and effects of these injustices have made a lasting impression. Education is one of the leading problems in the black community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” Recognizing the structural forces in my life has helped me understand my place in society. Being able to “understand everyday life, not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as part of his “war on poverty” in hopes of closing the achievement gap between low income schools, which typically house larger percentages of student of color, and their more affluent counterparts. The act has been redefined and reauthorized every five years since its original enactment. However, despite the last 50 years of education reform, the disparity amongst high and low poverty schools is as large as it ever was. In turn, the disparity between students of color and white students has only grown. Clearly, the one size fits all approach to education America has been using does not work. The U.S public education system is broken and, as a country, very

The American education system is failing the generations of the future. Society neglects the children born into impoverished areas, while mainly white upper class children participate in superior educational activities. Low-income neighborhoods often produce schools with low scoring students. Therefore the government transitions these schools into impersonal factories. The phrase diversity masquerades the reality of re-segregation of schools. Many schools across the country are utilizing the phrase diversity, yet the statistics reveal that over ninety percent of the students are black or Hispanic. Creating successful environments is extremely difficult and subsequently results in serious consequences for the American education system.

Ever since the establishment of equal education in the United States, there has been a disparity in academic success between children of different races. The education of African American children has become a prime example of this. As discussed in the historical text, A Letter to My Nephew, which was written during the time of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, African Americans were not given equal opportunities to succeed educationally and could do little to change their futures for the better. They had to work much harder than whites to receive even a portion of the recognition and success that whites achieved (Baldwin 1). Although many today believe America has overcome this problem, it still remains a pressing issue in many aspects of society, arguably the most important being education. The racial achievement gap, an important term to familiarize with when discussing this topic, refers to the disparity in educational performance between students of different races (National Education Association 1). As of now, although the education achievement gap has been narrowing, there still remains a large disparity between African Americans and their racial counterparts. According to a study by Roland G. Freyer and Steven D. Levitt, professors at Harvard University and W.E.B Du Bois Institute, respectively, African American students enter kindergarten already significantly behind children of other races, and their test scores continue to drop

Incarceration has negative effects on the education of black students. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, it shows that elementary and high schools receive about 73 percent of their state funding from a discretionary fund, the exact same fund that colleges and universities count on for half of their budgets. However, $9 out of every $10 that support imprisonment come from the same pot of money. With tons of billions of dollars in prison spending annually, states are finding that there is simply less voluntary money available to invest in education, especially in these lean economic times. The school districts that are considered failing schools, which house a majority of minority students, are significantly impacted. Consequently, education systems for black students are designed to continue the school to prison pipeline. These despairing injustices do not end with the education systems, they are also prevalent in the job force.

A year later, the courts made a decision in Brown II that “school officials proceed with all deliberate speed as they forged school systems not based on color distinction” (Anderson 4). Once these changes for African Americans began, supporters of segregation became more determined to remain the majority in power. Whites were upset that federal authorities overrode their desires and “sponsored a dangerous inversion of the South’s cherished traditions and the nation’s racial heritage” (Anderson 4). In their minds, blacks did not have a right to become educated, to have money, or to even be in the same category as them. White considered themselves racially superior and wanted it to remain that way.

After reviewing the Government laws and policies that have been in placed and replaced in history and more currently to contribute and correct the issue. The most important question of all remains. Why does the Achievement Gap still exist? According to former Secretary of Education John King (2016) “Black and Hispanic students continue to lag behind their White peers in achievement and graduation rates.”After so many attempts made by the Government to close the Gap and create equality, clearly there is something that is not being addressed across American Public Schools. Frederica Wilson (2013) former state senate member stated in the Brown vs Board Documentary There is such a difference in going to one school in one community and going to another in another community. Why don't we tackle that problem instead of testing the students predicting they will fail, watching them fail and denying them a good life?”The question now that remains how exactly are the schools different in different communities?

U.S. There are more people of color, whether black, hispanic, Indian, or any other color other than white in our overcrowded prisons today. They are in there because of their street crimes and because they are minorities who get significantly higher rates of penalization. Because of their financial situation, they do not have the ability to get able attorneys to represent them. Since they don’t have able representation, they plead the way they are told and end up in prison and remain there until their sentence ends. Their plight is one that does not have much assurance because they live in high crime areas, have low income or no jobs at all, and little or no education. Living in these areas and having no form of income with little education has labeled them. This predicament unfortunately leads to crime. The punishment for the crimes of the minority races are most of the time more harsh than for the white person. If a black person harmed a white person, the penalty would be harsher than if the black person harmed another

The system has also privatized the school and prison system, which go hand in hand with the economic reality of today. The racial disparities of today, was triggered by the downfall of the economic system that is in place right now. Families are struggling and individuals are looking for a way out. This paper will identify the realities African Americans face with the issue of economic justice along in the United States.

Issue Presented: How can the societal issues of racial disparity be addressed on the state and local levels?

According to research, black student achievement has greatly improved since the desegregation of schools (Strauss, 2014). With the help of proper school supplies and conducive learning environments, students of all races have been able to achieve higher academic goals. The results of this court case extend beyond black students; Brown v. Board of Education opened the door for educational equality for a great deal of other students.

Brown vs. The Board of Education ruling in 1956 ruled that segregated schools are unconstitutional but it took a decade for black students to enter into white schools. This case first started out a black community declaring to have better education, improving schools and curriculum. Finally, the Brown vs. The Board of Education case was seen in the black communities to ensure equality in the black community. The author focuses on the closing the achievement gap of blacks and white in high school graduation from 1940-1980. African American has always been playing the catch up game due to the struggle for civil right equality.

This ignorance, in fact, causes a great deal of anger in black and minority communities. And the effects of this anger are exemplified in the multiple riots, violent protests, social media outrage, and overall frustration that they feel. Although the segregation laws that once separated white and black society are long gone, the concept still exists to some extent. Statistics show that minority children are more likely to be brought up in troubled neighborhoods just based on demographics and the areas in which these races are forced to congregate based on sheer availability. As a result, non-white races in comparison to whites will always have the lower income jobs, lesser education, and unequal facilities. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that stated, “only 50% of high schools offer calculus, and only 63% offer physics, while 10% to 15% don’t offer other vital courses like algebra, geometry, biology, and chemistry. These numbers are especially relevant in schools with the highest percentages of African American and Latino students” (Mitchell, 2015). Within education itself, many of the African American students feel left out and are stereotyped throughout various schools in the nation. With a raise in the rate of African American households beginning to homeschool their children (Mazama, 2015), it is obvious that these children do not feel safe at school and their parents do not feel they are safe at school, because of race. The “cycle-of-poverty” should it remain unrectified, is both a dire and long-term consequence of racial discrimination that not only affects the present generation, but will inadvertently affect their children as well. But the present day consequences of the neverending cycle are just as severe. African Americans feel the highest level of frustration as they have been in this country for over three centuries, yet the