When it Comes to Educating Black Students, Some Believe Black Teachers an Important Part of a Successful Formula
Posted By The Editors | April 6th, 2012 (3 minutes ago) | Category: Education | No Comments »
Print This Postby Tarice L.S. Gray
For decades now, some of the nation’s leading educators and politicians have tried to solve the much-publicized riddle known as the achievement gap between black and white elementary and secondary school pupils.
Part of the reason is simple math. The most recent federal nationwide tests in reading and mathematics, theNational Assessment of Educational Progress program, found that black and Latino students in the fourth and eighth grades fell behind their white peers by an average of more than 20 points – or about two grade levels.
Those gaps, all agree, contribute mightily to the subsequent disproportionate drop-out rates of black and Latino high school students.
The discussion about the numbers is driven by the significant social and economic difficulties many black and Latino students face outside the classroom – such as the impoverished families and neighborhoods they come from. Some observers also contend that students are hurt by a cultural disconnect between them and many of the white teachers on their schools’ faculties, a distance caused by teachers’ inability to understand, literally, where the students are coming from. Others also tie the cause of the achievement gap to many whit