Why is There a Racial Achievement Gap?
Sometimes the most racist aspects of a society are right there in front of you, but no one seems to notice.
Take the racial achievement gap.
It’s a term used to describe the fact that black and Latino students don’t do as well academically as white students.
Why does it even exist?
Why do students of color in the United States achieve less than their white peers?
They have worse grades, lower test scores, meager graduation rates and fewer achieve advanced degrees.
As of 2018, they had the lowest mean score of any racial group on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
And it’s been like that for more than half a century.
In 1964, a Department of Education report found that the average black high school senior scored below 87% of white seniors (in the 13 percentile). Fifty years later, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that black seniors had narrowed the gap until they were merely behind 81% of white seniors (scoring in the 19th percentile).
So what does that mean?
It’s a question that has haunted our education system for more than a century.
And the various answers that have been offered to explain it often reveal more about our society than they do about black and Latino children.
CLAIM 1: People of color are just genetically inferior
I know. This sounds glaringly racist.
And it is.
Yet this was the favorite answer for the achievement gap at the start of Continue reading: Why is There a Racial Achievement Gap? | gadflyonthewallblog