And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many low-income and minority students within schools. In combination, these policies leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers; significantly larger class sizes; less qualified and experienced teachers; and less access to high-quality curriculum. Many schools serving low-income and minority students do not even offer the math and science courses needed for college, and they provide lower-quality teaching in the classes they do offer.
It all adds up. Since the Coleman report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, another debate has waged as to whether money makes a difference to educational outcomes.
It is certainly possible to spend money ineffectively; however, studies that have developed more sophisticated measures of schooling show how money, properly spent, makes a difference. Over the past 30 years, a large body of research has shown that four factors consistently influence student achievement: all else equal, students perform better if they are educated in smaller schools where they are well known to students is optimal , have smaller class sizes especially at the elementary level , receive a challenging curriculum, and have more highly qualified teachers.
Minority students are much less likely than white children to have any of these resources. In predominantly minority schools, which most students of color attend, schools are large on average, more than twice as large as predominantly white schools and reaching 3, students or more in most cities ; on average, class sizes are 15 percent larger overall 80 percent larger for non-special education classes ; curriculum offerings and materials are lower in quality; and teachers are much less qualified in terms of levels of education, certification, and training in the fields they teach.
After controlling for socioeconomic status, the large disparities in achievement between black and white students were almost entirely due to differences in the qualifications of their teachers. In combination, differences in teacher expertise and class sizes accounted for as much of the measured variance in achievement as did student and family background figure 1. Ferguson and Duke economist Helen Ladd repeated this analysis in Alabama and again found sizable influences of teacher qualifications and smaller class sizes on achievement gains in math and reading.
They found that more of the difference between the high- and low-scoring districts was explained by teacher qualifications and class sizes than by poverty, race, and parent education.
Meanwhile, a Tennessee study found that elementary school students who are assigned to ineffective teachers for three years in a row score nearly 50 percentile points lower on achievement tests than those assigned to highly effective teachers over the same period. Strikingly, minority students are about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers and twice as likely to be assigned to the least effective. Minority students are put at greatest risk by the American tradition of allowing enormous variation in the qualifications of teachers.
Students in poor or predominantly minority schools are much less likely to have teachers who are fully qualified or hold higher-level degrees. In schools with the highest minority enrollments, for example, students have less than a 50 percent chance of getting a math or science teacher with a license and a degree in the field. In , fully one-third of teachers in high-poverty schools taught without a minor in their main field and nearly 70 percent taught without a minor in their secondary teaching field.
Studies of underprepared teachers consistently find that they are less effective with students and that they have difficulty with curriculum development, classroom management, student motivation, and teaching strategies. Nor are they likely to see it as their job to do so, often blaming the students if their teaching is not successful. Teacher expertise and curriculum quality are interrelated, because a challenging curriculum requires an expert teacher.
Research has found that both students and teachers are tracked: that is, the most expert teachers teach the most demanding courses to the most advantaged students, while lower-track students assigned to less able teachers receive lower-quality teaching and less demanding material. Assignment to tracks is also related to race: even when grades and test scores are comparable, black students are more likely to be assigned to lower-track, nonacademic classes.
Analyses of national data from both the High School and Beyond Surveys and the National Educational Longitudinal Surveys have demonstrated that, while there are dramatic differences among students of various racial and ethnic groups in course-taking in such areas as math, science, and foreign language, for students with similar course-taking records, achievement test score differences by race or ethnicity narrow substantially. In a comparative study of Chicago first graders, for example, Dreeben found that African-American and white students who had comparable instruction achieved comparable levels of reading skill.
But he also found that the quality of instruction given African-American students was, on average, much lower than that given white students, thus creating a racial gap in aggregate achievement at the end of first grade. These children, though, learned less during first grade than their white counterparts because their teacher was unable to provide the challenging instruction they deserved. When schools have radically different teaching forces, the effects can be profound.
Depending on the age level of the children, it is best to deal with the unpleasant aspects of our national history also because otherwise children from racial minority families may well fret about the glossing over off reality. Race and social class also affect education in other ways. Very often people from a racial minority group or a lower income family do not have a family history of higher education. If the parents or grandparents have not had access to education, the child that comes from such a family is not likely to have had anybody read to them or even have had to opportunity to be exposed to many books.
As all educators know, this can be a disadvantage when these children are placed in a class where many other children have had tremendous exposure to the written word. They may seem like slow learners even though all it really means is that they are getting a late start. The teachers have to be aware of these crucial differences and ensure that these children do not label themselves as weak or poor students.
An encouraging environment and a little focused help can go a long way in helping disadvantaged students catch up and this needs to be handled with empathy and sensitivity. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. The study landed with a gut punch. Black men earn significantly less than white men, even when they were raised in families making the same amount. Poor black boys tend to stay poor as adults, and wealthy black boys are more likely to be poor as adults than to stay wealthy. The study, released through the Equality of Opportunity Project, is noteworthy in scope, using data on millions of people born between and in the U. And while it focuses on their economic outcomes, the research also looks at education, where the impact of racism on black boys is also apparent.
The differences were substantial. Whereas poor white men graduated high school about 78 percent of the time, black men whose families had the same income graduated only 70 percent of the time.
Disparities for women exist too, but were much smaller. This has real-world consequences. A number of states that do not have school funding gaps between low- and high-income students still have gaps between white students and students of color, one recent analysis found.
The idea is to get extra help for students who need it. In many cases, that means black students.
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