Education and racial disparities within our education system
Topic -education and racial disparities within our education system. In the discussion, each member should share their conceptualize of the topic and identify possible dimensions of the term. how do your conceptualizations and dimensions differ, and why? Once consensus on conceptualization has been reached, the image you were actually going to measure this concept through sociological research. What are some of the indicators for this concept? How would you operationalize the concept to ensure both reliability and validity?
Next, consult prior work to see how your concept has been conceptualized within the existing literature. Each member should bring in at least one journal article. How and where does your conceptualization differ from others? Are there dimensions of the concept that you or others hadn’t considered? How was the concept operationalized in the study? Was the measurement valid and reliable?
For the paper submission please include the following:
*Conceptualization of the topic with dimensions and indicators
*Operationalization of the topic with a discussion of reliability and validity
*Comparison to existing research articles on the topic (one per group member) addressing the questions listed above
For decades, black students in the United States have lagged behind their white peers in academic achievement. In 2014, the high school graduation rate for white students was 87 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For black students, the rate was 73 percent. Test scores show a similar racial gap.
To be sure, many factors contribute to the achievement gap, including home and neighborhood environments and school factors unrelated to teachers’ performance. But one dynamic is becoming impossible to ignore: Notable differences in the way black students are treated by teachers and school administrators.
Research shows that compared with white students, black students are more likely to be suspended or expelled, less likely to be placed in gifted programs and subject to lower expectations from their teachers.
The disparities can be tough to discuss, says Anne Gregory, PhD, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University. “There’s this idea that if we name the phenomenon, it’s teacher blaming.”
Yet in many cases, such differences in treatment aren’t malicious or intentional. Some disparities arise from cultural misunderstandings or unintentional “implicit biases” that unknowingly affect our thoughts and behaviors.
Racial bias doesn’t just influence how teachers teach. Bias also affects whether and how they discipline students for misbehavior.
According to 2013–14 data collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, black K–12 students are 3.8 times as likely as their white peers to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions.
And that’s not necessarily because black students are causing more problems, Gregory notes. A variety of studies have found that even after taking achievement, socioeconomic status, self-reported behavior and teacher-reported behavior into account, black students are still punished disproportionately.
Students who are suspended are more likely to drop out of school and have run-ins with the juvenile justice system, a pattern so well documented in the literature that it has earned its own dubious moniker—the “school-to-prison pipeline.”