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Educational Problems 1 It is hypocritical to talk about equal opportunity when the educational system ensures never-ending advantages for upper-income white students. A discussion of closing the achievement gap should not focus on equalizing outcomes, but rather on equalizing learning opportunities. To achieve that goal, it is necessary to take a look at what is going wrong with the education of African American children- especially low-income children. Although we can commend the No Child Left Behind initiative for the fact that the federal government is trying to do something, this reform provides no national, visionary leadership that shows schools how to improve student achievement. Most of its agenda is outside-in or top-down.
Its methods generally consist of politicians pressuring, threatening, or punishing school districts. In this climate of hysteria over high-stakes testing, school districts are responding with hysterical solutions. This issue was well expressed in the article by Janice E. Hale in Educational Leadership magazine.
It seems that the solution for everything wrong with education today is to teach students more academic content at a lower grade level. If students are performing poorly on 5 th grade mathematics, the solution is to teach them more advanced mathematics in the 2 nd grade. The state board of education in Michigan recently approved new math standards for elementary and middle school students. To achieve these standards, the board has proposed pushing the teaching of multiplication from 3 rd grade down to 2 nd grade (Hale, 2004). Another example of the mad scramble to raise standards- in ways that favor the already-privileged- is the addition of constructed writing responses to high-stakes tests. You cannot just descend on a lower-income African American child in the 2 nd or 3 rd grade and expect that child to be a proficient writer when he or she has not received the necessary support.
As an elementary school principal wisely said to me, You have to talk it before you can write it. The children who do well on such tests are those whose parents read to them, take them on enrichment excursions, and provide opportunities to talk about the childrens ideas and develop their imaginations. Many low-income African American children do not benefit from these experiences at home. There are several steps recommended for improving the existing situation.
As a first step in closing the achievement gap, schools must ensure that every child is reading on grade level in the 1 st grade. Although educators and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels tout 3 rd grade as the goal for grade-level reading achievement, middle-class parents would not be satisfied if their children were reading below grade level until the 3 rd grade. The second step is to ensure that every child is on grade level in math in the 3 rd grade. I select 3 rd grade for math performance because teachers address almost every elementary school mathematics operation over the course of 3 rd grade. A child who can perform on grade level in math in that grade will have a solid foundation to build on in later years as stated in the article. According to Hale, we should take every measure to stop the bleeding with the next cohort that enters kindergarten.
To achieve that end, we must reduce class sizes for primary grade students. Another fundamental need is creating linkages between preschool and kindergarten by expanding the training given to preschool teachers. Kindergarten teachers participate in teacher training programs that certify them to teach kindergarten through 5 th or even 8 th grade. They have the opportunity to obtain a long-range view of activities that students engage in throughout the elementary grades. When preschool teachers obtain any training at all, their program generally limits their purview to preschool education, often in an associates degree program. According to the authors experience, when preschool teachers attend conferences, they want make and take sessions instead of workshops that focus on theory and emphasize why we engage young children in particular activities.
Thus, we have lower-income children whose preschool teachers lack the expertise to provide instruction that will bridge the gap between what these children receive at home and what they need to succeed in elementary school. Bibliography: Janice E. Hale. Inequality in Preschool Experience. Educational Leadership, Nov 2004, Vol. 62, Issue 3, p 34.
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Research essay sample on African American Children Achievement Gap
