Achievement Gap Essay -- Sociology, Gender Roles, Racial Relations

The achievement prison-breaking is specify as the disparity between the performance groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status. The achievement to-do can be ascertained through a variety of measures including standardized test scores, grade transport averages, drop out rates, college enrollment and completion rates. The Black-White achievement break is a critical issue in modern societys education system. Although data surrounding the issue clearly indicates that the racial performance gap exists in areas of standardized tests, graduation rates, dropout rates, and enrollment in continuing education, the causative reasons for the gap are ambiguoustherefore presenting a significant quarrel in regard to the most effective way to close the gap. The gap appears before children enter kindergarten and it persists into adulthood (Jencks 1998). Since 1970, the gap has decreased about 40 percent, but has steadily grown sinc e. Theories suggest the Black-White achievement gap is created by a multitude of social, cultural, and economic factors as well as educational opportunities and/or learning experiences. Factors such as biased testing, discrimination by teachers, test anxiety among total darkness students, disparities between blacks and whites in income or family structure, and patrimonial and cultural differences between blacks and whites have all been evaluated as explanations for the Black-White achievement gap (Farkas 2004). The research that follows testament elaborate on these factors as they affect the even up in academic performance of black malesparticularly the literacy achievement of black males.Within the Black-White achievement gap resides a subgroup whose academic performance is sorely ... ...disparities between the two ethnic communities that can be traced back to the legacy of slavery and separate forms of oppression that blacks have suffered. Supporters of this view felt tha t educational achievement correlates more strongly with economic status than with any other single variable. Since the majority of the black community lags behind whites in income and wealth, the educational inequalities are caused by the economic inequalities. They believe that once the inequalities disappear, the educational disparities will as well. Many argue that this is not a viable argument. They fate to other minority groups such as Asians, some of whom are financially worse off than blacks, and they excel in school . They felt that because the well-bred rights legislation removed all roadblocks back in the 60s and 70s something else must be contributing to the large gap.