We in the black community and other minority groups will have to work much harder with all the rollbacks to Diversity and Inclusion and Affirmative Action.  This is nothing more than another attempt to hold minorities back in the country.  Their reasoning is so off the charts it makes me sick.  The system is unfair and the idea that whites are being discounted over unqualified minorities is outrageously laughable.  The system does not work that way unless the institutions are purposely trying to sway the results.  I will share my own tips, then go into the history of education.

Hard work is important in our society, but paired with the ability to articulate is a double threat.  I do not advocate gangs, but even within that realm, leaders rise up that have the ability to express themselves and be persuasive.  Learn how to use questioning techniques to your advantage, both in your personal life and in your career.  Bullying, although may involve voilence, usually starts with your adversary bombarding you with questions that “you” think you need to answer.  Example, “Where'd you get those shoes homey?  Your mother dress you?”  You are not obligated to fall trap to questions like this.  Your best defense is to question the question.  Example, “Do you like these shoes brother, or do you make a habit of checking out brother's clothes?  What else you checking  me out for, you like to look at other men?”  Beware, you may get your ass kicked, but at least you set a signal that you will not fall for his/her trap.  You will earn respect.  You want to get better at what I described and avoid getting beat in the process, learn to speak my friend.  Only way to learn to speak is to read.

The example I gave above applies in professional settings.  Bullying still takes place - yes it does - but it is more subtle, diplomatic, and polished.  You will also find that those that can articulate are simply persuasive and do not come across as bullying or attacking the other person.  It is a fine line between bullying and persuasiveness but the rules still apply.

You want to pick up girls, or guys, you have to be able to articulate.  You want to make money, articulate my friends.  Articulation means two things: The ability to instantly recall the proper words and phrases to influence others, secondly your vocal personality, meaning your delivery.  For the most infuencial people, they somewhat sing the words they are speaking, meaning ups and downs, highs and lows, stresses on important syllables, emphasis on certain words, animating their voice, hands, and body gestures.  Pay attention to those around you that you admire or respect.  You will see it in them. But for you, you have to have the words to say first and foremost.  Read!

In school, white or minority, and this is sad, kids pretend.  Many kids have the belief that they should never come across as smart, or caring about their education.  I learned through surprise, that many of the “cooler” kids came across as not interested in school, or uncaring about learning, but then realized that they were the best students and made the best grades.  They just hid that fact from others.  Granted, they typically were not top of the class, but they knew how to balance book intelligence with “social” intelligence.  Those are two important factors for the most successful in our society.  Rappers, basketball stars, movie stars.. guess what, they have that balance, and yes, they are, for the most part, smart and articulate.  There are very few that get there through on talent alone, but they have to catch up to compete.  Listen to Lebron James today vs. when he first got to the NBA.  Very articulate today, not so much back then.  He had to catch up to survive.  You likely do not have those odds of the same path, face that fact and work on your intelligence first, then balance that with your passion and dreams.  Rappers, same thing.  What is rapping anyway, “Articulating! along with eloquent speaking style".  I hear young wannabe rappers that mumble lyrics just like they speak on the street.  Guess what, they stay on the street!  No recording companies, let alone fans, are going to buy your shit based on how cool and gansta you look or sound.  Period.

Back to school, man I hated studying.  I was the all-nighter one that aced the tests pumped up on caffeine.  That was my secret, but I did learn and I did pass, regardless of the affect on my health.  But I had to juggle jobs, family life, and time to study was just non-existent.  I was surrounded by many students (mostly white) that cheated like crazy.  I didn't because I knew how to learn faster than just looking at answers and remembering.  One technique that I mastered was the ability to memorize quickly.  I will tell you now, and this is not an endorsement of a man with a legal rap sheet longer than a brother, but the Mega Memory system by Kevin Trudeau is something I stand by.  I could learn 100 things in the time it take to recite them using this system.  But it took practice that paid off.

In school, I struggled to understand the material.  Many times, I just didn't get it.  You get off track with the rhythm and you are toast and its hard to catch up.  My approach is simple, and I stand by it today.  I have attention deficit, so sitting down to study is painful.  But I figured out how to use it to my advantage.  I'll explain. 

You will learn better by ingesting the material in bites than trying to swallow whole.  What I mean by that is this, if you look at something (a learning concept), you tag it (i.e. highlight, write down, bookmark, etc), then walk away, even if you have no clue of understanding, then come back to it after a period of time, it will start to click, the more times you do it.   You will find yourself, more often than not, glossing over many pages without a clue of understanding, over and over, until you eventually get it, and that's okay.  Tag and move on!  Focus on the process over the material for a while.  Whatever you do, do not get stuck and spin to the point of frustration, tag and move on!  I do the same with my music, I get stuck creatively, and find myself often saying, “let it go” and move on.  The goal is to first get the high level concepts down, understand the organization of the material (commit to memory if brave enough), then drill into the details.  Many times understanding at a high level, helps you grasp the very difficult details once you come back to it.  Terminology clouds simplicity.  There is a reason for it.  Naming concepts is the most difficult and time consuming effort in many industries.  The less concrete something is, the more challenging the chosen term becomes.  Lawyers make a living over this.

One thing to focus on, if you are not sure what to highlight, is first terminology.  In many ways, understanding something is difficult if shrouded with a bunch of terms you are not familiar with.  Many times, if you can get through that layer, things tend to be easy on the inside.  Get familiar with the terminology and the core of what you are learning will start to gel.  I do this approach incrementally and comprehensively, meaning that I always go back to the beginning of a book to review my highlights before moving to the next chapter I'm about to learn.  Works wonders.  I start with the table of contents (always).  I will memorize the table of contents using the peg system with Mega Memory that I mentioned earlier.  I then focus on terminology in the table of contents.  I will highlight and learn that first, even though I may not grasp those terms fully, but at least I can summarize what they mean at a high level.  Learn the terms, even if you do not fully grasp the meaning.  That will come later.  Learn why they are names like they are.  Learn the etymology of the term.  There, I threw you a fancy term that means nothing more than the origin of a word.  Fancy big word it is, with a simple meaning.  Break the term into its constituents (peices).  Learn the origin of those.  Connect the dots mentally.

Doing this provides a framework for your brain.  It is a way to connect “in-book” concepts to a hierarchical map in my brain.  Sounds weird but it works.  Your brain and all of its synapses and neural networks are a hierarchy.  Think about when you are trying to recall something.  You go down a hierarchical pathway starting with what immediately comes to your mind and following it to and endpoint of recall.  Using this technique also gives you a high-level picture of where you are in your study.  Divide and conquer is what you are doing.  Map where you are currently, block out everything else in the book (for the time being) and you have a small, manageable chunk of focus, instead of this sea of pages and fluff.  Sometimes I create the hierarchy (a mind map) on paper or in a charting application like Microsoft Visio.  Man it makes learning so much easier and “super fast”!  

Does it take more time in terms of reading, yes, but the goal is not to finish, the goal is to retain the knowledge.  If I get bored or frustrated, I walk away and come back.   Eventually it starts to make sense.

Second tip, take notes.  Have paper/pen ready at all times, carry it with you.  Get ready to write.  Put the topic with date and time at the top of your first page but write, write, write.  File your pages in folders (I recommend in reverse date order - oldest towards the back) to keep your pad clean.  Make it a habit (even in work scenarios).  Don't know what to write?  Just write!  You are not writing verbatim what is said, just important terms, concepts, etc.  You don't understand the term, write it with a question mark.  This again becomes your hierarchical map foundation.  That should be your goal, not to capture everything.

Third tip, ask questions.  Be the first to have the balls to say “I do not understand”.  Chances are, all the others will sigh in relief that you are the first.  Don't ever, ever think that the others get it and you don't.  The teacher (whether at school or at work) has the obligation to assure that every student understands, and to respect the fact that you do not.  Make them explain until you do.  Just be respectful in the process.  They may ask you to take the discussion “offline” and that's okay.  Make sure that happens.  Nobody fails a class for asking questions, in fact, the opposite will likely happen, you will have a better chance at passing.

My last tip, and this is something I believe is lacking in education, so my approach frustrates teachers, but it is essential.  Learn the “why's”.  Books authors like to jump into the meat of something without explaining how it applies to “me” or you.  I will ask this question until I get a good answer, or I will search elsewhere.  I don't want to be a dick in the classroom and waste others time, but it is important.  Associate what you are learning to something you are passionate about, even if somewhat contrived.  This is where things touch on a bit of racism with learning material, something my whitey friends just don't understand.  An example problem statement you may come across, “You are putting up a fence in your back yard, you want to place a post perpendicular to the ground, but you want to calculate the angle at which to place a support beam”.  WTF?  Some might be thinking, “I live in the project fool, I ain't got no back yard and sure don't have money to buy a damn fence”.  See what I mean?  Problems like this can immediately alienate minorities, first off by giving the feeling “man I don't fit in this world”.. lost off the bat.  Secondly, there is no way to relate.  Tell this to your teacher (hopefully with a bit more respect that the theoretically thinking in my example), but be firm.  Ask your teacher to relate it to something you are familiar with, but you have to help, because they likely do not understand your world.  You may have zero interest in learning the math to build a fence, but put in your world scenario, you can at least learn the concept as it relates to you.

I am currently learning about 3d math so that I can provide a very simple (from a user perspective) 3d animation on one of my websites.  Wow, what a task!  This inspired me to write this article.  I look up the definition of “quadratic equation” and I get this:

• In mathematics, a quadratic equation (from Latin quadratus 'square') is an equation that can be rearranged in standard form:

ax2 + bx + c = 0

What the f***?  How is that an answer?  I want to know why this is important to me.

Then I found this (after hunting)

• The equations of the circle and the other conic sections—ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas—are quadratic equations in two variables.
• Given the cosine or sine of an angle, finding the cosine or sine of the angle that is half as large involves solving a quadratic equation.

This is better but still doesn't tell me why I should care.  Not even close.

Lastly, I found this:

• The trajectory of the cliff jumper is parabolic because horizontal displacement is a linear function of time ${\displaystyle 𝑥={𝑣}_{𝑥}𝑡}$

• , while vertical displacement is a quadratic function of time

Okay, now I have something that I can work with, and may apply to me.  Probably not immediately, but I can relate to what could be something I would do, although somewhat contrived for me for the time being.  For example,  “I imagine that one day on my website, I may have a animated stage were folks (virtual characters) can stage dive into the crowd”.  As an animator, I will need to know the best curve of the movement of the jumper's body".  And no, all the other stuff, parabolas, cosine, sine, not a clue right now (I literally mean that for me), but at least I now have an interest to learn.

One of my dreams is to start an inner-city outreach program to level the playing field in education.  Long term dream.

Everyone learns differently, above is just my advice.  Take it or leave it…

Friends, continue reading to understand your challenges, and to flip the script with my advice above.  Don't understand what I wrote below?  Use the tips above.  Practice the secrets I gave you, and own it!  :)

- Laveda

Examining Racial Disparities in the U.S. Educational System

1. Introduction

While U.S. policymakers view a high-quality education for all students as an important goal and numerous reforms have been implemented aimed at improving educational quality, significant disparities in outcomes for students by race/ethnicity persist. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (2015) notes that pre-existing gaps are often exacerbated by reform efforts, perhaps because there is no federal mandate against discrimination based on a genuine concern for student equity. Schanzenbach concludes that we must establish more transparent mechanisms that hold all policymakers accountable for equity in reforms if we are going to realize the goals of equity policy. Policymakers cannot address the problems that they do not understand; once these disparities and the causes are identified, the country can much better address them and ensure that students from all racial and ethnic groups have the opportunity to succeed.

1.1. Background and Context

These racial dichotomies present the mysteries which are the principal theme of this analysis: How are we going to make sense of these radically opposing views? Why are these problems of racial conflict and social stress still with us, even when more than three decades after the civil rights movement, we express a national consensus against discrimination based on race? What is the role of education in the national impasse over race? It is not productive to approach these perplexing and critical issues naively. The historical legacy of legal and de facto racial discrimination affecting Black people and culminating in a 'separate but not equal' Jim Crow system of racial (mis)education is not in direct evidence today. Indeed, that system of educational deprivation has been declared unconstitutional in the 1954 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education and is so generally repudiated by most of the populace that its relics and descendants can hardly be seen except in the abstract, ahistorical, value-content of the overinclusive term 'racial balance'.

Today, as every aspect of American life is touched by the fractures and discontents of racial discord, there is little dispute that the nation's educational systems, from kindergarten through graduate schools, reflect and reinforce unequal outcomes along racial (and other continuously intertwined) lines. Beginning with schooling's purposes, and continuing throughout its institutions, processes and effects, most Black Americans are failed by the social institution that structures so much of their opportunities - and hence outcomes - in life. The crux of the issue is revealed in the wide variation between and among the opinions and perceptions of people from different racial backgrounds. Even the most critical and perceptive aspects of these problems, especially the devastating personal and community impact of such massive and sustained national failure, are missed or hidden from many well-intentioned people. These exclusions are particularly likely when both the excluded and the excluders are members of the well-fed, comfortably well-off class of 'liberal' and 'universal' intellectuals and policy-makers.

2. Historical Overview

Perhaps more importantly, significant within the historical racial context, United States teaching personnel have demonstrated both conscious and unconscious biases through body language, allocation of resources, selection of literature, and verbal and nonverbal interactions. Although after deconstruction, providing equal rights and education to students of color, individual, family, and school effects should not be underestimated.

Historically, the aim of public education in the United States was to socialize citizens in the values of the social and economic order. It was not until the desegregation and Black Power Movements, in the 1960s and 70s, that public education began to respond to the struggle of African Americans by demanding equality of education and equal educational opportunity. During the deconstruction period, it was determined that racial disparity reflected a partiality expressed as a consequence of a hidden origin, not of a racist society embedded in social and economic policies and institutional practices, that manifested through cultural bias that helped to create a negative perception of accountability by some enfranchised white elites.

2.1. Roots of Inequality

So far, newly acquired legal equality has not, by itself, brought a significant reduction in racial inequality in the quality of U.S. public education. Some Blacks, a few more than are commonly recognized, have received educational opportunities equal to those of Whites. But, on average, Black and other disadvantaged American children have experienced many fewer educational opportunities than have White children. Their schools are inferior in many important ways. We desire to provide some sense of the weight of this often underappreciated fundamental component of racial inequality in this nation and its roots: the structure of educational quality at the school level in the United States today.

Public education in the United States has long been a site of struggle for racial equality. Our Plessy v. Ferguson decision laid the legal groundwork for a collectivist belief that racial inequality was allowable. In actuality, however, this legal sanction constituted official ratification of the societal "flexibility" that had emerged in both the South and North in the years immediately following Reconstruction; it sanctioned a version of the Southern race-relations pattern that encompassed both racial segregation and de jure color-conditioned educational (among other) inequality. Sitting children for education did not immunize Black Americans from the out-of-school life of extreme inequality that was allowed not just by Southern but also by Northern states. Abolition of official segregation and, in time, de jure educational inequality in the South forced the nation to redefine its concept of equality: if the casual "sort" of individuals during the school day was to require legal approval, then education became an emanation of a commitment to individual worth rather than a tangible sign of racial supremacy.

3. Current Landscape

College attendance and completion rates have increased steadily over the last several decades. However, college attendance and completion rates are lower for women and all racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The United States ranks near the bottom in higher education degree attainment and in the percentage of the labor force with an upper secondary education. Racial and ethnic disparities in dropping out of high school and college completion contribute to disparities in who participates and benefits from these educational experiences.

First, we will discuss high school completion and race. For the typical adult, the highest level of educational attainment is a key determinant of labor market success. Although a college degree is now more attainable than ever, only about one-third of adults hold a college degree. Only about 9% of individuals are high school dropouts, and among non-Hispanic whites and Asians, less than 7% of 25 to 29-year-olds have less than a high school education. However, more than 17% of African Americans and more than 13% of Hispanics still have not finished high school by their late 20s. These high school completion data also obscure the substantial proportion of students who have dropped out of high school and are still trying to earn a diploma or high school equivalency.

3.1. Demographic Trends

The racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Table 3.1 shows the demographic composition of the U.S. population in five different time intervals for Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. The U.S. has gradually shifted from being a predominantly White nation to one where society is multiracial and multiethnic. One reflection of this change is the school-aged population, which at one time was mostly White and is now less than 50 percent White. This drop in the number of White students has occurred over a relatively short time span, at the same time that the number of Hispanic students has increased by over 260 percent. These demographic shifts are expected to continue, not dissipate, and as a result, academic institutions are struggling to determine what challenges lay ahead for dealing with not so much having a multicultural society but rather having many large racial and ethnic numerical groups.

4. Institutional Factors

The dramatic shifts in the gender and racial composition of the teaching profession that have occurred during the late 20th century suggest caution when concluding about the direction or strength of the association between student gains and the racial gender sorting of their teaching force. These associations are well recognized but not uniformly. Much more research is therefore needed to specify how students benefit from having teachers that reflect their own racial and gender status, and under what conditions, or perhaps from certain rates of out-group representation. For example, do certain demographic characteristics of classroom teachers impart differential gains to students based on the race or gender of either teacher or student? Moreover, it is critical for research to move beyond restricted cross-sectional evidence to adopt strategies that account for the selection and retention of students and the characteristics of the schools and instructional contexts where they are educated.

Institutional factors contributing to black-white inequalities Given the important causal role that schools play in producing both academic and racial outcomes, less attention has been paid to the specific institutional features of educational systems that may be responsible for the production of unequal race-gender and race-ethnic academic progress and school completion. To the extent that one believes in the logic of school financing, especially in light of mounting evidence that money matters, institutional policies governing interracial and inter-group relations across school contexts, personnel arrangements within those settings, and variations in market demand and conduct point to potentially untapped elements of school systems that contribute to the maintenance of race-gender and race-ethnic inequalities in educational standing. These policies include single-sex/gender schools and other institutional configurations that promote and perpetuate group inequities by reinforcing single or separate identities across school contexts.

4.1. Funding Disparities

Equalization formulas adjust funding to account for differences in school districts' ability to raise revenues. The three types of equalization formulas are categorical aid payments, foundation formulas, and targeted pupil counts. Local option taxes are efforts to provide educational funding outside of the school district. More affluent communities create tax revenue sources that can be accessed beyond the reach of poor communities. Because of these significant disparities in school funding, many property poor communities have significantly lower levels of education funding than affluent communities. Low levels of school funding produce a variety of negative outcomes for minority children. They often attend poor or bad schools that can poorly prepare them for college, may have high non-graduation rates, and because many quality of life factors are correlated with high educational levels, often face higher levels of crime and violence. Furthermore, the value of a public education is long-term economic potential, and often does not significantly change with the quality of the education.

One major issue that contributes to the makeup of schools in low SES areas is the current structure of school funding in the United States. At present, school funding is unequal and is generally a closed monetary system. This means that states provide the bulk of school funding through income and property taxes. States also rely on their own resources, which is often a source of disagreement between property wealthy and property poor states. While funding is supposed to be distributed equitably among schools, states typically rely on local income or property taxes to fill the remainder of their budgets. This generally results in greater funding for high SES schools. The government attempts to equalize school funding through equalizing formulas, weighted student unit formulas, progressive tax structures, local option taxes, and it has also increased federal funding for education.

5. Curriculum and Representation

If racial representation and relationships enhance student engagement, effort, and performance, then immersion within positive, calm, respectful, varied, and representative grade-specific and developmentally-appropriate educational texts should enable similar benefits for black students currently underperforming in math classes and overall. In such novels, the typical role of the black character is subordinate – however, the few texts identified that both represent prominent, accomplished, and varied black adult heroes/heroines, along with successful peers, include black characters in typical situations and black culture woven throughout the story. Providing such enriched learning opportunities across the diverse racial and economic groups participating in contemporary schools can help eliminate the degree of critical discomfort experienced in their race-related interactions.

Previous research demonstrates that drawing black students into the subject matter by representing them within educational texts can lead to increased engagement, effort, and achievement. Yet racial representation in curricula is generally limited to curriculum produced for ethnic studies classes, typically taken by students of color. With these acknowledged benefits, if racial representation and relationships are so important, then raising the issue and confirming these goals during discussion of curricular standards, selecting and teaching curricular units should be a high priority for educators. Yet there is a dearth of curriculum produced that reflects the daily racial interactions of minority students in and out of school, while focusing on racial consciousness, race-related topics, and knowledge exchange – interactions known to support engagement, effort, and performance for black students. Furthermore, the little curriculum found for general social studies tends to focus on racial victimization and is potentially emotionally abusive/traumatic – yet exemplary teachers who adapt mainstream curriculum to become more representative might become suspect.

5.1. Eurocentric Curriculum

This is evident in the curriculum (i.e. what is taught), most of which represents only one group – Eurocentric content that is skewed, biased, and presented in a selective, glitzy manner designed to promote the maintaining power of Eurocentrism – and, ultimately, to teach students of color how to adopt the Eurocentric values, set of beliefs, and culture of the dominant Judeo-Christian, White, patriarchal, racist, and class-biased mainstream. This curriculum fails to represent the considerable, more complete, and more global contributions of people of color and other whites to world and federal as well as state, local, and institutional, workplace community life in humanities, history, social and natural science, technology, careers, and business. This is ironic given that members of all groups are expected to be responsible, participatory, productive citizens who demonstrate proficiency and excellence in traditional and current technical skills as well as in multicultural, multilingual, and global areas of academic study to succeed in work, education, problem-solving, and decision-making. Failing to prepare all members of the nation to reach proficiency and excellence across all areas of study is not only economically foolish but it can also be seen as part of the self-fulfilling prophecy inherent in maintaining people of color and other whites in marginal positions.

Understandably, disparities can be found in every aspect of the United States educational system. Despite the significant racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity of the United States, racism, sexism, classism, religious, linguistic, and cultural biases and discrimination continue to result in prejudice, economic exploitation, and social injustice in the way the education system operates, in the way families are allowed to participate, and in the way students are able to succeed or fail within that system.

6. Teacher Diversity

Despite the fact that the nation's student population is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, the American teacher corps remains so predominantly white that educators of color are the exception rather than the rule. The proportions of teachers of color lag the student population demographic projections, and reports based on the Current Population Surveys by the National Education Association (NEA) indicate that the teacher workforce is largely white (80 percent), and teachers are less diverse than their students in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. In general, teachers are mostly white women. There is significant variation by state, and some states and metropolitan areas have populations of diverse teachers. For example, despite still having a white majority (53 percent), California has a Hispanic/Latinx plurality (over 54 percent), and the data show that 55 percent of California's teachers are white and 40 percent are people of color. Also, based on 2011-2012 data, Nevada's teaching corps was 95 percent white, even though 70 percent of students were students of color.

Teacher diversity is a crucial part of the reform required to improve educational and economic outcomes for underserved students. As researchers on the academic and social benefits of diversity in schools have noted, the diversity of the teacher corps matters. More diverse teaching staff in terms of race and ethnicity, particularly when they reflect the diversity of the student body, increases the appeal of teaching in high-need schools. It provides mentorship that cultivates, grooms, and retains future teachers of color. It also provides students with a more culturally relevant curriculum, fosters allyship, and legitimizes the educational value of curricular materials that explore non-dominant cultural narratives. It emboldens career-shy students to pursue non-traditional career paths, promotes civic values and social responsibility, and over time, values diversity and shifts school and teacher practices and policies to move from culturally incompetent to culturally proficient.

6.1. Impact on Students of Color

Understanding how and why students of color are disadvantaged helps us also understand the active production of white advantages. In other words, deconstructing the way the system privileges whites gives us the clearest understanding of whiteness—that it is not just the absence of blackness, but a reflection of white individuals' embodied beneficial place in society. These racial disparities endure. To fully understand and respond to the educational disparities disproportionately experienced by students of color, we need to: 1) treat the life experiences faced by children of color and children with disabilities; 2) understand the specific impact of growing up in a high-stakes testing society.

As often discussed in the media and a growing body of academic scholarship, it is no secret that students of color in the United States face significant disparities in their educational experiences across the K-16 spectrum. It is wrong, I argue, to assume that these disparities only affect students of color. I argue that these racial, class, and gender disparities threaten not only individual future labor market outcomes of students of color, but also affect the welfare of all. In this part of the article, I use theories of race to help us ask whether our nation's structural inequalities actually help us achieve such racial progress.

7. Discipline Disparities

Indeed, schools that disproportionately use discipline with girls need to be closely examined, and those with both high percentages of boys and girls that receive these high rates of punishment should be particularly investigated in order to promote equity in educational outcomes. While many studies look at the influence of race and school characteristics on the usage of exclusionary discipline policies, it is worth it to step back and think of the purpose of discipline in the school setting. Are our goals met by enforcement? Are we overlooking ways to proactively remove anti-social acts before they occur? We will expand on these and other relevant questions throughout the section.

As we move from the classroom and school populations with large racial disparities to a space where the disparities are indeed large, but not quite as pervasive as in some of the previous sections, let us first take a look broadly on how discipline is enacted in schools. We need to be sure that we have policies that are equitable and fair, and not policies that are covertly racially biased. Do we want a system that punishes students for their background rather than their behavior? In order to ensure that we are headed in the right direction, it is useful to see which exact students have had these experiences with the disciplinary system. While this section focuses on race because typically that is the main source of disparities for almost all studies, we also want to remind the reader that it is useful to look at all intersectionalities in order to ensure that we have a just discipline system.

7.1. School-to-Prison Pipeline

When examining the socio-political and academic design and effects, we often frame the school-to-prison pipeline in association with racialized, gendered, sexualized, and classed discriminatory practices. The shift in population from larger numbers of children in urban communities, including low-income immigrant children of color, to prison and not universities through the cultivation and maintenance of harsh school disciplinary codes and practices fit the description of the school-to-prison pipeline. Facing the criminalization of poverty, unequal application of zero-tolerance policies, racialized and classed models, and social selection, many urban schools have demonstrated a lack of differences to prepare and develop in these areas the students who continually place more attention on the prison-industrial complex. Also, the relationship of the prison-industrial complex and characteristics found in cities where there are many failing schools and out-of-school young people from color or recent immigrants has the same shape.

Consistently over the last few decades, the differing treatment of racial groups in education has been a part of the national dialogue. Some of the problems experienced by black students include underrepresentation in gifted and talented programs, being subjected to harsher or more punitive disciplinary policies, higher drop-out and suspension rates, retention in grade in larger numbers, and overrepresentation in lower college enrollment rates and placements. In examining a range of issues, it is clear that one of the formidable areas to address in the education of black students is the school-to-prison pipeline. In the face of the impact of the U.S. prison-industrial complex as well as international human rights, thematic and specific guidelines were formulated and proposed for successful educational delivery.

8. Standardized Testing

States vary in the participation requirements for early childhood programs, the allocation of instructional time for language arts and math, teacher quality requirements, and the placement of instructional resources. States also use a variety of strategies to help schools improve and show on school efforts in evaluating multiple measures of academic performance, school accountability tools, and the provision of financial rewards for success and free tutoring to students in persistently failing schools and schools enrolling high numbers of low-income students. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a set of federal rules and guidelines that dictate how funds provided by the federal government should be disbursed to the states.

The federal government has left the states to set their own educational testing standards through individual budgetary efforts and has left the states to utilize various methods to measure "grades" and progress for schools. In section one of this research project, this researcher discussed the U.S. educational system and how the states receive their funding. Funding for the elementary and secondary public schools comes from three sources, which include approximately 47.7 percent from local government, approximately 43.2 percent from the states, and approximately 9.1 percent from the federal government. The problems that arise with these sources are with the states, which experience fiscal pressures that can compromise their own funding of their educational plans as they provide increased support for required welfare programs such as Medicaid.

8.1. Bias and Validity

As a pragmatic emphasis in the interpretation of a textual rendering, past research that has yielded a specific focus of study might be embedded within a study. In the study of successful discourses about a social phenomenon, stakeholders and potentially marginalized groups should become partners in the research enterprise. In the design of intervention programs, policymakers must move beyond blinkered and vested concerns. In 1787, the framers of the United States Constitution, as well as the colonial populace, came from a relatively narrow set of backgrounds. Efforts to integrate educational practices have made our nation a leading voice in the world. We should hope to provide educational success for all citizens, not out of an abstract ideal of equity, but because it is concrete and practical to do so.

Unintentionally, while endorsing statistical procedures as neutral and rational, researchers introduce their own biases. The personal beliefs of a researcher can affect their choice of research problem and the way research is designed. In an under-cited discussion, Bankston & Caldas (1997) suggest a methodological principle of "skepticism toward one's own research." They suggest that researchers "scrutinize possible biases in their choices" and that they state "very clearly" how their "research questions, hypotheses and/or research paradigm might be influenced by the fact that their research has a reason to be." In our situation, despite my efforts to do so, all research has within it an implicit set of motivations, beliefs, fears, and ideas about what ought to be.

9. Access to Higher Education

The research guides from landmark research show that students who attend an institution on the premise of a grade are less able to apply their university skills to practice than students enrolled on the premise of an old-fashioned simulation. The effects of black students who attend these institutions due to race-sensitive admissions also incorporate a relevant effect for discrimination. Affirmative action is linked to the literature on the mismatch effect, which is concerned with what happens when students enter a university where their statistical background indicates they are woefully underweighted. The evidence points to a conflict-driven story: the nature and level of the mechanism indicate it for students in different disciplines. The authors expect an even greater mismatch effect for universities with standardized admission requirements that accept students who are expected to achieve an artificially low probability of success based on weak indicators.

Given the persistent racial disparities in higher education attainment within the United States, college attendance and completion are critical benchmark outcomes. The proportion of U.S. children who finish college is off-limits for extrapolation from current trends in early preparation, with a significant body of evidence showing that they tend to persist. Persistent disparities in educational outcomes, both major and minor, within the American education system corroborate this concern. Class-based policies like affirmative action remain critical tools for eliminating the racial gap in college access and outcomes. Legal legislation that attempts to propose race-blind policies. Students who could not succeed without some degree of assistance due to family, social, or economic inequality are fundamentally disadvantaged by the constraints of race-blind proposals.

9.1. Admissions Policies

The situation is worst when the demand from the black community is the greatest. In the Orient, for example, most Orientals have rather high educational aspirations. They have traditionally believed that education was their road to success and they esteem the educational system. Hence, they put themselves under a great deal of family pressure to achieve academic success. This helps encourage success along this line. At the same time, the long history of this belief in the value of education has built up special problems for the educators. And realizing that their recognized problem results from the social group they are then competing against, the value of their education leads Orientals to vie strongly for admissions to the most desirable schools.

One area in which racial discrimination has been shown to occur in the educational system is in the admissions policies of colleges and universities. Many colleges and professional schools have undertaken to correct the effects of past bias toward members of non-minority groups. They have adopted modified standards for evaluation of minority group members or have set higher standards for non-minority applicants. One thing upon which all educators and legislators agree is that there are no easy answers to this problem. Minority groups tend to demand more compensatory aid than is reasonably possible to provide. They also want the admissions standard lowered, the curriculum changed to incorporate more black history, reduced class sizes, and a larger number of black teachers. Yet other minority groups such as the Orientals and Jews oppose any reduction in admissions standards that would benefit their children.

10. Policy Recommendations

We cannot wait for the elimination of discrimination, economic stagnation, or some unspecified degree of redistribution in order to ensure that all students in the United States attend a high-quality school. The goal of ameliorating social problems by helping all children to succeed educationally and choose a productive work path is not only moral but feasible; further, only by following that path can we hope to narrow racial and ethnic disparities in life outcomes.

Increasing teacher quality through a variety of measures including, most importantly, improved school environments, mentoring, and monitoring, and providing incentives and explicit rewards to attract high-quality teachers to the schools that serve low-achieving students, can indeed facilitate a reduction in the teacher quality response.

The educational policies that we know possess the ability to close the black-white test score gap should be increased in the public schools that serve predominantly African American students. These policies include decreasing class size for underachieving students, increasing teacher salaries with the explicit intent to attract higher-quality teachers, and increasing the credentials of attention, behavior, and responsiveness of young children.

10.1. Equity Initiatives

The successful application of the standards movement is likely to produce anger among educators and activists as it questions some long-standing societal myths. For example, the poor are not always with us and income is not necessarily indicative of academic success. Getting the poverty-stricken out of poverty in large numbers would, however, form a positive by-product of successful K-12 education reform. Reversing academic underperformance would produce private sector jobs and help to set a strong foundation for the future through academic success. These public events and trends—the establishment of clear and high educational standards, the electoral ramifications of urban educational underachievement, and the increased value of a high-quality education—create an environment in which existing reforms can make a difference and where future improvements are likely to be accelerated and enhanced.

Identifying racial disparities within the educational system is an important first step in beginning to eradicate them. This chapter presents insights from an in-depth examination of the causes of American educational failure, disproportionately among black Americans, and the need to reverse and eventually eliminate those causes. The development of society is inevitably limited when racial inequalities exist due to the underperformance of minorities. Eliminating this disheartening underperformance has yet to find a solution. Educational achievement is one of the principal causes of the racial disparities that are displayed among minorities. Black Americans have the largest disparities, and reducing these evil disparities is one of society's biggest gaps. Setting a clear and high bar for academic achievement will change electoral politics and force necessary reforms of urban schools to catalyze this change.

11. Conclusion

In some fields of study at the undergraduate or graduate level, African American women reach parity or surpass White women, and further analysis is needed to determine whether the success of Black and Latina women across college majors is due to the same or different reasons when compared to how Hispanic men perform in certain fields of study. Previous studies have documented an association between the racial and ethnic composition of the student body and failure rates in a particular class as well as the relationship between teacher race and student success in the classroom. Furthermore, Glass and Long (1980) show that high school curriculum and college major choice differed among Black and White students and concluded that the differences were a response to the different races of the students and the races of the students' classmates. These works suggest that students may be influenced by their peers and teachers in the subjects they choose to study. Implicit bias, along with various levels of economic and cultural capital accumulated by students from different backgrounds, could possibly manifest in the form of differential treatment, assessment and lower expectations from both people-of-color and White faculty members, educational leaders and future colleagues.

The findings suggest that students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds in the U.S. educational system are not being assigned to educational fields entirely on the basis of their abilities and preferences. Racial disparities are most clearly documented between African American and Non-Hispanic White students, with Hispanic and Asian students generally falling outside of the Black-White education divide. Latinas reach parity or surpass Non-Hispanic White women in some fields of study at the graduate level, while Hispanic men perform better than Non-Hispanic White men at the undergraduate level in STEM fields. Not all Black men consistently underperform compared to Non-Hispanic White men at the undergraduate level. Instead, Black designers, English and mathematics majors at the undergraduate level, and Black students studying education at the graduate level perform on par with their Non-Hispanic White counterparts once they filter into these programs.

11.1. Call to Action

It is also clear that meaningful progress will require comprehensive intervention, combining a broader political, social and economic commitment to children and education with specific legal and policy action to address schools that fail to teach. There is no inherent conflict between a more expansive and reformed accountability movement and intelligent forms of them presently offer. For example, specific examples of the power and utility of more comprehensive measures include the Texas Top Ten Percent Law, The Power of 10: Serrano Chapter Desegregations Strategies, the work of Getting Down to Facts and Gaining Promising Practices from the Field and the Getting Results education management and governance organization, the Texas Successful Schools Desegregation Handbook, Beyond the Status Quo by the Equality of Educational Opportunities Communities Program, the Community-Based Educational Improvement Project, and the Discharge of a Public Trust and The Education Working Group of the Council of State Governments. Each of us must continue to push the envelope beyond our current knowledge and improve our research and programs to extend educational advancement and educational justice for all of America's children.

The bleak picture painted by racial disparities of U.S. schools leads to a broad consensus on the urgency of reform. The issue is not whether there is a problem, but rather how to craft more effective and comprehensive solutions. Despite the obvious importance of the efforts of the families, communities and support groups to actively monitor and advocate for the interests of Black school children, to continue to obtain legal action and legislation, the presence of racially identifiable, poor quality public schools that miseducate some Black students erodes public confidence in the American educational system and thus diminishes public support, providing little incentive for those remaining children in these schools to demand high academic performance. Ultimately, these trends erode the base of support for American constitutional democracy.