This timely volume brings together a roster of experienced educators and researchers to address the African American achievement gap in higher education. The text provides an overview of recent research on the learning characteristics of African American university students and uses those findings to identify major issues and to foster new and productive inquiry and educational activities. Encompassing both traditional and virtual classrooms, the authors provide research-based strategies that higher-education faculty can use to design courses, pedagogy, and assessments that reach out to all learners in a fair and equitable manner. To help universities close the achievement gap, this book: Describes how African American, hip-hop, and school cultures influence learning and achievement. Identifies racial challenges and offers practical strategies for creating and teaching culturally responsive traditional and online courses. Includes sample lessons and assessment resources that implement many of the strategies described in the book.
Many African American children make use of African American English (AAE) in their everyday lives, and face academic barriers when introduced to Standard American English (SAE) in the classroom. Research has shown that students who can adapt and use SAE for academic purposes demonstrate significantly better test scores than their less adaptable peers. Accordingly, AAE use and its confirmed inverse relationship to reading achievement have been implicated in the Black-White Test Score Gap, thus becoming the focus of intense research and practical interest. This volume discusses dialectal code-switching from AAE to SAE and stresses the benefits and importance of African American students becoming bi-dialectal. It provides background theory and science supporting the most promising educational approach to date, Contrastive Analysis, a set of longstanding methods drawn from Second Language research and used effectively with students ranging from kindergarten through college. It offers a deeper knowledge of AAE use by students, the critical features of Contrastive Analysis, and detailed information about successful applications which teachers can apply in their own pedagogy.
Every Closed Eye Ain't Sleep: African American Perspectives on the Achievement Gap examines the origins and perpetuation of the achievement gap from the perspective of the African American community. Instead of accepting the achievement gap as an inevitable matter of fact, Every Closed Eye Ain't Sleep questions the fundamental beliefs that perpetuate the gap. Drawing on dialogue with African American community members, Teresa Hill advances a framework for understanding a predominant African American view of the educational process. She then juxtaposes this framework with the norms perpetrated by the educational establishment to demonstrate how disagreements about the roles and responsibilities of parents, teachers and students affect community members' experiences in schools. Every Closed Eye Ain't Sleep opens a dialogue about the achievement gap on different terms, analyzes the gap as an issue of social justice, and provides educational leaders and policymakers with ways to engage in the productive dialogue necessary to improve education for African American children.
" The test score gap between blacks and whites—on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence--is large enough to have far-reaching social and economic consequences. In their introduction to this book, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips argue that eliminating the disparity would dramatically reduce economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites. Indeed, they think that closing the gap would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy now under serious discussion. The book offers a comprehensive look at the factors that contribute to the test score gap and discusses options for substantially reducing it. Although significant attempts have been made over the past three decades to shrink the test score gap, including increased funding for predominantly black schools, desegregation of southern schools, and programs to alleviate poverty, the median black American still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. The book brings together recent evidence on some of the most controversial and puzzling aspects of the test score debate, including the role of test bias, heredity, and family background. It also looks at how and why the gap has changed over the past generation, reviews the educational, psychological, and cultural explanations for the gap, and analyzes its educational and economic consequences. The authors demonstrate that traditional explanations account for only a small part of the black-white test score gap. They argue that this is partly because traditional explanations have put too much emphasis on racial disparities in economic resources, both in homes and in schools, and on demographic factors like family structure. They say that successful theories will put more emphasis on psychological and cultural factors, such as the way black and white parents teach their children to deal with things they do not know or understand, and the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences. Finally, they call for large-scale experiments to determine the effects of schools' racial mix, class size, ability grouping, and other policies. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Claude Steele, Ronald Ferguson, William G. Bowen, Philip Cook, and William Julius Wilson. "
The updated Fourth Edition of Gretchen B. Rossman and Sharon F. Rallis’s popular introductory text leads the new researcher into the field by explaining the core concepts through theory, research, and applied examples. Woven into the chapters are three themes that are the heart of the book: first, research is about learning; second, research can and should be useful; and finally, a researcher should practice the highest ethical standards to ensure that a study is trustworthy. The Fourth Edition includes an elaborate discussion of systematic inquiry as well as a nuanced discussion of developing a conceptual framework.
“An important and powerful book” that radically reframes the debates swirling around the academic achievement of African-American students (Boston Review) “The solutions offered by each essay are creative, inspirational, and good old common sense." —Los Angeles Times In 3 separate but allied essays, African-American scholars Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, and Asa Hilliard examine the alleged ‘achievement gap’ between Black and white students. Each author addresses how the unique social and cultural position Black students occupy—in a society which often devalues and stereotypes African-American identity—fundamentally shapes students’ experience of school and sets up unique obstacles. Young, Gifted and Black provides an understanding of how these forces work, opening the door to practical, powerful methods for promoting high achievement at all levels. In the first piece, Theresa Perry argues that the dilemmas African-American students face are rooted in the experience of race and ethnicity in America, making the task of achievement distinctive and difficult. Claude Steele follows up with stunningly clear empirical psychological evidence that when Black students believe they are being judged as members of a stereotyped group—rather than as individuals—they do worse on tests. Finally, Asa Hilliard argues against a variety of false theories and misguided views of African-American achievement, sharing examples of real schools, programs, and teachers around the country that allow African-American students to achieve at high levels. Now more than ever, Young, Gifted and Black is an eye-opening work that has the power to not only change how we talk and think about African-American student achievement but how we view the African-American experience as a whole.
While many books decry the crisis in the schooling of African American children, they are often disconnected from the lived experiences and work of classroom teachers and principals. In this book, the authors look back to move forward, providing specific practices that K–12 literacy educators can use to transform their schools. The text addresses four major debates: the fight for access to literacy; supports and roadblocks to success; best practices, theories, and perspectives on teaching African American students; and the role of African American families in the literacy lives of their children. Throughout, the authors highlight the valuable lessons learned from the past and include real stories from their own diverse family histories and experiences as teachers, parents, and community members.
The racial achievement gap in literacy is one of the most difficult issues in education today, and nowhere does it manifest itself more perniciously than in the case of black adolescent males. Approaching the problem from the inside, author Alfred Tatum brings together his various experiences as a black male student, middle school teacher working with struggling black male readers, reading specialist in an urban elementary school, and staff developer in classrooms across the nation. His book, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap' addresses the adolescent shift black males face and the societal experiences unique to them that can hinder academic progress. With an authentic and honest voice, Tatum bridges the connections among theory, instruction, and professional development to create a roadmap for better literacy achievement. He presents practical suggestions for providing reading strategy instruction and assessment that is explicit, meaningful, and culturally responsive, as well as guidelines for selecting and discussing nonfiction and fiction texts with black males. The author' s first-hand insights provide middle school and high school teachers, reading specialists, and administrators with new perspectives to help schools move collectively toward the essential goal of literacy achievement for all.
