What Helps Black Students Succeed in English Language Arts

Understanding the role of culture in development is important. My first jobs exposed me to people who saw the earth differently than I. The more than I learned about why they held their beliefs, the more than I understood. Today, I enquire my [teacher education] students to think most their ain cultures and life experiences as the first pace in understanding and relating to the children and families they will encounter in the field.
—Barbara T. Bowman

My mother, who had less than 2 years of formal education, in one case asked me what I do for a living. I told her I try to incorporate a rich variety of experiences for kids into educational settings. She said, "Why that'due south merely common sense! They pay you for that?" Common sense, and still it's an uncommon exercise amidst many.
—James P. Comer

We must acknowledge the broader variety in and of the African American experience and celebrate that all Blackness children are born geniuses. Black students go on to pursue educational excellence despite the many unnecessary obstacles they face due to constructions and perceptions of race, class, gender, and sexual orientations in America.
—David J. Johns

Early childhood education is an increasingly important aspect of American life, predicting not merely after school outcomes but also career and piece of work options, economic stability, health, and social opportunities(Sanders-Phillips et al. 2009). Schoolhouse functioning constrains the future opportunities of many African Americans. When matched for social class, the gap in educational achievement between African Americans and other groups is substantial. African American children, on boilerplate, score lower on tests and are given lower grades than Asian, White, and Latino students. In adolescence, many of them fail courses and drop out of school. Others progress through school but do not excel; they are less often enrolled in honors courses in high school or accepted into competitive four-year colleges (Stanford CEPA, due north.d.; Valant & Newark 2017).

The achievement gap is a trouble not merely for African American students and their families and communities; it affects the well-being of the entire state. Researchers have found that "the persistence of the educational achievement gap imposes on the Usa the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession" (McKinsey & Company 2009, six).

Past and nowadays economic and social weather are at the root of the achievement gap. Societal efforts to overcome the sick effects of prejudice and discrimination for African Americans have non been effective plenty; at that place go along to be inequities in almost every attribute of life, including educational activity (Matthew, Rodrigue, & Reeves 2016; W.K. Kellogg Foundation 2014). At the aforementioned time, scientific and technological changes have raised the educational requirements for successful and fulfilling careers, placing an even greater burden on underserved communities and schools. And because social scientific discipline inquiry has focused primarily on group deficits rather than factors that have stymied progress, it has provided few clues as to how to construct support systems, even where there is a genuine wish to do so.

But by understanding these factors can teachers develop and implement the strategies needed to motility from schoolhouse failure to school success, increasing opportunities for life success for many more students. Although this commodity focuses on African American learners, children from other communities of color are frequently victims of racism and poverty besides. Each group has its own unique history with and strategies for coping with oppression, yet they share many of the same challenges and defenses. By understanding the differences and the similarities among groups, teachers tin can learn the strengths of children and families when designing programs to address their educational and developmental needs.

Societal efforts to overcome the ill furnishings of prejudice and discrimination for African Americans have non been effective plenty.

This article outlines some of the factors that contribute to the achievement gap between African Americans and White Americans and ends with recommendations for educators, administrators, and policy makers to help equalize educational opportunities.

Development and learning

Like all children, African American children are born with the ability to larn, but require experiences to bring their potential to fruition. Capabilities develop through interactions with people and things that shape the brain circuitry decision-making children's physical, social, emotional, and cerebral development. Some aspects of development—like learning language, being sociable, using symbols, and making categories—are propelled by inborn drives to learn. Well-nigh children primary these tasks at about the same ages and in similar ways.

Other learning is culture specific, such as learning a particular linguistic communication, creating unique ways to categorize the environment, and interpreting the meanings of events. For example, the vast majority of young children learn language (an inborn drive), but whether they larn Blackness English language or Standard English depends on their experiences in their linguistic communication communities. And so, a child's language acquisition reflects individual and human biological potential, but also information technology reflects the linguistic characteristics of a particular cultural community.

Children's experiences in the social earth of family unit and community play a critical office in what and how well children learn in school. The importance of warm interpersonal relationships cannot exist overstated. Adults are needed to provide consistent physical care, social guidance, intellectual stimulation, and emotional support. Children attach to meaningful caregivers and depend on them for physical and emotional security. They identify with, imitate, and brainstorm to internalize their caregivers' attitudes, values, means of expressing themselves, and approaches to solving problems; this sets the stage for social, emotional, physical, and cognitive characteristics that in plow impact everything from moral and ethical behavior to manipulative skills and executive functioning.

Children who begin life in safe relationships that are continuously responsive to their evolving needs are well-nigh likely to reach out, explore, and learn. This is especially important for children who live in challenging environments. Further, the most successful learners are born into families that have access to a baseline of resources, including physical security, health care, acceptable nutrition, attentive caregiving, and opportunities to learn.

Most African American children take positive adult relationships and achieve their basic developmental potential. That is, at the advisable ages, they main the complexities of linguistic communication, procedure sensory information, manage their bodies, and even use symbols (such as a wooden block to represent a piece of toast). Nevertheless, some exercise not accept a learning environment that includes opportunities to develop schoolhouse-related linguistic communication, knowledge, and skills (such equally literacy in Standard English, mathematics, or science). Others, given continued racial exclusion, do non think the work of educational activity volition pay off for them. And some are growing up in circumstances that are too stressful for healthy development. These students do not go the extra doses of emotional stability and guidance needed to face the arduousness they are exposed to, including adapting to the demands of schoolhouse.

Racism and poverty

The interface betwixt racism/classism and bellboy economic and social disadvantages is the key to understanding the underachievement of African American children. African Americans accept been exposed to generations of legal and illegal measures to deny them basic rights. From slavery to Jim Crow and to today'southward housing, health care, and voting inequities, the African American customs has endured unrelenting racism that begins at an early age (Gilliam 2014; Gershenson & Dee 2017). To believe that these insults accept non left a cultural residue—for Whites as well as for African Americans—is to deny what nosotros know about power relationships.

As parents adapt to unlike challenges, they develop different kid-rearing strategies, many of which are misunderstood.

The burden of poverty

Without question, poverty places a burden on families, and a large number of African Americans alive at an economic level that stresses families physically and mentally, with hunger, mental and physical disease, and despair being frequent corollaries (Matthew, Rodrigue, & Reeves 2016). Poverty among African Americans exceeds that of whatever other group (USDA 2017). While poverty has declined for White, Hispanic, and Asian families in contempo years, information technology has not for African Americans. In 2015, some 38 percent of Black children lived below the poverty line—a percent iv times greater than that of White or Asian children (Modify 2017). Families struggling to make ends meet are more than likely to be stressed and to have less time for their children than those from more economically advantaged groups. In addition, children from poor and also less-poor African American families tend to reside in segregated, underserved neighborhoods, thus concentrating and reinforcing poverty'southward effects (W.K. Kellogg Foundation 2014). Equally a upshot, generations of families and communities take been unable to provide the basic cloth resources their children require or protect children from the social and emotional stress of racism, poverty, and under-resourced environments. (Encounter "Living with Toxic Stress.") Poverty drains the social and emotional energy of families, making it difficult for adults to reply with constructive guidance to typical childhood behavior, such as aggressiveness or impulsivity. Some families and communities have adapted to the harsh realities they face up with aggression. And some children have learned to deal with problems by fighting rather than negotiating or working things out—behavior considered unacceptable in schoolhouse, especially when teachers and administrators do non understand the roots of the beliefs and do not help the children learn new behaviors in a warm, caring, culturally competent way.

---

Living with Toxic Stress

Exposure to extremes of violence and neglect, inconsistent and unreliable care, and unloving adults can be so stressful for children that their developmental potential is compromised or distorted. The results of such exposure can range from stunted emotional and intellectual development to decease. The longer children live in a toxic surroundings, the more difficult and expensive it is to aid them render to more typical developmental and learning trajectories (Shonkoff et al. 2012).

Likewise many African American children live in toxic environments. Given this, it is a attestation to African American families that despite the challenges they face, so many detect the resources to help their children avoid the more serious developmental and learning problems. Even so, early recognition of and support for children being affected past a toxic surroundings is essential if children are to avoid the pitfalls of failed development and a compromised future; exposure to severe neglect and abuse is increasingly difficult to treat. Timely family counseling and treatment, supportive alternative caregivers (often a grandparent or sitter), understanding teachers, supportive friends and neighbors, and/or therapeutic intervention can play a part in reducing stress and stabilizing children's evolution.

---

The role of civilisation and tradition

Culture is what groups create over time to adapt to their surround; it determines to a large extent how adults collaborate with children. Throughout the world, every bit parents conform to different ecology challenges, they develop unlike child-rearing strategies, many of which are misunderstood by those unfamiliar with a customs's history. For instance, every bit a result of transatlantic enslavement, Black people mixed the remnants of their home languages with English to create a dialect, or patois, to communicate with one another (since they did not share a common language). The remnants go on today as Blackness English. The public impression, still, which has been used to justify corruption and injustice, is that this adaptive linguistic communication, this dialect, is "bad" or broken English language. Amongst those with limited knowledge of Black culture and linguistics, Black English is mistakenly assumed to exist a product of ignorance rather than a creative class of verbal communication as complex equally Standard English (Labov 1972).

Other behaviors that were fashioned to help African Americans cope with the dangers of slavery continue today because life is still perceived as dangerous. For instance, African American children are often criticized for passivity, express oral responsiveness, and detachment (Labov 1972). Yet many Black parents teach this beliefs every bit the best style for children to be condom in a hostile globe. Rather than embracing new experiences outside the safety of family, children are encouraged to attenuate their responsiveness with others to avoid trouble (Labov 1972; Calarco 2014). Fifty-fifty though these strategies tend not to be advantageous in the school surround, they have lingered considering they keep children emotionally safe in the segregated order in which most of them live.

The systemic challenges of poverty and racism proceed today for African American parents and children (W.K. Kellogg Foundation 2014), and families reply in different ways (Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov 1994). Some experience self-doubt and powerlessness, others deny their culture and linguistic communication to avert rejection, and yet others respond with rage or detachment. While many of these responses may seem nonfunctional, they are designed to protect children from the prejudice and discrimination encountered by virtually African Americans with appalling frequency.

Unaware of the culturally adaptive reasons for behavior, many people—even many African Americans—are unaware of the strengths that have enabled African American communities to survive and thrive despite deep hardships. Teachers who understand the history of slavery, the restrictions of segregation, and the continued injustices encountered past African Americans can improve understand African American children'south beliefs. In the past, tight-knit family networks and communities of teachers and leaders were ameliorate able to support children and buffer the negative messages children received from the larger guild. Today, the lack of knowledge about and appreciation for Blackness culture creates social distance between African Americans and White Americans and is a deterrent to modify. The African American culture transmitted from generation to generation needs to be understood every bit rich and noteworthy, and needs to be used equally the entry to new skills and cognition. Past recognizing the meaning and value of children'southward home knowledge, teachers tin can employ habitation civilisation every bit a foundation from which to extend children's thinking rather than considering information technology an impediment.

While culture carries with it the by, it also constantly adapts to new conditions, new challenges. As people accommodate, they integrate the sometime with the new, often using the old to aid transition to the new. The traditional African American interest in music has led to innovations, such as jazz and rap, and to newer music forms; the traditional physicality in the African American community has led to high operation in athletics; the interest in language is reflected in the contributions Black people have made to the imaginative use of words (slang, for example). Many of the rules and concepts of school overlap with much of what children already know—merely often children need teachers and school system leaders to help them see the overlap. For example, many Blackness children accept potent interests in and knowledge near sports and entertainment. They need supportive teachers to assist them see how academics are related to these interests and will enhance what they already know. The capabilities developed in homes and communities tin be used as springboards for learning in schoolif teachers recognize children's strengths (Adair 2015). Building on strengths, achievement can soar.

Today, the lack of knowledge about and appreciation for Black culture creates social altitude between African Americans and White Americans and is a deterrent to change.

Exposure to poverty and prejudice are not uniform across the African American population; not all African Americans are poor or failing in school. Yet disproportionately their achievement and life circumstances are constrained by race and course. Almost every aspect of life at every income level is affected—housing, employment, wellness care, didactics, and social acceptance—all of which accept long- and short-term implications for schoolhouse achievement (Pager & Shepherd 2008; Reardon 2015). The systemic challenges of the Blackness experience go on today for parents and children (W.K. Kellogg Foundation 2014). Poverty and racism, past and present, compromise the ability of many poor and minority families—peculiarly African American families—to provide the secure base of operations young children need (Grusky, Varner, & Mattingly 2015). The ultimate solution to the education gap is the elimination of race and form prejudice and oppression. In the meantime, creating an ultra-supportive environment appears to be the best—perhaps the only—risk for children from challenging backgrounds to be successful in school and in life (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2016). This means providing supports for families and pedagogy for children, and promoting understanding among teachers and administrators.

The challenges of schoolhouse

If most African American families typically provide the experiences necessary for healthy growth and evolution, why do so many African American children have trouble learning in school? One reason is the differing expectations for children betwixt abode and school. The skills and knowledge children gain at domicile and in their communities oftentimes do not match schools' demands. Home cultures practise not prevent African American children from learning in school, but some dwelling practices are not similar to or synchronous with school civilisation.

Returning to language, children who learn Black English at home, as opposed to learning Standard English, take a steeper learning curve for school reading and writing (considering Standard English is very similar to academic English language). For Blackness children, specially those from low-income families in highly segregated communities, in that location is more than probable to exist a poor fit betwixt their linguistic communication experiences and what schools crave. This misalignment becomes a barrier to school learning unless it is addressed early.

Like other children, African American children—even those from depression-income families—have information near their immediate surround and learn through their experiences. Even so, they may non have the same cognition base of operations as children from other communities, particularly children from more economically advantaged ones. They may non have the academic and social knowledge that teachers look. They know the names of things, ideas, people, and places that are meaningful to them, but they may not know letter names or how to concord a book or what a farm is or how to count to 20. Considering of this, they are often viewed every bit developmentally delayed or having limited potential to learn. Thus, even though they take achieved developmental milestones, they may begin to fail in school.

African American children who go to school without a audio foundation of schoolhouse-blazon information are at a profound disadvantage, making the achievement gap inevitable at school entry—just not insurmountable. For case, children from lower income families hear fewer words and have smaller vocabularies, on average, than children from more than financially advantaged families (Hart & Risley 1995). This disadvantages African American children, since a larger proportion of them are poorer than White children. While a smaller vocabulary may not be a linguistic trouble (the children accept a language, only non Standard English language), it does mean a child is likely to take trouble with listening comprehension in the early grades, especially when teachers read aloud complex texts that use Standard and bookish English vocabulary. What starts out as simply a disparity in vocabulary escalates over the elementary grades to difficulty with reading comprehension, on which all after learning depends. Struggling with reading may also become a social challenge, leading to misbehavior and a lack of motivation to try (often fueled by embarrassment at beingness behind one's peers). Therefore, information technology is essential to accost the vocabulary difference before it morphs into school failure.

Another trouble for many African American children is the lack of continuity between the preschool years and the primary grades (Takanishi 2016). Research and school experience have shown the importance of long-term consistency in expectations, high-quality instruction, and social supports if children from depression-income homes are to master the challenges of school. In the first several years of their lives, many African American children remain at home or are in child care arrangements in which school prerequisites (e.yard., formal literacy and numeracy experiences) and social and emotional back up (due east.g., responsive teachers) are non a role of daily life.

For children who do not larn Standard English at habitation and are indelible the stresses of growing up in isolated and/or nether-resourced communities, even attending preschool may not exist enough. Children may require additional social and academic supports the first four or five years in school if they are to achieve their potential. They need meaningful relationships with teachers who believe they can learn, whom they want to please. They need carefully structured curricula that build beyond grade levels so that children have the prior knowledge necessary to succeed. They also need teachers who coach them in how to get their needs met in schoolhouse, how to ask for help, and how to accept it. And finally, they demand teachers and administrators who communicate well with their families and can assistance the families be supportive of their children's academic learning.

Grooming for educators

Essential to narrowing the achievement gap is the education of early on childhood educators. Teachers and administrators demand preservice preparation and ongoing professional development that enable them to understand that about African American children are not underdeveloped or developmentally delayed. When teachers utilise constructive engagement methods, African American children can achieve the same academic and social development in schoolhouse as other children. Preparatory institutions and professional development programs must fix educators to understand the manner in which kid evolution and academic learning are inextricably linked and how they can facilitate learning for children from different backgrounds.

Children with special needs

Certainly some children have developmental issues that may crave dissimilar teaching strategies because of biological differences (such as having Down syndrome) or because of life experiences (such as living with toxic stress) or both. They need teachers with special skills to recognize and encounter their needs. Other children—the vast majority—are typically developing and need a genuine opportunity to learn the foundational skills and knowledge expected by schools. During the preschool years, children need to be assessed for biological and social difficulties, with interventions provided as needed. Still, all children—whether they accept special needs or not—need to be fully engaged and then they become enthusiastic learners of their schools' curricula.

Cultural differences

Teachers likewise need a improve understanding of cultural differences and similarities. Too often, teachers and administrators view the different expressions of development in African Americans as evidence of intentionally bad and distasteful beliefs and/or low bookish potential. When African American children demonstrate adaptive behaviors (such as passivity or aggression) that have been successful in the past, teachers and administrators usually spend lilliputian fourth dimension trying to sympathize the etiology of these behaviors or the systems that cause them. They but label the children "special needs" or delinquent and exclude them from course-level curricula.

When teachers—often through petty fault of their own—practice non understand the reasons for children's behavior, they are probable to lower their expectations for children of color. The children internalize their teachers' evaluations of their potential, thus lowering their own (and often their parents') expectations for achievement. Underfunded schools that provide little support or professional guidance for inexperienced teachers and administrators compound the problem.

The capabilities developed in homes and communities can be used as springboards for learning in school if teachers recognize children's strengths.

In the past, informal networks of families and neighbors provided the supports many African American children and families needed. Today, considering of increased pressures in homes and neighborhoods, formal organizations (social, educational, political, economical, philanthropic, and customs) oftentimes must step in. To exist more effective, these organizations must rethink how they deliver their services. Depersonalized, rule-governed relationships must requite way to intentional connections and meaningful collaboration. The nigh effective manner to bring about and sustain such relationships is through local action in which Black families are meaningfully engaged. Schools in particular play an important role in defusing racism, educating staff, providing social networks (activities), and welcoming parents. If the accomplishment gap is to be closed, schools demand to keep their delivery to children from before birth into young machismo, with regular updates to run into changing social needs.

Reflections and recommendations

Acting on inquiry and intervention findings, some of which are presented hither, will require embracing new understanding and accepting the discomfort of change. Established economic, political, social, and even structural interests are involved in the status quo. Long-term change will only happen when these systems reflect a culturally advisable, asset-based agreement of the children and families they serve. It will require educators, administrators, and policy makers who

• Know that today education is needed for the Usa economy and the future of American democracy
• Understand the economical, political, and social contexts of families and recognize the complex interactions betwixt all of these and children's learning in schoolhouse
• Capeesh that education begins before nascency and that preschool education is as essential as Thousand–12 for all children at risk for school failure
• Sympathize that a good education is far more than good test scores (although those are important); physical and mental wellness, the arts and music, citizenship responsibilities, and empathic relationships are equally of import and should be planned for and supported in school
• See the importance of facilitating date and learning for children from not-White backgrounds; of integrating a positive racial identity with development; and of agreement education and learning every bit intellectually stimulating and culturally affirming experiences
• Plan for the prevention of difficult behavior and the promotion of responsible and constructive family support to reduce costly generation-to-generation transmission of unrewarding behavior
• Work to foster authentic, reciprocal partnerships between families, children, teachers, and schools, in which the achievement of all students is encouraged and supported at dwelling and at school
• Select curricula and employ instruction practices that are developmentally and culturally appropriate and thus are based on children's needs (rather than one size fits all)
• Ensure that all children are given opportunities to develop an identity of excellence and scholarship that counters negative stereotypes
• Recognize cultural differences and ready loftier bookish expectations for all children

We believe that a program carried out by people and organizations with a deep understanding of the complexities and the collaborations needed to back up child development, who recognize the importance of education—both what is taught and how it is taught—and who focus resource to support family functioning will assistance close the achievement gap, benefiting our children, families, economy, and democracy.

---

References

Adair, J.K. 2015.The Impact of Bigotry on the Early Schooling Experiences of Children from Immigrant Families.Written report. Migration Policy Institute. www.migrationpolicy.org/research/impact-discrimination-early-schooling-e....

Change, C. 2015. "Blackness Children Still Most Likely to Live in Poverty, Study Says."Time. http://time.com/3955671/black-children-poverty-study.

Calarco, J.M. 2014. "Coached for the Classroom: Parents' Cultural Manual and Children'south Reproduction of Educational Inequalities."American Sociological Review79 (5): 1015–37.

Duncan, Thou.J., J. Brooks-Gunn, & P.K. Klebanov. 1994. "Economic Impecuniousness and Early Childhood Evolution."Kid Development 65 (two): 296–318.

Gershenson, Southward., & T.Due south. Dee. 2017. "The Insidiousness of Unconscious Bias in Schools."Brownish Center Chalkboard (blog). Brookings. www.brookings.edu/blog/dark-brown-heart-chalkboard/2017/03/xx/the-insidiousn....

Gilliam, Due west.South. 2014. "What Could Make Less Sense than Expelling a Preschooler?"Psychology Benefits Society(web log). American Psychological Association. https://psychologybenefits.org/2014/12/13/preschool-expulsions.

Grusky, D., C. Varner, & Chiliad. Mattingly, eds. 2015. "State of the States: The Poverty and Inequality Report."Pathways: A Mag on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy. Special event. The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/SOTU_2015.pdf. 

Hart, B., & T.R. Risley. 1995.Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Immature American Children. Baltimore, Medico: Brookes.

Labov, W. 1972.Linguistic communication in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Conduct and Communication series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Matthew, D.B., E. Rodrigue, & R.Five. Reeves. 2016.Time for Justice: Tackling Race Inequalities in Wellness and Housing. Report. Washington, DC: Brookings. world wide web.Brookings.edu/enquiry/time-for-justice-tackling-race-inequalities-i....

McKinsey & Company. 2009.The Economical Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools: Summary of Findings. http://dropoutprevention.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ACHIEVEMENT_GAP_REPORT_20090512.pdf.

Pager, D., & H. Shepherd. 2008. "The Sociology of Bigotry: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets."Annual Review of Folklore 34: 181–209. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915460/.

Reardon, S.F. 2015. "School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps." CEPA (Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis) Working Paper No. xv-12. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp15-12v201510.pdf.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2016. "Can Early on Childhood Interventions Amend Wellness and Well-Being?" Health Policy Snapshot Serial. www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/03/can-early on-childhood-interventio....

Sanders-Phillips, K., B. Settles-Reaves, D. Walker, &, J. Brownlow. 2009. "Social Inequality and Racial Discrimination: Risk Factors for Wellness Disparities in Children of Color." Pediatrics 124 (Supplement iii): S176–86. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/Supplement_3/S176.

Shonkoff, J.P., A.S. Garner, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Kid and Family Health, AAP Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, AAP Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, B.South. Siegel, M.I. Dobbins, M.F. Earls, A.S. Garner, L. McGuinn, J. Pascoe, & D.L. Wood. 2012. "The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Arduousness and Toxic Stress." Technical written report.Pediatrics129 (1): e232–46.

Stanford CEPA, n.d. "Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gaps."The Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project. http://cepa.stanford.edu/educational-opportunity-monitoring-project/achi....

Takanishi, R. 2016. Beginning Things First! Creating the New American Primary School.New York: Teachers Higher Press.

Valant, J., & D. Newark. 2017. "Race, Form, and Americans' Perspectives of Achievement Gaps."Brown Eye Chalkboard (blog). Brookings. world wide web.brookings.edu/blog/dark-brown-middle-chalkboard/2017/01/sixteen/race-class-and....

USDA (US Section of Agriculture). 2017. "Poverty Demographics." Rural Poverty and Well-Being. www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-bein....

W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 2014. "New Poll Reveals Challenges and Opportunities Facing African American Families." News and Media. http://www.wkkf.org/news-and-media/article/2014/04/new-poll-reveals-chal....

---

Authors' note: Portions of this article were adapted from "Early Learning: A Report for the White Business firm Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans." This unpublished report was developed in 2015 while David Johns was the executive director of the White Firm Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans during the Obama administration.

Photographs: © Getty Images

wolfefackons.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/may2018/achievement-gap

Share this post