What is Causing America’s Race Problem in Public Schools?
To close the equity gap once and for all, we must now implement policies that resolve the systemic problems cause by race bias.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act states that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Based on this statute, Americans — in theory — should confidently expect that, if the federal government funds a service, even partially, anyone would have reasonably equal access to it. Nonetheless, in regards to America’s public schools, does this statute hold true? Are all students receiving equal benefits?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question is resoundingly no. Racial disparities in public schools have been well documented historically, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights shows in its latest report that education of students of color has seen little improvement.
In fact, Black preschool children are 3.6 times as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions as white preschool children. Moving into the K-12 system, Black K-12 students are 3.8 times as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions as white students. The most recent data shows 18% of Black boys and 10% of Black girls are suspended compared to the 5% of white boys and 2% of white girls. To help put these staggering numbers into context, Black girls are 8% of enrolled students, but account for 14% of students receiving one or more out-of-school suspensions.
When looking at expulsions, Black students are expelled from school at disproportionately high rates too. Black students are 1.9 times as likely to be expelled from school without educational services as white students. When expelled, Black boys account for 19% of students expelled without educational services, and Black girls account for 9% of students expelled without educational services.
These disparities, along with multitude of factors at the individual, school, and family level, are likely to account for the high levels of chronic absenteeism seen in many high schools, where nearly a quarter of all Black students are chronically absent. Simply put, students who are not in school, don’t learn — so it’s not surprising to know that since 1960 the achievement gap for students of color has only marginally improved despite landmark policy initiatives. In fact, 87% of Black students are still deemed not proficient in math, and 84% of Black students are deemed not proficient in reading by 8th grade.
These racial disparities in education, however, do not necessarily mean that American public schools are explicitly racist. Instead, racially-biased education practices are guided by educators’ subconscious, implicit beliefs and attitudes that affect their actions, understanding, and decision-making — a result of the way in which our brains organize and store information.
Contrary to common knowledge, our memories are not made up of endless details about the things we know. Instead, our brains organize information using schema, a generalized mental framework. Schema help us quickly and automatically categorize and recall information. However, this unconscious recall can cause problems, impacting how we judge and react to others. These assumptions don’t make us unequivocally racist, but can and often do racially biased acts.
We cannot blame educators for having these implicit biases. After all, the United States has been notoriously vulnerable to them. Despite what we like to think, the framers of the Constitution believed the value of Black person’s life was only a fraction of that of a white person, facilitating not only the expansion of slavery, but also later the notion of Black inferiority alongside the rise of Jim Crow laws. Though not as obvious, these biases are still promoted today through economic and geographic segregation, reinforced by American media, and even maintained by public policies.
Even so, acknowledging the racial disparities in education does not go far enough — increasing diversity in education programs does not go far enough. It is clear these reactive policy shifts are not working. Instead, for example, we must put forward policies that promote effectively identifying and facilitating student achievement regardless of race, like implicit bias training for all teachers.
I am fortunate to have the opportunity to be working as apart of the Being Black at School team to make these very policy suggestions and further study the learning environment for Black students in our public schools. To close the equity gap once and for all, we must now implement education policies that not only address the outcomes of racial disparities but also seek to resolve the systemic problems that cause them.
