Can We Make Schools Effective for Minority Students?

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Negro Education focuses on successful schooling of American black and some other minority students. On the whole, the basic academic achievement of black, Hispanic, American Indian, and some other minority students, particularly those from low-income families, has been significantly lower than that of the more affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) students. A few minority groups, such as the Jewish and Japanese Americans, have excelled in academic achievement, demonstrating that minority group students need not achieve at lower levels in American schools. In this paper, we will focus primarily on black minority students, but it should be recognized that generally, with some variation, the same phenomenon applies to Hispanic and American Indian students. In typical American school districts, the achievement of black students, as measured by standardized tests in the basic skills and basic school subjects, is slightly lower in the early elementary grades than the achievement of white students. Typically, this slight difference in achievement between black and white students increases as the students move through the elementary and secondary grades. This phenomenon, however, should not be attributed specifically to racial differences. The same discrepancy in achievement generally occurs between the children of poor white families and more affluent white families. Black students, therefore, may be doubly disadvantaged by both race and low income.' There is ample evi-