Black Students In The School System Essay

Students and school systems in lower income areas with predominantly minority students tend to have lower achievement than their affluent white counterparts (Gardner 2007). Scott Nearing found that “in 1927, South Carolina spent $2.74 per ‘Negro’ student and $27.88 per White student” (Nearing 1929, as cited in Gardner 2007).That means schools systems spent 10-20 times more money per white student than black student. Black students through history have been disadvantaged by black slave codes, then Jim Crow laws, and finally by institutionalized racism (Gardner 2007). While education has not always been equally dispersed amongst white students, they have had more access than black students because of the lack of discriminatory laws. In this modern age, there are many problems that contribute to keeping up the achievement gap. These problems include: poverty, funding, thinking, teachers and schools, locus of control, immigration, and parental experiences. The blame cannot be assigned to any one issue. All of …show more content…
Across classrooms, districts, and states students in one school have different needs that may require more funding than in another school. In Gardner’s (2007) home district of Seattle, administration tried a system of a weighted student funding formula; which evaluates the funding a school receives by the services needed by the students. These services range from the number of children on free or reduced lunch, to the number of children receiving special education services (Gardner 2007). The more services a school requires the more funding they receive. The schools other efforts made the slight improvement found using this method of weighted funding unable to be attributed to the program solely (Gardner 2007). Just like in Seattle, there is no way to decide which problem holds the national blame for gaps in