The supposed American Dream is built on the premise that
if you study in school, you will be rewarded with a good job that allows you to
care for your family. But poor kids in America, mostly children of color,
hardly stand a chance. And the odds start widening very early.
Research continues to show that access to quality preschool is a primary driver of later school success. In an article in the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Linda Bakken repots that from birth to age five are crucial to the development of the foundations of thinking, behaving and emotional well-being. Based on a body of research, Bakken concludes that access to quality preschool during this time improves later learning, reduces the need for special education, increases high-school achievement, lowers the rate of high-school drop-outs, the number of juvenile arrests, and the need for state-funded financial assistance as an adult.
But access to quality preschool is out of reach for most children growing up in poverty – largely Black and brown children- and that gap begins a trajectory of failure from the earliest days of life. As Julia Isaacs documents in an article for the Center on Children and Families at Brookings, ‘less than half of poor children are ready for school at age five,’ compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate or high incomes.’
A report by the National Institute for Early Education Research suggests that the achievement gap that disproportionately affects African American children later in childhood is really due to an ‘opportunity gap’ - the inability to access quality preschool programs. 45 percent of young African American children live in poverty and 70 percent in low income families, so subsidizing care only for those living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level leaves many Black children without a chance to access preschool at all. And much of the nations subsidized preschool is no high quality, negating the benefits described in the study.
The landmark longitudinal Perry Preschool Study, comparing two groups of at-risk African American three-and-four-year- olds, found that those who received a quality preschool education completed more education, including graduation from high school, had much lower teen pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births, and were much less likely to be arrested for violent crimes or serve time in prison. In fact, those who did not receive the quality preschool services were five times as likely to be arrested for violent crimes, four times more likely to be arrested for drug felonies, and seven times more likely to have been sentenced to jail or prison by age forty.
Besides being economically disadvantaged, minority children, especially Black children, are far more likely to be labelled as having behavioral problems, to be disciplined and removed from the very educational settings that could level the playing field for them. From the earliest stages, the educational system treats Black children more harshly than white kids. Research from the Yale Child Study Center confirms that preschool teachers are more likely to expect and identify disruptive behavior from Black kids, particularly boys, than white ones. . .
A study by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released in 2014 was both shocking and enlightening. The study found that, ‘Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment but make up 48 percent of preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension. This early racial disparity in suspension continues through-out grades K-12. Black students are almost four times as likely as whites to receive out-of-school suspensions in those grades.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology studies found that white female undergraduates ‘viewed black boys as older and less innocent than their white peers’. . .from photographs they estimated Black boys were an average of four and a half years older than they actually were. Black boys as young as ten ‘may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers’, instead, they are more likely to be mistaken as older, perceived as guilty, and face police violence if accused of a crime. Children are supposed to be protected, not punished.
A similar study tested 176 mostly white male police officers, whose average age was thirty-seven, from large urban areas to determine their levels of two distinct types of bias- prejudice and unconscious dehumanization of Black people using animal comparison choices. When the researchers reviewed the police officer’s personnel records to determine use of force while on duty, they ‘found that those who dehumanized Blacks were more likely to have used force against a Black child in custody than officers who did not dehumanize Blacks.’ Use of force in the study was described as using a ‘take-down or wrist lock; kicking or punching; striking with a blunt object; using a police dog, restraints or hobbling’; using tar gas or electric shock; or killing. According to the study, ‘only dehumanization and not police officers’ prejudices against Blacks – conscious or not- was linked to violent encounters withy Black children in custody.’
Often, discipline at school, for even the slightest infraction such as truancy or lateness, can lead to trouble with the law. In fact, Black students are more than twice as likely as white students to have an interaction with law enforcement or be subjected to a school-related arrest. A 2010 study found that more than 70 percent of all students involved in school-related law-enforcement incidents were Black or Latino. This phenomena is called the ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’ There are differences, based on race, in how students are disciplined: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, even when the infractions are the same.
Black and brown children are essentially being single-out and funneled towards a lifetime of failure almost from the start of their school years. Many are trapped in poor minority neighborhoods where they find little opportunity in a woefully inadequate educational system. Inherent segregation and underfunded schools contribute to the under-education of children. Black and brown students tend to have less experienced teachers and often more teachers who have implicit bias and skewed perceptions of them. They also have fewer tools to work with, such as books, computers, internet access, and online learning. And many enter school already at such a disadvantage due to conditions that seemed to be determined by economic and racial status that there’s little hope of ever catching up.
Behavioral scientists have found a fascinating correlation between intelligence and culture. Psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, of Yale University, writes ‘Intelligence cannot fully or even meaningfully be understood outside its cultural context.’ Conduct that is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered unintelligent in another. Chiefly due to the performance of Black children on IQ tests, an erroneous notion has lingered far too long that they have a diminished intellectual capacity.
The truth is that IQ is culturally and ideologically based, and it has been misused for decades, for eugenics purposes and to separate some children from others. In using the IQ test, the American educational system has continuously misevaluated Black children. After the de-segregation case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka we as handed down in 1964, opponents of integration searched for new ways to discriminate. Separation by “IQ” became one way of mismanaging the placement of minority students.
In some public-school districts, children may be subject to skill testing at very early ages. Students who do poorly on those exams often are labeled at ‘at-risk’ students. As early as kindergarten, some minority boys and girls, not blessed with an early education and quality preschool advantages available to other children, are labeled as potential failures. They and their parents then bear the burden of this mislabeling, which then follows them emotionally and on their records for the rest of their school life. With resources in short supply, with teachers overburdened by large classes and ever-changing standards, with lawmakers relentlessly shifting money from public to ‘charter’ and other private schools, many of these children will never lose this label, even though they might yearn and even strive to succeed. . .
The US Department of Education reports that ‘high poverty schools have a higher percentage, on average, of teachers who were not fully certified than schools with low poverty rates and that ‘schools with high proportions of students of color had a higher percentage of teachers who were not fully certified, compared with schools with low proportions of students of color. Segregation by race and class are linked to other deprivations, such a a paucity of college-preparation and career-education courses. Also, because these institutions are managed poorly and do not provide sufficient staff training for professional counselors, their students tend to have much greater numbers of suspensions, expulsions, and law-enforcement issues.
Technology could be a potential equalizer between children of privilege and those born with multiple strikes against them, but access to technology represents another divide according to race. According to the Pew Research Center, as of November 2016, 35 percent of Black Americans and 42 percent of Hispanics lack broadband internet service at home, compared to 22 percent of white Americans.
A child without access to a computer is as blatantly discriminated against as a Black child once denied the opportunity to read or write. Making the internet affordable, accessible, and available is one way to raise up the disadvantaged and disenfranchised - and to level the educational and technological playing field.
Former Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is spearheading efforts to slay educational and technological racism by fighting for universal telephone and high-speed internet access nationwide. But others on that same commission are doing everything they can to block her – and to serve the interests of the same corporate titans who have held minorities down.
In August 2017, a civil rights attorney filed a complaint against AT&T with the FCC on behalf of three Black women accusing the communications giant of ‘digital redlining.’ The Dallas News reports that, ‘the complaint refers to a March report by two non-profits, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community, that mapped internet availability and speeds in Cleveland. The groups alleged in the report tat AT&T had ‘systematically discriminated’ by not making fiber-enhanced broad and improvements in most Cleveland neighborhoods with high poverty. Making certain that computers, access to the internet, and online educational opportunities are available to everyone- these too are civil rights issues.
Research continues to show that access to quality preschool is a primary driver of later school success. In an article in the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, Linda Bakken repots that from birth to age five are crucial to the development of the foundations of thinking, behaving and emotional well-being. Based on a body of research, Bakken concludes that access to quality preschool during this time improves later learning, reduces the need for special education, increases high-school achievement, lowers the rate of high-school drop-outs, the number of juvenile arrests, and the need for state-funded financial assistance as an adult.
But access to quality preschool is out of reach for most children growing up in poverty – largely Black and brown children- and that gap begins a trajectory of failure from the earliest days of life. As Julia Isaacs documents in an article for the Center on Children and Families at Brookings, ‘less than half of poor children are ready for school at age five,’ compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate or high incomes.’
A report by the National Institute for Early Education Research suggests that the achievement gap that disproportionately affects African American children later in childhood is really due to an ‘opportunity gap’ - the inability to access quality preschool programs. 45 percent of young African American children live in poverty and 70 percent in low income families, so subsidizing care only for those living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level leaves many Black children without a chance to access preschool at all. And much of the nations subsidized preschool is no high quality, negating the benefits described in the study.
The landmark longitudinal Perry Preschool Study, comparing two groups of at-risk African American three-and-four-year- olds, found that those who received a quality preschool education completed more education, including graduation from high school, had much lower teen pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births, and were much less likely to be arrested for violent crimes or serve time in prison. In fact, those who did not receive the quality preschool services were five times as likely to be arrested for violent crimes, four times more likely to be arrested for drug felonies, and seven times more likely to have been sentenced to jail or prison by age forty.
Besides being economically disadvantaged, minority children, especially Black children, are far more likely to be labelled as having behavioral problems, to be disciplined and removed from the very educational settings that could level the playing field for them. From the earliest stages, the educational system treats Black children more harshly than white kids. Research from the Yale Child Study Center confirms that preschool teachers are more likely to expect and identify disruptive behavior from Black kids, particularly boys, than white ones. . .
A study by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released in 2014 was both shocking and enlightening. The study found that, ‘Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment but make up 48 percent of preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension. This early racial disparity in suspension continues through-out grades K-12. Black students are almost four times as likely as whites to receive out-of-school suspensions in those grades.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology studies found that white female undergraduates ‘viewed black boys as older and less innocent than their white peers’. . .from photographs they estimated Black boys were an average of four and a half years older than they actually were. Black boys as young as ten ‘may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers’, instead, they are more likely to be mistaken as older, perceived as guilty, and face police violence if accused of a crime. Children are supposed to be protected, not punished.
A similar study tested 176 mostly white male police officers, whose average age was thirty-seven, from large urban areas to determine their levels of two distinct types of bias- prejudice and unconscious dehumanization of Black people using animal comparison choices. When the researchers reviewed the police officer’s personnel records to determine use of force while on duty, they ‘found that those who dehumanized Blacks were more likely to have used force against a Black child in custody than officers who did not dehumanize Blacks.’ Use of force in the study was described as using a ‘take-down or wrist lock; kicking or punching; striking with a blunt object; using a police dog, restraints or hobbling’; using tar gas or electric shock; or killing. According to the study, ‘only dehumanization and not police officers’ prejudices against Blacks – conscious or not- was linked to violent encounters withy Black children in custody.’
Often, discipline at school, for even the slightest infraction such as truancy or lateness, can lead to trouble with the law. In fact, Black students are more than twice as likely as white students to have an interaction with law enforcement or be subjected to a school-related arrest. A 2010 study found that more than 70 percent of all students involved in school-related law-enforcement incidents were Black or Latino. This phenomena is called the ‘school-to-prison pipeline.’ There are differences, based on race, in how students are disciplined: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, even when the infractions are the same.
Black and brown children are essentially being single-out and funneled towards a lifetime of failure almost from the start of their school years. Many are trapped in poor minority neighborhoods where they find little opportunity in a woefully inadequate educational system. Inherent segregation and underfunded schools contribute to the under-education of children. Black and brown students tend to have less experienced teachers and often more teachers who have implicit bias and skewed perceptions of them. They also have fewer tools to work with, such as books, computers, internet access, and online learning. And many enter school already at such a disadvantage due to conditions that seemed to be determined by economic and racial status that there’s little hope of ever catching up.
Behavioral scientists have found a fascinating correlation between intelligence and culture. Psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, of Yale University, writes ‘Intelligence cannot fully or even meaningfully be understood outside its cultural context.’ Conduct that is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered unintelligent in another. Chiefly due to the performance of Black children on IQ tests, an erroneous notion has lingered far too long that they have a diminished intellectual capacity.
The truth is that IQ is culturally and ideologically based, and it has been misused for decades, for eugenics purposes and to separate some children from others. In using the IQ test, the American educational system has continuously misevaluated Black children. After the de-segregation case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka we as handed down in 1964, opponents of integration searched for new ways to discriminate. Separation by “IQ” became one way of mismanaging the placement of minority students.
In some public-school districts, children may be subject to skill testing at very early ages. Students who do poorly on those exams often are labeled at ‘at-risk’ students. As early as kindergarten, some minority boys and girls, not blessed with an early education and quality preschool advantages available to other children, are labeled as potential failures. They and their parents then bear the burden of this mislabeling, which then follows them emotionally and on their records for the rest of their school life. With resources in short supply, with teachers overburdened by large classes and ever-changing standards, with lawmakers relentlessly shifting money from public to ‘charter’ and other private schools, many of these children will never lose this label, even though they might yearn and even strive to succeed. . .
The US Department of Education reports that ‘high poverty schools have a higher percentage, on average, of teachers who were not fully certified than schools with low poverty rates and that ‘schools with high proportions of students of color had a higher percentage of teachers who were not fully certified, compared with schools with low proportions of students of color. Segregation by race and class are linked to other deprivations, such a a paucity of college-preparation and career-education courses. Also, because these institutions are managed poorly and do not provide sufficient staff training for professional counselors, their students tend to have much greater numbers of suspensions, expulsions, and law-enforcement issues.
Technology could be a potential equalizer between children of privilege and those born with multiple strikes against them, but access to technology represents another divide according to race. According to the Pew Research Center, as of November 2016, 35 percent of Black Americans and 42 percent of Hispanics lack broadband internet service at home, compared to 22 percent of white Americans.
A child without access to a computer is as blatantly discriminated against as a Black child once denied the opportunity to read or write. Making the internet affordable, accessible, and available is one way to raise up the disadvantaged and disenfranchised - and to level the educational and technological playing field.
Former Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is spearheading efforts to slay educational and technological racism by fighting for universal telephone and high-speed internet access nationwide. But others on that same commission are doing everything they can to block her – and to serve the interests of the same corporate titans who have held minorities down.
In August 2017, a civil rights attorney filed a complaint against AT&T with the FCC on behalf of three Black women accusing the communications giant of ‘digital redlining.’ The Dallas News reports that, ‘the complaint refers to a March report by two non-profits, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Connect Your Community, that mapped internet availability and speeds in Cleveland. The groups alleged in the report tat AT&T had ‘systematically discriminated’ by not making fiber-enhanced broad and improvements in most Cleveland neighborhoods with high poverty. Making certain that computers, access to the internet, and online educational opportunities are available to everyone- these too are civil rights issues.
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