In their article \u201cThe Political Foundations of the Black-White Education Achievement Gap<\/a>,\u201d authors Michael T. Hartney and Patrick Flavin explore the way in which educational inequality between African American and White students is, in part, perpetuated by racial and political inequities. <\/span>In their article \u201cThreat in Context: School Moderation of the Impact of Social Identity Threat on Racial\/Ethnic Achievement Gaps<\/a>,\u201d authors Paul Hanselman, Sarah K. Bruch, Adam Gamoran, and Geoffrey D. Borman interpret the results of values affirmation exercises in reducing the inequality in performance of African American and White students. The authors also explore the exercise\u2019s relevance in continuing to address such discrepancies in the performance of minority students today.<\/span><\/p>\n Whereas Hartney and Flavin address larger issues of racialized political dynamics in our society today, Hanselman, Bruch, Gamoran, and Borman look at factors contributing racial inequalities specifically in the context of our schools. To that end, the authors of both articles are like-minded in their identification of key overlapping areas in which our society needs to improve so that we may combat the racial achievement gap for African American students in our school system today. <\/span><\/p>\n ______________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n Hartney and Flavin (2014) define the racial achievement gap, in a school context, as composed of \u201csignificant disparities\u201d in the high school graduation rates and standardized test scores of African American and White students (p. 5).<\/span><\/p>\n Hanselman, Bruch, Gamoran, and Borman (2014) interpret the racial achievement gap in a similar manner, noting that progress in closing the African American-White achievement gap in the late twentieth century has \u201cstalled,\u201d while gaps for the growing Hispanic population are \u201csimilarly large\u201d (p. 106).<\/span><\/p>\n Image 1.<\/p><\/div>\n The articles identify possible contributors to the racial achievement gap as:<\/span><\/p>\n ______________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n Image 2.<\/p><\/div>\n In both works, the authors recognize that the continued existence of educational inequalities between minority and non-minority students may contribute to, and worsen, \u201cexisting inequalities\u201d in levels of \u201cpolitical participation for future generations\u201d (Hartney & Flavin, 2014). Also, \u201creal-world impacts\u201d of stereotype identity threat are likely to be heightened by the continued perpetuation of the stereotype (Hanselman et al., 2014).<\/span><\/p>\n Hanselman, Bruch, Gamoran, and Borman (2014) also assert that perpetuation of a stereotype identity threat in a school context can contribute to stress, anxiety, decreased working memory, and \u201cincreased vigilance\u201d to identity threat cues (p. 107). Such threat responses can contribute to lower academic performance, and \u201cdisengagement from learning altogether\u201d (p. 108). <\/span><\/p>\n To combat the racial achievement gap in schools, Hartney and Flavin (2014) call for an increased awareness of educational shortcomings affecting both White <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> African American students by both policymakers and citizens advocating for school reform (p. 21). Their main recommendation is to implement systematic changes that support the needs of all students, not just those who have the privilege of speaking up due to systemic political inequalities present in our society today.<\/span><\/p>\n Image 3.<\/p><\/div>\n Hanselman, Bruch, Gamoran, and Borman make similar recommendations, though their argument focuses more on what individual schools may do to improve academic context and facilitate the de-stigmatization of certain minority groups. Specifically, the authors look at the implementation of values affirmation writing exercises, which have students affirm \u201cpersonally important values other than school,\u201d including family, religion, or sports. This process allows students to \u201cbuffer\u201d the negative effects of identity threats in school environments (Hanselman et al., 2014).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introduction More than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, African American students continue to underperform their fellow White students in critical educational areas. This inequality, which has extended to affect other minority groups, including, but not limited to, Hispanic and some Asian American and Pacific Islander students, raises an important question: why is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":567,"featured_media":0,"parent":189,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-211","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-spring-2018-lharring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Problems<\/b><\/h2>\n
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The Effects<\/b><\/h2>\n
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\u00a0______________________________________<\/span><\/h2>\n
Possible Solutions<\/b><\/h2>\n
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