Lindsay Meyer

Wray

UWRT 1103

18 April 2017

Academic Achievement Gap

I greatly feel that there is a significant academic achievement gap between many types of

minorities across high schools and colleges. However, I am specifically interested and intrigued

by the achievement gap between African American students and white students. The academic

achievement gap refers to the difference in academic performance or educational attainment

between different groups of students. Although a survey my group performed concerning the

achievement gap suggests that there is no significant gap between African American students and

white students, I insist that there really is an academic achievement gap between these two

groups of students. Below are the results found after we completed our survey. Our survey was

completed by mostly college aged students, but ranging overall from age 17 to 73, and in which

ninety percent of the whole group were white. Also, the majority of the people that participated

in the survey either attended or does attend a suburban or rural grade school. While our results

may be slightly skewed and biased due to the fact that the majority of participants are white, we

found that almost half of our participants thought there was no gap whatsoever between African

American and white students. These results surprised me so much! My group and I all found this

very interesting due to our research into the topic of the achievement gap and the articles we

researched.
 According to the article College access improves for black students but for which

one's?, (2016) African-American high school graduates are less prepared for a college-level

curriculum than any other racial or ethnic group. Although they are the least prepared for

college, this article also claims that as the years have gone by and in the near future, high school

graduation for black students have and will increase, but in the present we still face many

difficulties that hinder these students from the success they need. These reasons are listed below.

The first reason being that African American students have a higher dropout rate than any

other ethnicity. This is particularly not good for obvious reasons. I feel that students drop out of

school for multiple reasons. One, because they just arent getting the grades they need to pass, or

they get held back. Two, because they dont have that support they need in the home or at school.

Three, because the school doesnt have the resources and help that a student needs to be

successful due to school funding. These are all three components of why African American

students drop out of high school.

Also, African American students tend to go to schools that have very little funding. With

limited funds, there is not much a school can do. With this situation in hand, it is difficult for a
school to help students be the best they can be when they cannot afford the best programs and

hire the best teachers. I find this particularly sad because many students in this situation will be

more likely to dropout and will not find the success they couldve found if they went to a nice

school with appropriate funding.

A third reason why there is an academic achievement gap between African American

students and other students is because black students tend to have lower test scores on

standardized tests, such as, the ACT and SAT (Cokley, Obaseki, Moran-Jackson, Jones, Vohra-

Gupta, 2016). In my experience with applying for college, all the schools I looked into and

applied for looked fairly heavily at my SAT or ACT scores, or even both. Many of the schools

just looked at your best score between the two, and used that as a component when looking into

your acceptance. If students dont get the scores the college is looking for, the least likely you are

to get accepted.

Lastly, African American students are least likely to take, or just have less access to

higher level courses, such as, AP classes and honors classes. This greatly relates to standardized

testing due to the fact that by taking higher level classes while still in high school will positively

correlate with those SAT and ACT score that colleges look at (Cokley, 2016). There are multiple

reasons that African American students are least likely to take honors or AP courses compared to

students of a white or Asian ethnicity. First of all, many predominately African American schools

do not even offer those higher level courses because they just dont have the money to offer

those courses. Second of all, even when an AP class or honors course is offered to an African

American student they are least likely to be placed in it due to them not being as academically

prepared as students who are white or Asian. Also, The College Board found that only 30% of

black students with strong math skills took AP math, compared to 60% of Asian students.
Beyond the availability of AP courses, courses that simply build on foundational knowledge such

as Algebra II, are not available in about 25% of high schools that serve large percentages of

black and Hispanic students (Cokley, 2016). While African American students are less likely to

take those higher level courses that help them be more academically prepared for the future,

African American students are also more likely to take remediation courses to widen that

academic achievement gap between the racial groups.

While some may suggest or argue that this data is outdated and inaccurate due to the time

period most of the data and statistical information was found. While a lot of the percentages

came from around 2008, and many of those numbers have changed within those separating years,

nothing has changed so drastic that there is no longer a gap between African American and white

students academic achievement. There is a lot that has to be done, and a lot that is being done to

fix this problem many students face in grade school. Colleges are starting to look less towards

standardized test scores, and schools are offering more and more help to students to lessen the

gap between students academically. It is taking a lot of time and effort to right this wrong, but

slowly and surely African American students are catching up to eliminate the gap.

Reference Page
Cokley, Kevin, Victor Obaseki, Karen Moran-Jackson, Leonie Jones, and Shetal Vohra-Gupta.
"College Access Improves for Black Students but for Which Ones?" SAGE Journals. PDK
International, 25 Jan. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.