Disproportionate Levels of Educational Achievement Among White

¶ … disproportionate levels of educational achievement among White and African-American students, titled "Powerful Pedagogy for African-American Students: A Case of Four Teachers," researcher Tyrone C. Howard examines the role of teacher effectiveness in terms of reaching this distinct student population. As Howard observes in the opening of his article, "effectively teaching African-American students continues to be one of the most pressing issues facing educators .. (and) despite the plethora of school restructuring and educational reforms, the disproportionate underachievement of African-American students is a consistent occurrence in U.S.

schools" (179), and this alarming phenomenon provides the central premise of his subsequent investigation. Howard elects to focus his qualitative study on the diverse range of socioeconomic, cultural, and regional factors which are likely to exert an impact on the continued underachievement trend within African-American student groups.

He is also concerned with assessing the role that teacher effectiveness plays in influencing the eventual achievement level of African-American students, observing that the disproportional placement of African-American students in remedial or special education programs is likely attributable to the growing gap in comprehension between students and those tasked with instructing them. By examining the import of Howard's conclusions in conjunction with a pair of contemporary contributions to the literature -- Mwalimu J. Shujaa's "Education and Schooling You Can Have One without the Other," and Carter G.

Woodson's "The Mis-Education of the Negro" -- one can begin to draw objective conclusions regarding the phenomenon of underachievement among African-American students. When the entirety of the African-American experience in this country since the end of slavery is filly considered, it is no surprise that the institutionalized societal marginalization which is so pervasive on a professional and financial level has been extended to the educational realm.

African-American students have repeatedly been placed in disadvantageous positions -- either through the legalized segregation which survived until the 1960s, or the informal divisions which took place when Whites fled urban area for suburbia in the 1980s -- and the consequences of these terribly repressive trends are being inflicted on today's minority youth.

As Howard observes in his study, "the percentage of African-American students labeled at risk, ineducable, or in need of special or remedial education services is grossly disproportionate to the overall percentage of African-American students in the school or district" (180), and this trend is an obvious extension of both the preexisting prejudice against minority students, and the preferential treatment reserved for their White counterparts.

Echoing a sentiment expressed by Shujaa in an article differentiating between education and schooling, Howard goes on to reveal a telling statistic that underscores the real issue at hand: "African-American teachers make up a mere 6% of the U.S. teaching population" (180). Shujaa's article touches on this fact in his own article, while discussing the gulf which exists between the concepts of education and schooling. As Shujaa observes, "the majority of our children are in European-centered public, private and religious schools ..

(and) the process of assessing the extent to which our cultural knowledge is taught must include an examination of what is happening to our children who attend these schools" (16-17), and it is precisely this divide which Howard addresses in his own study. Another intriguing point raised by Howard concerns the relationship between African-American students and teachers who share the same complexion and cultural background.

Speaking on the objective of his own study, Howard states that "the teachers who are the focus of this study are all African-American, and the familiarity they have with their student's cultural background underscores the importance of cultural congruity between students and teachers" (181), confirming Shujaa's postulation regarding the correlation between a student's level of underachievement and the cultural identity of their instructor. Although the conclusions reached by Howard and Shujaa would appear to suggest that separate methods of educational instruction be used on the basis of race, Carter G.

Woodson has written extensively to reject that notion. As Woodson states unequivocally in his "The Mis-Education of the Negro," recognizing the variations which exist between cultural groups, and teaching in ways that are respectful to those variations, should not have to remain mutually exclusive.