The Correlation Between Race and Ethnicity and Education in the US

In-between the years 1997 and 2017, the population of the United States of America has changed a lot; especially in terms of ethnic and educational background. It grew by over 50 million people, most of which were persons of colour. Although white European Americans still make up the biggest group in terms of race and ethnicity in the United States, the country is becoming more diversified and the percentage of whites is going down. Hispanics had the largest increase over the years, with Asians being the close second ethnic and racial group. These tendencies will continue in the future as well. Moreover, for the first time, “there are currently more non-white children at every age from infant to nine years, producing the first minority-white generation at 49.6 percent”. So it comes to no surprise that in today’s society, gender, race and other demographic factors are as important as ever.

Nowadays, people try their hardest not to offend anyone or to not accidentally say something racist. As mentioned before, during these 20 years, society became more schooled as well, since more grown-ups finished higher education and received a degree of some kind. But how come this political correctness mentioned earlier doesn´t apply to one of the most important parts of society; education? Because even though the overall population became more schooled, inequalities in education for certain ethnicities and races still exist. From kindergarten, up to college; people of colour and different ethnic backgrounds still face the problem, that their education is affected by their ethnicity and race. Even though the total amount of people that did not finishing High School or had an education lower than High School fell by about 7,5 percent (from 17,9 percent to 10,4 percent) in those 20 years, it still stands that graduation rates are lower for minorities. Whereas 91 percent of white and European American kindergarteners end up graduating High School, just 87 percent of African Americans, 62 percent of Hispanics and 52 percent of native Americans end up graduating. Through numbers like these, it has been established over time that there is a (often times negative) correlation between race and ethnicity and education. But what are some of the mechanisms and reasons, that make this correlation obvious?

This paper will give three mechanisms underlined by examples from High Schools all over the United States of America, that all show the connection that education has with race and ethnicity. The mechanisms that make the correlation between race and ethnicity and education obvious. As mentioned in the introduction, there are three mechanisms that clearly show how ethnicity and race affect education. For the sake of this paper, education here primarily refers to the performance of High School students.

There are obviously many more reasons and mechanisms that make the link apparent, but this paper will focus on some of the most visible and urgent ones. These are the racial biases and teaching behaviours brought to light by the High School teachers, the unequal opportunities and school segregation of students with different ethnic backgrounds, as well as the unequal resources that their schools tend to receive.

Racial Biases and Teaching Behaviours

Teachers oftentimes show favouritism quite openly in class. This can be observed in regard to race and ethnicity as well. Often times, non-white teachers will treat non-white students more generously or seem to openly treat them with favour, by for example giving them more of their attention. The same goes for white teachers and white students. Experiments have shown that some teachers treat students of their own race better by giving them better materials and acting more favourably towards them. A study done by Marylee Taylor in 1997, where white teachers behaviours were observed when they could not see the student directly showed, whenever they were told beforehand that the student was black, they would treat them immensely different then when they were told that the student was white. The black students automatically got feedback that was less positive that the white students. The same could be said for during class. Black students did not get as much attention, not as many compliments and were disciplined more than the white students. Even in more recent times, results have not changed much. Numbers from 2004 show, that approximately 38.2 percent Native Americans, 19,6 percent Latinos and about 35,1 percent of African Americans were either thrown out or suspended from school in-between grade 7 and twelve compared to 14,6 percent of white European American students. But there is more to teaching behaviour than just discipline. In general, “teaching behaviours are actions that teachers exhibit toward or in presence of students, which have been categorised into four domains: instructional, organisational, social-emotional, and negative”. Instruction methods, how a student’s responsibility is being encouraged, as well as giving feedback is part of the instructional domain. The organisational domain shows how teachers deal with a student’s behaviour, so also our beforementioned discipline, how they encourage and engage the students in class in order to maximise time by simultaneously setting expectations. The emotions and feelings a teacher has towards a student, as well as the responsiveness to emotions between them are part of the socio-emotional domain. Lastly, the negative domain deals with all the behaviour that a student might understand as a threat or punishment. Multiple studies and experiments have found out, that teachers’ attitudes and behaviour have a big influence on students’ successes. Furthermore, the behaviour seems to affect students dissimilarly according to their race and ethnicity. Often times minority students, in this study African Americans, viewed their teacher as less supportive and positive, even if the feedback was the same. The study also suggested, that reasons for these different feelings may be that the African American students simply don´t feel as connected to their white European American teachers as they would to African American teachers. So as these studies and researches show, teachers often times show a certain bias and sometimes more negative behaviour towards students with different ethnic backgrounds, while at the same time the students might not feel as connected to them. Both of the reasons can impact their performance in school a lot.

Unequal Opportunities and School Segregation

Sociologists of education see school as a location, where students should learn norms and values in order to prepare them for adult life in a society. “Schools are expected to give all their students the resources needed to live in and to contribute to society, regardless of their social background.” The main factor for success is ability, and now what racial and ethnic background a person has. Often times in sociologist studies about opportunities in school, these characteristics like race and ethnicity are being ignored. Over the last years the percentage of ethnic minorities in schools all over the US grew by a lot and schools are more ethically and racially diverse than ever. And still, African American and Hispanic students are more segregated and have fewer or worse educational and academic opportunities nowadays than they had for example twenty years ago. Already back in the 1960´s there were a lot of questions raised when it comes to giving students the same opportunities. Many people were worried, that especially minorities would receive lesser opportunities than the white students in segregated and desegregated schools. Which is why in 1954 a court case called Brown v. Board of Education was laid before the supreme court. Its mission was to go directly against the institutional discrimination based on the colour of people’s skin, which was very popular after the elimination of slavery in 1865 in the United States of America. During this time, the phrase “separate but equal” was often used to describe schools and the way they worked. They would keep minority students separate from white students, but both apparently had the same education. This phrase was seen as wrong and the court came to the conclusion, that segregated schools could not be equal and “that the applicants had been deprived of equal protection in contravention of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment'. As a consequence, from then onwards, the segregation of schools was illegal.

Still, for some the worry and suspicion was still there and steadily growing, that minorities were treated differently from their white classmates. In the past years, there have been multiple studies about schools and the equality of their opportunities. In those studies, they have put their focus on the school’s resources, their composition and the school’s climate. Often times, the researchers could analyse that the variation of the factors in different schools created unfair opportunities for students with different racial and ethical backgrounds. They were able to identify several mechanisms that caused the unequal distribution of opportunities, especially for students of non-white ethical backgrounds. An example would be the grouping of students. When checking whether the grouping of students by ability in a classroom would lead to unequal opportunity, researchers found out that often times the non-white students would automatically be paired with low-ability groups. In those groups the learning climate and the instructions were poorer and lower than the ones in higher-ability groups. Furthermore, students who were assigned to those low-ability groups inevitably excluded them from taking specific courses later in school. What is more, being in one of the low-ability groups negatively affected students´ performance, which then in turn widened the gap between the white students´ and the non-white students´ test score and achievements even more. 

Even in more recent studies, for example from the year 2000 (done by the applied research center), the same results are shows. Although there are actual laws against is, as shown with the Brown v. Board of Education case, some schools remain segregated. And still, in schools where more than half of the students are white, it is twice as likely that there are more advanced classes on offer, than in schools where there are more African American and Hispanic students. They also get put into courses that are low track than the white or Asian students even though they received the same scores in their tests. All of these results make it obvious how for some students their ethnic and racial background takes away their opportunities to perform to the best of their abilities.

Unequal Distribution of Resources

The last mechanism that plays a big role in the link between race and ethnicity and education, is the unequal distribution of resources. “Because of race and class segregation and its relationship to local school revenues, students in high-poverty racially segregated schools are not exposed to high-quality curricula, highly qualified teachers, or important social networks”. In a report about High Schools in Virginia, it was shown that high poverty schools have definite noticeable shortcomings when it comes to academic and educational opportunities. High poverty schools in this case are schools, where at least about 75 percent of students are eligible for lunches that are either free or reduced in price, which would be the case, for example for a family of four that has an income of 43,568$ or less. Vice versa, low poverty schools are schools where only a maximum of 25 percent of students is eligible for a lunch that is free or reduced in price. Often times the high poverty schools have teachers with less experience, not as many science, math and AP courses available and they receive less spending for materials.

For example, a teacher in a high poverty school received about 46,000$ in average in the 2013-2014 school year. Whereas a teacher in a low poverty school received about 57,000$ in the same school year. So on average, the low poverty teacher earned about 11,000$ less that year. And in the end, the students are the ones who will be affected the most because of these inequalities; especially the minority students. Mostly Virginias African American and Hispanic students are the ones stripped of their chance to fulfil their educational and career aspirations. The reason for that is, that most of these students are the most represented in high poverty schools.

Some of the beforementioned consequences for the students due to the unequally distributed resources are worse results in standardized tests, the absence in class is higher and the likelihood of repeating a school year and not graduating in the usual 12 years is a lot higher. 

This unequal distribution of resources doesn't only happen in Virginia though. The same thing happens in big cities such as New York City for example. There have been times, for example around 1997, where a high poverty school district would spend about 11,700$ per student in comparison to about 22,000$ per student in a low poverty school district such as Manhasset in Long Island. The same as before also goes for the teachers´ salaries; in 1997 a teacher in a high poverty school would earn about 43,000$ a year compared to the 74,000$ a year a teacher in a low poverty school makes. Even though in recent years, the pay gap seems to have diminished a bit, the fact still stands that the gap still exists. And in the end, the number do not lie; often times “the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states.” 

Conclusion

As said in the beginning of this essay, over the last twenty years, the population of the United States of America has grown and changed a lot. Especially in terms of racial and ethnic backgrounds and in education. Results show, that nowadays there are a lot more High School graduates, notably a lot that have non-white ethnic and racial backgrounds. Predictions say that this tendency will remain and grow even more until there will be more non-white than white students that graduate High School. At a certain point around 2025 or 2026, only 49 percent of all High Schoolers that are graduating will be white.

That gives the hope, that over time, mechanisms such as the segregation of schools, the unequal opportunities, as well as the unequal distribution of resources will diminish and the negative correlation between race and education will disappear over time. Since at some point there will be so many different cultures present in schools, hope stands that one culture or ethnicity will not be favoured over other. Though for some mechanisms, such as the unequal distribution of resources, that mission will be harder and will most probably require actions done by the state. 

Bibliography

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• Duncombe, C., 2017. Unequal Opportunities: Fewer Resources, Worse Outcomes for Students in Schools with Concentrated Poverty, n.a.: The Commonwealth Institue.
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