Education: When Minorities Fail, Society Fails

Education: When Minorities Fail, Society Fails
by Dylan Deleto

There are many competing views on exactly what it means to close the achievement gap in education. The primary question concerns what is being measured. Is it dropout rates? Is it graduation rates? Is it the difference in standardized test scores. Finally, and perhaps more important, who is being measured? Is the comparison between the wealthy and the needy, black and white, males and females? Various educators use different evaluations.

Black and Hispanic high school students, across the United States, drop out of school much more frequently than Asians or Whites. Despite recent improvements, this discouraging trend persists. More troubling perhaps, of those students who attend college, Blacks and Hispanics are only half as likely to graduate from college as compared to Whites. Furthermore, many of the minorities who graduate taken longer than 4 years to obtain a college degree. Therefore, the gap must be addressed very early in the educational process to ensure positive long term effects.

Recent studies have shown that are three crucial factors required to improve the college enrollment and eventually graduation rates among Blacks and Hispanics:

High educational aspirations: In order to close the achievement gap, more students must desire to attend college. Intervention on this front must start earlier than high school. High school graduates whose parents did not attend college tend to report lower educational aspirations than their peers as early as eighth grade. Low educational aspirations affect students' curricular choices, as well as their selection of peer groups.

Strong academic preparation: A clear policy lever is to make required high-school courses more rigorous. Low-income and ethnic minority students are least likely to enroll in a college-preparatory curriculum, so this effort should address the courses that all student must take.

Money or financial support is the final piece of the puzzle. Some minorities take themselves out of the college education because they "feel" that they cannot overcome the money obstacle. There are billions of dollars available as both scholarships and financial aid based on need and/or merit. Parents, students, faculty and guidance counselors must all work together to access these funds so that every child can realize his/her dream of attending college.

Education creates an even playing field. It provides the best route out of poverty, the best public citizens and workforce prepared to make a better world. Education erases many of woes of human existence: illiteracy, poverty, racism and crime. If a society allows minorities or any other group to lag behind, then they are actually creating a burden that directly impacts the quality of their lives and their children's lives. Therefore, closing the gap in education is the responsibility of the whole society, not just the group that is lagging behind.

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