Reconstructing Reading for Students of Color

African American students face discrimination and inequalities in classroom settings on a daily basis. We often think of discrimination and inequality as something being done or said to someone in an inappropriate manner. However, classroom learning material and products should be considered as well. Curriculum, textbooks, and supplemental materials usually do not include information about black history, authors, or poetry. When they are included, they are often used as supplemental material that is not studied, examined, or discussed. In addition, the books they read in class or for pleasure do not necessarily have role models that resemble African American students.

Demystifying the Stigma of Transient African American Housing Dwellers

African American transient housing dwellers are the studied population in this chapter. A noted section addresses transient students, also referred to as highly mobile students, which are a group that can benefit from additional educational support at school and also in the community. As communities of people are drawn together in faith and love, churches are distinctively positioned to fill in the gap for kids and their communities. By entering into a supportive partnership with a school, they can make the kind of difference that transforms a community. According to Fulgham, every school in low-income communities has a plethora of needs, and churches likely feel compelled to meet each of them. Fulgham went on to encourage churches to prioritize their support for programs and activities that help increase student achievement. This chapter provides findings from interviews conducted with adult transient housing dwellers and suggests methods to reach transient African American students during challenging times, specifically addressing their educational needs.

Language Variation in the Writing of African American Students: Factors Predicting Reading Achievement

Purpose This study aims to examine the predictive relation between measures obtained from African American students' written narrative language samples and reading achievement, as measured by standardized academic assessments. Method Written language samples were elicited from 207 African American students in Grades 1–8. The samples were examined for morphosyntactic variations from standardized written Generalized American English (GAE). These variations were categorized as either (a) specific to African American English (AAE) or (b) neutral across AAE and standardized written GAE (i.e., considered ungrammatical both in AAE and in standardized written GAE). Structural equation modeling was employed to then examine the predictive relation between the density of AAE-specific forms in students' writing and their performance on standardized assessments of literacy and reading vocabulary. This relation was examined while accounting for the density of dialect-neutral morphosyntactic forms, reported family income, age, and written sample length. Results The written samples were highly variable in terms of morphosyntax. Younger students and those from lower income homes tended to use AAE-specific forms at higher rates. However, the density of AAE-specific forms did not significantly predict standardized literacy scores or reading vocabulary after accounting for dialect-neutral variations, income, and sample length. Conclusions These results support the ongoing need to better understand the language, literacy, and overall academic development of students from all backgrounds. It may be essential to focus on dialect-neutral language forms (i.e., morphosyntactic forms that are consistent across both AAE and standardized written GAE) in written samples to maximize assessment validity across students who speak varying dialects of English. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16879558

The Comparisons between Ethnicity and Poverty Level on Eight Graders’Science Performance

The purposed of this study was to examine the relationships between ethnicity and poverty level with eight graders’ science performance. This study utilized the 8th grade data file (2006 - 2007) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) and had the sample size of 7,305 students. A full 2-way ANOVA model was applied to test the ethnicity and poverty level effects on the students’ science performance. Results indicated that ethnicity and poverty had significant effects on students’ science performance. White students have the highest mean score, followed by Asian, but African American students have the lowest mean scores. The gap on the mean scores between the highest and the lowest group was 20 points. White and Asian students do better on science performance, while Hispanic and African American students have lower scores. The impact among the interactions of ethnicity and poverty persisted within the breakdown of 10 subgroups’ outcomes. The subgroup of Asian “at/above poverty” had the highest mean scores, while the subgroup African American “below poverty” had the lowest scores. Future studies should continue to investigate African American students in conjunction with science performance.

Promoting Privilege

Point of view: I am a cisgender, White male in my sixties. I retired recently after working with children in a professional capacity since the mid-1970s. My first career involved organizing and managing youth sports programs for public recreation departments. I began my second career as an elementary school teacher in the privileged white neighborhood where I grew up near Atlanta, Georgia. There were no African American students at any of the public schools I attended. By the time I took a position in the central office after teaching for 14 years, Black students comprised 77% of the county’s 98,000 students (Anderson & Smith-Hunt, 2005). I spent my last six years in the classroom teaching fifth graders and serving as the school’s gifted liaison teacher. In the latter role, I administered tests to students to determine if they were eligible for the “gifted” label. At that time, I also taught an assessment course to teachers who were seeking a gifted add-on endorsement to their teaching certificates. I recently retired from a large school district in a different state after working as an educational measurement and assessment specialist for 12 years. Value: Numerous educational policies and procedures in the United States benefit children from privileged families over their traditionally underserved counterparts, which include students of color and low-income students. This piece describes a public school district’s inequitable practices related to its program for gifted students, practices that are not uncommon in many American school districts. “Education is one of the best ways to address systemic inequities, but education systems in the US seem to be increasingly subject to criticism that they are unable to change and promote equity” (Cheville, 2018, p. 1). Despite their inherent resistance to change, educational agencies must be made aware of discriminatory policies and procedures. Stakeholders must then hold policy makers and educational leaders to account. As James hanged until it is faced” (1962, p. 38). Summary: Gifted education programs in public schools comprise mainly middle-class and upper-middle-class students of European and Asian descent. Students from low socioeconomic groups, African American students, Latinx students, and Indigenous American students continue to be underrepresented in gifted programs, despite the fact that this inequity was brought to light many years ago (Ford, 1998). Given our nation’s long history of overt and covert racism, it is not surprising that the manner by which students are identified for gifted services is systemically entrenched and at the heart of the problem. Most states have mandates or provide guidance to local school districts regarding identification criteria; however, very few of the measurement instruments and methods used to evaluate of children for gifted services are effective at facilitating equal representation of all groups in gifted education programs. This piece examines one school district’s guidelines used to identify students for gifted services, including admittance to its prestigious school for gifted children. Because the guidelines are typical of practices employed by many other school districts, the information contained herein is generalizable to a larger audience.

Racial Identity-Rooted Academic Motivation of First-Year African American Students Majoring in STEM at an HBCU

The purpose the present study is to explore African American undergraduate students' perceptions of their experiences and academic motivation within a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) learning environment. As part of a larger study, we collected 212 open-ended survey responses from first year students in STEM majors about how the HBCU context shapes their academic motivation. We used semantic thematic data analysis and found three major themes and corresponding sub themes that were salient in the development of students' academic motivation: place (institutional climate, HBCU mission and tradition, and absence of marginalization); pedagogy (culturally relevant pedagogy, positive faculty-student relationships, African American curriculum and instruction, racial socialization); and people (people “like me”; student, faculty and alumni models of high achieving African Americans). We discovered that HBCU institutional factors engendered academic motivation that is rooted in students' racial identity and suggest the construct of racial identity-rooted academic motivation. Given the important and unique realities of African American students that impact their educational experiences, engagement, identity development, and achievement in various types of school contexts, self and sociocultural variables must be included in research and theory on the motivational psychology of African American students. Implications for higher education practice and future research are discussed.