Early college high school for African American males Dissertation

Early college high school for African American males - Dissertation Example In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools that segregated Whites from Blacks were unconstitutional, and that schools that included different races helped to promote educational equality. Kozol (1991), however, found that even forty years later, racial segregation continued largely unchanged in various urban schools acrosst the country. The nation’s largest school districts remained 95-99% non-White, and Black students in poor families still recorded significantly lower scores on tests of academic performance than Whites in middle and high-income families (Knaus, 2007). Thus, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling and the federal government’s assistance of hundreds of millions of dollars to improve academic performance among Black students in public schools, school achievement remained unchanged (Noguera, 2008). Thus, achievement was unaffected by programs funded by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title 1 programs of the United States Department of Education, Head Start, Success for All, and Accelerated Schools. African Americans’s schools were often inadequate as compared to schools for exclusively White students (Knaus, 2007). Researchers (Bell, 2009; Ladson-Billings, 2004) who have studied and made recommendations about education among African Americans and school segregation have also described how segregated schools continue to lack academically rigorous curricula to promote cognitive growth and development that Black students require to succeed in school. Other researchers have presented the difficulties Black students have faced when transitioning from segregated public schools into an integrated environment and the subsequent performance gap that has existed since the mid-1900s (Valien, Taeuber, Glick et al., 1970). There is an increasing gender difference in graduation rates across the United States. â€Å"The difference exists across racial subgroups and is widest between African American girls and boys† (Chadwell, 2009, p.9). In the entire United States, as compared to any other group in American society, Black males are the most likely to be punished, most frequently through some form of exclusion, are labeled, categorized for special education even when there is absence of disability, and are the most liable to experience academic failure. Gender Differences in the Ways Males and Females Learn According to physician and psychologist, Leonard Sax (2007), the gender issue is relevant to classroom learning in several ways. In the United States there is increasing prevalence of boys expressing their disdain for school â€Å"saying that school is stupid and they do not like to read† (Sax, 2007, p.40). This approach is found to cut across all demographic groups, affecting both affluent white boys in the suburbs and black boys in low-income neighborhoods. Sax