I began my teaching career in 2003 as a mid-semester hire in a high school that reflected a predominantly black student body. This school had a reputation for low academic achievement and high disciplinary challenges. Principals never remained long enough to create lasting change. On many occasions, I would enter the teacher's lounge to hear the predominantly white teaching core bemoan the ability and achievement of the student body. They would reminisce on a time when students came prepared and ready to learn. The time they spoke of was a time when the student body was predominantly white. These teacher lounge conversations and teaching at this "underperforming school" lead me to the term known as "the achievement gap." Having learned that there was a gap in performance on standardized tests between black and white students I began to wonder about this gap. Fast forward some 18 years later, the conversation of the achievement gap as morphed into the opportunity gap and now the equity gap. Teaching at a predominantly white institution (PWI), we do disaggregate our data by race and we routinely find that black students do not perform at the same levels on standardized testing as their white counterparts. I want to investigate why this is. I also want to turn the lens away from the student and their economic background to the teacher and their racialized ideologies as well as the structures that exist in schools today that support those ideologies.
The historical development of my topic dates back to Brown vs. Board of Education (citation). It is a landmark 1954 case heard by the US Supreme Court that would end desegregation in American public school, upending the supposed practice of separate but equal (source). Separate but equal was the result of another 1896 Supreme Court Case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, that legalized segregated school systems in America (source). Brown vs. Board of Education was argued based on segregation being a violation of the 14th amendment to the constitution.
The sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of this topic sit squarely in the widescale acceptance/embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement during the Summer of 2020, the widening racial divide, masquerading as simply a political and ideological dived, under the Trump Presidential administration and the failure of Brown vs. Board to right the wrongs of racism on the American educational system.
This is something that my research has yet to provide an answer to. I do not want to make any conclusions without data to support my conclusions. Some international studies that I can refer to are Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA) [Source]. As I think of other cultures around the world, this question of the achievement gap exhibited by black and brown students would require countries or context (in my mind) that have racialized systems that benefit a dominant group and disadvantage marginalized group. Race must also be a factor for me to effectively analyze global/international interests.
The gap in the existing knowledge base that I can contribute to is this type of study advanced by a me, a woman of color who was educated in the American educational system and who has been a teacher/educator in that system for some sixteen plus years. I located a study dissertation (May 18, 2019) "The Impact of Social Justice Scale Score, Teacher Ethnicity, and Years of Teaching on Student Growth for Black & Hispanic Students" by Anahita Khosravi which is along the same lines of what I was thinking. Dr. Khosravi focuses on what she titles a "Social Just Scale Score." I think my intersectionality can allow for me to use language that is more targeted - like 'racialized' or 'internalized bias.'