Structural racism as the fundamental cause of the academic achievement gap

Abstract

Over six decades since the Supreme Court ruled that all American children have the right to a high quality education, the academic achievement gap remains an important social problem in the United States. Researchers interested in understanding the achievement gap generally seek to find the mechanisms that can explain why Black students continue to achieve at lower levels than their White counterparts. This research has shown that differences in socioeconomic status, family cultural resources, school quality and racial composition, and bias and prejudice in schools all act as mechanisms that link race to academic achievement. In this paper, we review studies from the past 10 years on the academic achievement gap. We argue that while all of the factors identified in the literature can add insight to how race structures educational achievement, the fundamental cause of the achievement gap is structural racism, a system of social organization that privileges White Americans and disadvantages Americans of color. We argue that acknowledging structural racism as the fundamental cause of the achievement gap can provide a unifying framework for interpreting findings from studies of specific mechanisms link race to academic outcomes.

Testing the limits of structural thinking about gender

“…When and how people also reason about social categories in structural terms is much less documented in psychological research. In a philosophical approach, Haslanger (2016) develops an account of social structure and connects it to structural explanations, while sociologists have long emphasized structural interpretations of racism and sexism (e.g., Bonilla-Silva, 1997;Merolla & Jackson, 2019;Ridgeway & Smith-Lovin, 1999). A related literature on critical consciousness has explored similar ground, investigating adolescents' structural understanding of social injustice (e.g., Diemer et al, 2016;Godfrey et al, 2019;Watts et al, 2011).…”

Understanding Racialized Learning Environments: Moving from Exclusionary to Inclusive Secondary Mathematics Classrooms

“…Teachers' negative perceptions of minoritized learners are evidence of deficit thinking, which draws heavily on racial stereotypes of learners and their orientation to schooling (Chang & Demyan, 2007;Cherng, 2017;Ford et al, 2002;Harris, 2011;Irizarry, 2015a;Irizarry 2015b;Irizarry & Cohen, 2019;Jackson, 2002;McGrady & Reynolds, 2013;Merolla & Jackson, 2019;Solorzano, 1997;Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995;Tyson, 2011;Valencia, 2002). For example, white teachers tend to implicitly compare Black students to white hegemonic ideologies, therefore viewing Black students as defiant or less than their white student counterparts (Carter Andrews et al, 2019).…”

Third Grade Achievement Predictors in Urban Poverty Settings: End of Kindergarten Behavioral and Performance Indicators

“…When examining educational outcomes, racial disparities have remained fundamentally unchanged since the 1970s (Merolla & Jackson, 2019). Merolla and Jackson argue that resulting achievement gaps are primarily due to structural racism.…”