• Trask Middle School;     New Hanover High School

• Gender differences NC

• Achievement Gap NC - Race

• State of the State Report NC 2002

• NC Graduation

• Graduation Rates by Race

4 Explanations:

 1) Genetic Inferiority Theory

• Differences in achievement genetically determined, Jensen & Shockley. Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life Herrnstein and Murray 1994

Assumptions:
1) IQ tests are valid measures of intelligence
2) Intelligence is mainly inherited
3) lower IQ test scores indicate less intelligence, therefore less educable
4) occupational level and income are dependent on intelligence
5) poverty results from inherited deficiencies in the poor.

• Programs to help people in poverty - welfare, head start, throw money away.

Criticism: Rationalization of the status quo - justifies inequality as being genetically determined. Also assumes a narrow definition of intelligence

• Inferior home environment, children socially and linguistically deprived, ill prepared to enter school compared to white middle class peers, unable to count, read, name colors.
• Solution: Compensatory Education Programs. - Headstart.

Criticism: Programs attractive because they leave existing social and cultural arrangements intact, locate the problem in the students' home culture and seem to offer a solution.

• Reject previous explanations and solutions. Argue that inequalities in educational outcomes reflection of inequalities in larger society - financial, & cultural.

Solution:
1) Financial -redistribute resources to ensure that all schools are equally funded. 
2) Cultural -challenge the assumed superiority of white middle-class culture.
Schooling involves the interaction of the child's culture and the school culture - cultural clash or cultural support.
Cultural mismatches occur in a) language/dialects b) learning styles c) ways of knowing d) cultural identity
Cultural differences not cultural deficits.  (An Indian Father's Plea/ PDF option)
• Anyon - 5 elementary schools: found a direct relationship between quality of schooling and social class.
• Working class schools relatively indifferent to academic content - rote learning vs. think for themselves.
• Far from equalizing, schools tend to reproduce inequalities (testing, tracking.)

• Students experiencing discriminatory practices often reject or resist the authority of schooling thereby contributing to their own failure.
• Rejection of schooling/Academic work - school seen as irrelevant to goals -acting dumb - peer sanctioned. "Failure," seen as a statement of the irrelevancy of schooling.

1) Working class adolescent females - goal traditional roles - act dumb, value femininity, strong peer support.
2) Working class lads value traditional macho roles, anti-intellectual, resistance to academics, to school norms.
3) African American students, cooperation with the school means acting white.