Racial Disparities in the K-12 Education System
By: Maria F Lopez
Tags: Inequality, Education Reform, Racial Equity, Disparities, Education

Given the climate of our country’s social status, in society today, we are experiencing an elevated issue at hand regarding racial inequality. Many people of color and mainly of African American descent are experiencing heightened negligence for social justice and equality. Many of these systemic issues can even be found in our very own education systems across America. Many students of color experience racial disparities within the “safe place” and space where they are supposed to feel most comfortable for academic success and journey to graduation, unfortunately, there are many factors that hold students of color back from their full potential or drive to attend school. This blog post will shed light on the various factors students of color face in their educational journey.

Racial Discipline Disparities

Many students of color experience racial disciplinary disparities in the education system’s imbalanced distribution of punishment within the administration and have yet to be held accountable for this faulty system. We need for the ending of all “white silence” that hold students of color back from their full potential and prevents any common ground of educational equality due to this uncomfortable feeling of “white silence” and ignorance causing discomfort of those in higher power positions that need to be held accountable. We need to eliminate the unnecessary void that is the discomfort about communicating about race, inequality, segregation, and talk about creating policies to put in motion and raise more attention to reduce racial disparities in disciplinary acts.

Black students are three times more likely to be expelled or suspended than white students, in this day and age schools have become increasingly tight-knit with law enforcement and the criminal justice system over the years leaving the more traditional administrative mediation for disciplinary infractions.

2. School to Prison Pipeline

There is overwhelmingly high presence of law enforcement on school campuses makes black boys and girls feel less safe causing them to attend school less. Black and Latina teens also often do not finish or complete school due to being overpoliced. Oftentimes these visibly armed campus officers intimidate students of color inadvertently affecting these student’s capability to focus in or attend school overall compromising attendance and performance ability. Many students of Latino and African American descent that experience an overwhelmingly higher surveillance rate. In a 2016 article by Freeman and Steidl they state, “Thus, surveillance and suspensions work to actively disadvantage and, sometimes, permanently ‘pushout’ those subjected to school discipline. Racial disparities in the discipline have also been tied to racial achievement gaps…”

3. Lack of Proper Resources

We live in an age where we see a major shift in our education systems and face the stereotypical nature of placing students of racially diverse backgrounds on a pyramid of educational hierarchy. It is proven that young black students do not hold up to the highest achieving whites from the very beginning stages of one’s educational journey starting at the early stages of development in the K-12 range. Oftentimes striving young black minds are provided the bare minimum when discussing proper necessities, learning tools, attention, and funding needed to establish equalized achievement disparities in the black-white learning gap. There is an obvious need for us as a society as a whole it is our duty to call out educators and policy-makers to push for change for the young black community within the education system.