1 Running Head: GAPS IN STUDENT LEARNING LEVELS 2 GAPS IN STUDENT LEARNING LEVELS Name Course Facilitator Date Differences in achievement and performance in different levels of schooling for students in America has for the longest time being influenced by many issues key among this being the race, social economic position in society which in turn influence the attitude of educators towards the students in America as well as the students themselves towards each other. Lisa Delpit author of Multiplication is for white people: Raising Expectations for other people's children, Claude Steele's "Thin Ice: stereotype Threat and Black college Students and Devin Brownes "The Latino Gap: Not quite Trilingual" all have suggested reasons as to why there are this various disparities in learning levels for students in the American school system. First, Lisa Delpit author of "Multiplication is for white people raising expectations for other people’s children" has various opinions on how the various learning gaps between the minority students in America and the middle and upper class Caucasians have come to exist. One of the things she points at as having brought about the difference in learning is how educators define basic learning skills. Delpit says that” If we are going to ensure that all children learn to read, I believe we have to turn our notion of basic skills" on its head". The reason she says this is because for a long time both the white children and black children who come from different social backgrounds have been expected to have a basic understanding of some vocabulary only familiar to the white middle and upper class American environments, also she points out that most of this children from inner city settings or low income settings are taught different skills sets that their white counter parts 4 to 5 years before they join preschool. She argues that middle class children an example being her daughter Maya are taught basic reading skills from home while the less well off children of the inner cities and the rural areas are taught like skills which she calls "higher order skills" which are skills that middle class children acquire much later in life. Delpit says that middle class culture s taken as the standard culture by which all forms of literacy are judged and because of this children from lower levels of society are classified as being slow and put in special education classes because they do not be conforming to the standardised view of being clever, Delpit points out an important fact and says that the students are asked questions on what they do not know and what they do know is left out(Delpit 2012). Secondly, Claude Steele on his part has several theories as to what leads to the disenfranchising of young black students which leads to their poor performance in school, in his article in the Atlantic titled “Thin Ice: stereotype Threat and Black college Students" he gives world feat.

1. 1
Running Head: GAPS IN STUDENT LEARNING LEVELS
2
GAPS IN STUDENT LEARNING LEVELS
Name
Course
Facilitator
Date
Differences in achievement and performance in different
levels of schooling for students in America has for the longest
time being influenced by many issues key among this being the
race, social economic position in society which in turn
influence the attitude of educators towards the students in
America as well as the students themselves towards each other.
Lisa Delpit author of Multiplication is for white people:
Raising Expectations for other people's children, Claude
Steele's "Thin Ice: stereotype Threat and Black college Students
and Devin Brownes "The Latino Gap: Not quite Trilingual" all
have suggested reasons as to why there are this various
disparities in learning levels for students in the American
school system.

2. First, Lisa Delpit author of "Multiplication is for white
people raising expectations for other people’s children" has
various opinions on how the various learning gaps between the
minority students in America and the middle and upper class
Caucasians have come to exist. One of the things she points at
as having brought about the difference in learning is how
educators define basic learning skills. Delpit says that” If we
are going to ensure that all children learn to read, I believe we
have to turn our notion of basic skills" on its head". The reason
she says this is because for a long time both the white children
and black children who come from different social backgrounds
have been expected to have a basic understanding of some
vocabulary only familiar to the white middle and upper class
American environments, also she points out that most of this
children from inner city settings or low income settings are
taught different skills sets that their white counter parts 4 to 5
years before they join preschool. She argues that middle class
children an example being her daughter Maya are taught basic
reading skills from home while the less well off children of the
inner cities and the rural areas are taught like skills which she
calls "higher order skills" which are skills that middle class
children acquire much later in life. Delpit says that middle
class culture s taken as the standard culture by which all forms
of literacy are judged and because of this children from lower
levels of society are classified as being slow and put in special
education classes because they do not be conforming to the
standardised view of being clever, Delpit points out an
important fact and says that the students are asked questions on
what they do not know and what they do know is left out(Delpit
2012).
Secondly, Claude Steele on his part has several theories as to
what leads to the disenfranchising of young black students
which leads to their poor performance in school, in his article
in the Atlantic titled “Thin Ice: stereotype Threat and Black

3. college Students" he gives world features as seen by black
students as one of the reasons they end up feeling out of
favour, he says that issues of the bell curve, affirmative action
and losing a romantic interest to a race considered superior to a
black students drove him to think that maybe everyone was right
about the various stereotypes associated with black people.
Steele he poses the question whether by the black students
being aware of the existence of these features of his world
whether it could affect his education negatively( Steele 1999
).Steele cites a theory by Psychologists Jennifer Crocker and
Brenda Major which they call the attribution ambiguity theory
which he says is when a black students is "at the receiving end
of negative stereotypes" what this students are said to do is
give up on caring what other people think of them because other
skin colour and in reinforcing this don't care attitude they stop
caring even about their academic performance which in turn
leads to the learning gap being widened further among the
races( Steele 1999 ).
Thirdly, Delvin Browne in his article Devin Brownes "The
Latino Gap: Not quite Trilingual” observes several factors as
leading to the learning gap experienced by Spanish
learners(Browne 2012).Language seems to be one of the biggest
barriers that Spanish students have as a hurdle to their learning
experience, a student case study of Brownes called Andrea is
used as an example of the problem various students in the
LosAngles area go through in trying to find a footing in the
education system with so little understanding of both the
English and Spanish languages necessary for their learning
needs both at school and in the home setting(Browne 2012).
Browne says that because students like Andréa cannot
communicate with any one easily they are trapped in their head
and the only way for students with language problems to
express themselves is that they hit each other or parents or
become completely withdrawn and eventually drop out of school
as a last result (Browne 2012). Another barrier that Browne she

4. highlights is that this students they tend to not be given
attention by their parents who are mostly too busy with work an
example is Andreas parents who she never spends any time
with, therefore following up in her school performance is kind
of hard for her since the parents are never available and her
siblings do not also value schooling so they are not much help
to her either (Browne 2012).
Fourthly, when the above information is brought together it is
clear that there are some similar reasons that lead to students of
color not to have the success rates experienced by both
Caucasian and Asian students. The various reasons include the
misunderstanding of environments where the poor minorities
come from as highlighted by Delpits anecdotal story of a child
who did not know the names of some things because she had
never seen them , but it’s because this things were more
predisposed to white children who come from middle income
neighborhoods for example she give an example of a parent
who told a teacher that her child did not know what a canoe
was but knew what a boat was showing the disparity in inner
city and suburban settings which in turn lead to the branding of
inner city children as slow(Delpit 2012). Steele on his part
shows that the promoting of various stereotypes has negative
effects on the black student in a higher learning environment
which has this low picture of the student and which the student
soon starts to internalize and not wants to put enough effort as
he feels disillusioned somehow( Steele 1999 ). Another reason
that hinders success of students of color seems to be the
language barrier as highlighted by Browne she says that with
the scraping of Espelanza programs in LosAngles the students
from minority groups such as Hispanics have fallen behind in
the English only teaching system which does not leave a chance
for the Esperanza teachers. All the above reasons and many
more are what has led to the decline in the quality of learning
for most of the students from minority groups (Browne 2012).
Fifthly, Delpits has made several recommendations for

5. closing the various gaps that have affected the learning of
students of color in America (Delpit 2012). She suggests that
the students from marginalised backgrounds be shown that it is
not intelligence they do not have but particular skills which
make them good at particular things and not so good at others a
teacher in a case study in Delpits book who is said to be good in
teaching black students from disadvantaged backgrounds says
that " they perceive themselves to have insufficient levels of
smartness"(Delpit 2012). They believe that other students are
smarter than others. The teacher says that part of her teaching is
to emphasize that everyone is smart and that different people
have different skills that are improved upon over time. If some
individuals looked to be smarter it is because they put in the
time and effort to become good (Delpit 2012).
Delpit also says that student should be taught the skills they do
not leave home with, she says the skill a child comes to school
with should not be put down but added upon with what they do
not know, depending on the social background teachers can
access which trait to instil in a young student. In a passage she
says “Children need to participate in real literacy activities, but
some who do not come from homes that reflect school culture
need to learn the skills necessary for literate
communication"(2012
borrowing on Delpits recommendations, one way that these
children from minority backgrounds can be helped to close the
various learning gaps, could be through the improvement of
the skills they do have within them instead of trying to force
talents on them that they do not have interest in, for example if
a child from an inner city is good at drawing or at playing an
instrument they should be encouraged along the lines of this
various talents instead of insisting they take up other courses
because it is what the middle class template of education
recommends. There should not be a one size fit all education for
children so as to avoid leaving out this marginalised children as
they will assume their intelligence is lacking. Just like the
teacher in Delpits story says people have differing skills and

6. these should be improved on over time. Not to say that a student
should not have other skills added on them apart from those
they got from home, students go to school to be enlightened
and because of this teachers should encourage students as
Delpit recommends to explore different things and to push
boundaries so as to find out what they are good at. For example
if a student has no aspirations for any particular career coming
from home, it is the teacher’s duty to find different things for
the child to do in order to find out where their strengths lie.
References
Browne D. (Febr.03 2012) "The Latino Gap: Not Quite
Trilingual".http://www.fronterasdesk.org/content/latino-gap-
not-quite-trilingual
Delpit L.(2012)"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising
Expectations for Other People's Children. New Press, The,
2012.
STEELE C. M.(Aug, 1 1999) "Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat
and Black College
Students".http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08
/thin-ice-stereotype-threat-and-black-college-
students/304663/2/