5.3 Models of Education: Applying the Social Problems Process
5.3 Models of Education: Applying the Social Problems Process
Kimberly Puttman
When we examine how our students perform in school—how many grades students attend school; whether they can read, write, reason critically, or use computers; whether they graduate from high school or end up at NASA or being brain surgeons—we see a difference between wealthy White male students and those who are not. The achievement gap refers to any significant and persistent disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students, such as White students and students of color, for example, or students from higher-income and lower-income households (Great Schools Partnership 2013).
In some good news related to a social problem, the achievement gap between women and men is closing. Colleges and universities in the United States enroll at least as many women as men and more women than men appear to be graduating (Parker 2021). However, differences in educational outcomes persist when you examine the trends using race and class. When you apply intersectional analysis to education, like the d/Deaf Black students in the previous section, the differences in outcomes become even more pronounced. To explain this, we examine the history of who is educated over time and how educational policy has expanded access to education (somewhat).
Legal Segregation
To make informed decisions, people need the ability to read and write. A literate populace was fundamental to establishing a strong democracy. Access to education expanded in the 1700s and 1800s. Despite this intention, we haven’t yet achieved universal access to education, which is people’s equal ability to participate in an education system.
Early education systems in the United States were segregated. Segregation refers to the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions. Schools were segregated by gender, race, ability/disability, and class. Educator and researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings summarizes the history of segregation in education in the United States (2006). She writes:
In the case of African Americans, education was initially forbidden during the period of enslavement. After emancipation, we saw the development of freedmen’s schools whose purpose was the maintenance of the servant class. During the long period of legal apartheid, African Americans attended schools where they received cast off textbooks and materials from White school. . . . Black students in the south did not receive universal secondary education until 1968.” (Ladson-Billings 2006:5, emphasis added)
As already discussed in this chapter, the US federal government policies required that Indigenous children stay in residential schools just for them. Finally, d/Deaf students, when they could access education, received that education in segregated facilities, usually in state boarding schools. In these schools, students were often taught to lip read and sp