WHITES ARE GIVEN MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS

This article from the New York Times talks about the unfair opportunity the white students get over the African American students. The issue is that the white students are picked to be in the Charlottesville’s gifted program over African American students when the black students are more likely to be in suspension even though their progress shows that they are performing better than white students. This issue led the African American professionals and parents to speak up against the school district. Some African American students joined the Black Student Union, petitioning the City Council to remove the Lee statue and speaking out at school board meetings about the achievement gap.

I learned that becoming an activist really helps getting people’s voice heard and makes them feel more empowered. People should care about this because African Americans who studies harder and earned higher scores than whites gets less out of their hard work. This unfair system does not reward for hard work but rewards for the race you are born in. The school system should focus more on just grades and school performances and not so much on race itself. If the system remains the same, many great ideas would not have the chance to be known and many African American students would not try to do their best for this unfair system.

The Unjustice In Schools

This article from NBC news talks about the how the reputation that T.M. Landry College Prep had gained for sending black students to some of the nation’s most prestigious universities but it turned out to be an educational fraud. Most of Landry Prep’s students come from Breaux Bridge and Lafayette and both have a racial gap in high school graduation rates. In Lafayette, the graduation rate was 81 percent for white students and 68 percent for black students and the graduation rate in Breaux Bridge was 86 percent for white students and 75 to 79 percent for black students. The issue here is that the Landrys attracted black and low-income parents by using their reputation and claimed that they provided higher education than other schools and that poor education can limit children out of opportunity. They claimed all those while they actually operate with few teachers and relying on optional attendance and they have the least qualified teachers, the lowest-quality facilities, and less rigorous curriculum.

This impacts the black community because the schools are giving poor education to the blacks that want to succeed and it’s not giving blacks the education they deserve. What I have learned was that some schools take in students of colors not for the purpose of giving them equal education but for the purpose of simply to raise their diversity. People should care because the schools are taking away the opportunities for black children to have a higher education who could have impacted our world but could not because they did. The value of this article is that the author interviewed many people who investigated into the T.M. Landry College Prep. The limitation of this article is that no perspective from students was given and no actual stories about what happens in the schools were given.