Proposal for The Center for Research on the Eradication of Educational Disparities at Kentucky State University
Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world” September 2018
For more than 130 years, Kentucky State University has been educating students to make a positive difference in the world. In an era in which the lived experience of many Americans, as well as their senses of hope and opportunities for living a fulfilling and self-sufficient life are determined by access to basic needs such as food and shelter and a quality education, the social and economic gaps seem to widen every year. The proposed Center for Research on the Eradication of Educational Disparities seeks to address these inequities from the opportunity mindset; that is, the C.R.E.E.D. will look at the patterns, causes, problems that are associated with educational disparities. In developing solutions, the Center will look to find sustainable ways to educate educators and the larger community in how to recognize inequitable and disparate access to resources and reverse the achievement gap with positive approaches to accessible educations for all. In keeping with the mission of Kentucky State University as a “public, comprehensive, historically black, land-grant university committed to advancing the Commonwealth of Kentucky, enhancing society, and impacting individuals by providing quality teaching with a foundation in liberal studies, scholarly research, and public service to enable productive lives within the global economy,” the Center will concentrate efforts on the citizens, and students, in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and seeks to offer a national model for improving society locally and at large.
The research literature is saturated with the fact that there are significant achievement gaps between majority and minority students, those with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and English language learners, between males and females, between socio-economic groups, and between regular-education students and those with special needs. Additionally, there are gaps when one considers access to health care, the juvenile justice system, and gifted programs. The “achievement gap” in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. The achievement gap shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures. It is most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between African-American and Hispanic students, at the lower end of the performance scale, and their non-Hispanic white peers, and the similar academic disparity between students from low-income families and those who are better off. Racial disparities in educational achievement are one of the most important sources of American inequality. Racial inequalities in adulthood in areas as diverse as employment, incarceration, and health can be traced to unequal academic outcomes in childhood and adolescence (Belfield and Levin 2007). For example, African American students, on average, scored 31 points below white students in eighth-grade math and 26 points below in eighth-grade reading (NCES 2014).1 Historically, black students made steady gains in closing the gap after school desegregation in the 1960s; however, this progress leveled off in 1990. The gap has fluctuated slightly since then, but has
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