Action plan: Closing the achievement gap of African American students Background

Based on statistics, the performance of African American students in public schools is way too dismal compared to their peers. In addition, there is a clear difference in the number of African American students graduating from high school. The need to address the education gap and improve on the performance and by extension the graduation rates of African Americans has the potential to improve the society in general (Washington State Library, 2008).

Assessment of circumstances

Despite the expectation for uniform performance, statistics show that 23.6 percent of African American students drop out from high school (Washington State Library, 2008). It is important that the education system is reoriented to addresses the needs of their diverse populations in American today.

Whites

African American

Score above grade level

67%

51%

Adequate yearly progress 2010

69%

49%

Adequate yearly progress 2011

62%

33%

Adequate yearly progress in 2012

56%

37%

Table 1. Achievement between White and African American high school students

According to the Washington State Library, a thorough analysis of the problem indicates that a variety of issues have a role to the achievement...

These issues include limited opportunities, resources, preparation, and readiness-to-learn.
Purpose and rationale

The primary purpose of this plan is to better engage African American students in high school education to improve their performance and reduce on dropout rates, which is ultimately expected to close the performance gap between African American students and other ethnicities, primarily white students. With the effort to improve the general American society, a crucial starting point would be to ensure equality among all communities and ethnicities in academic achievement (Noeth & Wimberly, 2002). The rationale of this plan is to determine effective programs that are crucial to addressing the achievement gap.

Vision

The vision of this plan is to change the general perception that African American students have on education. The current distorted view of education has been shown to be a major issue why African American students have little regard for education and academic achievement (White, 2009). This action plan seeks to counter and transform these negative viewpoints which are mainly culturally-based patterns. These negative cultural views need collaboration of the various stakeholders to eradicate them.

The principal and the staff members need to communicate the importance of education to parents, so that the parents are partners…