Introduction
Please contact Dr. Martha Bireda at
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Chronically Undereducated Students Are Left Behind in Our Nation’s Schools While many students in the United States receive an excellent education, a segment of the student population, however, remains chronically undereducated. As a result, these students are “left behind” and the schooling for these students perpetuates rather than eliminates the underclass in this nation. Who are the students who are left behind in our schools? · Chronically undereducated students come primary from what Ogbu (1978) describes as caste minorities. These groups in this society have either been enslaved, conquered, or colonized , i.e., African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Pacific Islanders, etc. The major element that significantly distinguishes these minorities from other minority groups, i.e., autonomous or voluntary/immigrant minorities, is the stigma of innate inferiority. Poor students who come from caste minority groups are stigmatized by both race and social class.
· We fail to acknowledge or accept the sociopolitical context in which schooling in this nation takes place and the influence of group membership upon the school experience and quality of education students receive. · Students from caste minority groups most often attend segregated schools populated by other impoverished students. · Students from caste minority groups attend schools in which they are stigmatized by the school culture and climate. · The schools which caste minority students attend provide no mechanism either formal or informal to assist these students in overcoming the stigmatization of caste minority membership or poverty. · We have resisted alternative solutions and have persisted in using conventional methods focused primary on test-based standards have failed to improve educational outcomes for these students. What must we do to meet the needs of chronically undereducated students who attend chronically low performing schools? · The structure and the context in which poor students from caste minority groups are educated must be changed. · A new pedagogy not based upon deficit thinking and rooted in the ideology of racial and cultural inferiority must be institutionalized. · A pedagogy that addresses both the cognitive and affective needs of students from stigmatized groups must be implemented. · A socially responsive pedagogy is the key to changing the culture and the climate in which poor students from caste minority groups are schooled.
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