Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE June 2017 Opportunity, but at what cost? African-American parents' experiences in a predominantly white school Peter Smith Smith Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Peter Smith, "Opportunity, but at what cost? African-American parents' experiences in a predominantly white school" (2017). Dissertations - ALL. 667. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/667 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract National measures of student achievement, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), provide evidence of the gap in success between African- American and white students. Despite national calls for increased school accountability and focus on achievement gaps, many African-American children continue to struggle in school academically, as compared to their white peers. Ladson-Billings (2006) argues that a deeper understanding of the legacy of disparity in funding for schools serving primarily African- American students, shutting out African-American parents from civic participation, and unfair treatment of African-Americans despite their contributions to the United States is necessary to complicate the discourse about African-American student performance. The deficit model that uses student snapshots of achievement such as the NAEP and other national assessments to explain the achievement gap suggests that there is something wrong with African-American children. As Cowen Pitre (2104) explains, however, “the deficit model theory blames the victim without acknowledging the unequal educational and social structures that deny African- American students access to a quality education (2014, pg.