Friday, March 29, 2024

Black Children More Likely to be Suspended from Preschool than Whites

teacher in class

*New research from the Yale Child Study Center suggests that many preschool teachers tend to more closely observe blacks than whites, especially black boys when challenging behaviors are expected, but the race of the teacher plays a big role in the outcome. Black teachers hold black students to a higher standard of behavior than do their white counterparts, the researchers found.

Lead researcher Walter Gilliam told NPR that we all have biases. “We all have them,” Gilliam says. “Implicit biases are a natural process by which we take information, and we judge people on the basis of generalizations regarding that information. We all do it.”

At an annual conference for Pre-K teachers, Gilliam and his team had participants watch four videos of a Black girl, a Black boy, a white girl and a white boy. The educators were told that researchers were interested in learning about how they detect challenging behavior, but what they did not know was that “eye-scan technology measured the trajectory of their gaze as they watched the videos.”

READ RELATED STORY: Trump Campaign Chair Resigns After Saying Racism Didn’t Exist Before Obama Took Office (Watch)

Those surveyed were instructed to press the enter key on an external keypad every time they saw a behavior that could become a potential issue in the classroom.

“What we found was exactly what we expected based on the rates at which children are expelled from preschool programs,” Gilliam says. “Teachers looked more at the Black children than the white children, and they looked specifically more at the African-American boy.”

Data released by the U.S. Department of Education reveals that Black children are 3.6 times more likely to be suspended from preschool than white children. Black children make up 19 percent of all preschoolers, but account for nearly half of preschoolers who get suspended, Jet magazine reports.

 

We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!

YOU MAY LIKE

SEARCH

- Advertisement -

TRENDING