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Introduction
Almost seven decades after Brown v. Board of Education, racial inequality still permeates educational structures in the United States, as made apparent by the persistence of an achievement gap between African American students and their caucasian peers. This chapter aims to understand why, despite the fact that education is often perceived as the ground for breaking down social inequalities, it appears instead to perpetuate them. By looking at evidence used in Sociology, Psychology and Economics to explain racial inequalities this chapter strives to present a holistic understanding of this issue.

Explaining inequality: Sociology
In their endeavour to elucidate the question of racial inequality in the US education system, sociologists have looked primarily at the role of identity and at the structures embedded in education.

The Coleman Report of 1966, supported by a wealth of empirical and qualitative data, set a precedent for understanding the achievement gap as a product of family background, rather than as a result of school funding. More recent analysis has aimed to explain how the interplay between family background and socio-economic factors such as social and cultural capital, lies at the heart of these inequalities. Indeed, Diamond and Lewis' research reveals children of white descent tend to have more of both these forms of capital and also suggest their parents are more likely to make use of their social capital.

Other sociologists focus more on structural aspects of the US education system, such as standardised testing. Indeed, it would seem that the inherent form of these tests places African American students at a disadvantage. In turn, black and brown students are disproportionately assigned to lower ability classes, which again has a negative impacts on their learning, as a combination of factors renders these lower ability classes less enriching. Sociologists have also analysed the relationship between deviancy and punishment, which is stronger for black students than for their white peers. As such, not only is their learning process more often stymied but this also reinforces the State to Prison Pipeline, widening the achievement gap.

By juxtaposing the color-blind theory with the qualitative data they have obtained in schools, sociologists also argue de jure equality of educational institutions, serves as a justification for the inaction of both parents and policymakers, who turn a blind eye to the persistence of de facto inequality, perpetuating the cycle of racial inequality.

Explaining inequality: Sociology, attempt #2
According to sociologists, color-blind theory is key to understanding the persistence of racial inequality in the US education system: they argue de jure equality of educational institutions, serves as a justification for inaction, as those with the power to enact change turn a blind eye to the persistence of de facto inequality.

Inherent inequality in standardised testing
In recent years, the US has placed increased emphasis on standardised testing, asserting that this is an objective, merit-based way of evaluating students. However, evidence disproves this claim: a 2003 study shows how pretest phases with high-scoring students (who are typically white) determines which questions make up the SATs used for university applications. Another paper points to similar issues, with tests focusing not on critical thinking but rather knowing certain conventions (such as knowing > means “more than”), which equally disadvantages black students

Testing systematically segregates learning
Standardised testing begins in primary and is placed at the heart of all consequent decision making. As such, teaching in schools with low scores - often schools with a majority of black and brown students - will be forced to focus more on test preparation at the expense of other parts of the curriculum such as music and art, enriching ways of teaching are set aside and replaced by methods which place all focus on providing the right answer. Moreover, within more diverse schools, standardised testing is used to separate students into ability classes, resulting in African American students being disproportionately assigned to lower ability groups, where multiple factors lead the teaching quality to be lower.

As such, both within and across schools the very structures of education reinforce inequality, their apparent objectivity making it particularly difficult to encourage policymakers to consider necessary changes.

Explaining Inequality: Socio-economics
Within Economics lies the significant sub-discipline of Socioeconomics which studies the relationship between economic activity and social processes. Socioeconomics has a distinct way of understanding and explaining racial inequality in the US Education system through the assistance of econometric evidence. A Pennsylvania State University researcher documented that the school funding gap between the top 1% district and the average-spending school district at 50th percentile widened by 32% between 2000 and 2015. In the same period of time, the number of high poverty schools - schools where 75% or more of the students lived in families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunch - increased by 60%. Another study conducted by sociologist Sean Reardon found quantitative evidence of the racial isolation in Atlanta, New York, and Detroit schools - cities with significantly high degrees of racial segregation. Reardon proclaimed that the schools were “equally racially segregated” but in Atlanta where ‘black’ schools were 56% poorer than ‘white’ schools compared to 15% poorer in Detroit, the test-score gap between black and white children is nearly 5 grade levels compared to 2 grade levels in Detroit. Reardon concluded that the larger the poverty rate between black and white schools, the larger the achievement gap. Thus, the issue of inequality in education stems down to economic inequality. The average African-American will earn 62 cents for every $1 of the average white American and in 2016, ⅓ of black American children were living in poverty compared to 11% of white children. Using the plethora of quantitative economic evidence, Socioeconomics argues that unless black children are liberated from poverty and able to attend well-funded schools, racial inequality in education will persist.

Implicit Racial Associations
Studies show that explicitly negative racial attitudes (i.e. self-reported) have declined over time due to changing norms regarding social propriety. The researchers agree, however, that implicit racial associations remain ever-present, especially in the educational department. The term 'implicit racial associations' refers to all automatic cognitive responses people attach to a certain racial group. People are usually unaware of, or unwilling to recognize their responses in fear of social revilement. Therefore, they are capable of manipulating their reactions to e.g. a straightforward questionnaire about their personal attitude towards a certain social group (explicit associations), but their reactions to implicit measures cannot be falsified. In studying the implicit racial associations, researchers most often resort to Implicit Association Test, in which the reaction time is the key assessing factor. During IATs, the subjects are asked to press reaction keys associated with a certain image as quickly as they can. According to a study analyzing the results of a voluntary online IAT, 68% of. respondents expressed views discriminatory towards black people and/or praising white people. The pool of interviewees consisted of individuals from different racial backgrounds - the tendency observed by the analysts was that whites, on average, exhibited anti-Black implicit associations in a medium to large extents. The study prompts an assumption that since the average American expresses discriminatory implicit assumptions, an average American teacher will be no exempt and hence hold bias, perhaps even unconsciously, towards Black students.
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Stereotypes' impact on students
In 1988, Steel and Aranson conducted an experiment to assess the impact of negative racial stereotypes on black students' performances. They took two groups of Undergraduate Stanford students and gave each group a test: the first was said to assess individual capacities and the second was introduced as an experiment. African American students had lower scores than white students on the first test but did as good on the second, which led the searchers to claim that when assessed on their individual capacities, African American students are reminded of the negative stereotypes that weigh on their culture and the fear to confirm these stereotypes by failing gives them additional, penalizing anxiety. Similarly, Steel and Aranson observed that coloured students had poorer results when asked to record their race on the exam paper, inducing that black students' confidence was undermined by pejorative stereotypes. The racial self esteem issue has also been assessed in much younger children.

Teachers
It has been implied that teachers' expectations are biased by the race and dialect of students and that they tend to expect less from non-white students. A study found that teachers tend to be less positive in students' academic abilities and give them lower grades when they speak Black English instead of Standard English, the negative impact of dialect being stronger for coloured students. The results also showed that teachers consistently evaluated black students more negatively than white students, which would imply that teachers have a negative vision of black students. What is more, a meta-analysis conducted by Tenebaum and Ruck clearly indicated a trend where teachers would refer non-white students to special-needs testing, whereas their white peers would more frequently be assigned to gifted-and-talented testing. *reference will be added* It has also been proved that teachers discipline black students more severly than their white peers. However, such discriminatory behaviour can be found in the most good-intentioned teachers when caused by implicit bias, the unconscious process of emotions, stereotypes that affect our emotions. NEED FOR BETTER DEF. Studies then put the accent on the importance of educating and training teachers on this issue

Conclusion
While the works of social scientists tend to explain racial inequalities with the impact of institutional and economic disparity, psychologists have shown a different approach which focuses on racial bias and student's reaction to pejorative racial stereotypes.

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