Rosemary Harris Lytle, the President for Colorado, Montana聽and Wyoming recently invited聽Josh Prudhomme, PhD candidate in Educational Foundations, Policy & Practice (EFPP), to lead a discussion on the opportunity gap at the states'聽quarterly conference.聽PhD Alumnus and CSU Assistant Professor Dr.聽Vincent Basile (Science Ed, 2015) joined Prudhomme in the conversation聽titled, 鈥�Black 麻豆淫院 Matter: (In)Visibility of 麻豆淫院 of Color and (In)Equity among Education and STEM."
CHEYENNE - Education experts discussed the need to narrow the "opportunity gap" for black students in Wyoming during a regional 聽(NAACP)聽meeting on Saturday in Cheyenne.
Vincent Basile, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and Joshua Prudhomme, a聽Educational Foundations, Policy & Practice聽(EFPP)聽doctoral candidate of the School of Education at the University of聽Colorado Boulder,聽spoke at the civil-rights group's Colorado-Montana-Wyoming State Conference quarterly meeting.
The two discussed their research that shows that black students routinely do not have the same educational opportunities as white students.
The result of this, they said, can be seen in Wyoming's graduation rates for black students, which is significantly lower than the rate for white students.
U.S. Department of Education data from 2012-13, the most currently available statistics, shows that the graduation rate for white students in Wyoming was 80 percent. But the graduation rate for black students here was only 66 percent.
Prudhomme said it's wrong to characterize this as a cultural problem or the fault of the students themselves. Instead, he said, "the root causes of all of these things is structural racialized oppression."
An example, he said, is that black students are more likely to attend classes in schools that have over-crowding issues or a lack of resources. He added that educators can have "lower expectations" for black students and be more prone to punish them.
"I recommend you (tell policymakers that we) need more opportunities for our youth," he said to the about 20 people who attended the meeting. "And we need more equitable opportunities for youth from low-income families of color that are similar to their affluent, predominantly white peers.
"That is the opportunity gap in a nutshell: There is a gap in opportunities based on income levels and race."
Prudhomme said the racial discrepancy is not as large or obvious in Wyoming - a state where black students make up just 1.1 percent of the total public enrollment.
But Basile said a "conversation must happen" here, as well as elsewhere, to find ways to create more opportunities for black students.
He said one solution is to get black students more involved in advanced courses, such as聽science, technology, engineering and math classes. He said this type of learning is "the gateway" for the students to have a better chance of graduating and advancing to higher education.
Basile said educators must also "believe in" and be willing to properly encourage these students.
"From our research, one very positive thing -聽one of the biggest impacts a teacher can have on an African-American student is to enter into interactions with them with the assumption (that they are) brilliant," he said. "There are positive outcomes consistently, practically every time."
Rosemary Harris Lytle is the president of the聽NAACP聽regional chapter that is based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
She said local NAACP chapters and individual families must also be accountable by doing things such as encouraging the students to take higher-level classes. But she said the school system also shares in this responsibility.
"So I might not push my child into AP chemistry, but the counselor, teacher or principal must do their job," she said. "And that is what we talk about when we talk about holding them accountable."
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