1.

Bohrnstedt, G., Kitmitto, S., Ogut, B., Sherman, D., and Chan, D. (2015). School Composition
and the Black–White Achievement Gap (NCES 2015-018). U.S. Department of Education,
Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved February 16, 2018,
from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch

This source goes into depth about the achievement gap between black and white students
within a school system and between school systems. This source takes into account both
situational and locational differences. The source discusses the issues that perpetuate the racial
separation in achievement in school.
This source will benefit my research because it was a report published by the National
Board of Education so not only do they have first hand access to all information regarding all
schools in the country, but also they are a trusted source. This source will help me by providing
strong, factually based research that encompasses information from the the whole country. This
could be potentially bad if they are trying to make the school system seem better than it is and
they sugar coat their research.

2.
Camera, L. (2016, January 13). Achievement Gap Between White and Black Students Still
Gaping. U.S. News. Retrieved February 16, 2018, from
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2016/01/13/achievement-gap-between-
white-and-black-students-still-gaping

This source criticizes the efforts that have been made in the past to fix the achievement
gap. It outlines arguments saying that the gap has decreased in size but then rebuttals and says
that any progress that has been made cannot be accredited to the increased spending and other
factors. This source outlines that not enough has been done to solve the issue, and even with all
previous actions being done, we are not progressing.
This source will benefit my research because it is fairly recent and has current
information. This source will help because it should be unbiased as it has no “connection” to the
school system and has no reason to slant the information one way or another purposefully. The
downside could be that it is not federally backed so the information could be inaccurate.

3.
Smack, A. (2013). Closing America's High-Achievement Gap. Retrieved February 16, 2018, from
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/file_uploads/High-Achievement_Interactive.pdf

This source is a solution based document. It first outlines the issue and why it is such a
large issue. It explains why all children deserve the right to an education. It then goes in to what
could be done, in the author’s point of view, to solve the issue. It talks about how the school
should be operated in order to facilitate equality and how to pick teachers that can help to
educate those below the standard achievement level.
This source is a book that is wholly about the education gap in America. This source will
be beneficial to me because it is a book that if full of research on this topic so the it is clear the
author does not only have a surface level knowledge. In it, the author also proposed what she
believes could be done which could be good for my presentation. This source will limit me
because it is a whole book which means there is a lot of information to sift through in order to
find what I need.

4.
Closing the Achievement Gap. Action Research [Audio blog interview]. (2016, February
16). Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-edvice-
podcast/e/42620665

This source is a podcast done by a man named Steven Bauer who has no connection to
education. He is reporting the facts that he has researched and inserting his honest opinions on
them. He discusses the issues as they relate to the school systems around him and on a larger
scale.
This source is a podcast from a website called Edvice which is known to have credibility
and they also commonly talk about topics such as this relating to education and the government.
This source could be beneficial to me as it told my someone who is not directly related to the
school system and should not have any bias on the topic. It could limit me because they could be
lacking some of the facts as they are on “the outside”.

5.
The Wide Variations in the Black-White Higher Education Gap in America's Largest Cities.
(2003). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, (40), 6-9. doi:10.2307/3133993

This source goes through and analyzes the education gap in the large cities in order to
find if it is worse in some areas than others. It not only looks into it from an elementary, middle,
and high school perspective, but it also goes as far and seeing the difference in the amounts of
each race going to and graduating college. It follows the achievement gap even further than most
sources.
This source is a published peer reviewed journal and it will be beneficial to me for similar
reasons as the podcast. This source is written by someone who is supposed to be unbiased on
topic and is writing objectively. This source could limit me because I am not as sure on the
credibility as some of the other sources, however, it came from a credible site, so I am confident
it will be a good source.
6.
Cepa. (n.d.). Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gaps. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from
http://cepa.stanford.edu/educational-opportunity-monitoring-project/achievement-gaps/race/
 This source displayed information mostly regarding the education gap between multiple
races rather than just the white-black gap. From this website I was able to see that it is white
students that tend to do the best in school, African American students who tend to do the worst,
and hispanic students fall somewhere in the middle. This will help provide me information for
the research question: “Are certain minority groups affected more heavily by the education
gap?”.
This source is going to be helpful for me because it is different than a lot of the other
sources I have already found because it is a published educational website rather than a book or a
government document. However, it is a government document so it is very trustworthy for
accuracy and should have limited bias as it is displaying the data exactly as it has been collected.
This website will be most helpful in my research because it has a lot of graph which are
interactive and show the progression of the education gap over the years between different
groups of minority students in different subjects.

7.
Brownstein, R. (2016, May 19). The Challenge of Educational Inequality. Retrieved March 23,
2018, from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/05/education-inequality-
takes-center-stage/483405/

This source, similar to the last, answers the question “Are certain minority groups
affected for heavily by the education gap?” In the article, it says by 8th grade the gap has mostly
closed for hispanic students, but not for black students. This sources also reference things that
have been done in the past to help fix the issue like the ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ proposed by
George Bush in 2001, and said that it was not successful because we gave up on it too early.
This source will be useful to me because it is not published by the government or any
other educational institution so it should have limited bias as it has “no skin in the game” and it
will give me an “outside looking in” perspective from the issue. This source could help me in
the part of research where I evaluate efforts made in the past to fix the problem.

8.
Tavernise, S. (2012, February 09). Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies
Show. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-
poor-studies-show.html
This source goes in depth on how the achievement gap is perpetuated by money rather
than by race or location. Obviously all of these factors are interwoven together, however, this
source tries to focus solely on money as a factor and it finds substantial evidence that incomes of
families does play a significant role in the level of education received.
 This source would be useful to me because it is not published by a government agency or
an educational institution and it should be fairly unbiased. This source will be helpful in different
ways than the last source because this article discusses the research question: “Is family income a
factor in the education gap?” as it discussed the education gap between the rich and the poor
rather than between different ethnicities. This source shows me that income does in fact play a
role, and the success between the rich and the poor students does vary substantially.

9.
The New Rules. (2002). Retrieved April 13, 2018, from
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/nochild/nclb.html

This source discusses not only the issue of the achievement gap, but also what has been
done in an effort to solve the issue. The article focuses mainly on the actions taken by former
president George W. Bush. It offers a fairly unbiased account and only shares what is is rather
than talking about its strengths and weaknesses.
This source is useful to me because it offers a different kind of information than what I
have found before. All of my other sources have focused mainly on the statistic and the issue
behind the education gap. But this source helps to offer insight on a different side of the paper:
What has been done? This source details the “No Child Left Behind Act” that George W. Bush
passed into effect very shortly after coming into office for his first term. The source addresses
what it is and what the act really entails. The source does not site it’s drawbacks of why it failed,
and that is the only issue with it.

10.
Jackson, A. (2015, March 25). 3 big ways No Child Left Behind failed. Retrieved April 13,
2018, from http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-no-child-left-behind-got-wrong-
2015-3

This source analyzes what the efforts of the “No Child Left Behind Act” were and talks
about each individually and how they worked and how they didn’t. It identified the three main
goals of the act to be: High staking test, adequate yearly progress, and having every student
proficiency by 2014. It analyzes the successes and failures of each things.
This source is similar to the last one in the way that it is about different information than
a majority of the other sources were. This source also focuses on the “No Child Left Behind
Act”. The last source was lacking in the drawbacks of the “No Child Left Behind Act”, which we
know it has because the education gap has not seen a significant increase. This article addresses
the issues with the Act and talks about what exactly this website believes to be the reasons we
have not seen great success with the bill.

11.
 Valant, J., & Newark, D. (2017, August 15). Race, class, and Americans' perspectives of
achievement gaps. Retrieved March 23, 2018, from
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/01/16/race-class-and-
americans-perspectives-of-achievement-gaps/

This source claims that the largest problem with the education gap is not race based, but
rather wealth based. They say that race is an issue in all school systems, but in a school system
that is poor, the students will struggle despite their race. They say that the issue that needs to be
addressed is bringing economic equality to school systems so all students have equal opportunity
to succeed.
This source is going to be useful to me because it helps to analyze a different side of the
issue. It helps to show how both race and class affect the education gap so I can directly
compare the two and see which one has the biggest impact. It also offers some of the people in
America’s perspectives so that you can see how the whole nation views the issue. The issue with
this one could be that I am not all that familiar with the website, so while I do not perceive it to
have bias, it could possibly have some.

12.
Income, More Than Race, Is Driving Achievement Gap. (2012, February 13). Retrieved March
23, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146816813/income-more-than-race-is-
driving-achievement-ga

This source gives credit to the efforts that have been made to close the achievement gap
and says that the gap between white and black students has seen a significant improvement over
the past years with the government programs that have been implemented. However, they say
that the economic disparity between school systems is a prolonging issue which has not seen any
improvement and this is why the achievement gap remains so large.
This source is useful because it presents a different argument than most of the other
articles, and that is that race is not the issue, but rather income. It will offer a different side of the
story than I have been repetitively seeing. It could possibly have an issue if the person speaking
does have some bias, however it should remain pretty unbiased. Also, they are not a government
institution so I do not know if their data is 100% accurate.