Minority Program Entry Essay

My path to the PhD program hasn’t been the most straightforward, but my inspiration comes from W.E.B. Dubois’ idea that “Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls which molds and develops men.” This statement resonated with me in my seven years of teaching high school mathematics in urban school districts. I learnt so much about the inequities faced by students attending low performing schools, living in violent neighborhoods, and confronting problems that most people never have to deal with in a lifetime. These observations as well as a friendly nudge from the Federal government during the Great Recession led to my return to graduate school to help improve the educational conditions faced by many minority students in urban schools. Attending a doctoral program is something I have always thought of thanks to my undergraduate experience in the American Economics Summer Minority Program, which geared students toward attending graduate school. Althought this program was instrumental in exposing me to a career in research, I did
I witnessed firsthand education inequality within the school. This includes high numbers of African-American males in special education, disproportionate discipline practices, and few minorities seated in honors or advanced placement classes. These inequities in the educational system lead to lower high school graduation rates for minorities, higher rates of minorities in remedial college courses, lower rates of college acceptance and completion for minorities. My dissertation, “Structural Education Inequalities” addresses these disparities and at the most basic level, it seeks to understand how schools are failing a large portion of our students. This work focuses on the gatekeepers of the educational process as well as how the school environment encourages behavior that conflict with academic