Giving Compass' Take:

• Senior Ayden Clayton at Rangeview High School in Aurora shares his feelings on how the racial achievement gap in high school starts when students of color are treated differently in the classroom.  

• How can school districts do more inclusivity training and educate their teachers on diverse classrooms and hurtful stereotypes or microaggressions? 

• Read about using the arts to combat the achievement gap. 

Research from Stanford showed that African-Americans come in behind other students on standardized tests and enrollment in honors to AP and college classes. This is very important because the gap is also prevalent at Rangeview High School in Aurora, where I am a senior.

I’ve been in numerous AP, honors and CCA classes (college courses) throughout my high school career. What I really have noticed were the underprivileged kids being treated differently, almost like the teachers thought of them as troublemakers without even knowing them.

I’ve had many teachers stereotype me about drugs, hip-hop, if I have a dad and more, and it made me pretty uncomfortable to the point where I didn’t want to go to the class. I feel that when issues such as these that occur in the classroom, it makes students of color not want to focus, and teachers could probably use better training on how to teach kids that do not look like them.

Those students would continuously sit in the back of classes, wouldn’t raise their hand, and wouldn’t ask questions. I used to be one of them. It’s not because the urge to not learn, but the discomfort of the setting in the classroom.

Read the full article about the achievement gap by Ayden Clayton at Chalkbeat