As the American student demographic continues to grow increasingly diverse, racial disparities in student outcomes indicate that public schools and White teachers across the country are struggling to provide quality education to students of color. A critical analysis of the widely recognized “achievement gap” and discipline gap reveals White educators socialized within a white supremacist society often adopt dominant deficit perspective schemas about people of color which inhibit teachers’ abilities to provide effective, equitable educational opportunities to students of color. The dominant deficit schemas prevalent among predominantly White educators and administrators serve to obscure systemic racism, deny systemic and individual responsibility for perpetuating inequalities, and justify racial disparities as “natural”. This thesis employs a critical analysis to explore the historical, social, and political constructs of race, historical and contemporary oppression of people of color and racialized educational opportunity gaps, the impact of socialization within a white supremacist society on teacher schema, the impact of teacher schema on the educational outcomes of students of color, and the role that critical consciousness and culturally relevant pedagogy can play in effectively addressing the learning potential of students of color
