In a recent test, (Harper's, 1996) the principal at P.S. 116 tells a white tester that the regular school program is not the right one for him. He should apply for the gifted program, even though it has already been filled. The principal goes on to provide an application, testing information and a list of private bussing services that exist outside the school's district. A black tester calls to inquire about the same gifted program and is told that applying does not guarantee admission. This may sound shocking, yet it is the results of the report that was conducted on the New York public schools by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The experimenters called several public schools in New York, posing as parents. The only knowledge that the principals or assistant principals had to go on was the race of the parent, yet the conclusions were all in common with the above example. In fact the study showed that only half the amount of black testers were able to reach the educator as were the white testers. This report clearly shows that there is still a belief that there are students who have less cognitive ability based simply on their cultural, social or ethnic backgrounds. This is a problem in education that needs to be addressed and solved.
Although many educators have addressed the problem raised by the presence of many cultures and ethnicities in the classrooms, there seems to be a great difference on how to solve the problem. There are many (Famularo, 1996) who believe that the curriculum must change to include all of these cultures. In fact the Clinton administration has joined with educators to create the National Standards for United States History. The belief is that a multicultural society must have a multicultural curriculum that caters to the background of each individual student. Thus, as events are studied, they must be looked at in terms of how they effected each culture within ...