What is Socio-Economic Status

The main purpose of this chapter is to address the opportunity gap in math education experiences of Black students in the United States. While some Americans may have thought that racism and inequity were issues of the past, a recent racial reckoning throughout the nation has opened many people's eyes to educational deficits in the Black community. By unpacking the definition and concepts surrounding the “opportunity gap,” this chapter identifies three main overlapping branches that exemplify Black students' struggles: inadequate educational resources, inequitable economics, and underperforming quality of instruction. The COVID-19 pandemic has made these disparities more publicly clear and has exacerbated the pain these tenets of the opportunity gap cause. Black students' math achievement has lagged due to the opportunity gap, but math can play an important role in helping to end these disparities.