Gang Affiliation and the Achievement Gap

Gang Affiliation and the Achievement Gap

What is a gang?

A gang is a group of teenagers and young adults who share an identity as a group, interact as a group, are often involved in crime, claim control over “turf,” and adopt colors, gang clothing, and paraphernalia by which they can be identified.

Gangs may also be identified by: graffiti on walls, notebooks, and signs; special jewelry; tattoos; gang literature (signs, symbols, poems, prayers, procedures); initiation injuries; hand signs; and special behaviors and meetings.

In 2002, there were more than 22,000 gangs in the United States, 85% of which operated in large cities.

Why Do Kids Join Gangs?

Kids join gangs to find a peer group, replace a family, build self-esteem, make money, get drugs, and obtain notoriety, power, status, and glamour. Kids with learning disabilities and those who have trouble with academics are 3 to 4 times more likely to join a gang than kids without such difficulties. Gang members come from all races, all socio-economic groups, and both genders.

Gang Activity and Schools

School officials must treat gang activity differently from non-gang activity. It’s not made up of one-on-one or isolated incidents. Problems can escalate quickly from a school fight between rival gang members into a drive-by shooting a few hours later. School officials must discipline individual students involved in gang offenses based on their individual actions, but school personnel must recognize that these offenses are part of a broad pattern of gang-related conduct and violence.

Educators, police, parents, and others who work with young people need regular training in the changing nature of gang identifiers and gang behavior. Gang members have become more “low key” in their behavior and identifiers to avoid detection by authorities.

Risk Factors for Gang Membership

There are five major areas of risk factors for gang membership – the individual himself, family conditions, school performance, peer group influences, and the community. Risk factors from any of the five areas that are present when a child is aged 10 to 12 predict the likelihood of the child’s joining a gang at age 13 to 18. Children with seven or more risk factors were 13 times more likely to join a gang than children with no risk factors. Also, the more areas of risk factors that affect a child, the more likely that child will join a gang. Therefore, communities and schools need to take a comprehensive approach in addressing multiple areas of risk factors.

The most important predictors of gang affiliation at ages 12–14 are: antisocial peers such as gang members or having few social ties, poor school attitude and performance, aggression, poor parent-child relationships, psychological conditions, prior physical violence, and being male. Predictors at ages 6–11 are: delinquency, substance use, being male, a disadvantaged family, and antisocial parents.

Preventing Gang Affiliations

Since one of the areas of risk for gang membership is school performance, it stands to reason that, if young people do well in school, they are less likely to join gangs and the academic achievement gap will lessen between Caucasian students (who are less likely to join gangs) and minority students (who are more likely to join gangs due to the presence of multiple areas of risk factors in their lives). Obviously, any steps that are taken to improve school performance will help in this effort. These should include:

1. Multiple school and community support and tutoring programs for at-risk students.
2. Early interventions for students at-risk of school failure. Eliminate failure in school by supporting students from kindergarten through high school.
3. Ongoing teacher training.
4. Hiring fully qualified and specially trained teachers, especially minority teachers.
5. Incorporating multicultural curricula.
6. Involving parents in school activities, conferences, etc.
7. Fostering mentoring programs and after school, weekend, and summer activities and sports for at-risk students.
8. “Lock down” the schools, i.e.; fence the school and keep everyone out except for staff and students to eliminate drugs on campus.
9. Create a plan for safety in school at all times. All students should have to attend anti-drug, anti-violence, and anti-bullying courses.
10. Offer Gang Resistance Education and Training Programs (GREAT).
11. Offer alternative means of getting an education for those who begin to fail in mainstream education – special programs, special schools, but they must be positive alternatives, not punitive ones.
12. Establish rewards for school attendance, including monetary rewards. Call on local businesses to assist financially.

There are no easy answers to stopping gang involvement. Most programs and new laws have been ineffective. Some possibilities that may be effective include:

1. Prevention programs that provide counseling that targets individual teens and their families; peer group associations; and academic achievement. One such program is Multisystemic Therapy (MST).
2. Enforce all existing anti-gang and criminal laws consistently.
3. Keep children and teens busy, involved in sports and other groups, and off the streets.
4. Enforce a curfew.
5. Establish an intensive probation program for teens with a history of violence and crime.
6. Promote parenting classes. Convince parents that they must be non-violent, non-criminal, non-incarcerated role models in order to remove the status and gang goal of going to prison.
7. Eliminate drugs from the community.
8. Establish a strong, consistent school attendance policy and enforcement. Hire truancy officers to visit homes and patrol streets for truant students. Hold parents responsible for students’ school attendance and enforce the laws.

To learn more about gangs and how they affect the achievement gap between majority and minority students, read Close the Gap: Multiple Ways to Close the Achievement Gap by Mylai Tenner, M.Ed.