Achieving academic success is a challenge for many children; However, for many African American children, academic success is more than a challenge; it's a nearly impossible feat. Anyone can look at newspapers or peek into average classroom grade books and see the vast disparity or achievement gap that is evident between the grades of African American and Caucasian students, or proficiency levels on academic measures. Although many reasons have been put forward to explain the existence of this gap, many researchers are specifically interested in the role that teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and teaching practices or styles play in improving or hinders academic achievement of African American students. Oates, (2003) examined the relationship between teacher and student ethnicity to determine whether dissimilarity between teacher and student races influences teachers' perceptions of students. (Oates, 2003). It also examined whether the relationship between teacher perceptions among students of the same race (i.e., an African American teacher and an African American student) would be consequential for performance. He used the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), which included 24,559 eighth graders; however, after focusing on the educational processes of students who had tenth (1990) and twelfth (1992) standardized test data and tenth grade teacher perception data, he had a sample of 836 Afro-American students. -Americans; 670 with perception data from White teachers and 166 with perception data from African American teachers; and 7,094 white students with perception data from white teachers and 155 with perception data from African American teachers (O...... middle of document...... and others directions to follow in academic studies Academic success can help to glean more information and better understand how teachers' perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and teaching practices can have a (positive) impact. or negative) on the academic achievement of African American students ReferencesOates, GL (2003). -student racial congruence, teacher perceptions, and test performance. . (2003). Pre-service teachers' attitudes toward teaching African American students: Contemporary research in urban education, 38 (. 6), 640-654 Retrieved from http://uex.sagepub. .com/content/38/6/640.refs.html doi: 10.1177/0042085903257317Love, A and Kruger, AC (2005). in urban schools serving African American students Journal of Educational Research., 99(2), 87-98.