Student Achievement

Foundation Tackles Black Males’ School Woes

By Catherine Gewertz — December 07, 2004 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

When Rosa A. Smith took the helm of a small Massachusetts foundation a few years ago, she commissioned a study to help the philanthropy better target its work to close the scholastic gaps between boys and girls.

” Public Education and Black Male Students: A State Report Card” is available online from The Schott Foundation for Public Education. ()

The message that emerged from the data was not the one she expected. But it was so compelling that it altered the path of the Cambridge-based Schott Foundation for Public Education. It has replaced its gender-gap work with a new focus on how schools can better meet the needs of African-American boys and young men.

The foundation’s work in two other areas, fiscal equity and early-childhood education, continues. But the data showing that most educational gender gaps are closing—while black boys and adolescents still struggle on many scholastic indicators, from graduation rates to test scores—were too striking to suggest that the Schott Foundation should continue to conduct business as usual, Ms. Smith said.

See Also

Read the accompanying story,

Professional Groups to Combat Drug Abuse

“This is a group that not a lot of people were talking about,” Ms. Smith, a former superintendent of the Columbus, Ohio, school district, said in an interview. “But it’s a moral issue we have to examine. The accumulated consequences of school failure are greatest for this group of students. It is so life-determining. And if we do this work well, everybody in a community wins.”

Drawing Notice

Built from the earnings of a high-technology media publishing firm, the Schott Foundation is small—it awards $2 million in grants annually on a $4 million budget. But Ms. Smith, the foundation’s president, hopes it can help open new pathways for young black men.

In late October, the philanthropy issued a study showing that on average, nationally, only 40 percent of black males graduate with their high school classes, compared with 70 percent of white male students. The report also detailed how black males are disproportionately represented among school discipline cases and in special education referrals. (“Renewed IDEA Targets Minority Overrepresentation,” this issue.) The problems were particularly bad in some big cities with large African-American enrollments.

Rosa A. Smith

In the past two years, Ms. Smith has strategically placed her writings on the topic in publications that reach policymakers. She also has organized several gatherings of scholars, activists, and civic leaders to brainstorm about effective strategies to address the situation.

“Rosa has really thought outside the box on this issue,” said one attendee at such a meeting, Linda C. Wing, the deputy director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban School Improvement. “She has stimulated people’s thinking and brought to the surface knowledge and ideas they might not have had.”

Pedro A. Noguera, a New York University professor who has written about societal forces that affect urban education, views the Schott Foundation’s work as a welcome part of a newly emerging dialogue on the problem. Solving it, he said, will require more research, and reflection on areas that make many people uncomfortable, such as racial and gender differences in parenting practices and teaching styles.

It also might mean rethinking how schools are organized, said Gregory Hodge, a school board member in Oakland, Calif. He believes that smaller, more personalized schools—many of which are popping up in that San Francisco Bay-area city—could benefit African-American boys by encouraging strong relationships and mentoring.

Part of building success for black boys, Mr. Hodge said, will involve changing negative images popularized by the entertainment industry and the news media, which often depict them as criminal or anti-intellectual.

“It’s about rehumanizing African-American males,” he said. “If people don’t value these young men, they don’t have the advocates that they need, working with and for them.”

Teacher Misperceptions

Teacher preparation must also be re-examined if schools are to become vehicles for success for young black men, said La Vonne I. Neal, an associate professor of education at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. The issue becomes even more pressing as demographic shifts bring ever more student diversity into American schools, she said.

“How do we prepare all our teachers to be culturally responsive?” she said. “If you don’t understand students’ diverse social and cultural behaviors, then you won’t know that what you’re seeing as problematic is not a deficit, it’s just different.”

Students often suffer from teachers’ misperceptions, and black males suffer disproportionately, she said. In a study of public middle schools in Texas, Ms. Neal and her colleagues found that adolescent males who adopted a walk she calls “the stroll,” common among black males, were more often perceived by their teachers to be more aggressive and less intelligent than other students, and were more often referred for special education evaluation.

Rossi Ray-Taylor, the executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network, an Evanston, Ill.-based association of suburban districts that are examining ways to eliminate racial and ethnic achievement gaps, said she hopes the Schott Foundation’s work will help keep the national conversation about school improvement framed correctly.

Too often, she said, such discussions take on a tenor that blames students for performing poorly, rather than looking squarely at the failings of the systems in which they function.

“How are kids experiencing school?” Ms. Ray-Taylor said. “What are the pressures on African-American males that could be pulling them off track? Are we expecting different things from them? Are they expecting that from themselves? Where are we broken, as a school system? That’s where we’ve got to keep the question.”

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Achievement Quiz Quiz Yourself: How Much Do You Know About Improving Student Outcomes?
Answer 7 questions about improving student learning outcomes.
Student Achievement Opinion This Nonprofit Runs the Nation’s 3 Largest Tutoring Programs. Here's What It's Learned
Post-pandemic, tutoring is all the rage. How can it be done well?
6 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Student Achievement Spotlight Spotlight on Student Engagement & Hands-On Learning
This Spotlight will help you learn about reducing student ambivalence towards math, proven strategies for reengaging students, and more.


Student Achievement What the Research Says Next NAEP to Take Deeper Look at Poverty's Connection to Students' Achievement
Researchers say the new measure could yield a more accurate reading of how family income affects students' test scores.
5 min read
Glitch stylized photo of a white woman with a hood over her head.
iStock/Getty