African-American Male Achievement here

Analyzing and Addressing the Underachievement of African American Males in Guilford County Schools A Report to the Guilford Countjt School Board t''. ø4#**u*fl ;iåt"",=, ffiËffi# tffiä ffi,T ffi ffi ry ffi ffi*Mm$s offi o ffi'ffi* &ffi'H l,ËW ffi 'H EHffi Ë L,L [ ]** #, Monday, June 23r g,OoB Guilford Coun$ Board of Education Boardroom 712 l{orth Eugene St Greensboro,^fc g74ol Table of Contents Student Outcomes: 'What has Changed in øqYears? Dr. Nancy Routl4 Former Principal, GCS Boardmember Children of Color: Implications of Early Experiences on School Success Lynette Aytch, Psy. D, Director, Leadership Smart Start, Raleigh, NC Where Do Teachers Stand on the Gup or Disparities in Education? Dr. Muktha Josl Associate Prqfessor, North Carolina A€iT University The (Mis)Use of Assessment and the Failure to Connect Instruction to Student Lives Dr. Anthony Graham, Associate Pro;þssor, North Carolina A€lT Uniaersity Community Racism fndex or Whose Achievement Gup is it AnywayP Ed Whitfield, Activist Writer €i Director, Fundfor Democratic Communities Accounting for Differences in Schooling Outcomes of Blacks and Whites: Historical Institutional Economic Factors Dr. Lawrence Morse, Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, North Carolina A€iT Uniaersity What Does All This Data MeanP And What Can We Do About ItP M arni e T homp s on, F o un der, F un d for D emo cr atic C ommunitie s Restoring the fmage of and Belief in African American Male Success: Looking Back and Looking Forward Monica F. Walker, Diuersity Officer, Guilþrd County Schools 'What Student Outcomes: has changed in 2Q years? The Comprehensive Study presented contains student achievement and student demographic data available for Guilford County Schools beginning in l993.It is an attempt to show some of the variables known to be, or believed to be, factors affecting student achievement and overall academic performance relative to ethnicity and gender. While the current focus on the "gap" that exists between and among the numerous target groups identified by No Child Left Behind has been a priority for less than a decade, the focus on student achievement and the impact of policies and instructional practices on this achievement has existed for a much longer time. Each of the three districts, Greensboro City, High Point City and Guilford County, that were merged into the Guilford County School District (1993) had a slightly different history relative to desegregation of schools, organizational structure, curricular/instructional focus and student achievement. All measured student achievement by classroom performance, grades and standardized achievement tests (the exact instruments used may have varied). Total desegregation plans for Greensboro City Schools were implemented in the l97l-72 school year. Elementary schools were organized into primary schools (K-3) and paired with an upper elementary school (4-6). In most cases a predominately black school was paired with a predominately white school for the elementary years and students were bused out of their neighborhoods for some portion of their elementary years. Junior and Senior High Schools used a feeder school pattern in order to desegregate schools at the secondary level. State funded kindergarten programs also began in Greensboro in 1977 andthe emphasis in the K-3 primary schools was on Early Childhood programs rich in experiences for language development, exposure to activities based on developmental needs of the children, and directed toward the acquisition of language arts/reading skills and understanding numeration. Upper elementary grades continued skill development through the content aÍeas. All subjects weÍe graded. Within five years the board of education, the administration and the general public began to voice concerns about student achievement and the need to have clearlv established grade level standards. Competency testing at the secondary school level to determine eligibility for graduation was implemented in North Carolina in 1977 . Programs designed to reduce the failure rate and to assure the acquisition of basic reading and math skills were added to the high school course of study. The practice ofplacing a student at the next higher grade based on attendance or age, was abandoned by many schools systems and replaced with promotion criteria based on grade level expectations, grades and test scores. During the 1977-1978 school year the Greensboro City Schools adopted a policy requiring promotion standards for all elementary grades including kindergarten. These standards defined specific mathematics, reading and language arts skills to be mastered and recommended requirements for all other subject areas. The skills required were based primarily on the current textbook adoptions and were revised as textbooks were changed. The Board of Education policy authorized promotion standards that were raised annually until all elementary grades, kindergarten through grade six, had grade level standards for reading and mathematics. In order to avoid annual revisions, the administrative regulation was changed in 1983 to include the requirement of a passing grade or a 'oD" average minimum of all subjects for which a grade was given. Within ayeat of the initial policy adoption, the number of students retained grew and by 1983-1984 school year the impact on students K-8 was being felt in every elementary and junior high school. Principals \ilere aware of the impact at the individual school level and asked the administration to look at the district wide data. The data gathered in 1985 for the district confirmed the need to address the retention problem created by the district's rigid policy. A break down of the data by grade level and by ethnic groups showed the disparities. (See Table I, attached) Parents concerned about the high numbers of non-promotions and the underachievement of students organized meetings with school administration and the board of education and demanded that action be taken to relieve the situation. The Home/School/Community Committee For Student Achievement was appointed to study the problems of underachieving students in the Greensboro Public Schools. An organizational meting was held on September 77,1986. At this meeting the Superintendent stated that the tasks of the committee would be to: 1) identify factors within the school, the home and the community which may contribute to a student's low achievement, 2) identify factors within the school, the home and the community which support or contribute to higher achievement and 3) determine appropriate roles for each of these three entities as they relate to improved student achievement. Data akeady compiled by the school system was presented to the committee as background information. The second meeting of the committee was with Dr. Asa Hilliard on September 22,1986. Dr. Hilliard shared his knowledge and the results of his work with minority students throughout the United States. Sub-committees studied three areas: 1) programs currently provided by the school/s 2) programs available in the community and 3) the communication system between the school, home and community. A report was compiled and presented in December of 1986. Recommendations wsre made to address individual student needs and to provide alternatives to grade retention. The 1985-1986 Retention Report and other demographic and achievement data are available. The following is taken from the 1986 report: Dr. Asa Hilliard met with the study committee in September,1986, he stated that demonstrations with children show that every child can leam, wants to learn and that hislher parents are concerned about his academic accomplishments. Local statistics as provided by Mike Booher, school psychologist, confirm that Greensboro students can indeed learn; for Greensboro students typically out perform other students regionally, statewide, and nationally. Yet, apparently, a number of our students - 1,804 (see Table I) - were not promoted to the next grade level at the end of the 1985-86 school year,i.e., they failed to achieve the necessary skillslknowledge to move ahead. 'When While the 1986 report addressed the impact of a rigid promotion standard based on a "grade level" determined by textbooks and grades, the extemal variables affecting the number of students who were non-promoted and considered to have failed, are not unlike the variables currently identified as impacting the achievement and academic performance of our students as measured by state mandated testing. in 1986 and some progress made. The focus was on the individual student. Personal Education Plans (PEP) were written extra help provided through, reduced class size, extended day instruction, and summer programs planned to provide remedial, enrichment and recreational activities. Improvement was shown during the late 80's and into the early 90's. After-school and community programs planned to serve students in specific schools or areas of the district changed as a result of merger, redistricting (both before and after merger), the state's Basic Education Plan and accountability mandates. All of these factors have served to modify or change instructional programs and practices. Changes were made We have years of data, both before and after 1993; we know how children learn and how they develop skills needed to acquire knowledge, solve problems and think critically. We have not improved in our ability to welcome all of our students and families into the school community; provide appropriate instruction during the early years; actively involve students, parents and community in the leaming process; and to keep our students successfully connected to schools through an effective communication process that moves students from elementary, into middle grades and into the appropriate pathway or setting at the high school level to assure each one is prepared for future study and work. It's time to use what we know. Success for all is achieved one by one. Attachments: Tables I - Vil Prepared by: Nancy Routh Children of Color: Implications of Early Experiences for School Success Research in early childhood development provides clear evidence that eariy experiences establish the foundation for learning throughout life. The scientific advances from this research have generated a much deeper understanding and appreciation for: (t) the importance of early life experiences on the development of the brain and human behavior, (e) the central role of early relationships as a source of either resilience or risk, (s) the capabilities, emotions, and social skills that develop during the earliest years oflife, and (+) the capacity to increase the odds of favorable outcomes through quality early developmental and learning experiences and interventions (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2o0o). The Perry Preschool study and the Abecedarian study are higtrly regarded longitudinal studies that examined the relationship between high quality early care and education and child outcomes for African American children from low-income families. This research provides evidence of a positive relationship between child care quality and virtually every facet of children's development. Poor quality early care and education experience is associated with less optimal child outcomes and higher quality care and education is associated with desirable outcomes (High Scope/Perry Preschool Study; 2oo5; Carolina Abecedarian Study, 2oo2). Despite the increased awareness of the importance of early childhood experiences and availability of high quality childcare opportunities, African American children, particularly males, continue to experience significant disparity in practically every major indicator of early childhood health, development, and well-being âs compared to white children. Below are some troubling disparities for recent North Carolina data for African American (or minority) children that can have long term implications for education and iife outcomes: r The mortality rate for African American births is nearly white births 74o/o compared to 6Yo for The low birth weight incidence for minority babies is twice that of white babies, 14o/o compared to 7% respectiveiy. African American children under the age of 18 are three times as likely to live below the federal poverty level as white children. 2a% of Lfrican American children who meet the income eligibility requirements for Medicaid or Health Choice are not enrolled. This percentage is actually lower than that of white children who are eligible (ss"/") but are not enrolled. of Ãfrican American children score at 3'd grade proficiency in reading compared to 97%o of white children. 5go/o of African American children score at 3'd grade proficiency in math as comparedlo 83o/o of white children. 73o/o Based on the fact that these disparities are evidenced early in the life of many African American children, it can anticipated that these disparities will continue to exist as children progress through youth and adult life without intentional efforts to address these inequities. There is strong evidence that children ofcolor, particularly boys, are disproportionately victims of health, educational, and well-being disparities. Mychal'Wynn, in his bookTeaching, Parenting, and Mentortng Successful Black Males, states that there must be a clearly articulated vision and mission that guides and focuses intentional efforts to improve the development, educational achievement, and life outcomes for African American males. This mission must be a collective effort shared by the family, community, and school. This focus on the shared responsibility of family, community, and school is at the heart of the North Carolina Ready Schools Initiative. In this initiative, a Ready School is defined as having an inviting atmosphere, values and respects aÌl children and their families, and is a place where children succeed. The distinguishing factors of a "ready school' are that it (r) has an expectation ofexcellence for every child, (z) understands and appreciates that its success as a school is dependent on valuing and respecting the role of parents/families in the learning process, and (s) understands the value ofbeing deeply engaged with (and a resource to) the community in which it exists. These schools know that they function within a social context in which helping to ensure that children and families have opportunities for adequate financial resources, safe communities, health care, quality early education, and other family/parent support services is essential to the academic success and well-being of the children that they serve. Lynette Aytch, Director, Leadership Smart Start North Carolina Partnershios for Children. Inc. References: Data Sources: http://www.schs.state. nc. us/SCHS/data/vitalstats. cfm http://www.schs.state. nc. us/SCHS/pdf/ReportCard2006. pdf Action for Children Report using NC lnstitute of Medicine data calculations) Shonkoff, J. P. & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. National Academy Press: Washington, DC. Campbell, F.4., Ramey, C. T., Pungello, E. P., Sparling, J., & Miller-Johnson, S. (2002). Early Childhood Education: Young Adult Outcomes from the Abecedarian Project. Applied Developmental Science, 6, 42-57. Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, 2., Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lífetime effecús; The High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40. (Monographs of the High/Scope EducationalResearch Foundation, 14). Ypsilanti, Ml: HighlScope Press. Wynn, Mychal (2005). Empowering African American Males : Teaching, Parenting, & Mentoring Black Males. Rising Sun Publishing: Marietta, Georgia. Lynette Aytch, Psy.D. Director, Leadership Smart Start The North Carolina Partnership for Children, lnc. 1100 Wake Forest Road Raleigh, NC 27604 919.821.9529 919.821.8050 - fax June 2008 Where do Teachers Stand on the'Gup' or disparities in educationP Greetings. I'm an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at North Carolina A&T's School ofEducation, and I teach courses on race and class issues, technology, instructional design, and assistive technologies. I've taught European-American, African-American, Hispanic-American and Asian-American preservice and in-service teachers for 12 years no\M in Iowa and North Carolina, and I have never met a teacher on the first day of class who understood the causes, context, meaning, relevance and consequences of real disparities in education. The source of the issue is not some lack of capacity in them, but the result of their own one-sided education and socialization. I too earned a Ph.D, in education and had no real understanding of historical, racial, social and political disparities in education. To some extent, we all suffer from this disease. Even the few teachers who understand it at a gut level need a course to validate their knowledge. This condition, where teachers (and society) lack the knowledge about the origins and nature of the achievement gap, prevents them from truly addressing the critical issues today. Instead, they stumble unknowingly (like the rest of us) and join the beat of the system, which portrays the achievement gap as some kind of deficiency that exists between European American and African American students revealed by test scores, and which can be addressed through more standardized instruction and more standardized tests, Somehow, standardized tests have become the bureaucratic pill to fix deep-rooted problems in education, but this is like taking a daily dose of aspirin to fix cancer. First, we aII need to stop popping that standardized pill especially because it's not doing anything for our headaches. Then we really need to study this cancer. Together. If we did this together, we might actually see some of the peculiar things that we are doing to all children today. For instance, we now have a fairly elaborate system and technique where we assign a quantitative value to each child - I, II, III, or IV. In essence, we are assigning a quantitative value to their quality as a human being and their ability to know and understand the world. Again, through tests and test scores. As the media critic Neil Postman questions, if we can assign a number to their human value, then can we agree we can also assign a number to the quality of love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, mercy, even sanityP And this doesn't even get into the absurd fact that children carry these numeric identities all the way to their high school years. Education today is mostly about preparing young people for scarce jobs in a future we don't fully comprehend through a competitive process that creates winners and losers. It's not about cultivating a love for iearning in children; it's about damning children through test scores, pìacement on meaningless levels of intelligence and ability, and robbing them of their selÊ confidence and innate interest in learning. Postman argues that once we admit a technique or technology (like this systematic stamping of children with numerical values) into the culture, it will play out its hand and do what it was designed to do. If we study this cancer, we'll see how the technique of sorting children is playing out its hand. It creates a sort of fatalism in the child's mind - I am here, and I am stuck. It gives teachers and other adults responsible for the growth of the child an entirely wrong and inaccurate place to start. It creates huge divisions between children and their teachers, and teachers and their administrators. It pits groups of parents against each other. It creates a stalemate where the health of the community is affected. In an unfair economic system, historical disparities play a stealthy hand in who gets sacrificed and who doesn't. Perhaps these are all the gaps that we should study. Muktho Josf, Ph.D., AssocioÌe professor. Curriculum ond Instrucfion, North Corolino A&T Sfote Universily (mjosl@ncot.edu) lunø 2008 Much of this 'Gap' in teachers' performance is unnecessary and can be addressed through schooling practices, teacher education, and professional development. Like students, teachers have race, gender, class, and ethnic identities, to name a few, and these influence their work in the classroom. Our first task in education must be to hoid a mirror to the truth out there about the 'gap' in education and the source of that'gap.' It's not as if education has been equal in the last 2Oo years and suddenly and dramatically, AfricanAmerican and Hispanic-American children started to lag behind. If that were the case, all it would take are shot-in-the-arm methods to get them to catch up with the rest. If we study the history of this cancer, we can learn some important things to use in our problem solving. Despite wellresearched and carefully documented Constitutional, legal, social, economic and political race disparities, many African-American children in a number of school systems did exceptionally weil prior to the well intentioned efforts to racially balance schools with the attendant loss of biack teachers and administrators that took place. One reason is that these teachers knew how to address the needs of the children. Another is that the communities of these children had more influence on the education of their children at a time when bureaucratic control was not the order ofthe day. When communities wish to take part in the education of their children today, they are forced to speak in the language of intelligence levels, literacy levels, special needs classifications, IEPs, behavior infractions, SIMS data and all sorts of bureaucratese. This is absurd and we have no idea how much schooling slams the door in their faces through this synthetic and unloving language. The means to creating the 'Gap'was systematic, but the mechanical and sometimes punitive means to closing the 'gap' like the practices relating to NCLB cannot provide us with the intended result. Closing the gaps in educational results calls for imagination, creativity, compassion, and cooperation, and intense, relentless, and misguided testing is not even the least common denominator in addressing the problem. More than anything, there are no quick fixes, canned programs, strategies and rules about closing the'gap'. As a community, we need to understand this concept for what it truly is before we can do anything that can address the problem. It's imperative that we educate our teachers and principals about the truth related to the 'gap' in authentic and meaningful ways. Teachers can teach us a thing or two about themselves, if we let them. In the semesters that I teach the course on 'Integrating Technology', there is a pattern of teacher learning, engagement, and motivation in the very small unit on 'Assistive Technologies.' Teachers are expected to take stock of the assistive technologies in their schools, talk to those who use them, observe their use, and participate in online group discussions about their fìndings. This is what many teachers take with them from their research in their own contexts and classrooms, and the engagement with their peers: they become transformed from teachers who often were hearing the term for the first time, to stepping a little nervously into the role of an advocate for a meaningful use of assistive technologies to address learning disabilities in their classrooms. Although there are several factors that help in this transition, the most powerfirl one is the fact that they receive some powerful, real, and clear information from other teachers in a language that's engaging about performance probiems that resonate with their everyday struggles with students that they watch getting 'left behind.' Most importantly, they hear the details about how a teacher is using a certain tool (which can range from pencil grippers or wiki sticks to screen reader Muktho Josf, Ph.D., Associote professor, Curriculum ond Insfrucfion, North Cqrolina A&T Stote University (mjost@ncot.edu) software) to address a child's barriers to reading, writing, communica,r"* -nnt;. ,::::"r ", other peers, math, and all those other classroom related tasks and behaviors that make children successful in schooling. When teachers get excited, they ask questions, and in this unit, they literally ask hundreds of questions. They seek answers from their peers. They continue the group discussion long after the deadline passes and despite the fact that they don't receive class credit. They invite each other to their classrooms and schools to see for themselves how they are using certain software to get a learner to read or a child with auditory problems to listen to the story. I know that they are on their way to addressing a barrier to learning maybe only one child at a time, but it's more than a beginning that fails to happen in other expert-centered contexts. Like our children in schools, teachers become surprised and angry when exposed to their own 'gaps' about the paradox that's our educational framework, which works for some children but fails some others. Mechanisms that were meant to keep people divided don't disappear in a few decades, nor can a few decades of 'equal rules' restore what has been taken systematically from communities, and that begins to shed some light for them. Why wasn't I ever taught all this stuff about Native Americans and the way the Constitution systematically deprived all but EuropeanAmericans of their very basic rights, they ask. If I had known that seven states in the U.S. actually belonged to Mexico and the history of that acquisition, I'd have a different attitude about the sorely misunderstood immigrant children in my classroom, they say. Had I known about the long and consistent history of disproportionately brutal punishments for minor crimes for AfricanAmericans since Reconstruction, I'd see the behavior issues of African-Americans in my class, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the disproportionate minority contact with different eyes, they insist. Another important transformation takes place in the attitude of teachers: they begin to see the 'assets' in the children that test scores push to the margins. They discover interesting patterns in their own schools about how these children and their families are treated. They begin to see what had for long now been obscured by their own prejudices and stereotypes. can go on and on about the list of small changes in the ways in which they begin to see the critical issues, European-American and African-American teachers alike. The important thing is that they grasp the complexity of the issue and the need for action that is different from what's going on today. The relevant thing is that they understand which fire they need to hold their students' feet to, which is the one directly related to the fire of learning that can happen in the I classroom between the teacher and the student. All else is scapegoating parents, administrators, poor communities, uncaring parents, etc. and they can acknowledge that. The encouraging thing is their confidence in the seeds to change that they hold in their hearts. But the tragedy is that the soil is not entirely the right kind to plant those seeds when they return to their own classrooms and schools. The context in schools is simply toxic and fragmented. On the last week of class, one of the teachers commented after class that the speaker that day really helped her. lfhe speaker that day engaged them in a difficult and deep conversation about their own personal convictions about homosexuality and the need to separate them from their treatment of the child. All children deserve to be treated with respect and kindness, and all children deserve a fair education, he said, and his message was well heard by the teachers, especially by this teacher. She shared that with a few weeks left and with all the test prep in her elementary classroom, she came back from the weekend to find a new child in her class with a multitude of health issues and disabilities like Asperger's, epileptic fìts, etc. No additional help was provided by the school. When she asked her Muktho Jost, Ph.D., Associote professor, Curriculum ond Instrucfion, North Corolina A&T Stqte University (mjost@ncot.edu) June 2008 principal for some heip in addressing the chiid's needs, she was directed to go to the 'Internet.' She confessed that she went back to the classroom with some anger and animosity toward the child, but saw the foolishness of her misplaced anger through the words of the speaker. Teacher quality is not just about what they bring to the classroom by way of credentials, degrees, and teaching experience. It's also about including and understanding teachers and their own 'gaps' in social experience, understanding, compassion, and faith in their students' capacities . Only then can we make relevant choices about teacher learning so we can show results in the simple and dynamic goa-ls of a child's ability to read, write, do math, communicate with teachers and peers, and to think criticallv. Muktha Jost mjost@ncat.edu Mukfho Jost, Ph.D., Associofe professor, Curriculum ond Instrucfion, North Corolino A&T STote University (mjost@ncot.edu) The (Mis)Use of Assessment and the Failure to Connect Instruction to Students' Lives "How do we know Blacks really don't perform well? We're going by what we're told. We don't get to see anyone actually analyzing the numbers. We only see the final reports. How do we know those people are telling us the truthP I hate to say that, but I've seen kids-They say this kid is slow and this kid is lacking, but this is the smartest kid. It's just that the way you were trying to get information out of that child wasn't working . . . But we're supposed to believe what thev tell us?" -An African American Woman Teacher Education Candidate. 2oo6 The Assessment Director of the Assessment Development Division at Educational Testing Services (ETS) confirmed during an HBCU-ETS meeting in the spring of 2,ooa in central North Carolina that testing bias exists on standardized assessments. During her presentation on fairness principles and how these ideals guide the development, construction, and analysis of assessment questions on the Praxis series of examinations, she explained in great detail how questions were deleted from assessments on which White male students performed poorly (Roland, 2006). However, on questions where other subgroups performed poorly but White males performed well, these questions remained on the assessments for future use. This admission supports the findings of Nicklos and Brown (toso) who identified several studies that indicated standardized assessments were culturally biased. The mere fact Educational Testing Services uses a "Fairness and Equity Division" to ensure cultural bias is minimized on its assessments confirms assertions these biases exist. If these assessments were unbiased and fair for all learners, there would be no need for such a division. Unfortunately, the No Child Lefi Behind accountability model relies primarily upon these types of multiple choice assessments. Although the intent of the model is to address issues relative to the Black-White Test Achievement Gap by disaggregating assessment score data to the extent we (educators and the genera-l public) can see which subgroups are performing well, proficiently, or poorly so equitable resources can be provided for each group to raise their assessment test performance, its implementation has been problematic and the results of these data have proven invalid, inaccurate, and useless. With a growing number of administrators piaying statistical games to elicit desirable results for titles such as "School of Excellence" or "School ofDistinction" and a growing number of classroom teachers planning instruction based on what they believe the assessment will measure, the accountability system has failed young men and women in the public schools. Perhaps the greatest error with the implementation of such a model has been the assumption classroom teachers and school administrators are knowledgeable and skilled in the area of assessment to carry out the necessary steps to ensure the modei is valid and reliable. À/o Child Lefi Behind emphasizes the notion of employing "highly qualified" teachers-nomenclature that is misleading and problematic in itself-but what is glaringly absent is the required education and training of classroom teachers to prepare valid and reliable assessments based on the population in which they serve as well as the education of classroom teachers and school administrators to interpret assessment data and its implication to drive future instruction based on the academic needs of their students. In order for such an accountability system to produce valid and reliable data, proper training and preparation of these educators must occur. Not only must classroom teachers have the ability to design valid and reliable assessments and understand how to use various forms of assessment to "get af' different forms of knowledge, skills, and dispositions but also they must have the appropriate training and preparation to analyze results of such data to determine how to use it for future decision making processes. The term "highly qualified" does not account for this necessity. What is ironic with this accountability system is its reliance-and perhaps overdependence-upon assessment data and its failure to ensure those persons who are ultimately responsible for the implementation of the model are knowledgeable and prepared to employ appropriate assessment procedures or analyze assessment data. On a recent trip to Arlington, Virginia for a United Stated Department of Education "Transition to Teaching" meeting intended for recent grantee recipients and their external evaluators, I had the pleasure of meeting the director of an educationa-l assessment research center located in Raleigh, North Carolina. We engaged in conversation about the proper use of assessment and program evaluation procedures, and how the educational system fails to utilize either appropriately. More specifically, she pointed out classroom teachers whom she has had the opportunity to observe in her role as an educational program evaluator, and she talked quite extensively about what she has seen as "misdiagnosis of student ability using flawed assessment practice" in the classroom. She recalled an incident in one classroom where the teacher began the class using a "traditional assessment" (short quiz) to assess the prior knowledge of students, which she commended the teacher for doing; however, as the class progressed, she engaged the students in an activity that strayed from the "poorly written lesson objective on the board" and she returned at the end ofclass to asses the students using another traditional assessment which did not align with the instructional presentation. During the debriefìng session with the evaluator, the teacher concluded based on these assessments several of her students lacked the knowledge to move forward to the next concept when, in fact, the real issue rested with the teacher's improper use of assessment. By not triangulating data using various forms of assessment during the period and by failing to align instruction to the intended objective, the conclusions to which this teacher reached were inaccurate. When she pressed the teacher further about the design of the pre- and post-assessment instruments, she learned very quickly the teacher created an assessment without using an assessment plan (i.e., test specifications table) prior to its creation. The instrument was simply created randomly and as the teacher saw fit, not realizing the biased nature of the instrument and the unfair advantage several of the questions posed for a certain population within the classroom. Despite these obvious flaws and errors on behalf of the teacher, the students were "misjudged" and conclusions were reached about them that were wholly inaccurate and unsubstantiated. Yet, the students had no way of knowing and were silent in this system. Unfortunately, this example is all too common yet not surprising. Each semester, I pose to my graduate students who are typicaìly a mixture of lateral entry teachers or those who currently hold North Carolina licensure a few simple questions at the beginning of class: (a) How many of you know what triangulation means and do you triangulate your assessments to ensure your conclusions about student learning are accurateP (b) How many of you examine each of your learner's performance on the previous EOG or EOC data to plan your instruction for the upcoming year? Every semester, I come to learn many students are unfamiliar wholly with the concept "triangulation" and they do not understand the process of writing measurable or observable lesson objectives with a "degree" for success, proficiency, or mastery nor do they understand the proper way to assess students (i.e., content validity, construct validity, table of specifications). Moreover, students overwhelmingly share they do not use assessment data from previous years to plan what they will teach or how they will teach it in the upcoming academic year. They base their instruction on what is stated in the NCSCOS, on what they assume the EOG or EOC to assess students, or on what they deem important or necessary. Ultimately, what the students need based on the assessment data goes largely unnoticed or unexamined by the very people responsibie for providing them with relevant, challenging, and engaging instruction. Without utilizing what the assessment data informs them, the assessment system fails in its intent and purpose. I teach graduate students who represent a cross-section of Teacher Education Programs or colleges and universities in the state of North Carolina, I have come to learn through classroom discussions and one-on-one conversations that many of these programs do not teach an explicit course in classroom assessment and evaluation and even fewer address notions such as culturally relevant pedagogy nctions. Consequently, these educators are left "teaching disabled" because they lack of knowledge of assessment principles and its relationship to teaching and learning; however, this label is often misguided and displaced onto our students who ultimately bear the consequences of the teacher's lack of awareness and skill. Because What may be even more problematic from these conversations is what I have seen through personal observations in the classroom and what I have heard in one-on-one conversations with classroom teachers in various schools across Guilford County, Randolph County, Orange County, Greene County, Pitt County, Bertie County, and Lenoir County. Overwhelmingly, classroom teachers ask me a very simple question: How do I make what I'm teaching more relevant for my students? As an instructor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, this type of question is expected from first- or second-year teachers; however, when this question is posed by 15- or 2}-year veterans who are struggling to make their content reach students with whom they have no knowledge or understanding, then the question becomes frightening. Many times, classroom teachers have admitted to me they do not know how to make what they teach meaningful to their students' everyday lives but they desire to do so. I often respond with a simple question, "How often do you spend in your students' communities, especially those students who are struggling in your ciassroom?" Invariably, the response to this question is often, "Not much" or "very little". As I share with them, effective classroom instruction is like spandex where what you teach fits around your students. Their experiences, backgrounds, and aspirations are the curves you must measure to ensure what you teach fits comfortably yet snuggly around them. Unfortunately, what these teachers' questions and admissions illuminate are our classroom teachers' inabilities to make the content of their subject areas relevant to their students' lives. Without such connections, many of our classroom teachers are pushing those students who are already disenfranchised in formal educational settings further to the periphery. Not using what assessment data tells you to shape your instruction is problematic but failing to learn more about the backgrounds, experiences, aspirations, fears, and hopes ofyour students is arguably an even greater problem. Very recently, I asked 13 "high achieving'African American male high school seniors (e.g., GPAs higher than 3.O and math, verba-l SAT scores higher than 1o0o)in Guilford County to write a brief l-page response to the question, "Why are African American males dropping out of school and what can we do to address this problemP" To this question, students responded openly and honestl/, stating notions such as: o "I am currently a senior in high school and have watched a number of my African American male peers become increasingly frustrated, belligerent, and eventually anti-education as their frustrations mounted. The expectations of the school system seem to be selÊfulfilling for many of these students, in that little is expected of them and therefore, little is achieved by them. These students are quick to receive negative attention for negative behaviors ... but are seldom recognized for positive behavior." . "They feel that the school system has the least of care for their situation. Coupled with the stress of schoolwork, young black males feel attending school everyday is a waste of time and money." . o "fA Black male friend of mine] spoke words of hope and boredom simultaneously. Hope to learn and comprehend but the boredom, mistreatment, and lack of interest and education that was presented to him in the only place that could present him with any type of solution in concern to learning. He concluded our conversation by telling me that his time in school was soon to end. He would be dropping out soon in order to escape a place that seemed unnecessary to him." "Teachers must be able and willing to understand the learning styles of students and have the desire to ensure frequent opportunities for black males to be successfirl in their classrooms. The school counselors should be willing to supplement [the teacher's knowledge on] the lack of student or family knowledge" Throughout their essays, these young men agreed unanimously many of their peers were leaving school because it lacked relevancy, and educators within the schools were disconnected from their daily lives, Essentially, they agreed the system lacked care and was indifferent to their needs and who they were as individuals. Given these observations, lack of teacher and administrator knowledge and proper use of assessment procedures, the inability to use assessment data to drive instruction, and the unawareness of how to make instruction relevant to students' lives may be major "undiagnosed" culprits contributing not only to the achievement test-score gap but also to the excessive "mislabeling" of students of color as special education or "struggling reader" or "behavioral and emotionally disturbed". As an optimistic educator and former high school teacher, I believe these issues can and will change but only after these issues are illuminated, examined extensively, discussed honestly, and addressed properly. However, these issues cannot be addressed solely by demanding more "one shof' professional development workshops that lack substance and fail to provide foliow up measures nor should money be allocated to implement short-term interventions. or diflerentiated instruction. Many of these institutions prefer to "embed" these principles into their coursework; however, it is imperative explicit connections between assessment principles and cultural awareness within instructional presentations be taught to future teachers (as well as those currently in the classroom) if the implementation of No ChildLefrBehindis to be valid and reliable. As it stands currently, the d ata collected via this system is inaccurate, flawed, and skewed since its primary data collectors (i.e., teachers and administrators) have not been trained properly to carry out its fu Dr. Anthony Graham Associate Ptofessor School of Education Community Racism Index or Whose Achievement Gup is it AnywayP There are several points I would ìike to make. I will list them here and go into more depth below: t)The way we are looking at the Achievement Gap, we thing. are not measuring the right goes z)The differences we do see in what we are measuring will go away when racism away or when the differences between European American children and African American children go away. g) Efforts to teach more efficientlv to the test to directiy overcome these test differences cár, b" successful, but at a high pii."' We will dumb down even further the school experience. +)What parents and communities want for the education of their children can be achieved in schools of widely varying racial composition and under many different types of educational leadership. 5) Nothing in the breadth or complexity of the problem is an excuse for not building relationships and engaging in good education practices now. 6) Creative ways to utilize the parents' and community's connection to children and love for them into the learning process need to be found. 7)The gap we should be most concerned about is the gap between what we as a community want for our children and what they are getting in schools. This is not the same thing as the commonly referred to "Achievement Gup". There are complex issues of racism in the classroom that can be found in teacher attitudes, curriculum and testing. These should be addressed in the process of reforming schools and bringing them into conformity with the democratic desires of our community. But there is a basic question we must ask to get to the democratic essence of whose voices are being heard, whose needs are being satisfied, whose interest are taken seriously? Why do we talk now about an achievement gap? Whose achievement gap is it anywayP \Me cannot both object to the increasing use of standardized of tests and the dumbing down of schools "teaching to the test" then accept the legitimacy of the results of these tests as the sole measure of disparity in education. I have previousiy referred to the achievement gap as the community racism index - partly reflecting on the bias in testing and the complexity of what is and what is not being measured and also in an effort to move the onus of the observed gap in the performance between white and non-white students offof the students and their individual families and back more broadty onto the community whose weaknesses in equity are being reflected in these measures. The way anything should be evaluated is by the extent to which it accomplishes it mission. If we think democratically while we discuss the achievement gap, we should ask ourselves to what extent we believe that parents of our community would identify the problem with schools as being that the scores of black children are not as high as the scores of white children on tests that we don't feel are legitimate and which are distorting the whole academic life of schools by being misapplied and over-applied. There is a near community consensus that there is an overemphasis on standardized testing. This raises the question "'Whose achievement gap is this?" It is unlikely that parents' main complaint is the extent to which there is no parity on tests that are themselves suspected as being biased and not academically sound. This means that to dig deeply into the real concern about schools we can't simply look at the numbers provided by either the state ABCs or NCLB dictated testing. Ãs Zaid Hassan says in his essay "Slouching Towards Flatland" concerning how discussions of the UN's Millenium Development Goa1s have abstracted away from the real people that they represent: "The MDGs themselves and the whole business of tracking indicators can be thought of intellectual and cognitive exercise belonging to a very peculiar universe, one that many people, at least in the \Mest, are increasingly choosing to live within (and one that most people in the non-West do not yet live within). The MDGs come from a way of being and thinking, from a place, that can be thought of as "Flatland" a twodimensional, selÊreferential, closed universe defìned by the boundaries of reports and Power Point presentations. . . . In a Flatland paradigm, people are not people but statistical cases, suffering from "grad 1,2,3 or 4 malnutrition" or simply "ill" - not whole people. People do not live in PowerPoint presentations. People are not categories. People are not shadows. Or are they?" as an He could easily have been talking about the current discourse about standardized testing and our children. Children are not "1,2,3, or 4," in reading or math on an EOG. They are whole people who need art, music, history, science, nature walks, athletics, creativity and self expression. All of these things are lost in the emphasis on standardized testing and no amount of closing the gap on those test scores will correct this weakness in our current schooling of our children. The real gap we should be concerned about is the gap between what we as a community want for our children and what they are getting. This includes a weil rounded education for the whole person, not the scores from the flattened eva-luation that lives in its abstract worid but does not meet the whole needs of our children. The type of education our children need is one which will prepare them to critically assess the world we live in and creatively develop the problems we face. Standardized tests are not a good measure of the whole of what we are trying to facilitate in the development of our youth. They do not do well in measuring the full humanity of young people. We should realize that we are not really measuring what most people would tell you they wanted for their children. This means we should put our concerns about these measures in perspective. One of the ways that racism functions is in the series of assumptions and attitudes that it fosters in the minds of people in power, their operatives and their victims. The noble efforts of fighting racial oppression in this country led to the 1954 Brown decision. Unfortunately, both the language of that decision and its implementation have caused much additional confusion that should be clarified in dealing with the question of the achievement gap and what goes on in schools. The idea that separate schools are inherently unequal, when filtered through this society's racist lens has come to be understood as affirming that black folks are incapable of creating quality educational institutions/programs/curriculum/ for black children and that the only way that we can elevate the educational outcomes of African American children is to do it with the resources of and in close proximity to middle class white children. The achievement gap is then often looked at as the schooi system's failure to do this and make black education like white education. While years ago it was acceptable to assume that lower black achievement resulted from genetic mental inferiority, these days the genetic arguments have been largely replaced with cultural ones that talk about the culture ofpoverty and its impact on learning. All the way from word deficits to anti-intellectual attitudes toward learning and blackness - there are discussions on the ways that poor and black culture prevents learning. What we are missing is all the ways that what is provided in schools is failing to engage our children and reflected in their poor performance on the current tests. There would be a real problem if we assumed that the type of education white middle class children is getting is what we want African American children to have. The noncritical, "task completer", preparation that is easily tested by the multiple choice tests which produce the achievement gap is not suflicient for the challenges of the world we live in. This is not what we want more of for our children. This is not what they need to make sense of the world we live in and to change that world so that it makes sense for us. That task will require young people developing a high level of creativity. Robert Epstein, the former editor in chief of Psychol.ogtTodøy, writing in the iÑi4ay 29,2oo8 issue of Scientific American said: "\Mhen children are very young, they all express creativity, but by the end of the first grade, very few do so. This is because of socialization. They learn in school to stay on task and to stop daydreaming and asking silly questions. As a result, the expression of new ideas is largely shut down. We end up leaving creative expression to misfits-the people who can't be socialized. It's a tragedy." He goes on to say "'Well, all four of the basic creativity competencies can be taught to children. But when I've suggested to teachers that they set aside a few minutes each week for creativity training, these days they tell me that's impossible. This is an area where I see our society moving in the wrong direction-toward an obsession with raising scores on standardized tests." We must be very leery of trying to catch up with those running in the wrong direction. I have a number of examples of historical situations where segregation left the black community in charge of black education and schools of excellence were created that met the needs and interests of the community. The products of these schools even found ways to succeed in the corporate world though the racist barriers were just beginning to fall. We would do well to study the existence of these schools and the nature of their work while we try to understand what is meant by "inherently unequal". These pieces reflect that there have been schools that satisfied our community in a way that we are not satisfied now. Their existence and the way they were controlled and who they belonged to needs to be brought into the discussion. This brief abstract about one of the Dunbar High Schools that I mention gives us a sense of what parents and communities want their schools to do. In this school, r,ve can see that the alumni thought it did it well. An attitude survey of Dunbar High School alumni in Little Rock, Arkansas, a black public high school with a reputation for excellence, was conducted to ascertain opinions concerning the preparation for successful adulthood this school afforded its students. A total of I,523 people who graduated from Dunbar between 1930-1955 were contacted. Of these, 4oQ (26 percent) responded to a 97-item questionnaire modeled after the Questa II survey developed by the Educational Testing Service Secondary School Research Program. In addition, seven teachers, three former principals, and a number of community citizens were interviewed. Comparisons were also made between respondents'level of educational attainment and that of their parents. Respondents felt that Dunbar strongly emphasized and realized its goals of helping students improve their socioeconomic status, preparing them for jobs, encouraging selÊdiscovery, teaching knowledge and skills, preparing for college, developing leadership skills, and preparing for citizenship. A total of g+ percent of respondents felt their teachers were well prepared; 91 percent indicated a positive social atmosphere. Level of educational attainment of Dunbar graduates generally exceeded those of their parents. (A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas by Faustine C. Jones-Wilson 198a) Or this section from a Washington Post article on another Dunbar High School in Washington where Duke Eilington had attended: This was the near-mythical place depicted in the documentary "Duke Ellington's Washington," a school where blacks outscored their white counterparts on standardized tests. In 1900, when it was known as the M Street High School - the name changed to Dunbar in 1916 - African Americans from other parts of the East Coast moved to Washington so their children could attend the school. Ellington himself noted in his autobiography that "the proud Negroes of Washington" protested school integration plans because they didn't want white students to bring them down. (Washington Post August 3l,2OO7) We might also consider the Rosenwald schools built across the south with the input of northern philanthropy, local community funds and the double taxation on the black communities involved. Many of these schools were sources of pride that prepared their students to go on to higher education if desired and professional positions while other students were prepared to remain in the community as educated and skilled crafts 4 people. We also need to understand that school improvement is not a technical or economic problem. It is a problem that is connected to issues of relationships, power and control. The gap we should be concerned about closing is not the gap between white and black test scores with the existing curriculum and the existing testing regimine, but rather the gap between what we want for our children and what they are getting in the schools. What Faustine Jones identifies as the successful outcome of schooling in her piece on Dunbar High School in Little Rock is not very different from what Deborah Meier identified talking about the type of success that her acclaimed East Harlem School students had. This is a success that is rooted in a successfùl life in the community ". . . its goals of helping students improve their socioeconomic status, preparing them for jobs, encouraging self-discovery, teaching knowledge and skills, preparing for college, developing leadership skills, and preparing for citizenship." "But how long can Mission Hill and other Boston pilots survive if their initiatives are undermined by ever-more-detailed state mandates-about subjects to be taught, material to be covered, time to be spent per subject (down to the minute)-and a single highstakes test as a measure of success? And what if indicators that are far more significantly correlated to later college and life success for low-income and AfricanAmerican youngsters are no longer counted, and reforms guided by them die out? For example, while going to a small school correlates with later success in school, it does not substantially raise test scores. Other indicators turn out to be more attainable and equally powerful: perseverance, high attendance, strong relationships with adults outside the family, and participation in extra-curricular and service-learning experiences. Smallness also correlates with school safety and a greater sense of personal efficacy. How sad if we lose track of these in our relentless pursuit of test tt scores."(Deborah Meier, "Deborah Meier Responds Boston RevÍew, February/March 2000i "There are multiple,legitimate definitions of 'â good education' and 'well-educated' and it is desirable to acknowledge that plurality" (p. 16). Exposure to different and competing goals is morally and intellectually invigorating. The community needs to be constantly involved in such a debate. ("Six Alternative Assumptions on High Stakes Testing by Deborah Meier" as edited by Kathy Emery.) The current discussion about "achievement gap" takes the community out of that debate and allows the definition of academic achievement to be simply multiple choice standardized test scores. Closing this particular "standardized test gap" is neither necessary nor sufficient for the education of black children. This is not to say that there is no problem with the education of black children in the public schools. But it does call upon us to be more energetic in defining exactly what that problem is from the standpoint of the needs of the children and their communities. Again, this is the gap that must be closed - between their real needs that we want them to have and what they are getting in schools. A 6th grade Middle School science teacher in the Seattle Washington,Carl Chew, late April øooa defied federai, state, and district regulations that require teachers to administer the Washington Assessment of Student Learning to students and was suspended without pay for the remainder of the school year. "To my mind the measure of successful childhood is that each child learns about who she or he is and how the world works, gains an assertive and confident self image, and feels safe, well fed, and happy. Schools, along with parents and communities, need to contribute wisely to this goal. Unfortunately, the WASL creates panic, insecurity,low self esteem, and sadness for our children." (Carl Chew, Seattle Teacher, explaining why he would not give his students the standardized test in Washington State) Notes for Schooi Board Presentation Ed Whitfield June. 2OO8 6 Accounting for Differences in Schooling Outcomes of Blacks and Whites: Historical Institutional Economic Factors Lawrence Morse, Associate Professor Department of Economics NC A&T State UniversiW Research shows that household wealth and whether a student lives in a family-owned home are statistically significant factors is accounting for schooling outcomes makes it important to understand the history of the institutional factors that have advantaged whites in the accumulation of wealth and in home ownership. This paper summarizes some of the findings on the impact of family wealth and homeownership on educational outcomes. The paper also provides a chronology of historical factors that have systematically worked to whites' advantage in the accumulation of wealth and in home ownership. I. The role of wealth in student outcomes and institutional factors that have advantaged whites in wealth accumulation V/e all "know" that white students, on average, have more successful schooling outcomes than do black students. We generally believe there is a strong relationship between household income and student performance in school and because white households tend to enjoy higher incomes than do black households we think we have one explanation for the racial differences in school performance. We tend to omit considerations of family wealth in our economic analysis of student outcomes. Conley (1999) found that household wealth has a large impact on various measures of children's educational outcomes. Conley's contribution to the discussions and analyses of students' school and economic outcomes was to include family wealth as an explanatory variable. Conley used the "usual" explanatory variables ofthe student's characteristics', parental characteristics' as well as parental class measures' to assess the odds of high school graduation, of college graduation, of being held back a grade, of expulsion or suspension. His statistical analyses yielded results consistent with those of numerous other researchets. Conley then pushed his analysis a step further by adding measures of wealtha to the string of explanatory variables. The inclusion of wealth produced three noteworthy statistical effects: the statistical strength of the estimated equations generally increased, the wealth variables tended to have "statistically significant coeffrcients"-which in English means that these variables merit attention-and some ofthe parental characteristics variables no longer had "statistically significant coefficients." In other words, family wealth, variously measured, has important consequences for odds of high school graduation, of college graduation, of being held back a grade, of expulsion or suspension. Students from households with more wealth have higher odds of high school graduation and of college graduation, and lower odds of being held back a grade, of expulsion or suspension. Whether black, Latino or other ethnic group, whether female, and number of siblings. Age of head of household and number of years the household was female-headed and whether welfare receipt. 3 Education ofhead ofhousehold, occupational prestige ofhead ofhousehold, and income. a Net worth (assets minus debt), primary residence eguity, business equity, net value of other illiquid assets and net 2 t value ofliquid assets. Conley also assessed students' economic outcomes of years after they completed school. He analyzed the odds of unemploymenVlabor-force-nonparticipation, hours worked, hourly wages, and odds of being a welfare receipt using the same student characteristics and parental characteristics and class measures. As with the schooling outcome analyses he then added measures of wealth as explanatory variables. He found that the various measures of family wealth had "statistically significant" effects on the odds of unemployment/labor-forcenonparticipation, hours worked, hourly wages, and odds of being a welfare receipt. In short, family wealth impacts children's schooling outcomes and their future economic outcomes. One way to make sense of why parental wealth is apparently more important than parental income is to think of income as being for life support, paying day-to-day expenses while wealth is moving ahead money. V/ealth allows a family to plan and work for a future for itself and its children in ways that income does not. Having established the importance of paternal wealth let us now turn to the institutional factors that have, over and over again, privileged whites in accumulating wealth. ln2004 "Nonwhite or Hispanic" family median net worth was $24,800, and "White nonHispanic" family median net worth was $140,700. (Federal Reserve, 2004.) Also in 2004 black household median income was $35,158, and white household median income was $56,700. (Bureau of Census, 2004.) White family median net worth was 5.7 times black family median net worth while white household median income was 1.6 times black household median income in2004. The very striking difference between the ratios 5.7 and 1.6 is the consequence of years of public policies and practices that have systematically advantaged whites in the accumulation of wealth. These policies and practices include: > > > Þ The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American'War resulted in a massive transfer of land from Mexicans to white people throughout California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, parts of Colorado, and small sections of what are now Oklahoma, Kansas and \Myoming. (Lui et al.2006) In 1849 nearly 100,000 white people were drawn to the Califomia gold rush. The Free Soil provisions of the California state constitution allowed whites to claim and own land while banning slaves and free black people from doing so. The 1862 Homestead Act that granted whites 160 acres of land for free if they would farm it for five years. Blacks and Native Americans were not allowed to participate. (Lui 2004) An estimated 46 million Americans living today are descendants of Homestead Act beneficiaries. (Lui et aL.2006) There was a huge wave of European immigration from 1850 to 1920 and while ethnic and religious prejudices were often virulent, the prejudice against poor immigrants was different from the prejudice black people experienced in two important ways. One the prejudices against immigrants not encoded into law unlike the obstacles for people of color. Two new immigrants could encourage their children to become "American" by becoming "white." While these were wrenching choices, unlike people of color at least most of the lrish, eastern and southern European immigrants had that choice. Despite the discrimination unskilled European immigrants faced during this period they regularly displaced African Americans as workers on canals. railroads. construction and docks. Whites \Mere never driven from their homes as blacks were during the first half of the 20th century hundreds of towns across America became "sundown to\ryns" or towns whose local public policy required that blacks not be in town after the sun went down. (Loewen, 2005) The 1933 Agriculture Adjustment Administration policy that took Southem "traditions" into account by paying 4%þ per pound of cotton not grown to the landlord who was to pay the tenant /zþ. (Dubofsky & Burwood 1990) The 1935 Social Security Act did not extend coverage to farm and domestic workers. Blacks \Mere more than twice as likely as whites to be employed as farm or domestic workers. (According to the 1 93 0 censu s 68 .7 5% of gainfully employed blacks worked in agriculture or domestic services.) Twenty-two percent of white workers in covered occupations did not earn enough to qualify for benefits. The comparable figure for black workers was 42 percent. Consequently a much higher percentage of black workers than of white workers were not covered by Social Security at its outset. (Lui et al2006) The advent of Social Security changed families' attitudes toward not only how much to save, but what savings could be used for, including being able to afford higher education for children or making a down payment on a home, a home that might be the equity needed to obtain a business loan. {Social Security coverage was extended to domestic and agricultural workers in 1950.} The originally proposed 1935 National Labor Relations Act would have reserved the closed shop for unions that did not discriminate. The final legislation did not include the restriction on non-discriminating unions to use closed shops nor a clause barring racíal discrimination by unions. The southern Democrats, who had voted to keep agricultural and domestic workers out of Social Security, with the support of the AFL that was more interested in enhancing union polwer thaN reducing the discriminatory power of unions, were responsible for the changes in the final NLRA legislation. (Roediger 2005) Failing to disallow unions to engage in racial discrimination enhanced whites' access to jobs and crafts that offered premium wages. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act did not apply to domestic and agricultural workers and consequently a much higher percentage of white workers enjoyed minimum wage protection and being paid time-and-a-half for certain overtime work. (Katzenelson 2005) {Minimum wage and overtime coverage was extended to domestic and agricultural workers inl967.j The segregation of the armed services during'World War II did not limit white soldiers' access to training in employable skills. The 1944 GI Bill of Rights, formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, did not mention race, but like other federal programs was locally administered and primarily assisted white veterans. The local administration resulted in white vets having greater access to vocational training. The US Employment Service, set up by the GI Bill, tended to steer white vets into jobs commensurate with their skills while typically steering black vets into jobs below their skills. While over two million vets went to college on the GI Bill, they were primarily white as black vets were denied admission to many white campuses. {While enrollment at black colleges went from 29 thousand in 1940 to 73 thousand in 1947, between 15 and 20 thousand black veteran applicants could not be admitted for lack of space. ) Furthermore, white vets were approved for home and business loans at much higher rates than were black vets. Indeed of the well over $800 billion (in 2008 dollars) in new housing financed by the VA and FHA by 1962,98 percent of it had gone to white home owners. These white recipients are the parents of the baby boomers, and their homes are a significant portion of the $10 trillion in inheritances no\M being passed down to the baby-boom generation. (Lui et a|.2006) II. The role of home ownership in student outcomes and the institutional factors that have advantaged whites in home ownership Researchers have found that homeownership has a positive impact on educational attainment. Rhoe, YanZandl and McCarthy (2002) found that after controlling for various factorss whether a student lives in a family-owned home or in rented housing is not only an important predictor of educational attainment but of the odds of dropping out of high school or becoming parents as teenagers. Furthermore they also discovered that homeownership is associated with stronger cognitive skills and with reduced behavioral problems and feelings of worthlessness. Herbert and Belsky's (2006) analysis revealed that homeownership tends to increase student scores on standardized tests, and odds of graduating from high school. The findings hold for children of both lower- and higher-income households. Not only does homeownership have various positive educational and cognitive outcomes but these effects cascade generation to generation for children of homeowners are more likely to not only become homeowners themselves but to do so at a younger age (Boehm and Schlottmann, 2001). Because homeownership its own impact on educational outcomes, factors that advantaged whites in the accumulation of home equity merit their own chronology. A smaller percentage of blacks own their own homes and have substantially less wealth or net worth than do whites. Nonetheless home equity is more important to black households that it is to white households. Black households' equity in their homes is 62.5% of their assets, while home equity is 43.3o/o of white households' assets (Oliver & Shapiro, 1995). Family wealth is an important determinant in the across-generations amassing of wealth, starting a business and so forth. Home ownership is importantly related to the creation of business wealth, for homes often serve as collateral when entrepreneurs start a business. Also Shapiro (2004) found that modest financial assistance from parents allowed white families to make down payments on homes. Such financial support advantaged white households in two ways: in being able to buy homes in neighborhoods with "better" public schools; and being able to make larger down payments that kept "points" from being added to the mortgage rate. The latter saved such white families thousands of dollars over the lives of their mortgages. Percent of families owning their primary residence: 1995 1998 2001 2004 * White Non-Hispanic 70.6% 7r.8 74.3 76.1 Nonwhite or Hispanic 44.3% 46.8 47.3 50.8 Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances The 1933 Home Owners Loan Corporation, created to help home owners and stabilize banks, gave none of its approximately one million loans to black home owners allowing a higher proportion of black home owners to lose their homes during the remainder of the Depression. (Liu et a|.2006) The HOLC created detailed neighborhood maps that, among other things, 5 Personal characteristics, parental educational background, parental income, family size and home value. 4 took into account the neighborhood's racial composition as well as its likelihood of racial infiltration. * The Federal Housing Administration, established in 7934,was not explicitly a white program, but realtors and hostile white neighbors kept families of color out of white neighborhoods and the FHA condoned redlining practices initiated by the HOLC which * precluded loans in predominantly black neighborhoods. The HOLC and subsequently the FHA created strong preferential options for whites as planners, builders and lenders were encouraged to promote racially and class homogeneous neighborhoods. (Roediger 2005) Up though the 1940's FHA manuals and practices channeled funds to white neighborhoods and collaborated with blockbusters. The policies disproportionately concentrated blacks into substandard houses. In 1948 the Supreme Court ruled against restrictive covenants and yet the FHA continued to push for them as conditions for loans. President Kennedy's 1960 Order 11063 mandated federal agencies to oppose discrimination in federally-supported housing. The FHA did not communicate the Order to local offices. Indeed of the approximately $120 billion in new housing financed by the VA and FHA by 1962,98 percent of it went to white home owners. These white recipients are the parents of the baby boomers, and their homes are a significant portion of the $10 trillion in inheritances now being passed down to the baby-boom generation. (Lui et aL.2006) * Urban renewal in the 1960s resulted in the construction of public buildings and connectors that linked an urban center to the new interstate highways. The demolition and construction disproportionately impacted neighborhoods whose residents were predominately people of color. The disruption to such neighborhoods, including their local business district, was substantial. While the land and buildings were purchased, many of the black families who lost their homes were not able to replace them. .:. The 1968 Fair Housing Act authorized HUD to investigate complaints yet HUD had no enforcement po\iler and could only refer cases to the attomey general. (Lipsitz 1998) The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited discrimination in real estate lending and required banks to record the racial identity of applicants rejected and accepted for home loans. While the 1974 Act had the appearance of ending racial discrimination in real estate lending, it is worth noting that the banks refused to collect the data, by race, on rejected and accepted applicants. In 1976 ten civil rights $oups filed a suit to have the court order the FDIC and the Home Loan Bank Board to obey the 1974\aw requiring the banks to keep and report the race data. In 1981 the FDIC ceased keeping race records when the court order ran out. President Reagan used the Paperwork Reduction Act to stop HUD from gathering data on the racial identities of participants in housing programs. (Lipsitz 1998) t III. Concluding observations Gaps in achievement scores, drop-out or graduation rates and other educational outcome comparisons are usually cast in terms of ethnic groups. Such ethnichacíal comparisons may cause some to attribute the differences to race alone and to ignore or not be aware of other factors. The fact that in 2004 white family median net worth was 5.7 times black family median net worth and that in whites were 1.5 times more likely than black families to be homeowners are certainly not the responsibility of public school schools or teachers to correct but rather are the socio-economic realities within which public schooling operates. When seeking explanations for the racial disparities in educational outcomes it is important the hold these wealth and homeownership differences in mind and not to fall into a "blame-the-victim" trap. These wealth and homeownership disparities are essential to take into account when designing programs to enhance schooling outcomes for all students. Do we all have a stake in undoing the black/white educational disparities? From a selfish 'When economic perspective the answer is a clear yes. future black workers do not achieve their full educational potential the whole economy suffers. One study found that gross domestic product would be L6o/o larger if black workers had the educational attainment of white workers (Brimmer, 1997). While l.60/omay not seem like very much, l.6Yo of a 13.5 trillion dollar economy is approximately $2 1 6,000,000. REFERENCES Brimmer, A.1997. "The Economic Cost of Discrimination," in A Different Vision: Race and Public Policy. Edited by T. Boston. Routledge, New York. Boehm, T.P. and Schlottmann, A.M. 2001r "Housing and Wealth Accumulation: Intergenerational Impacts." Low-Income Homeownership Working Paper Series, LIHO-01.15, Cambridge MA. Joint Center for Housing Studies. Bureau of Census, 2004. Historical Income Tables - Households, http://www.census.govlhhes/wwdincome/histinc/inchhtoc.html , Table F-5. Conley, Dalton. 1999. Being Black. Livine in the Red: Race. Wealth. and Social Policy in America. University of California Press. Berkeley. CA. Duboßky, Melvin and Stephen Burwood, editors. 1990. Women and Minorities during the Great Depression. Garland Publishing, New York. Federal Reserve, 2004. 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances http://www.fecleralreserve.sov/pubs/oss/oss2i2004lscfl2004home.html, Table 3.) Herbert, C.E. and Belsky, E.S. 2006. The Homeownership Experience of Low-Income and Minorit), Families: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature. V/ashington DC. US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, available at http://www.huduser.ors/Publications/PDF/hisp_homeown9.pdf,1-2. 'W.V/.Norton. Katzenelson, Ira. 2005. When Affrrmative Action V/as White. New York. Lipsitz, George, 1998. The Positive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. Loewen, James. 2005 Sundown Towns. W.W. Norton. New York. Lui, Meizhu.2004. "Doubly Divided: The Racial V/ealth Gup," in The'V/ealth Inequality Reader. Edited by Dollars & Sense and United for a Fair Economy. Dollars & Sense, Economic Affairs Bureau, Boston: 42-49. Lui, Meizhu, Barbara Robles, Betsy Leondar-Wright, Rose Brewer, and Rebecca Adamson. 2006 The Color of V/ealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial V/ealth Divide. The New Press. New York. Oliver, Melvin and Thomas Shapiro. 1995. Black V/ealth/White Wealth. Routledge. New York. Rhoe, V/.M., YanZandt, S., and McCarthy, G.2002. "The Social Benefits and Costs of Homeownership: A Critical Assessment of the Research," in Retsinas, N.P. and Belsky, E.S., eds. Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal. V/ashington DC. Brookings Institution Press. Roediger, David. 2005. Working Toward Whiteness. Basic Books. New York. Shapiro, Thomas. 2004. The Hidden Cost Beine African-American. Oxford University Press, New York. Underachievement of African-American Males in Guilford Countv Schools: 'What Does All this f)ata MeanP And What Can We Do About ItP Marnie Thompsonl June 2OO8 A few months ago, Monica'Walker, Diversity Officer for the Guilford County Schools (GCS), invited several locally-based education researchers, thinkers, and practitioners to review a Powerpoint presentation prepared by Dr. Gongshu Zhang. Dr. Zhang had pulled together the most recent data on the academic achievement of the district's Black ma-le students, as part of a comprehensive response to a request from a iocal African American church group, the Men of Mount Zion.ln essence, the African American community asked, "What is going on here?!? Why are our children - especially our boys - failing in such large numbers?!?" We sat and watched, as slide after slide went by (more than 160 in total), each depicting what we already knew from our experience in schools and on street corners - that in aggregate, Black male students are faring very poorly in GCS schools. From test scores to grades to attendance to graduation rates to expulsion and suspension rates, the news was roundly upsetting and bleak. Furthermore, the slides showed conclusively that as far as test scores go, there has been no narrowing of the so-called "achievement gap" - for more than ten years. The gap we see today is the same size as the gaps we saw back in the mid-nineties, when the state first initiated its high stakes testing program, from which the data were drawn. What are we to make of this depressing messP And what can we do about it? The Limits of Data (and Solutions that are Based in that Data) When the question came from the Men of MountZion, GCS took an important step - instead of responding quickly and defensively, the district decided to take a comprehensive look at what was going on for African American male students, using every bit of data it had - both to Marnie Thompson is a Greensboro-based educational researcher with a specialty in teacher learning, with an obsession for authentic democracy. Formerly a Senior Research at the Learning and Teaching Research Center at Educational Testing Service, she now splits her Scientist time between educational consulting and serving as President and co-Founder (with Ed Whitfield) of the Fund for Democratic Communities. Her other qualifications include the fact that she is the parent of a Smith High School graduate, who is now a third grade teacher in Wake County. She is also a concerned citizenwho knows how hard everyone in GCS is working, even as she is appalled by the year-in, year-out policies and practices that systematically result in tenible educational outcomes for so many of our kids. and a community activist I understand the scope and nature of the problem, and to craft a solution that was based in the best information available. Dr. Zhang set about the Herculean task of collecting, cleaning, and anùyzing data from numerous departments and sources, working to ensure that the most accurate and up-to-date numbers were used. The Powerpoint slide show that resulted represents hours and hours of thoughtful work by Dr. Zhang and his team. The data collected covers numerous aspects of GCS's educational process - enrollment, coursetaking, grades, test scores, dropout rates, graduation rates, attendance, special education status, language status, suspension rates, expulsion rates, and more. The collected data represents every "oflicial" scrap of quantitative information the district has on hand regarding the way that African American students are faring in school, and how this compares to other groups of students. Dr. Zhang and his coileagues left no quantitative stone unturned as they searched for information. You would think that this much data might yield important answers to the question of why it is that perfectly intelligent Black boys end up doing so poorly in school, and what we might do about it. But amazingly - it does not. And not because of any fault of Dr. Zhang's team or their datagathering process. The reason the data tell us so little that is useful in understanding "*hy" is that the district like almost every district in the state and country - has almost no systems in place to collect data on the "why" questions, what we might call the "inputs" to this process that yields such depressing results for so many students. and effectiveness of specific actual teaching that is going on in classrooms. educational programs as well as variations in the This is not unusual - collecting this kind of data in ways that ensure its reliability and validity is expensive and time consuming, requiring personnel and resources that the district has not allocated. I am speaking of data concerning the quality, implementation, The result is that almost aìl of the data that the district collects helps us to see the magnitude of the problem of African-American under-achievement, but very iittle of it points to the causes of the problem. Instead of answers to the question of "How has this happened to our Black boys?" we get to see slide after slide that demonstrates - again and again - that Black boys are not doing at all well in school. Now, despite this gap in information, I am not going to argue that the answer lies in getting more or better data, for two reasons. First, I am not at all convinced that we need to get this data to verify what anyone who spends time in schools already knows - there is a great deal of variation in teacher effectiveness and curricula from school to school and classroom to classroom, even within schooìs. (Tracking is the most obvious mechanism that legitimates this within-school variation.) And Black children, especially Black boys, are the ones most likely to be taught by the inexperienced, the underqualified, the unenthusiastic, the frightened; and to be subjected to curricula and "classroom management systems" that are designed more for coverage and crowd control than for intellectual engagement. We know this from our own qualitative experience in GCS schools and classrooms. We know it also from study after study performed in districts across the state and country. There is nothing special about GCS that would make us think that the probiems of teacher and program weakness don't exist here too, and that the problems of discrimination and unequal opportunity aren't here as well. (Though if we wanted to "prove it" with our own studies, we could.) The second reason I am not going to argue that we should collect more data - even though I am an educationa-l researcher by training and profession, and that is what I do to make a living - is that over the past decade, we have been caught up in a national obsession with "data-driven decision-making" as the tool that will turn schools and classrooms around. It rings true - if you want to solve problems, you need to have the best, most up-to-date data to understand the problem and craft the soÌution, So iet's get more data! But, as is often the case in educational reform movements, the deep ideas of the reform have been washed out, and a surface approach has taken hold, one that lacks a deep understanding of the strengths and iimits of data, one that mistakes the mere collection and presentation of data for the far more difficult challenge of using data wisely to figure hard stuffout. Having the data is not the same thing as solving problems or making something work better. In the fad of datadriven decision-making, it is easy to think that spending a lot of time looking at data is the same as (or better, even) than improving the teaching and learning that are the real purpose of schools. People, even data analysts like me, are easily overwhelmed by quantitative data. In the name of studying data so we can make "data-based" decisions, we are lulled by the crispness and implied accuracy of bar charts and line graphs. 'We can easily begin to think that we are seeing everything that is relevant to the issue at hand. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of data driven decision-making. The data we look at - even if it is quite limited, even if the authors of the report take pains to warn you that it is limited - can have a powerful biasing effect on the way we conceive of the problem and the range of solutions. And that is exactly the danger we face here. Since the district does not collect much data at all on how its own policies and practices might have led to the learning problems of certain groups of students, we don't have a similar amount of "hard" data to balance the depressing data that depict poor academic results linked to certain demographic groups - in this case, African American male students. In the absence of balancing quantitative data, it is easy for people to fall back on one or both of these messages, as they struggle to make sense of what the achievement data mean: Whew! This is an overwhelming problem that we are not able to solve! OR There must be something wrong with "those kids" or their families, making impossibÌe for them to learn! it These ideas are both wrong - my colleagues and I can present historical and contemporary data that refute them and offer other explanations for the results - but they exist broadly in our society. Because these ideas are connected to deep, usually hidden racist messages that our culture - and ali of us who swim in it - have largely internalized, it is easy to trigger them, especially with the help of a multi-slide array of statistics that details exactly how badly Black kids are doing in school, and how durable this problem has been. It is vital, therefore, to consciously work to counter these ideas and feelings, because they undermine our efforts to change the system to provide all kids great teachers and learning experiences. Theories about Race and Racism Data don't exist in a vacuum. Our very ideas of what constitutes data are political and cultural. Somewhere along the way in the past l5O years, the notion that "numbers" are a superior form of data has taken hold in the U.S. Bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs seem to hold greater influence on our thinking than what we know through observation or storytelling, whether casual or systematic. Beyond that, each one of us brings our own assumptions and ways of thinking about the world to the meanings we make from data, yet the way \Me speak about data ("number" data especiatly) is often with a belief in its "objective truth," simply because it is well - data! A tricky aspect of this has to do with the implicit theories we each bring to our glances at any line graph, pie chart, or number. Most of us are unaware of what we bring, thinking we are taking the data "at face value." But in fact, these implicit theories - about society, and about science - have all kinds of eflects on what we see and how we see it. Here's an example. As we watched the initial draft of the slideshow go by, one set of slides caught our attention. It was a set of slides that compared GCS with other districts on various measures, after correcting for something called the "Difliculty Index." We asked what this Index was measuring and were told that it is a composite measure that is intended to capture the degree of "extra' difliculty a district faces with regard to educating students who are supposed to be "harder to educate." The index combines demographic data on the proportion of students in a district who quatify for free or reduced lunch (a measure of poverty) and who are not White or Asian. is certainly possible to construct a logical argument that students who come from economically poor homes might struggle more in school, and thus be "harder to educate." Though this is not any kind of absolute truth - there are many examples of poor countries, towns, and schools around the world where students who live on far less than Guilford County's poorest households do very well in school, But some social scientists have argued that comparative poverty within an aflluent society can have a generally negative effect on schooling outcomes. So perhaps this portion of the Difficulty Index makes sense within that It framework. It's the other aspect of the DifÏiculty Index that really troubled us. What does it mean - if we are trying to eradicate an achievement gap between White and Asian students on the one hand and Black and Latino students on the other - if we calculate and use a statistic that flatly equates "being Black' or "being Latino" with being "harder to educateP" What does the existence and use of this statistic tell us about our belief systems, with regard to human intelligence and race, and the likelihood that we will ever close that gapP 4 GCS did not make this statistic up. It is used statewide, as a tool to facilitate the comparison of school districts across North Carolina on their relative success. It is, in essence, a "handicapping" tool that makes a comparison behveen places like "more white" Orange County with places like "less white" Mecklenburg, Durham, or Guilford County more "fair." Implicit in its very creation and use is the idea that Black and Latino students are an unfair burden, and that the districts that have so many of them are to be granted something of a "reprieve" when comparisons are made. I am sure no one means it "that way:'but good intentions notwithstanding, this characterization is racist and offensive, not to mention counter-productive. One might argue that the race aspect of the DifTiculty Index should be thought of in the same vein as the poverty index - that it isn't the students' race that makes them "harder to educate," but rather it is the effects of racism that makes them harder to educate. No doubt racism is piaying a role in student outcomes, but partialing out the efnects of racism by using this kind of statistic only helps keeps those efÏects morehidden, further removed from our list of things to correct. To be clear, the state and district make no effort to assess the degree to which racism is functioning in schools or in students' lives outside of school - it is simply equating being Black or Latino with being "harder to educate" and leaving it to anyone who wonders what this is all about to come up their own reasons for why this might be so. Given the prevalence of both aware and unaware racist reasoning, the existence and use of this statistic merely adds to the pile of stereotypes. Not to mention lets the district and state offthe hook for providing an effective education to allofits students As you can tell, I am no fan of the Difliculty Index, but that is not the reason I write about it here. I am bringing it up to illustrate two things. First is the way that racism is unawarely built into the very fabric of our daily work in GCS, right into the policies, tools and methods we use to get our work done - even when that work is focused on ending inequality! We routinely say, "All children can learn," yet we then take some of that back when we use the Difficulty Index and we don't even know we are doing it! Which brings me to the second point - the importance of getting explicit about what our underlying theories are. If we make our hidden theories explicit, it gives us a chance to see when our internalized cultural assumptions are leading us to fall short of our own goals. That's one of the purposes of the Undoing Racism workshops, and I support these (or similarly focused learning experiences) as an essential part of the effort to improve the district's performance with regard to its Black and Latino students. But attending a workshop is not enough. Everyone in the district has to bècome more conscious and more skillful at unpacking and correcting these hidden assumptions - and then do it. Good News: Human Intelligence is Boundless, and It's True for Everybod)¡ Over the past few years, a growing research consensus has emerged in the world of neuroscience and the study of human intelligence, and it is profoundly good news. The results are exciting and consistent: Human intelligence is deeply malleable, and every single person is capable of getting smarter, throughout their entire lives, simply through the paired vehicles of expectations and effort. The research of Carol Dweck, James Flynn, and the National Research Council each take diflerent pathways and looks at different aspects of human intelligence, but they all reach this same conclusion. With the exception of people with severe physical injuries to their frontal lobes, it is always possible to learn, and even more, to get smarter, across your life span. Literally smarter - even to "raise IQ" in the sense of individuals making big gains in IQ test scores. No matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter what race, class, sex, or age you are. I am bringing up the topic of human intelligence because in the background of any discussion of why one group of students is not doing well in school lurks the idea that "maybe they're just not smart enough." That idea may not be stated out loud, but it is certainly in the room. The reason this idea is so widespread is because people who are adults today were raised in an era when the "science" of IQ was understood rather differently than the research says it should be. 'We were raised with the idea that intelligence is fixed - that each of us was born with a certain amount of intelligence (suggested by the term "intelligence quotient," the "quotient" being our allotted amount). Each of us had to make do with what we were given, and this explained why some people excelled in school and life, others did just okay, and still others floundered. The old idea about intelligence is hard to shake. It colors everything we think about schools, education, and learning, and it is embedded and re-enacted everyday in our schools. Its most pernicious form is in tracking - the "sorting" of students into different curricula and ways of schooling (AG, VSN, AP, honors, regular tracks, etc.) - but it functions in more subtle ways too - often just in the backs of people's minds where it shapes expectations and opportunities. That's why it is vital that we trumpet the good news on human intelligence, and make it explicit in our work with teachers, administrators, parents, and community members - to counter any spoken or unspoken belief in racist explanations for some students' low performance in schools. We also need to get teachers to understand the pivotal role they play in creating learning environments that push students to learn, and in that process, get smarter. Fortunately, the good news about human intelligence is that it applies to everyone - even us grown-ups, inciuding teachers. That means that our teachers can get smarter too - if we provide them learning environments that support and push them to learn. Testine and Accountabilitv I began my life as an educational researcher working at UNCG on a "psychometric" project, where I had to learn the ins and outs of measurement, testing, and the related statistics. I then worked for eight years at ETS, "the world's largest not-for-profit testing company." Though I am not formally trained in psychometrics (the science of measuring human abilities, psychology, aptitudes, etc.), my work at ETS and with teachers required me to learn enough to be able to evaluate, think about, and comment on tests and testing as a tool of accountability. purely psychometric perspective (that is, from the perspective of reliability, validity, and fairness), North Carolina's ABCs of Education tests are not the best, and they are not the worst. However, regardless of the character of the tests per se, it is becoming increasingly clear From a 6 that our current obsession with testing is leading to all kinds of undesirable outcomes for schools, teachers, and students. To name just a few of the problems: The tests and the culture around them over-emphasize individual performance at the expense of learning to collaborate on problem-solving. Testing culture has led to a signifìcant narrowing of the oflicial curriculum of schools to those subjects, and those topics within the subjects, which are tested. o Within tested subjects, the curriculum has been further reduced to reflect the kind of learning and thinking that is easily assessed in a multiple choice question format. This is particularly distressing to see in the current era, since this is not the kind of learning and thinking that is needed to build strong communities ready to take on the challenges of peak oil and global warming, never mind "global competitiveness." Within 20 years, we old foÌks will be depending on the young people who are in school today to work collaboratively and creatively to solve survival problem after survival problem. I assure you, these tests will have no meaning at that time. Why are we putting so much faith in them now? There is growing, tangible parental and community dissatisfaction - across the class and race spectrum - with North Carolina's testing regimen and the "logic" of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Some of us got a glimpse of this a few months ago at a pubÌic dialogue session sponsored by the Beloved Community Center's Community Dialogue on Education. The forum was ostensibly about the kinds of schools people wanted to see. To some extent people were able to focus on that question, but only after they spent a great deal of time focusing on what's wrong with testing! Teachers, students, parents, and employers all expressed concern about the negative effects of standardized testing. All wondered if it was possible to stop this train. How did we set here? The hyper-testing that we are now experiencing stems from a state and national trend that kicked in about fifteen years ago: the standards-testing-accountability movement. The theory was that ifstudents, teachers, and schools were held accountable for results based on tests that measured clearly articulated educational standards, schools would improve. But in truth, the theory of action behind test-based accountability is thin. By "theory of action" I mean the answer to this question: "What is the exact mechanism by which more and higher stakes testing, with various carrots and sticks attached, helps teachers teach better and students learn better?" The answer to this question would be test-based accountability's theory of action. The theory seems to be based on the notion that students and teachers are holding back, waiting for either stronger incentives (carrots, such as bonuses or other rewards) or scarier consequences (sticks, such as being held back a grade or being denied a pay increase or losing a job). The small upward ticks and just-as-frequent downward tocks suggest that teachers and students are not sufficiently enticed or terrified yet. Every teacher I know is teaching as well and hard as they can every single day. They may not be fully effective, but heaven knows, they are not holding back waiting for more money! Given this rather weak theory of action, it's no surprise that empirical analysis of data coming in since NCLB was introduced shows that test-based accountability has had almost no effect on measures of learning that are independent of the states' own accountability tests, such as NAEP. And employers and colleges don't seem any happier with the quality of the graduates who are coming to them. One respected psychometrician, Robert Linn, has published an intriguing analysis that he calls the "Lake Woebegone EfÏect." Linn's analysis looks at multiple states and districts that experienced a chillingly similar pattern of test scores. The district or state institutes a new or revised test, and proficiency takes a slight dive from where it was on the last test. Over the next several years, scores inch up slightly and then flatten out at a point not good enough to reach the levels of proficiency required under accountability programs. The state or district starts to think maybe there is something wrong with the test, so they change it - and scores go down again. The pattern then repeats itself, The implications of this research are that a) test based accountability is not causing big, sustained gains in learning, and b) the nature of the learning that is being assessed by these kinds of tests is very limited. In fact, it is so limited that it doesn't even transfer from one version of a multiple choice test to another version! The "teach to the test" approach that has come to dominate so much of what passes for teaching really is just that - teaching to that particular test. Even slight changes in tests are too great for students who have been taught this way to transfer their learning! This has huge implications if we care about the kind of learning that we need to survive and thrive. am not an advocate of no accountability. Teachers and schools should be held to account, like any of us who have work to do that others depend upon. But in meaningful ways, and with adequate support to have a good shot at success. Testing can play a small role in such accountability systems, but should not rule it. I We have wrung every easy gain we are going to get from this test-based accountabiiity system, and we are now up against very durable problems of institutional change. An early gain from the standards-testing-accountability approach was getting teachers to teach to standards they were ignoring. Some teachers who did not know their subjects were just avoiding parts of the curriculum that they were unsure of. Now, thanks to the accountability system, this is far less common, But it only bought us a few percentage points on the proficiency scale, and there is no more gain to be had here - I assure you, everyone is now teaching to the test, with all that entails. Another "easy" gain - schools and districts now have to report disaggregated achievement data on subgroups, which means schools that formerly got by on decent enough average achievement, but reached that average because of strong performance by white or aflluent kids balancing out low achievement by poor kids or kids of color, are now on notice that they have to raise achievement for all kids. But that's the problem - they're on notice, and that's all. They'd like to raise achievement for everyone, but they don't know how to do it, or they don't have the capacity to do it. The tests don't fix our capacity problem - they only point it out. Under pressure to raise scores, and without signifìcant support for increasing capacity to teach better, schools and teachers are turning to other methods. In these kinds of high stakes conditions, people and systems will always find ways to meet standards as measured - and often not in the way you had hoped when you set the standard. I think our worst local example of this is the "push out phenomenon," whereby low-achieving students are held back and then pushed out of our high schools, which leads to a shamefì.rlly low graduation rate (only two of every three GCS students entering ninth grade will graduate with a high school diploma). Thanks to the "push out" phenomenon (which is not a policy written on paper, but is stili widespread across our schools nonetheless), our tenth grade achievement scores are higher than they would be if those struggling students had stayed. Imagine how low our tenth grade achievement scores would be if these kids were still in the system! What do these results tell us? No one wants these results - yet we produce them reliably, year in and year out. Black students, and especially Black male students, are suffering more than most, leaving school both officially and unoflicially at rates that are double the rate of white students. In an analysis I conducted iast year for the Community Dialogue on Education, I found that 1,799 of 6,295 students from the GCS class of øooo failed to graduate on timez. That's almost 3oo/o! A, similar proportion failed to graduate in the class of 2oo5. With results this consistent, you have to look for systemic explanations. Now, in general, I would say that no one working in GCS, in any role, is deliberately setting things up so that 1,799 students drop out of a cohort. Most GCS employees and all GCS school board members are very upset when they learn about the graduation rate (a better indicator ofthe real magnitude of the dropout problem than the oflicial dropout statistic). Most would say they are doing all they can to make sure that doesn't happen. But despite all their efforts, this is still happening. I think this makes plain that the problem is institutional or systemic in nature. That doesn't mean individuals don't have a role to play in fixing it, just that you cannot blame any one individual for causing it. You will find a similar discrepancy between the official dropout rate and the actual graduation rate, along with disturbingly big true dropout numbers, in any large district in North Carolina, and most large districts nationwide. I say this so that we don't think there is something erceptional going on in GCS. Something truly awful is going on here, but it is not exceptional. It is part of a consistent pattern across the state and nation. Further proof, in my opinion, that this is an institutional or systemic problem, and that it is perpetrated at many levels. Still, that doesn't let GCS offthe hook - we need to fix this problem in our schools, and to do so, we must understand it in all its complexity. Often when I talk about these kinds of results, people make attempts to explain away the complexity by simply bÌaming the students, their families, or their circumstances. Some people respond with statements that effectively classify all these dropouts as coming from abusive homes, single parent homes, and other forms of "desperate" circumstances. As a single parent,I feel like quibbling over the notion that the circumstances I raised my daughter in were 2 Only 3-4Yo of students who fail to graduate on time go on to graduate with a high school diploma, so failure to graduate on time can largely be interpreted as a measure of the true dropout rate. If you doubt the truth of my analysis, count heads at a graduation ceremony for any GCS comprehensive high school, and compare that to the number of students enrolled in that class four years earlier. 9 if we accept that these are desperate circumstances, there is no way that all t,zgg of the dropouts from the class of z006 came from such homes. I would guess that only a fraction did. Plus we know many kids from truly "bad" homes still manage to graduate (a real tribute to them). I say all this because it is important not to pathoiogize the kids and their families. We need to look at how our schools are not supporting huge numbers of kids, not blame them or their parents. Investins in Teachers and Teacher Effectiveness is Kev "desperate." But even If we were to stop blaming and start thinking about how to fix this system that produces thousands of failures in every cohort, where would we start? I would start with teachers. Not so reliably because teachers are to blame, but because teachers are the ones that hold the greatest potential to change outcomes. A dense and growing research base on what influences student learning shows that teacher eflectiveness trumps virtually all other influences on student achievement. Teachers - rather, effective teachers - are more powerfuÌ than any demographic characteristic in "explaining' student outcomes -more powerfìrl than race, class, gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, wealth of community, parental education, the number of books (in the home or in the school library), size of school, class size, age or quality of school buildings, grade level configurations, and who goes to school with whom. The research is clear - there is no other force as powerful as teachers in impacting whether and to what degree students learn. Despite this substantial body of research, GCS, like most districts, has been playing a shell game, whereby it attempts to move (through incentives and other means)a small number of teachers who are understood to be eflective to the students who are understood to need them most. Now, teaching effectiveness is a complex thing. A teacher who is effective with one set of kids or in one school may not be effective with a different set of kids or a different school. So solutions that move so-called effective teachers from one grade, subject, or school to another fail on two counts: they don't build the number of effective teachers - they just move them around - and they don't even work reliably to improve learning for the kids who get the newly moved teacher. Besides, most teachers don't want to move - they have their reasons or staying where they are, and who can blame themP But even if teachers are happy to move, this approach is fundamentally bankrupt. Because euery kid, every year, in every classtoom deserves a teacher who o knows and loves their subject, o knows and loves their students, and o knows how to teach their sub)ectto the particularkíds who are their students. It's actually quite a lot to demand from individual teachers, that they hit on all three of these cylinders. But it is what is required if they are going to be effective. In GCS, we are nowhere near this for every kid, every classroom, every year. So we have to work hard to develop larger numbers of capable, effective teachers. I have spent a lot of time in classrooms watching teachers teach and students do their best to Iearn, as well as watched hundreds of hours of videotaped lessons. Some in GCS, but mostly 10 outside the district. I can tell you that virtually every teacher is teaching the best they know how, right now. No one is holding out, waiting for more money or some other performancedriven incentive. If you don't believe me, try hanging out in a classroom for an hour or two, with zs kids in your charge, You are going to do everything in your power to create a productive learning environment, because if you don't, all heÌl is going to break loose. It's a matter of simple survival. Sometimes, hell does break loose (and this gets reported in the papers and on TV)- not because teachers aren't trying their best, but because they don't know how to do it any better than they are already doing it. They need help to get better. -We need to create more teachers who are more effective. There aren't some better ones out there, waiting to get in the door - just ask GCS's Human Resources people, just ask the principals who are having such a hard time staffing their schools. We have to work with what we've got, and that's not such a bad start. Our teachers are plenty smart, and the research on intelligence shows that they can get smarter if we supply them with learning opportunities and environments that support and push them to get better. Just as important, almost every last one ofthem entered the profession in order to do good, to help students succeed. So we have a good base to start from. two ways to build on what we have. The first is to do a better job preparing and supporting new teachers - our friends in higher education have to play a critical roie here. But waiting on a ne\M generation of better-prepared teachers to enter the profession will take too long. And this approach is complicated by the fact that the next generation of teachers will themselves be the product of the current K-t2 system, a system that is not known for consistently high results. I see to add a second approach: do a betterjob supporting the teachers we already have more effective - the "love the one you're with" strategy. This means a major to become commitment to teacher professional development. This goes \May beyond workshops (no matter how well chosen they are), but rather, requires us to create schools that are not only suitable Iearning environments for students, but are also suitable learning environments for teachers. So we need Teaching is a complex activity that cannot be reduced to cookbook-like recipes or scripts that can be reproduced by robots. In fact, expert teaching has all the hallmarks of complex cognition that we see in scientists, champion chess players, and concert musicians. The kind of learning environments experts like these need is sustained, and wrapped around repeated cycles of new learning, systematic practice, critical reflection, and integration. It is true that every person knows at least one thing that they can usefully teach to others, but their ability to do a good job of teaching it - no matter how well they know what it is they know - will depend to a large extent on the opportunities they have had to learn to teach it, learn from what worked and what didn't, and try again. In other words, effective teachers are not born, they're made. Ofcourse, reconceptualizing schools as places oflearning for teachers as well as students is a radical shift from business as usual. To do so will require time and resources, and the system already feels like it is stretched to the breaking point. But if you don't apply time and resources to the problem of teacher efÏectiveness, then you won't get results that are any different. The Importance of Beins Disruptive 11 Around the country, schools are trying out lots ofdifferent approaches to boosting teachers' effectiveness, and some of them look really promising -notably sustained within-school support for teacher learning through the vehicle of teacher learning communities. An extended discussion of the what, how, and why of teacher learning communities is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is worth noting that GCS is already taking this approach in several schools - it has been for years. I see in GCS a pattern that is prevalent around the country with teacher learning communities as well as other innovations, like computers in classrooms. Both types of innovation have been crammed into existing operations in ways that ensure that operations will notbe changed. Clayton Christensen and his co-authors, who write about educational technology, note this trend and counter it with this advice: "The way to implement an innovation so it will transform an organization is to implementit disruþtiaeþ litalics mine]." That is the exact opposite of how teacher learning communities and other hopeful innovations have been implemented in GCS and districts across the country. If we want different results, we have to take a risk, and disrupt what we have going. Given how damaging the current resu.lts are, I think we should take the risk. Imagine that we utilize teacher learning communities or some other means to help teachers become more effective, help them learn to teach the kids they have with knowledge, enthusiasm and love - for both the subjects they teach and the students in their rooms, To work, this will undoubtedly involve helping teachers learn to apply a selÊaware, anti-racist analysis to the day-to-day practical business ofteaching. I am sure that is not the sole focus, but I am sure it is an important piece of what must be learned. I say this not just as an researcher who has been studying teachers for years, but also as a white person who has to continue to learn, every day, how to unpack and counteract the racist messages that I have inadvertently internalized, simply by virtue of living in our subtly and not-so-subtly racist culture. I am no different from all the good teachers who do not in a million years ever want to harm anybody, but who, like everyone else in our society, has unaware biases and prejudices clouding their thinking about certain students in their classrooms, mostly in the form of low expectations. Lower than the level where the kid can actually perform, and certainly lower than the level of "push" that the researchers on human intelligence tell us is needed for people to get smarter. The test-based accountability I discussed earlier has done nothing to build capacity in teachers so they can succeed in this struggle, and may have inadvertently worked to reinforce these very stereotypes. For years, all we have done is hold teachers to account, with little support for them to get better at teaching and thus and have a decent shot at succeeding. I argue here for giving teachers breathing room, for taking the test-driven foot offthe neck, and instead giving them the support they need to actually get better. One example would be to remove the pressure of near-mandatory pacing guides and benchmark tests. Another would be to get rid of paperwork obligations that distract teachers from the core business ofcreating effective learning environments. Still another would be to provide more planning time and collaboration time during the normal workday, not at night and on weekends. 12 Some may say this will cost too much money. No doubt it will cost money, because to implement these kinds of programs requires that teachers have more time in the school day to be learners. This means hiring more teachers to cover classes while other teachers are meeting (with other teachers, parents, community members), studying, reflecting, watching others teach, and preparing lessons of their own. Some of the disruption can be covered by creative scheduling, but that will not create enough time. Some ineffective programs can be cut back, and that can yield some financial resources and possibly a little more time. And yes, it may end up costing more money. But think of this-effective teachers and schools will save well more than one hundred thousand dollars in lifetime costs for each student who does not drop out, according to researcher Henry Levin. For the class of z006 alone, that amounts to $1?9,9oo,ooo! That is almost $1SO million that won't have to be spent on prisons and detention programs, truancy programs, and other social services. I think we can afford it. Personal and Orsanizational Chanse We actually know a fair amount about "what works" in education. The beating-the-odds schools and lots of other research tell us that we know a lot about what works in supporting the learning of students of color and students who live in poverty, as well as more afÏluent students and white students. The problem is that we are not doing it, at least not at scale, or at the institutional level. Not out of willfùl refusal, but rather out of organizational stasis and not spending the time, attention and resources on actually mounting and following through on the change. The 'We don't know how to disruptbusiness-as problem is that we haae not learned how to change yet. usual, even when we really want to. GCS is not alone in facing this problem - I have worked in Trenton, New Jersey, Cleveland, Ohio, Newport News, Virginia, and I see the problem everywhere I go. Lots of good smart people - stuck. Not because they don't know what they want to change into, but because they don't know how to make the change. This is a really serious organizational learning problem - lots of researchers and thinkers have been working on it for lots of years. And as our organizations grow iarger and more complex, the problem gets even harder. Researchers and common sense \Mill tell you it takes difïerent approaches and ingredients. All of them talk about the length of time it takes. A minimum of fìve years, according to research on comprehensive school reform. That's a minirnum of five years. Five years - or more - where you're not yet experiencing obvious benefits. In the pressure of NCLB and the ABCs of Education, a school has two years to clean up its act. It puts us in a terrible dilemma. But we have to follow the path of integrity here, start down the path of change, and stick with it. We cannot let NCLB or any policy be the reason that we do not do what is right. Given that we (meaning us folks here in Guilford County)don't know yet how to make the change (even if we have many good ideas about what to change into), I think there is one 13 approach that makes sense. It's not particularly complicated, or expensive, but dedication and resolve. Here's the Basic Plan. it will take Start small. Go slow. Build capacity for change. Scale up slowly, consciously building capacity as you go, so that scaling is even possible. How smali? One or two schools. Realiy, just one or two, for starters. We don't know what we're doing yet, so what makes us think we can do it at scaleP Pick one or two elementary schools, because this is where kids learn the most about what it means to be a learner, and it has implications for middle and high school. If we are successful working with one or two elementary schooì.s, then by the time these students get to middle school, we'll have the capacity to scale to middle school. Focus hard in these one or two schools, and use them as laboratories - not for trying out unproven programs, but rather for learning how to support change. Use these schools as the starting point for learning how to build individual and organizational capacity in specific areas of know-how that will be needed to scale up later. We need to document the heck out of what we are doing (higher education foiks can help here). We should do lots of on-the-fly, formative evaluation of what's going on, and use the results to adjust as we go. Teach everyone involved to be a researcher of their own practice and a researcher of their school and community, so that their experience and thinking gets counted in - more people thinking about a problem guarantees more good solutions. Strategically and deliberately build capacities in the areas of expertise needed. Invest in people, not in fancy outside programs. That doesn't mean outside people and programs cannot play a role - Deborah Meier comes to mind - but the point of bringing them here is to build deep, long-term capacity across more and more local people. So every time an outsider comes in, their work here should be structured for maximum local uptake and learning. How slow? After one or two years, think whether enough has been learned and enough capacity has been built. When it has, pick two or three more elementary schools as the next target, preferably elementary schools that feed the same middle school as the first schools. We'll face a dilemma at this point - our strongest agents for change will still be needed at their old schools, How can we support a sharing process that builds capacity at the new schoolsP That's a problem to solve - some staffmay need to move to the new schools, and that means investing in preparing their replacements at their old schools. By the end of three to five years, the changes in the first one or two schools will be showing themselves in measurable ways. Great - we'll have a local "existence proofl" Proof that right here in Guilford County, teachers, parents, students, and community are able to work together to create a more effective kind of school. I cannot tell you what this will mean for the district's ability to start to really scale up. Because without a local existence proof, it is too easy for naysayers to chide, "That might work just fìne up there in X district, but it will never work here with the kind of students we have," Once we have the local existence proo{, it becomes much easier to change, and the rate of scale-up can speed up a bit. You may be thinking that with Black and Latino achievement as low as it is, pretty much across the district, how is it morally acceptable for me to propose a solution that takes ten or more 14 years to implement? I have two thoughts in response. First, because of the entrenched and long-standing nature of our problems, the solution has to be deep, and it has to operate at a deep level in every single classroom. It takes that much time to make that kind of deep change, at scale, from the grassroots up. If you rush into global "solutions" without full understanding and capacity, if you try to order top-down changes that appear to offer a quick fix, I assure you that in a couple of years, you will be right back where you started from. You'll be losing time, not saving time. Second, the comprehensive data analysis prepared by Dr. Zhang, our starting point for this discussion, shows that the problem of the so-called "achievement gap" has been with us relentlessly for more than ten years. Historical and economic analysis shows that it, in turn, is the result of hundreds of years of socia-l and economic forces. If we can turn it around in 10-15 years, I think we're doing fine. 15 "To be young and Blach in the urban areas of the United States is to be subjected to all the harshest dentands of oppression at the most uulnerable period of one's hfe. -Robert Staples "The proper education of any people includes sym.pathetic touch between teacher and pupil; knowledge on the part of the teacher, not simpþ of the indiaidual taughl but of his surround'ings and background, and the history of his class and group; such contøct between pupilq and between teacher and pupil, on the basis of perfect social equality, øs will increase this sym.pathy and knowledge;føcilitiesfor education in equþm.ent and housing, and the promotion of such ertra-curricular actiuities as will tend to induct the child into lfe'" -W.E.B. DuBois The challenge in teaching is tofind a wry of com.municøting to each child the idea that his or her special quality is understood, is ualued, ønd can be talked about. because we It is not easy, are influenced by thefears ønd prejudiceq apprehensions and erþectations, which haue become a cørefulþ hidden part of every one of us. -Vivian Gussin Paley Not leaming tends to take place when sonleone høs to deal with unavoidable challenges to his or her þersonal andfamiþ loyalties, integrity and identitlt. In such situations, there areforced choices and no apparent middle ground. To agree to leamfrom a stranger who does not respect your integrily causes ø major loss of sef . The onþ alternatiae is to not-learn and reject their world. .Herbert Kohl "We hear less about thefailure of the schools in regard to black students and more about disaduøntaged groupq 'people o;f color', and soþrth; all erpressions that take thefocus azaayfrom those who haae,for 4oO years, been sþecficølþ selectedfor disaduantage." -Michael Holzman Restoring the Image of and Belief in African American Male Success-Looking Back and Forward Several months ago a group of African American men representing one of the esteemed with a critical question regarding the disparaging outcomes for African American males in Guilford County Schools. While the Board initially offered responses to their question, a motion was made by board member, Deena Hayes that more information be gathered and a more thoughtful analysis be provided regarding the full scope oftheir concern. churches in our county, approached GCS board members Members of the board agreed to couch this analysis in the work of the Achievement Gap committee, headed by Hayes, and supported by Dr. Nancy Routh, Dr. Walter Childs, Dot Kearns, Darlene Garrett and Alan Duncan. Since that time the Achievement Gap Committee has worked closely with Monica Walker in the Diversity Office and Dr. Gongshu Zhang and his staffin the Office of Accountability and Research. Additionally, this study has engaged some of the community's finest minds to help ponder and evaluate the comprehensive data which reveals the educationai conditions of African American males in our schools, Dr. Zhang and his staffprovided us with more than 111,6 pieces of statistical data measuring the performance and conditions of African American males as compared to their male and female counterparts both Black, white and Latino. The underachievement ofAfrican American males in public education is not unique to Guilford County Schools. In fact, this issue has reached epidemic proportion in educational venues across the country. Clearly, something is amiss, Given this reality, it would be so easy, typical and tempting, for those who represent the system to throw in the towel and resort to "blaming the victim" as we have been so well socia-lized to respond. We are not above that. We are often well versed in suggesting what they and their parents ought to be doing, and not doing. They are their own problem. Hence, "The formula for action becomes extraordinarily simple: change the victim. All of this happens so smoothly that it seems downright rational. First, identify a social problem. Second, study those affected by the problem and discover in what ways they are different from the rest of us as a consequence of deprivation and injustice. Third, de{ìne the differences as the cause ofthe social problem itself "(Ryan, 19?6) understand the underachievement of African American ma-les in public education, we must begin with an examination of the history of discrimination against African American males in education, specifically and the society, more generally. The idea of evaluating these issues in an historical context is often met with great resistances on the part of whites. It suggests that we are fìne with addressing and fixing the problem only if we can speak to the results and obliterate the causes. Well, the good news and the bad news is that we cannot solve this problem without a knowledge of history, an understanding of the cultural and In order to fully class divide which perpetuates it, and a willingness to validate and assess the implications of race and racism and its impact on our society and thus our educational system. The history of the African American educational experience begins with slaver), when African Americans were forbidden to learn how to read and write. At the conclusion of the civil war, African American families lived in segregated communities where children attended segregated schools which were legal under Plessy vs. Ferguson with the stipulation that schools were separate but equal (Orfield, 2ool). During segregation, the African American community consisted of families from lower, middle, and upper - socioeconomic levels, all living together. Schools were taught primarily by African American teachers who were part of the school community. The infrastructures of these schools were lacking, compared to white schools. Up to date instructional materials and curriculum were hard to come by due to lack of funds, the teachers infused the curriculum with the accomplishments and history ofAfrican American. Family involvement in schools was less of a challenge due to the fact that schools were centrally located within the community where people knew each other well enough to support each other (Wilson, 19s?). African American children saw the impact of having an education as they witnessed the lives of both laborers and professionals within the community. With the Brown vs. Topeka decision in 1g54, came court ordered desegregation and eventually African American students and white students were bused to the same schools to achieve racial balance and equity. The face of schools across the nation changed as African American students joined white students in the classroom. New Challenges arose for African American students with the desegregation of schools. Most classrooms were taught by white teachers. The curriculum was Eurocentric and not inclusive of African American culture or history. Family involvement declined as families did not live in the vicinity of the schools and often had difficulty attending conferences and schooi events. Initially, many newly desegregated schools showed an increase in achievement test scores among African American students during the 1970's but then test scores began to decline in the 1980's. (Orfield, 2ool). Unfortunately, the plan to desegregate schools with all deliberate speed, made no room, special arrangements or considerations for what the losses and casualties of integration would entail. Fifty some odd years later, not only have African American children loss ground in this rearrangement, but these losses have been peculiarly poignant and menacing to the African American male. Unfortunately we do not measure these losses, but rather, we measure his performance on tests and curriculum proven time and again to be culturally biased and foreign to his experience and background. We then decry his inability to meet our narrowly imposed standards. All the while we are also collecting and filing data which suggests that he is being disproportionately affected by every discipline policy and program we have employed. Finally when he has had enough of this hostile environment and begins to reject, withdraw, dropout or worse, confront our low expectations and opinions of him, he is either demoted to classes bearing lifelong labels, suspended, expelled, or hauled downtown with charges levied that will restrict and limit his present and his future. Many of you will hear this as if it suggests there are no African-American young men with relevant discipline problems. No well meaning administrator or educator would suggest that. Yet, the sheer numbers of our discipline data would (without context, definition and further evaluation) affirm that African American maìes are a menace to the classroom. "An oppositional identity that disdains academic achievement has not always been a characteristic ofBlack adolescent peer groups. It seems to be a post-desegregation phenomenon. Historically, the oppositional identity found among African Americans in the segregated South included a positive attitude toward education. While Black people may have publicly deferred to Whites, they actively encouraged their children to pursue education as a ticket to greater freedom. While Black parents still see education as the key to upward mobility, in today's desegregated schools the models of success-the teacher, administrators, and curricular heroes-are almost always White." (Daniel-Tatum, 1998) Years these kinds of accumulated disadvantages and practices affirms an historica-l arrangement and not only suggests to young African American mal.es that their possibilities are limited, but also gives energy and legitimacy to the low expectations of teachers, administrators and the overall society. Thus begins the "selÊfulfilling prophecy." of Kati Haycock, director of Education Trust, a leading educational research organization, recently visited GCS and declared in her presentation that poor children GET LESS in our educational system-then consider at the bottom of the poverty scale are poor Black males who get THE LEAST and therefore, predictably perform the poorest in our schools. Since desegregation, everything in the set-up of our schools and classrooms is structured to the collective imposition and disadvantage of African-American males. According to the research of Dr. Janice HaIe, author of "Learning While Black'Black males suffer the double jeopardy of cultural arrangement in education that disfavors both his gender and his race. a Additionally, "It is important to know that if an individual has been programmed or socialized to believe false and distorted beließ about themselves, then he will develop a belief system and life-style to justify and support those beliefs (Gooding, 2oog). Parents, teachers and other educators must help these students discover ways to reject distorted images of themselves. " For these students and their families, blame is the name of the game. They are to blame for the failures of our education system. "We hear less about the failure of schools in regard to black students, and more about these 'disadvantaged groups ..all expressions take the focus away from those who have, for 4,oo years, been specifically selected for disadvantage." is entirely possible that what we are getting is a reflection of what we have invested. It demands that we painstakingly examine our policies, practices and teaching program to eliminate any and all vestiges of "isms" which have trapped African American males in a It perpetual state of disparaging outcome. References: Ryan, William, (tozo) Blaming the Victim, United Kingdom, Vintage Books Orfield, Gary,(zoot) Schools more Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Re-segregation, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Wilson, Amos, (tssz) Developmental Psychology.of the Black Child, New York, Africana Research Center, Columbia University Library Daniel-Tatum, Beverly, (tosz) Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, New York, Basic Books Gooding, Virgil, (zoos) Managing Multi-generational Anger in African American Males, (VÍrgil A. Gooding, Sr., holds a M.A. and a M.S.W. from the University offowa.Ife is a Iicensed Independent Social Worker (L.LS.W) and is a Treatment Coordinator,/FamÍIy TherapÍst for the SÍxth fudÍcÍal DÍstrict Department of CommunÍty-Based ConectÍons Iocated Ín Cedar Rapids, fowa. Ife is the Clinical Superuisor for Foundation II, which is also located Ín Cedar RapÍds, fowa. Ife is also in prÍvate practÍce.) A d di ti on aI R eferenc es : Staples, Robert, Qsaz) Black Masculinity: The Black Male's Role Press, University of Michigan in Society, Black Scholar Burghardt DuBois, W.E., (tssø) Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?, The Journal of Negro Education Gussin-Paley, Virginia, (tszs) White Teacher, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press Kohl, Herbert. "I won't learn from you: Confronting student resistance." Pp.134,-35 in Rethinking our classrooms: Teaching for equity and justice. Milwaukee, Rethinking Our Schools, 199<1,. Holzman, Michael, (zoos) It's about the schools: An emerging consensus on the Black-White achievement gap, Education'Week, June 4, 2oo8 TABLE T GRÐ6æRO RJELIC GREENæRO, ItrIH S*Mts CARû.IM Table I IS5.6 REIÐ'TI(¡I REPCRT Í æ 0t 6e3 ¡bt r3.3 Prcroted 713 a. 03 04 6æ Tæ 678. g n æ a 12 47 861 152. 854 c6 gÌ c8 6 693 m 753 7n n6 r56 60 44 z 6 æ ?13 9t æ o) 94 105 z 6 s u æ 215 92 121 l?2 ç, 1 7.8 q? 6S 63 76 38 45 60 86 813 f04 IJ 133 ö.t 9.8 10.2 871 'll4 r59 tQr 9.r 16.5 6.6 3.4 7.8 æ,6n l,æ4 r 9.7 Ttese flgures dc rot irchÉ stLëÍts in ælf-cont¿ired clæses. ll GREENSBORO PUBLIC SCHOOLS DEPARTMET¡T OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES II Gharactcrictlc¡ and Porformancc of Studonts Scoring Below.Avcrago on Cal I fornia Achioyomont .Tost and Toet of Cognitivo Skiltc TABLE I 986 /"NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF GPS STUDENTS SCOR I NG BATTERY OF CAT-E: t AT OR BELOW 25:I ON TOTAL Total GPS Students 1585 1477 169 11 . 4aÄ 1547 147 5 I {62 232 t 539 187 I 2 .2Vc t 758 Number < 2SVoile r39, I .8% t92 12.4% 257 17 .4% 290 Percent of GPS t5.9% 16.5% tt NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF GPS STUDENTS SCqRING AT OR BELOW COGNITIVE SKILLS: 25'IILE ON TEST OF Grade NumberPo r cen of 3 GPS Students GPS 2fo l7 .9% 3rq 20 .6Yr 439 t ot 25-5% I tr OF LD STUDENTS¡ NUMBER AT{D PERCENTAGE OF HAND I CAPPED CHILDREITI TAKING CAT-E AND PERFORiiANCE Numbe r of Hand i capped GPS LD x 201 195 t 83 r99 t3l 7 Percent of Number Med 12.7% 58 q*__*_ 13.2% 97 Ie a?Yai.i_e rl.8% r3.0% 155 .íVa 94 of llt 2l%i le ian CAT-E %i l,e 27'/"i 23%i Ie I l%i le TABLE II (con't) IV. AVERAGE CAT-E PERFORMANCE OF GPS STUDENTS EASED ON PARENT EDUCATION LEVELS¡ 8th Grade or Less 8th to 12th-Not GradHi gh Schoo 32%i I e 44%i le 29%i lo 42aói I e 329ti lo 39%i le 51?6i le 3l%i le 39%i le 49%i le 76%i le 30%i le 28tci Ie I Graduate 5f%ile 84%i le 54%i I e 4-3%i I o Some Educat ion Af ter High School 83%i le 86%i le 72%ile V. AVERAGE CAT-E PERFORMAI{CE OF GPS STUDENTS BASED OtI ABSENCES: x 7 0%a O-7 Absences >21 Absences le 64%i le 64%i le 49%i le 60%i le 40%i le 58t6i I e 32?6i 6l%¡ le .;i 44ttile .\ le V I . e AVERAGE CAT-E PERFORMANCE OF GPS STUDENTS BASED ON TiIUMBER OF RETENT I ONS: 7 Grade Non I 2 3 .,'. lx t%i le e 2 7l,t6i te 38%i I e 33%i le 42'/ci I e I 7.3%i â  le 7O%ile 40%i le 66%i le 28%i I e ¡" 53eÄi I 34%i le 32%i I e 3%i 57t(.i I e 28%i le 24'/e 2t%i le 8%i le i I e le Reported numbers and scores for grade I ref lect total reading since does not provide a total ba tery score for grade 1- CAT-E Table III Programs ldentified r¿ithin the Greensboro Public Schools Gillespie Park Education Center rn-school Suspension (rSS) at the Middle and High school levels LEAP (Learning Expectations and Achievement Programs) at Bluford, Lindley, Morehead, lJashington, and Hampton Schools. Sununer School Chapter I Tutoring - by older students and college student.s Guidance Progran Support Services - Social Services, Psychological Services Advisor/advisee component of the Middle School ArtlMusic /P.8. Exceptional Children's Programs - See Exhibit II Speech/Language Specialists Alternative Schools (Open and Traditional) 17 Special Programs inltiated within individual schools - See Exhibit I Thi-s list does not include acÈivities - clubs, organizations, athletics, cultural arts, etc. rErl0ñ IElcH80RH00D CODE L¡S1 HP' . HP¿' lPr' tP3. ',P2 t{.ElclrBoRgooD @!¿!! t{E NE Atl EEI Aycoelr School lRl. cutCIU¡. t?l tcl t12 lc¡t¡mr-lnrls (!) l¡ßtla loratÈ lrl,tÈt.h llood¡ , Clrrtrgr lllb St¡r-llt/!ro¡proÀ lrookcood C¡¡dc¡ larrar!aa-Jonatboro nt lll¿ ¡¡!t Ng NII Jtl. JRz. xtl' xt2 JCl. c¡l lH¡. úLl. cPl øJ2 DL¡ Dr¡. DL3. cul. Cqb¡rh¡d-l{C 1I1 Cuobrrlod (lhrÈ) Düdl.t l.tthr. t¡r¡ l¡tr Dr As.r Cl13Èo¡ 8l11r Cosnlrt l.rl Colle¡r [1ll¡ (U[C-C) MI slf DPI t!¡, hrt Dudhy 8d.¡htr Drllvood P¡rl lr¡allf¡/ll¡¡ ls¡nllfdll¡.Èl¡od ll¡co lâ¡d A¡.. lor..r Y¡ll.t Gre¡¡flrld/South Grr¡¡t¡voa Glcad¡l¡ Etllr Cs..¡3!.a Grca Vrllry Cl.Ûl ood 8r¡1,1Èoû Lf¡ccla [.lthtr lrz cÅl cF1 lr¡¡llhô{cCo¡n¡1 llt tt 3l st ml st I{E ¡tE NE st ¡¡ï ¡fl ütt t¡t ¡¡l ¡.f,1 Itt r.f,l L?2 x¡ll ßlrtrcod llflbd¡I.¡ P¡rh (SE) Pack School Ar.¡ Iwlni Prrl, (lJe¡r) Inrl,nt P¡rk (E¡¡¡) trrinS l¡rl (ilorrh) Jrff¡r¡on Cudrnr Jôî.! Rord Lohob.th Church Ro.d flaSa lo!..3 kl,ntr lor.r3 (ltorth) sl{ llll T{IJ llr sll trltl r.Lt rJot tfPl lJ?2 Hhlt. l,!èscrldtc H.ltht! lJoodlar L¡ke¡ Ork t{H SE t{l{ sg sg llP3 tloodEcrè Prrk (Errt) l{oodncrr Pårk (t{Êrt) PrÈlo Phc. Aptt IE t{E NE r.?¡ l.,P5 rE NI l{vt t¡rnd¡t¡ 8o¡r¡ Lbdl.t hrk Llndhy ll (ll¡rt) ll¡¡dosyood f,oo¡r l¡Èh¡¡ l¡rl' L¡Lr D¡akl lltl ¡{ll llvl r.w2 lhrn¡r¡v11I¡/South lJ.rt'l.ood Phllllp¡ itv. Aprt lJ¡rncr¡vlllc lJood¡crc Pk/I,roodbrt¡ S NE NE NE SE SE Nlf 'üfl tfil sll slf sg !ql. !131. ¡¡¡rocÈo¡ . l!¡4 lßt !G2 llo¡¡/!ld¡-Bilbboro lr35 ¡{8ó trsE l¡nn.! Àva-llorn/Sfda ' llcCoür.l l¡t/lltllan üon/s1d./!v.¡trt 3G üorÍ/81d./^p¡ch. IorÈb n.lpton 3ch-üon/31d. sl st EI llE 9lf 3t 3l Fr3. lf¡t tl4. FÍl. cF:¡. CEI. G¡adar loÐa Nll Ng SE oo1. 002. IUl P¡ Cr¡¡ol1¡ld/!rf.¡tol .sE sg n^l. Gtl cLt NI 8TJ Ì1, RA', RRl, RR,:I. rA:l ctl cfû cuL cvl û¡tllord 81ll¡-ll¡1n C¡¡ll/¡Ull Cr..n. School (l¡|È) Mf dn. C1{1. Cl¡¡rood Or¡t) Glrqsood (C.ÁÈr¡l) ¡fl ¡{ll rgl Rtf23F1 stf cn4. Er¡,. 81. Elr tc1. Gha¡ood (toutb) xrj!. 8tr3 mó m5 ELI þo' ¡otó m{5 Etfl rü2 ll¡blrod PerL Eu!È.r E1lb (C¡¡t¡d) truaÈ.s Bfll. (l¡rÈ) Euat.r ¡t11. (llorÈh) Auns.r nllt. (ïctt) lr.Y¡ld St. n¡ûllÈo! t¡L. 8¡4to! [or.r (i¡t SÈ.) nl!Þtot Eoa¡¡ (l¡rt) R¡lptoî Íorr (lhrt) Arllnttoô 5r. (l¡rÈ) Sorb¡s 5È/81¡ttt¡. 3Ê. 8r¡lltoB Flll. sll ss sï tosarÈ ¡fï sl¡ ¡llf src s¡o 3lrl sul s81 stl sï sx! 3U2. sr stf st3 slf Nll txl ill svl. ¡lll lrcl. Etl nP2, Illllrdrtr lrrh [l.ll¡drl. ?¡rk sl sl st st 3rf 1Ë TIA¡ Ntll. 0.k. 0 f,rnry Ortr (trt) Prgr/Conr 3chool C¡ldçrll lch-tr ll¡rr l¡t B.rrc¡ [osrlût Drl.-OE¡h¡ tt R¡t lf¡rr.¡ (E¡rr) Rolll,o¡ ttoodr Lolltnt lfood¡ (!¡t¡) l¡ñdor lfood. l¡odo llood¡ (h¡r) 8È¡rEounÈ lor..È 3h¡¡noo lltll¡ trlth üoù.t (SO ¡ !¡.È) htfh tør (Iorrh) sliCh no!.. (sp¿rt¡) SouGllont tulr.t ¡111. tr¡û..t nlll. (Sourh) lrl,radl,y lolrr Sprfat V.11.t lhrcr tlr¡dor¡ lrltlr Dr (Îuct.r) L¡ttl. Dr (lngllrh) Onrûr7 i üot¡/sld./t¡yrm 3r llrpl./1.rÈr.1. Dr 3È sl st lllf IE NE NI SE SE st st stl sll 3ll ¡Íl sll 8ll sr 3ï srf grf ll¡rch I, 198ó Iï 3If mf slf ¡llf r¡t vrQ tßt ï..Èburt lloodl¡¡ ï¡rhlnttoû lC/!.nbor G¡r¡|,¡l¡¡d Dr l.nn.Èt Colh¡r Âtcr ^pt. ìll ¡¡t tt 3l Þ tr{ H stl 3lf IJD1. trl H I I (S) sr j : r ) TABLE V .sH tlt sl{ 1 SMl sr{ sM3 NE t{OI r4s8 NE SE r{E SE sl¡ SE sE SE SE SE NE NE SE WP5 HM4 TX3 HAz s¡,f2 Apartnents, lfE; Soabar Street,/Hlgglns Street Camleland Drive Apartments Avenue Phllllps 23* 24 2LÍ 201 Washington Sbreet/Benbow Road Snlbh Homes (Norüh) r.9Í DL3 l.ts6 HM5 East Dudley Helghts lfornlngslde /Apache Street 'Arlington Street (East) Dale-Onaha Street 18f 18Ë LT% NA3 DLI GLl FBz RA2 Dudley tietghts Glendale Htlls Fnanklln/Pine Ray L6Í L6Í L6f $% ]:5* l{arren Housing Rehobeth.Ct¡urch Road L5í Lsf Lsf Smlth Homes (South & East) Snlth Homes (Sparta) l{htte Oak L[f r4tr sE SE .RAl tdilz GI{4 sE S¡{ SW NE .sE t{E i sI{ SW Mornlngside/Evans Street Caldwell School/Ray Harren tJashington .Street/Benbow Glenwood (South).. l4Í L4F 14?6 JRl BEz HM3 Jones Road 14% Lt+% Bessemer-grsin (E) Hanpbon Homes (Hest) l{oodnere Pank (Wesü) G1enwood. (Souüh) L3f HPl Gt{4 HHz L4 L¿f Hunter Hl1ls (Eas¿) t¡E r¡(2 ÎextlIe Dnfve (Eng1lsb) Patlo P1ace Apartnents' Cllnton Hi11s Glenwood (t{est) NE WP3 sE ctl sI{ Gt{z sI{ HH3 st{ st{I NE I{Pz sE: Hl{l sE Hl,tz L¿r 11Í 1IË uÍ I1tr 1IÉ t_oÉ 8% Hunter H1IIg'(North) Southnont Hoodnene Park (East) Hampton Houes (Ray Stneet) Hampton Hones (East) 8f 5r TabLe .'VI FAILUNES K PROMOTIONS TOTAL PENCENTACE 2L4 2L5 I 2 3 4 r,397 t,402 1,4O5 1r611 13.3 13.3 '92 I2I.. 104 7g. 133 163 1,44L r r416 L r,61? I,497 L,562 I,520 1,506 1,553 1,648 6.1 T-7 6.8 .5 6 T r42T r,420 r,4q5 L,619 5.2 8.6 9.9 IO I I 10 11 L2 181 58 304 95 r,684 Ir5tt0 I,800 L'742 1,844 -I 3.3 16.5 6-6 rr34t 1,435 19,012 1'436 1r495 2O.,82L. 50. 3.3 lr8og 8.? (Dlstni-ct Aver.age) T¿ible .VII lrPS CRADE FSTLnRES I .TOTÂL PENCENTAGE K LT 2u . ?;9*, ?,L'/" t T 3 5 11 5 r¡t IO L2 ].tt I 10 6 3 /6' 1t 50s 50Í, ZLl, Table y111 GREENSBORO HOUSING AUTHORTTY The following agencies provide services corununities: AGEDICY to youths (ages 6-16) in GHA GTIA CO'üUIIITT SERUICES PROYIDED Bpys' and Girls'Club 840 Neal Street Greensboro, NC 27403 of A¡nerica Hampton Homes Outreach social recreational Hickory Trail tutorial, Social and recreational, after-school and technical training Day Care, Greensboro, NC 27406 United Day Care Services 1200 Arlington Street Hampton Homes' Tutorial (after-school ) Tutorial (ofter-school ) $'lorningside HomeS Day Care, $n¡th Ray Homes Homes Head Start, pre-school ) llarren Homes Day Care. Counsel (after-school tutorial E¡nployment, and Southeast Greensboro Council 0n Crime and Deliquency 743 tl. Florida Street Greensboro, NC 27406 Smith Morningside Social and recreational, Homes ing, tutorial JTPA referrals (after-school ) Hampton Homes Social and recreational, tutorial (after-school ) NAACP P. 0. Box 20642 Greensboro, NC Tutorial Program 27420 Smith Homes ïutorial, Homes social and recreational educational educational, Morningside Tutorial, sociaI and recreational Hampton Homes Tutorial. educational social and recreational Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pìpeliner[ Fact Sheet @@ Facts About the Cradle to PrÍson Pipelineru Crisis All Children The Cradle to Prison Pipelineru crisis can be reduced to one simple fact: the United States of America is not a level playing field for all children. At critical points in their development, from birth through adulthood, poor children, and disproportionately more poor children of color, face many critical risks and disadvantages. These multiple risks and disadvantages, when accumulated, make a successful transition to adulthood signifìcantly less likely and involvement in the criminaljustice system significantly more líkely. They include lack of access to prenatal and other health and mental health care; lack of early education and enrichment; unstable parenting and child abuse and neglect; educational disadvantages resulting in failure, suspension, expulsion or dropping out; unaddressed mental health problems; and racial and economic disparities and inequities in education, child welfare and the juvenile and criminaljustice systems. \Mthout significant interventions to remove these multiple, accumulated obstacles, poor and minority youth are far too often trapped in a trajectory that leads to marginalized lives, imprisonment and even premature death. Established research on these risks and disadvantages proves beyond a doubt that the Cradle to Prison Pipeline is a tragic reality for far too many poor children and a disproportionately high number of poor children of color. Poverty-All Children Poverty is the cornerstone of the "Gradle to Prison Pipeline.' The numbers of poor children defy the stereotypes but minority children are disproportionately poor. Poverty in America continues to grow. a ln 2004, 13 million American children (one out of every six or 17.8 percent) were poor. ln 2004, child poverty rose for the third year in a row in working families. The number of poor children in working families increased to 8.9 million in 2004, up from 8.3 million in 2001-a rise of 623,000 children. a Poverty-By Race & Ethnicity By the percentages a a - Black children are most disproportionately poor, followed by Latino children: 33.6 percent of Black children, 28.9 percent of Latino children, 10 percent of Asian children, and a a 10.5 percent of White, non-Latino children were poor. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, Inc. Dismantling the Cradle to Príson Pipelineru Fact Sheet :¿ri#Fr*' ür*i$åH By the numbers -- even though the proportion of Black and Latino children who are poor is far higher, there are more White non-Latino children who are poor: a 4.5 million White non-Latino children are poor, 3.8 million Black children are poor, and a a a 4.1 Latino children are poor. ln 2004, more than one in three Black children lived in poverty. Extreme Poverty Extreme poverty is defined as living with annual income below $7,610 for a family of three. The growth in extreme poverty is close to twice as fast as the growth rate of poverty overall. . . The number of children in extreme poverty has increased by 20 percent since 2000 to reach almost 5.6 million children. A child in America is more likely to live in poverty than a child in any of the 18 other wealthy industrialized nations for which data exist. The Compounding Effectof Poverty Research links poverty to multiple risks and disadvantages, including increased risks of abuse, neglect, academic failure, delinquency and violence. Economic hardship and stressful life events are associated with a lack of parent-child involvement and attachment. Children living in extreme persistent poverty are more involved in delinquency, especially serious delinquency. Poverty is the single best predictor of child abuse and neglect. Children who live in families with annual incomes less than $15,000 are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected than children living in families with annual incomes of $30,000 or more. Fourthgraders in US public elementary schools with the highest poverty levels have significantly lower reading scores compared to their counterparts in schools with lower poverty levels. Low family income has repeatedly been associated with self-reported teen violence and convictions for violence offenses. Social disorganization and concentrated poverty within the community lead to residents' decreased willingness to intervene when children are engaging in antisocial/ unlawful acts. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, Inc. Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pipelinelu Fact Sheet ,ffigli,ttu ' gliilli?å 'rÉffi Esü Prenatal and Health Care Poor children of color are less like to be healthy and to have access to health care: Being born to a teenage mother is a strong predictor of later delinquency. A Black child is more than twice as likely to live with a single parent and is almost twice as likely to be born to a teenaged mother. Black and Latino women were almost three times as likely as White women to have late or no prenatal care. The percentage of Black babies born at a low birth weight, putting them at risk for a range of postnatal complications, is twice that for White babies. A low birth-weight child is 50 percent more likely to score below average on measures of both reading and mathematics. A low birth-weight child is more likely to experience educational disadvantages that can persist into early adulthood. Adolescents with childhood elevated blood lead levels report higher levels of delinquency and anti-social behavior. Black children and children from poor families are not only more likely to have had asthma than White or Latino children and children from higher income families, they also are more likely to suffer from disabling asthma. Children with disabling asthma have almost twice as many restricted activity days and lost school days as children with impairments, due to other types of chronic conditions. Black children are nearly twice as likely as White children to be uninsured. Latino children are almost three times as likely as White children to be without health insurance. Black and Mexican-American children living in older housing (pre-1946) are more likely to have elevated blood lead levels than white children living in comparable housing-22 and 13 percent as opposed to six percent. Early Childhood Poor children of color are less likely to enter elementary school prepared: At-risk toddlers not enrolled in a quality childcare and development program were five times more likely to become chronic law breakers as adults. Even mild undernourishment, the kind most frequently found in the United States, impairs cognitive function and can do so throughout the life of a child. Children participating in high quality early education had lower rates of juvenile delinquency, fewer arrests and fewer juvenile court petitions. Children who have graduated from Head Start are less likely to repeat a grade, less likely to need special education, and more likely to graduate from high school. 42 percent of Latino and 48 percent of Black three to five year olds are read to every day compared to 64 percent of White children. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, Inc. Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pipelineru Fact Sheet ?5'1*tos o :$þ'iifi$å 'tæ @H ln 2003, 28.5 percent of Black and 28.1 percent of Latino children lived in families that were hungry or at-iisk of hunger. a a Only 1/3 of Black and 215 of Latino kindergarteners have home computers. Only 25 percent of Latino and 35 percent of Black three to five year olds are able to perform three out of four basic reading and math skills. Forty-two percent of White children can complete three out of four of these tasks. Child Abuse and Neglect Poor children of color are more likely to be involved in substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect and are more likely to be placed in foster care: Children in foster care have higher rates of grade retention, lower scores on standardized tests and higher absenteeism, tardiness, truancy and drop out rates. Youth in foster care wíth unmet education needs are at a higher risk for homelessness,. poverty, public assistance, and juvenile or adult court involvement. Abused and neglected children are 1 as likely to be arrested as an adult. 112 to 6 times as líkely to be delinquent and 1 1t4 to 3 times Children involved in the juvenile justice system are more likely to have a history of child abuse and neglect than children outside the system. Abuse rates ranging from 25o/o to 31% were reported consistently in various studies of youth in the juvenile justice system. Black children make up 15 percent of the child population, yet they represenl24.7 percent of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect and 40 percent of children in foster care. Native Americans are 1 percent of the child population and 2 percent of children in foster care. Children of color enter foster care at higher rates, even when their families have the same characteristics as comparable White children and families. Children of color remain in foster care for longer periods of time African American children versus 9 months for white children. - a median stay of 17 months for African American children in foster care have been found to have a much lower probability than White children for reunification and adoption. Analyses of national data show that White children were four times more likely than African American children to be reunified and twice as likely to be adopted. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, lnc. Dismantling the Cradle to Prison PipelinerM Fact Sheet @Ð Mental Health Care Lack of access to and availability of community-based mental health services is causing thousands of poor children to be lost to the'Cradle to Prison Pipeline" every year: The U.S. General Accounting Office reported thousands of families relinquishing custody of their children to the child welfare or juvenile justice systems so they could get treatment. A recent report showed that two thirds of the detention facilities in 47 states hold youth who do not need to be in detention as they wait for mental health services. Over a six-month period in 2003, nearly 15,000 incarcerated youth waited for community mental health services in the states. A national study of children ages 2-14 who are involved in the child welfare system, either at home or in foster care, found that nearly half had clinically significant emotional or behavioral problems and only about one-quarter received mental health treatment. African American children in foster care are less likely than other children in care to receive specialty mental health services. Studies have reported that as many as three-fourths of the youth who are incarcerated have a mental health disorder and about one in five has a severe disorder. Studies show that, given the same behavioral symptoms, more Black youth than White youths are incarcerated, and more White youths than Black youths are placed in mental health institutions. Poor families underutilize mental health services. The 1999 Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health noted that the relationship between the underutilization of mental health services and poverty is especially significant for minority children and families. Education Children of color are less likely to succeed in school. Educational disadvantages make it more likely that children of color enter the juvenile justice system: Of fourth graders, 41 percent of Whites are reading at grade level compared to 15 percent of Latinos and 13 percent of Blacks. ln math, 37 percent of White eighth graders perform at grade level compared to 12 percent of Latinos and 7 percent of Blacks. a a Academic failure in the elementary grades increases risk for later violent behavior. Where 9.3 percent of White students have been retained in grade at least once, 18 percent of Native American, 17.5 percent of Black and 13.2 percent of Hispanic students have been retained at least once. 14.6 percent of White students have been suspended or expelled in grades seven through 12 compared to 38.2 percent of Native Americans, 35.1 percent of Blacks and 19.6 percent of Latinos. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, lnc. Dismantling the Cradle to Prison Pipelineru Fact Sheet petlu t*dE¡¡È ;........ @ü ¡ ¡ . . Where Black youths represent a disproportionate percent of the suspended, they are also disproportionately incarcerated in similar numbers. Numerous studies demonstrate that students who are suspended or expelled are more likely than their peers to drop out of school altogether. One study found that being suspended or expelled is one of the top three school-related reasons for dropping out. High school dropouts are almost 3 times as likely to be incarcerated as youths who have graduated from high school. ln 1999, 52 percent of Black men who had dropped out of high school had prison records by their early thirties. Juvenile Justice Sysúem and Incarceratíon Children of color are more likely to be incarcerated in both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems: Although they represent just 34 percent of the U.S. adolescent population, minority youths represent 62 percent of the youth in detention. For those charged with drug offenses, Black youths are 48 times more likely to be incarcerated than White youths. For those charged with víolent offenses, Blacks are nine times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites. Among youth with no prior admissions, for drug offenses, Latinos are 13 times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites. For violent offenses, Latinos are five times more likely to be incarcerated. Boys adjudicated delinquent for a violent offense between age 10 and age 16 were 6.25 times as likely to be convicted of a violent crime by age 24, compared with juveniles between age 10 and age 16 not adjudicated delinquent for a violent crime as juveniles. Compared to individuals arrested as adults but not arrested as juveniles, those arrested one time as juveniles were twice as likely to be arrested as adults and those arrested two times as juvenile were 6.3 times as likely to be arrested as adults. One in three Black boys born in 2001 will spend time in prison at some point in their lives. ln partnership with: Jack and Jill of America, lnc.