Is It Time For A National Educational Agenda For The African American Community?

By:
Dr. Mike Robinson

What is the future of education for African Americans relative to the academic achievement of African American children?  If you or anyone working as a civil rights advocate, community organizer or civic leader knows, please share it with the rest of us. Because from where most of the African American community sits the vision and pathway is not really clear.

The ongoing failure of school systems to educate an increasingly high percentage of African American young men is frightening. In some urban school districts the dropout rate is as high as 70%. What become of those who leave the thousands of school systems? Where do they go? What do they do?  Those are just a few of the many questions that confront the African American community.

Is it time for a massive nationwide protest for our rights for a quality education. Should we march and rally on our State capitals demanding justice in education? Maybe we need to galvanize on Twitter and Facebook and any other forms of social media to get the word out; that we want quality education for our communities and we want it now!

It is likely that an approach using those methods above will generate some public responses from civic leaders and community advocates. There is even a likelihood that some forms of legislation requiring access, increase funding may come out of the outcry for educational justice.  However, herein lies the issue, “been there, done that and have the T-shirt.” So at the end of the day, we eventually find ourselves right back where we started. A community with high dropout rates among African American young men; African American female students graduating at a lower rate than white and Asian females; fewer African Americans entering college; a disproportionate number of African American students entering college unprepared and needing remedial educational courses; the steady decline in the number of African American men matriculating through institutions of higher education. I could go on and on, but we get the picture and in many cases, we have lived or we are living it.  With an unemployment rate hovering near 15% (probably higher) our only solid hope to turn this tide for future African American generations is to emphasis the need for an educational system that is filled with academic rigor, demanding and competitive classes and state of the art equipment which ensures our children can compete nationally and internationally.

It is time for a National Educational Agenda for the African American community? This would be agenda should outline the expectations of the academic achievement for African American students from a nationwide perspective. What would such an agenda look like? Well let me offer the first few components:

• Increase in the number of African American male teachers in the classroom
• A national meeting between all HBCUs, the United States Department of Education and the 50 Secretaries of Education representing each state in the Union create MOUs to hire over 100,000 male teachers by 2025
• Every African American church should adopt at least one school in their community to provide educational support not religious doctrine
• Entrepreneurial based curriculum should be included in the academic courses starting as early as 4^th grade
• Extend the learning day
• Increase multicultural training for teachers and staff as a means to reduce the disproportionate number of African American students suspended or placed in special education
• Parental involvement that is supported by schools, churches and employers

These are just a few of the components that should make up the National Educational Agenda for African Americans.  We have to demand more academic rigors and once we have it, demand performance from our children and their friends. Respect and celebrate the academic achiever, make them the rule, not the exception.

HOW CAN FATHERS OR SIIGNIFICANT MALE ROLE MODELS IMPACT THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF STUDENTS?

Written by:

Michael A. Robinson

Education: The Natural Bridge spoke with several African American men to get their response to the question: How can fathers or significant male role models impact the academic achievement of students? One of the first to offer an opinion was Dr. Walter Dozier, former Special Assistant to the Chief Administrative Officer / Education Liaison for Prince George's County Government.

ETNB: How can fathers or significant male role models impact the academic achievement of students?

Dr. Dozier: This is an interesting question. The absence of masculine guidance in any culture has devastating effects on children’s self esteem and learning capacity. For example, girls do better at some sports when fathers encourage their participation. That is because sports are deemed a male domain. Fathers and surrogate fathers must set standards of behavior and expectations for boys (and girls). A local (Maryland) author states in her work that many men have something called “extended adolescence” because they never learned that at a certain age, adult responsibilities must be taken on. We still have men in the 40s and 50s acting like they are in the 20s.

Prior to the industrial revolution, men worked primarily at home where they tutored and honed the masculine skills of the sons. Once men left home to work in factories, there was a subtle but dynamic shift in the way boys were raised.

When men tell boys that is okay to be smart, boys have a means to mentally and emotional combat the negative messages about being smart and being a man. I heard Dr. Franklin from Morehouse University say “if the village elders do not stand up and set the agenda, the village idiots will.”

In many cultures, boys still go through manhood rituals, which announce to the society that a boy is ready to pass into manhood because he has been properly schooled in manhood responsibilities and expectations. We have lost our manhood rituals other than sports. And given the recent examples of Vick, Burris, O.J., Barkley, Stallworth, athletes themselves need male mentoring not to mention should not be automatically given role model status.

I have gone in to dozens of homes with the police department and found that the absence of fathers is decimating our community on multiply levels – economic, criminal, social, and emotional. I am interested in promoting boarding schools for children who have poor social and academic structure in their home environments. At the same time, society must help repair the generational socioeconomic injuries to Black men, while Black men take advantage of ever-expanding opportunities in our society.

The Seldom Discussed Real Achievement Gap

Written by

Michael A. Robinson

According to Maxwell (2004), “nationally, a mere quarter of the 1.9-million black men between 18 and 24 attended college in 2000, the last year the American Council on Education reported such statistics.” Over the past 33 years, black women have enrolled in four-year colleges at higher rates than have black men, according to the results of a study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

David Miller, Chief Visionary Officer for the Urban Leadership Institute (ULI) located in Baltimore, Maryland in his Executive Summary Man Up: Recruiting and Retaining African American Male Mentors revealed some very alarming data with regards to African American males. According to Mr. Miller: (1) A black boy has a 1 and 3 chance of going to prison in his life time compared to 1 in 17 for his white counterpart; (2) Homicides among African American males ages 15-19 years of age represents one of the leading causes of death ; and (3) 59 percent of black males in their early 30s who dropped out of school had prison records.

Mr. Miller goes on to posit the challenges facing black boys are magnified when one examines additional factors such as:

• Increasing teen births which is 68% for African Americans
  
• 58% of African American children are growing up in single family households