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Here's an alternative for educating young Black Americans. Unfortunately it feels like a new form of segregation. It will have the pluses of some of the segregated schools that produced many well educated Black citizens, but it will also deny many young Blacks what our tax dollars should provide. It is a dilemma to either pull out and try to save a generation, or continue to work on reform but perhaps have too many lost kids.

Black Americans should be applauded
By Karl Priest Published 01/15/2008 Commentaries and Reports Rating:
KARL PRIEST
Karl Priest was a West Virginia educator for 34 years in including four years as a principal. He taught students from kindergarten through ninth grade, mostly as a math specialist, and spent his last nine years as a Junior High and Middle School math teacher. Karl is currently the State Coordinator for Exodus Mandate (http://exodusmandate-wv.org/).
View all articles by Karl Priest

Black Americans should be applauded
Karl Priest
Columnist EdNews.org

While black citizens are understandably angry about what happened to a young woman in Logan County, WV they should be even more upset about what is happening to their children nationwide. Every school day black students are being neglected (or worse) by the public school system.The reality of this shameful situation should warrant a march out of the public schools by Black Americans.

Black professor Walter Williams looked at the research statistics and concluded that "black education is a disgrace". Dr. Williams believes that, rather than an apology for slavery, the government should apologize for "fraudulent education" and the devastating impact the public schools have had upon black students.

Harvard's Civil Rights Project has reported findings that government intervention in the public schools has not reduced racial achievements gaps. The director of the Civil Rights Project has called the report "depressing". The situation is even worse than depressing.

The superintendent of Pittsburgh City schools, Mark Roosevelt, calls the gap between black and white students the "civil rights issue of our time". He calls the situation "bleak, terrifying, embarrassing, humiliating" and states that America is threatened because of it. Roosevelt admits that the longer that children stay in the public schools the worse off they become.

In 2002 the national NAACP office declared that "The facts are clear: the persistent failure of schools to provide equality of opportunity for all students is having a devastating impact on communities of color and the future of our nation. "Unfortunately, the NAACP wants to try to fix the failing public schools. Their honorable goals will be to no avail.

The Nation's Report Card, which is provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), has revealed that "the Black-White achievement gap between socioeconomically similar children is null (amounting to nothing) at kindergarten entry but sizable by third grade". In plain English, the data shows that the schools play a major part of the problem in causing the achievement gap.

For West Virginia, the Nation's Report Card discloses that, in 2007, 54% of black 4th graders and 48% of black 8th graders scored below Basic in reading.In mathematics the 2007 below Basic percentages for black children were 36% and 69% respectively.Those figures are shocking and sad.

In 2004 America observed the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Blacks cannot wait another 50 years for the public schools to do what those courageous blacks of 1954 had hoped for. In a terrible twist of fate the public schools first barred out black children and now the public schools have bogged down black children. The public schools have been called the "Great Equalizer", but who wants to be equal with failure?

The public schools have been a major battle ground for the Civil Rights movement and Black Americans should be applauded for what they have accomplished in this regard. Unfortunately, they were swimming in the sea of racism and climbed aboard the public school Titanic which was already sinking. Now, Black Americans need to realize the gaping hole in the public schools cannot be plugged and they must rescue their children and board the lifeboats of alternative education.

Most black parents are like all loving parents. They do not want their children socialized with drug and alcohol using classmates.Likewise black parents are concerned about school violence and sexual predators. Black parents demand rigorous academics and high morals. Also, many blacks maintain that the public schools only provide superficial Black History while providing low expectations and both overt and subtle racism.

There is a wonderful option for thinking black parents to achieve true educational freedom without the daily lessons of servitude and conformity provided by the public schools.

Homeschooling is growing by leaps and bounds and it is difficult to keep up with the data, but in 2003 black children made up about 5 percent of homeschooled students. The rate of black homeschoolers is increasing faster than homeschoolers in general. Reports from media sources such as NPR, Newsday, CNN, BET, Reuters, FOX, the Chicago Tribune and others reveal that black families are choosing homeschooling by the thousands.

Referring to public schools, Gilbert Wilkerson (founder of the Network of Black Homeschoolers) proclaims, "We can do better. We have the courage, the strength, the spirituality, the economics--everything we need within the Black community." He also says that blacks do not have to settle for government education programs. "Why are we waiting around for somebody else...to give us a hand for something we can do ourselves? I know we can do better."

There is real diversity of reasons why blacks choose to homeschool.The black adults who homeschool are a mixture of single and dual parents, as well as grandparents. Also, the philosophies and learning strategies of black homeschoolers are as unique as the individual families.

The founders of the National Black Home Educators Association remind us that homeschooling is not a new idea. It was commonly done by everyone's ancestors. For blacks, after slavery, many black mothers did a wonderful job homeschooling their children.

A Google search for "black homeschool" will bring up an amazing number of resources for black parents who want to find a way to give their children the education they deserve. Also, Exodus Mandate-West Virginia will provide assistance upon request.

Granted, many blacks have great reservations about abandoning the public schools. Many black homeschooling pioneers have carefully thought through those and other issues.Joyce Jenkins (director of the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance) says that blacks "no longer want their children used as guinea pigs in educational experiments to see if their test scores will rise a percentage point or two."

The bottom line is that it is about parents protecting and doing what is best for their children. For the sake of their children, blacks marched up the public school steps. Now, the evidence is overwhelming that black children are at risk. Thankfully, blacks have the right to march back down the public school steps to education freedom.

Published January 16, 2008



Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by SKR) Rating:
As a public high school teacher I have observed that black students (particularly boys) fall terribly behind. Public schools aren't ignoring black students. They can't. The test scores are too important if nothing else. I've observed the problem to be some sort of society based mystery and its not just a black thing. These kids don't care about the sacrifices their great grandparents made to earn it. I've sat with a group of my boys and argued the math that, yes, a college degree will get you farther in life then selling drugs. Their white peers are only a half step behind them on the way down. On the up side I've found that black girls are the most motivated and most rewarding group to work with in general. We must find a way to reach ALL of our boys and teach them the value of respect and hard work.
Comment #2 (Posted by Jim Billingsley) Rating:
A courageous letter that presents real solutions to a very real problem. It is not just black children who have been condemned to the irreclaimable government schools, but all children whose parents shirk their responsibility to provide their children an education grounded in truth. The government schools today are incompatable with any family whose values include: virtue, honesty, chastity, responsibility, and liberty.
Comment #3 (Posted by Joseph Mastropaolo) Rating:
The article is excellent but does not go far enough. The root reason that the public schools fail Black America is their monolithic teaching of evolution that portrays blacks as nearly apes. The public schools teach that Darwin was a great scientist. Well, here is what Darwin said: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." -- Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1874. p. 178. Black Americans should boycott the public schools until evolution is expelled.
Comment #4 (Posted by Dr. Bill Bray) Rating:
Karl has a message we all need to hear, and heed. Good stuff.
Comment #5 (Posted by EME) Rating:
As a home schooling mom, I am delighted to see black families leave government schools and begin to home school their children. This is a great article and I pray that it encourages more black Americans to join the exodus from the public school system.

He Gets It!!

Howard Stevenson who spoke last week in the Atlas/Wheelock series on the Education of Young Black Males turned out to be another outstanding presenter who had much to share with both his audiences. Now in its second year, this series has brought to Boston some of the best educators in higher education who understand the issues around the eduacation of Black male youth, and who have demonstrated effective strategies for improving their lives.

Stevenson is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and ran a five year research project at a disciplinary school in Philadelphia in which he woked on ways to help young men and women deal with anger. The project seized on moments of anger during the school day when staff members could help students process what they were feeling and explore alternatives.
“...entitled PLAAY (Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth), found that the impact of a cultural socialization intervention reduced the rejection sensitivity of the PLAAY youth compared to a control group. The intervention involved the culturally relevant teaching of emotional empowerment through athletic movement in basketball (TEAM), self-control in martial arts (MAAR), cultural pride reinforcement within a psycho-educational group (CPR), and bonding in family interventions (COPE) to help youth with histories of aggression to manage their anger within school settings. COPE (Community Outreach through Parent Empowerment) focused on identification and promotion of resilience of the parents of boys with histories of aggression.

Insights from the program were numerous;

Stevenson told both Monday’s and Tuesday’s audiences that if they were to take nothing else from the sessions, they should leave with the mantra “Boys not men”. He emphasized that these were kids in different developmental stages from ages 5 to 19, and too often they were treated like men and punished like men. Gloria Ladson Billings made the exaxct point in her session last month.

• Style matters- While it may seem to be an excess to some, it actually provides a way of making things work, either by providing an external or internal cover. Style is particularly important in young black male culture.
  
  
• How we manage hypervulnerability is important. Young black males are particularly vulnerable to slights whether they are racially motivated or not, and need help in knowing how to maqnage them.
  
  
• In Catch 22 ,“you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t”; Stevenson felt these kids were in Catch 33; “you’re damned even if you don’t do anything.
  
  
• Black boys need to know that they are often not being treated as an individual but as representatives of a stereotype. This changes the effectiveness of their response. If they are being treated as men and as a threat, bravado may be counter productive-even if iy feels good.
  
  
• Get them to buy your arguement. Don’t just tell them but let them make their case for what they think should happen, and then present your case to them. If they buy it, great; if not, at least they’ve heard your take.
  
  
• Fear of Calamity-not to fear something that is dangerous is unhealthy

It was clear that Stevenson understands the life of the Black male, and the issues he constantly faces. He presented this environment clearly and cogently, stating things as they are, and coming up with specific ways to counteract them.
He gets it!!!

Howard C. Stevenson



Associate Professor & Chair, Applied Psychology and Human Development Division

Education
1980: B.A., Psychology and Sociology, Eastern College
1985: M.A., Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary
1985: Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology

Areas of Expertise
African-American psychology
At-risk youth and high-risk boys
Family and parental engagement
Racial integration and re-segregation

Professional Biography
Dr. Stevenson is an associate professor and director of the Professional Counseling and Psychology Program (PCAP) in the Applied Psychology and Human Development Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1994 to 2002, he was Faculty Master of the W. E. B. DuBois College House at Penn. In 1993, Dr. Stevenson received the W. T. Grant Foundation’s Faculty Scholar Award, a national research award given to only five researchers per year which funds five years of research. In 1994, Dr. Stevenson was a Presidential Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, where he participated with 35 other community activists and researchers from 30 countries to present their community health intervention projects. In 1995, Dr. Stevenson served as a member of a 12-member academic panel to consult on the development of a National Strategic Action Plan for African-American Males, sponsored by the National Drug Control Policy Office in the Office of the President. Dr. Stevenson has 20 years of experience as a clinical supervisor and therapist in family and child psychotherapy. For three years, he served as an administrator, a clinical supervisor, and a family therapy trainer in residential treatment centers for emotionally disturbed adolescents in the State of Delaware’s Division of Child Mental Health. Currently, he consults with various community-based mental health and social work agencies.

Research Interests and Current Projects
His research and consultation work identify cultural strengths that exist within families and seek to integrate those strengths in interventions to improve the psychological adjustment of children and adolescents and families. From 1998 to 2003, he directed two research projects that underscored themes of cultural relevance and empowerment and were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The first, entitled PLAAY (Preventing Long-term Anger and Aggression in Youth), found that the impact of a cultural socialization intervention reduced the rejection sensitivity of the PLAAY youth compared to a control group. The intervention involved the culturally relevant teaching of emotional empowerment through athletic movement in basketball (TEAM), self-control in martial arts (MAAR), cultural pride reinforcement within a psycho-educational group (CPR), and bonding in family interventions (COPE) to help youth with histories of aggression to manage their anger within school settings. COPE (Community Outreach through Parent Empowerment) focused on identification and promotion of resilience of the parents of boys with histories of aggression. The second project involves the Success of African American Students in Independent Schools (SAAS) and was co-investigated by Drs. Margaret Beale Spencer and Edith G. Arrington. This project involved understanding the protective role of racial identity and racial socialization processes in the development of emotional coping strategies for African-American students and families in predominantly White independent schools.

Courses Taught
AFAM 310: Contemporary Issues of Identity and Community Focused Research
EDUC 522: African American Psychology
EDUC 557: Interaction Processes with Adolescents
EDUC 782: Psychological Intervention with Youth
EDUC 784: Psychological Consultation

Selected Publications
Hughes, D. L., Johnson, D., Smith, E., Rodriguez, J., Stevenson, H. C., & Spicer, P. (in press). Parents’ ethnic/racial socialization practices: A review of research and directions for future study. Developmental Psychology.

Hall, D. M., and Stevenson, H. C. (in press). Double jeopardy: Being African American and “doing Diversity” in independent schools. Teachers College Record.

Fantuzzo, J., Stevenson, H., Abdul Kabir, S., & Perry, M. (in press). An investigation of a community-based intervention for socially isolated parents with a history of child maltreatment. Journal of Family Violence.

Davis, G. Y., & Stevenson, H. C. (2006).Racial socialization experiences and symptoms of depression among Black youth. Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Cassidy, E. F. & Stevenson, H. C. (2005). They wear the mask: Hypermasculinity and hypervulnerability among African American males in an urban remedial disciplinary school context. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, 11(4),53–74.

Stevenson, H. C., McNeil, J. D., Herrero-Taylor, T., & Davis, G. Y. (2005). Influence of neighborhood cultural diversity on the racial socialization experiences of Black youth. Journal of Black Psychology, 31(3), 273–290.

Playing with Anger: Engaging the Emotional Lives of Black Boys in Schools

Free lecture: Monday, December 10, 2007, 4:30-6:30 p.m.
All day workshop: Tuesday, December 11, 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Howard Stevenson
Associate Professor and Director of the Professional Counseling and Psychology Program (PCAP)
Applied Psychology and Human Development Division
University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education

Schools as Pipeline to Prison

Gloria Ladson-Billings suggestion(below) that schools by forcing kids out before graduation were funneling them into the prison system seems to be true in Texas. Those dropouts are most often Black young men, who had first been assigned to Special education. A new report by Texas Appleseed provides the data to prove the hypothesis. Below is an editorial from the Houston Chronicle regarding the resuts of the report. The full report can be found at Texas Appleseed

Editorial
Nov. 22, 2007, 7:37PM
Prison track
Texas has to make schools safe for learning without turning misbehaving students into criminals
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Something went horribly wrong after Texas decided to crack down on mayhem in public schools by
mandating zero tolerance for weapons, drugs and violence on campus. Given broad discretion to
remove unruly pupils from class, teachers and administrators restored order. But they also created a terribly efficient fast track to prison for
a shocking number of Texas schoolchildren.
According to an analysis of statewide data for 2001-2006 and thorough studies of more than a dozen Texas school districts, the number of
students suspended and the number removed to alternative discipline campuses skyrocketed after the Legislature's 1995 overhaul of school
discipline laws. This, the public interest law group Texas Appleseed states, has caused a "school-to-prison pipeline" that puts inordinate
numbers of youngsters on a path to dropping out of school and into the juvenile justice system. The far end of the pipe pours into Texas'
massive adult prison system.
Appleseed's report, "Texas' School-to-Prison Pipeline, The Impact of School Discipline and Zero Tolerance," argues that schools that suspend
and expel students to Disciplinary Alternative Education Programs for minor misbehavior not covered by the zero-tolerance mandates
unwittingly funnel kids into this life-stunting pipeline. Infractions that have gotten children suspended or expelled include profanity, rough
play, bringing prescription medicine to school and disrupting class.
For many at-risk youths, suspensions lead to lost academic ground and more behavior problems. Once in a DAEP, students are five times
more likely than mainstream counterparts to drop out. The link to crime is clear: In Texas, one in three juveniles in a Texas Youth
Commission lockup is a dropout. Dropouts comprise 80 percent of the adult prison population.
The school-to-prison pipeline is filled with black, Hispanic and special education students, who are far more likely to be given discretionary
referrals for discipline than their numbers in the school population would predict. Also, contends the American Civil Liberties Union, pressure
to do well on high-stakes standardized tests pressures schools to suspend poor academic performers in order to raise overall scores.
Much of this damage is avoidable: Fully two-thirds of Texas students sent from their school to a DAEP campus are transferred at campus
officials' discretion. (The remaining third are mandatory removals under state law.) What's more, the harm is haphazard. Some school
districts employ discretionary referrals at much higher rates than others, so where a child goes to school, rather than the offense, is a better
predictor of whether a student ends up at an alternative campus.
Groups such as Texas Zero Tolerance, a statewide organization to reform public school disciplinary codes, complain that schools have taken
zero tolerance to extremes, often involving police in minor student misconduct — even in elementary school. Students are being arrested at
school for breaking campus rules and prosecuted in court. Schools fail to immediately notify parents when their children are interrogated by
police.
School districts can improve this grim picture by employing research-based strategies and offering teachers more classroom management
training. Parents must be more involved in their children's education, and schools should provide them the tools to do so, informing parents
right away about behavior issues.
Appleseed says it will urge lawmakers to improve oversight over alternative education programs to ensure that minimum education standards
are enforced, and to intervene at schools that make inordinate numbers of disciplinary referrals. Furthermore, lawmakers should revive a bill
that passed in the House last session but died in the Senate that would have made it mandatory for districts to consider a student's intent
when determining punishment. Such a law might have kept a young Katy Independent School District student out of the criminal justice
system for writing "I love Alex" in small letters on a school wall.
Texas can do better. Schools can be safe for learning without turning students into criminals for minor infractions, exacerbating an out-of-
control dropout problem and setting kids who are merely unruly on a path toward prison.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Gloria Ladson-Billings
Part II

The second leg of CRP’s 3 legged stool is Cultural Competence.

Cultural Competence

teacher understands culture and its role in education

teacher takes responsibility for learning about student’s culture and community

teacher uses student’s culture as basis for learning

teacher promotes a flexible use of students’ local, national, and global cultures.

In a Culturally relevant teacher’s classroom

the teacher recognizes self as a cultural being

the teacher recognizes student’s culture as a resource for learning

the teacher links student learning to student’s culture

the teacher avails self of opportunities to learn about and from student culture

the teacher serves as a “culture broker” between the school and the community

(Poor people won’t come to school to sit through long meetings. If they have a task to do, they’ll happily do it)
(middle class people are in school appearing to be helping, but are there for reconnaissance; checking out who the good teachers are)


The third leg of CRP is Socio-political Consciousness

America is an oligarchy-run by corporations

the teachers knows the larger socio-political context of the school community

the teacher plans and implements academic experiences that connect students to the larger context

the teacher believes that students’ success has consequences for his/her own future and quality of life

the teacher has an investment in the public good

The CRP classroom with socio-political consciousness
1.Teacher understands the large socio-political context in which schooling takes place
2. Teacher views his or her work as transcending the classroom
3. Teacher understands that students’ cultural, ethnic, economic, language, backgrounds impacts their social positions
4. Teacher links students with broader cultural identities and sense of personhood

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING ALL STUDENTS WELL

Our children are educable.

When students are treated as competent, they are likely to demonstrate competence

When teachers provide instructional “scaffolding” students can move from where they are, to where they need to be.
the focus of the classroom must be instructional

Real education is about extending students’ thinking and abilities.

Effective teaching involves in-depth knowledge of both the student and the subject matter.

The above 6 principles of teaching need to guide us all in our work as teachers.It is not an easy job and we need people with real intellectual passion to be in the classroom.