Saturday, August 28, 2010
Yes We Can!
Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education reveals that the overall 2007/8 graduation rate for Black males in the U.S. was only 47 percent. Half of the states have graduation rates for Black male students below the national average. The report highlights concerns that New York's graduation rate for its Regents diploma is only 25 percent for Black male students. New York City, the district with the nation's highest enrollment of Black students, only graduates 28 percent of its Black male students with Regents diplomas on time. Overall, each year over 100,000 Black male students in New York City alone do not graduate from high school with their entering cohort. These statistics—and the other alarming data in this fourth biennial report— point to a national education and economic crisis.
Without targeted investments to provide the core, research-proven resources to help Black male students succeed in public education, they are being set up to fail.
The report highlights the success of New Jersey’s Abbott plan, which demonstrates that when equitable resources are available to all students, systemic change at the state level can yield significant results. New Jersey is now the only state with a significant Black population with a greater than 65 percent high school graduation rate for Black male students.
By providing the public with this data, we hope to continue to spark action from advocacy and philanthropic communities to hold policymakers and school districts accountable for facilitating changes needed to provide Black male students the opportunity to learn and succeed.
from: http://www.blackboysreport.org/
To view the report:
click on link: http://www.blackboysreport.org/bbreport.pdf
Without targeted investments to provide the core, research-proven resources to help Black male students succeed in public education, they are being set up to fail.
The report highlights the success of New Jersey’s Abbott plan, which demonstrates that when equitable resources are available to all students, systemic change at the state level can yield significant results. New Jersey is now the only state with a significant Black population with a greater than 65 percent high school graduation rate for Black male students.
By providing the public with this data, we hope to continue to spark action from advocacy and philanthropic communities to hold policymakers and school districts accountable for facilitating changes needed to provide Black male students the opportunity to learn and succeed.
from: http://www.blackboysreport.org/
To view the report:
click on link: http://www.blackboysreport.org/bbreport.pdf
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
It's Time!
We all realize that our most precious gifts to the world are being marginalized and disenfranchised here in the Western Front. Black and Latino males are disproportinately finding homes in today's prison cells instead of the world's Fortune 500's. I am on a mission to help change the landscape of how we reach and teach our young men.
The report below gives us a taste of what we see in our schools. It also opens up our eyes to the level of work we need to invest to eliminate that Prison Pipeline all together.
For over five years, The Schott Foundation for Public Education has tracked the performance of Black males in public education systems across the nation.* Past efforts by Schott were designed to raise the nation’s consciousness about the critical education issues affecting Black males; low graduation rates, high rates of placement in special education, and the disproportionate use of suspensions and expulsions, to name a few.
The 2008 edition, Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males, details the drastic range of outcomes for Black males, especially the tragic results in many of the nation’s biggest cities. Given Half a Chance also deliberately highlights the resource disparities that exist in schools attended by Black males and their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. The 2008 Schott report documents that states and most districts with large Black enrollments educate their White, non-Hispanic children, but do not similarly educate the majority of their Black male students. Key examples:
More than half of Black males did not receive diplomas with their cohort in 2005/2006.
The state of New York has 3 of the 10 districts with the lowest graduation rates for Black males.
The one million Black male students enrolled in the New York, Florida, and Georgia public schools are twice as likely not to graduate with their class as to do so.
Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Wisconsin graduated fewer Black males with their peer group than the national average.
Illinois and Wisconsin have nearly 40-point gaps between how effectively they educate their Black and White non-Hispanic male students.
These trends, and others cited in Given Half a Chance, are evidence of a school-age population that is substantively denied an opportunity to learn, and of a nation at risk.
* Black students are defined by the U.S. Department of Education as “students having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa as reported by their school.” Data in the Report are based on information from the U. S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and Office for Civil Rights, state departments of education and local school districts.
from: http://www.blackboysreport.org/
The report below gives us a taste of what we see in our schools. It also opens up our eyes to the level of work we need to invest to eliminate that Prison Pipeline all together.
For over five years, The Schott Foundation for Public Education has tracked the performance of Black males in public education systems across the nation.* Past efforts by Schott were designed to raise the nation’s consciousness about the critical education issues affecting Black males; low graduation rates, high rates of placement in special education, and the disproportionate use of suspensions and expulsions, to name a few.
The 2008 edition, Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males, details the drastic range of outcomes for Black males, especially the tragic results in many of the nation’s biggest cities. Given Half a Chance also deliberately highlights the resource disparities that exist in schools attended by Black males and their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. The 2008 Schott report documents that states and most districts with large Black enrollments educate their White, non-Hispanic children, but do not similarly educate the majority of their Black male students. Key examples:
More than half of Black males did not receive diplomas with their cohort in 2005/2006.
The state of New York has 3 of the 10 districts with the lowest graduation rates for Black males.
The one million Black male students enrolled in the New York, Florida, and Georgia public schools are twice as likely not to graduate with their class as to do so.
Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Wisconsin graduated fewer Black males with their peer group than the national average.
Illinois and Wisconsin have nearly 40-point gaps between how effectively they educate their Black and White non-Hispanic male students.
These trends, and others cited in Given Half a Chance, are evidence of a school-age population that is substantively denied an opportunity to learn, and of a nation at risk.
* Black students are defined by the U.S. Department of Education as “students having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa as reported by their school.” Data in the Report are based on information from the U. S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and Office for Civil Rights, state departments of education and local school districts.
from: http://www.blackboysreport.org/
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Brothers of Distinction
I believe that it is time that I revamp this blog and begin to chronicle the important moments of my history. Time is moving forward and I am evolving in the midst of it. My mission is to open up a Boys Academy so that we can educate, empower, and encourage our young men to become "distinctive" global citizens and leaders who will change the landscape of the world we live in. It is time that I and "like-minded" urban scientists collaborate and make the movement come alive!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Education For All--Including the President
The International Reading Association's President, Dr. Pamela Edwards of Georgia (US), and first African American female president, charged us with looking at the Education For All (EFA)Goals for improving international education for all students.Six internationally agreed education goals aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.
Goal 1 - Expand early childhood care and education
Goal 2 - Provide free and compulsory primary education for all
Goal 3 - Promote learning, life skills for young people and adults
Goal 4 - Increase adult literacy by 50 per cent
Goal 5 - Achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015
Goal 6 - Improve the quality of education
Link: http://www.unesco.org/en/efareport/
Now, we had a chance to travel with Dr. Pamela Edwards to Zanzibar, wonderful island outside of Dar es Salaam. We thought it would such an honor to spend time with a professional woman from the south who was just selected as President-Elect of such a prominent organization in education. However, her attitude and demeanor toward the people of Africa was less than digestible to say the least.
My mother told me that if I did not have anything nice to say..do not say anything at all. So, I am going to stop here.
However, I would love to meet with her again, in the future to share how her overall presence depicted a very poor outlook on the African American community and educational profession as a whole. For once, I can say I was truly embarrassed to be part of the African American community.
6th Annual Pan African Reading Conference
The 6th Pan African Reading for All Conference took place at the University of Dar es Salaam from August 10th thru the 14th. Teachers from all over the globe converged on the campus to strategize how we can create meaningful and effective opportunities for students to become more literate.
Here are some questions I took away from the workshops that I attended:
* How can you remain effective in teaching class sizes of 40, 50, or more?
* What is literacy? And how do we make it accessible to all communities globally?
* How do you educate a child that has endured severe human conflicts and still motivate them to want to learn?
* What does professional development look like for African teachers versus the rest of the globe?
* What will it take to get Africa on the same common ground, educationally, as many of the other nations?
As I spoke with many African teachers and listened to their stories, I realized that many of them wanted the government and communities to support them with parental involvement, supplying adequate textbooks and spaces for children to learn, and opportunities to empower teachers with effective practices that are appropriate for the children they serve.
One of the biggest statements or questions that I took away from my time in the conference was:
Who's Voice Are We Going to Listen To?
Our children have so many obstacles to learning. They wake up in their own experiences and fight for survival; enter our classrooms and are expected to absorb material that is foreign to their identities; and go back to their own multi-layered lives wishing that someone would take the time to just listen to who they are and what they want for their own world.
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