Contemporary Report

As I ponder the reports on the persistence of the achievement gap between whites and minorities in America’s public schools, I worry that the pundits are overly zealous in expecting to see public schools show revolutionary results in an evolutionary process. I came to believe that it takes roughly thirty years for cultural changes to occur in the US mainstream while watching the receptiveness to civil rights evolve into the popular culture. Today, I am troubled by the potential need for massive retirements in public school management and teachers to foster tomorrow’s massive minority groups socioeconomic upward mobility. We may have a chance to reshape the national psyche on the human resource valuation of minorities’ academic capabilities; however, it may only occur through tomorrow’s emerging leadership’s discontinuing some staid beliefs of the past. The No Child Left Behind law today signals that the psyche for new public school administrations and teachers is to accept that the nation now values all of its children. It is currently unacceptable to merely write off children because of race, being disadvantaged, and so on. History might some day record that President George Bush may have been the catalyst for the long term enfranchisement of minority group children in the American Economic Mainstream.

On the other hand, Sam Dillon wrote an October 20, 2005 article for The New York Times entitled, Bush Education Law Shows Mixed Results in First Test. This article reminded me of the early days of assessing socioeconomic progress in the civil rights epoch when many blacks had expectations that progress needed to be immediate even though many minority people possessed the native ability but they lacked the managerial background to handle senior level managerial jobs. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program may have exacerbated this immediacy black leadership urge by creating a host of jobs where folks became coordinators, directors, and executive directors. These social program jobs carried little mainstream legitimacy with the portability of experience they provided. Minorities were now carrying briefcases instead of merely working in muddy trenches or doing menial jobs. I felt that these pseudo executive positions may have been simply a way to offer apparent upward mobility rewards to former civil rights operatives who were on the frontline in the civil rights movement.

The portion of the New York Times article that is disquieting is, “. . .Gage Kingsbury, director of research at the Northwest Educational Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group based in Oregon that carries out testing in 1,500 school districts, said the results raised new concerns about the feasibility of reaching the law's goal of full proficiency for all students by 2014.

“Fourth-grade math students showed some of the most rapid progress in closing the achievement gap between black and white students, Mr. Kingsbury said. Extrapolating from those results, he said, black and white students would probably be performing at equal proficiency levels by 2034. Other results, like eighth-grade reading, suggest it will take 200 years or more for the gap to close, he said.”

I feel Kingsbury’s assessment suggests that he lacks an appreciation for evolution in human conditions. In forty years, a black may be seen on CNBC television business channel as the chairman of the board of directors of a major corporation. I believe there is an educational trigger level that once achieved minority student advancement will become an economic mainstream expectation. I sense that the elevation of nonwhite minorities into the economic mainstream is being driven today by the fear that America’s standard of living is currently eroding from its workforce being noncompetitive in the global marketplace. Therefore, there is a legitimate business need to diminish the role of altruism as a rationale for educating minorities and adopting definitive goals and timetables to accomplish a minority educational enfranchisement strategy.

But for minorities in the economic mainstream to reach corporate chairmen, cabinet members in national, state, and local government, civic leaders, and so on, it required career development time. Some might argue that these minorities’ ascension up the socioeconomic ladder was an evolutionary process underpinned by the civil rights struggle. Today, we see the ascension of women to very prominent positions, some might argue, from the efforts of the women’s movement. What I suggest is that two years worth of data on the No Child Left Behind law is simply insufficient data on which to make long term prognostications. The civil rights movement liberated the “Talented Tenth” in Black America, but it ignored the masses, so No Child Left Behind may offer hope to poor minority children with academic potential to become tomorrow’s industrious citizens instead of their merely being written off as modern day chattel in today’s public school systems.

Although we are not seeing drastic educational progress reports today, I feel that the infrastructure for a paradigm shift in modus operandi in many minority communities is starting to dawn. At present, the National Basketball Association requires that their players come to work looking like business persons and not inner-city hip-hop thugs. One might expect that the long term fall out from this sports decision is to foster an atmosphere where many kids in the black community learn to adopt Mainstream American values when they are thinking about seeking employment. This NBA decision may defrock the Hip-Hop culture, now a mainstay in many tough American communities. The gangster persona may dissipate in a couple of years, presenting an opening for mainstream values to once again guide the vision of tomorrow’s inner city poor children.

One of the key problems in bridging the achievement gap is that the national psyche embraces the belief that black kids are academically inferior and many black children may have been duped into believing that their academic failure is some sort of badge of honor. Therefore, African-American children desiring to be academically successful are vilified for acting white. There needs to be a national effort to make being smart a badge of honor and vilifying ignorance as a guarantee that one is trapped in poverty.

I recently wrote to an African American university professor asking for help in enfranchising the virtues of being smart in African American communities. My note read, “I am working on an EDD at the University of Delaware. I wrote a book, Teaching College Algebra Reversing the Effects of Social Promotion that was published by ScarecrowEducation this year. I am currently working on a new book, Demystifying Business Calculus: Teaching with a Practical Business Mindset, where I was able to encourage business students at Delaware State University to seek excellence during my tenure. What I believe is needed today is to figure out a way to make being smart a status symbol in the Black Community. I feel that Brown Vs Board of Education gave us public school desegregation and not integration; therefore, Black children are being viewed as educational chattel. What is disquieting is the acceptances of the role of educational chattel may mean that Black students find themselves enchanted with failure. What is needed is for Black scholars [such] as yourself to help us better understand how to change this educational crisis.

“When I was a child the old folks taught that we needed to be twice as good as a White to be equal. The old folks gave us a clear excellence bar. Perhaps Black America needs a new excellence bar. I trust you will provide us some direction on excellence returning to the Black community.”

I see the second issue in bridging the achievement gap is the ability of the teacher to form an emotional link with the students through showing them that you truly care about their upward mobility. I tell my students that I am here to teach you and not to fail you. I believe that everyone can learn and you must convince me that you can’t. I further state: No one has yet convinced me that they can’t learn. I follow this statement with a clear set of does and don’ts which is especially important for kids coming out of a tough inner city background where people admire strong individuals and run over wimps.

My third issue in bridging the achievement gap is appreciating that in the case of many inner city children their parents’ net education (that they can use to find meaningful employment or handle their day to day business) may be between fourth and sixth grade. Some of these parents were teenagers when they became parents, so they may have a gross education level between ninth and eleventh grade; some may have even gotten a high school diploma through social promotion. These parental high school dropout or social promotion scenarios are troubling because these parents may possess bad memories of the public school system. One ought not to expect these poorly educated parents to be able to provide academic assistance for their children who may be acting up in school because they feel disenfranchised in their classes. I believe every effort must be made to help capable inner city parents to receive a bachelor degree level college education, so they become neighborhood role models and their education kindles hope of a better tomorrow versus allowing the enchantment of neighborhood blight to perpetuate today’s despair. These educated neighborhood parents should be able to better communicate with the teachers on a peer level that may hopefully diminish the impact of misconceptions on the motives of tomorrow’s public school teachers and administrators when it comes to teaching black children. Furthermore, educated black parents can tutor their own children and their working hard on school assignments at home may evolve into an academic expectation for their offspring in public schools.

My fourth issue on bridging the achievement gap is to demystify science and mathematics to where they become areas of pursuit for capable children in African American communities. I carried a double major in mathematics and physics in undergraduate school and people used the phrases like heavy to describe my joy of science. I needed an additional course to get both degrees, so I graduated in mathematics but I went to graduate school in physics. As an undergraduate at Delaware State University in the Nineteen Sixties I saw a number of students who came with academic backgrounds where they were able to major in science and mathematics. Many DSU students came from former racially segregated school systems where their black teachers had high expectations for their students and the students rose to the teachers’ academic goals. The black teachers did not intimate to black students that science and mathematics were beyond their reach through academic neglect.

Today, I believe that for public schools not giving black children the proper preparation for careers in mathematics and science is tantamount to creating urban illiteracy reservations where the economic mainstream is offering tacit approval to black American socioeconomic deprivation through educational exclusion. Therefore, I am in agreement with Robert P. Moses in his book Radical Equations when he espouses that understanding algebra is a new literacy requirement for the Twenty-First Century. Nevertheless, I am distressed because I believe ballyhooing Moses’ civil rights successes of the past may have demonized his educational motives when it comes to promoting his educational agenda to white teachers and administrations. I could not quite understand Moses Algebra Project from reading his book program, so I can only give my blessing to his overall goal of algebra literacy.

My fifth issue in bridging the achievement gap is to look for thinking that I feel is worthy of my writing newspaper articles to share this information with the black community. Lisa D. Delpit offers some excellent sound bits for commentaries in her 1999 Fall Forum speech hand out:

Ten Factors Essential to Success in Urban Classrooms

Do not teach less content to poor, urban children, but understand their brilliance and teach more.
Whatever methodology or instructional program is used, demand critical thinking.
Assure that all children gain access to "basic skills," the conventions and strategies that are essential to success in American education.
Challenge racist societal views of the competence and worthiness of the children and their families, and help them to do the same.
Recognize and build on strengths.
Use familiar metaphors and experiences from the children's world to connect what they already know to school knowledge.
Create a sense of family and caring in the service of academic achievement.
Monitor and assess needs and then address them with a wealth of diverse strategies.
Honor and respect the children’s home and ancestral culture(s).
Foster a sense of children's connection to community - to something greater than themselves.

I agree with Delpit’s factors. I think she offers a recipe for bridging the achievement gap in the statements above. As a teacher who focuses on teaching college students from inner city backgrounds, Delpit’s comments are like axioms that I follow in my classrooms. I find these axioms allow me to form an emotional link with the students, regardless of race where they will do as I ask and I can chastise them for nonperformance or bad behavior without creating resentment. Since I do not see the need for special techniques required to teach black children, I have very little energy around Gloria Ladson-Billings, “The DreamKeepers.”

However, I would add to Delpit’s list to cover college students needing background enhancement:

1. Classroom decorum must be adhered to at all times.

2. Teacher intimidation is unacceptable at all times

3. Class attendance is a necessary condition for achieving academic success.

4. Excuses are no substitute for academic performance.

5. Do not take courses for which your background is insufficient—take remedial or lower level courses for proper preparation first.

6. Dropping courses because they become challenging is unsatisfactory—academic tenacity is a necessary condition for graduating from college in a reason period of time.

7. You can not cram for mathematics examinations—you want to do a bit of mathematics everyday.

8. You must learn to read the mathematics textbook and it will become your friend if you do not learn to read the book it is your enemy.

9. Definitions are like recipes that tell you what you can do and not do.

Since I do not accept the idea that there is a special teaching effort for African American students, I espouse sound teaching principles transcend race, ethnicity, and so on. I take that mindset into my classes at Cheyney University (predominately black) and Delaware County Community College (predominately white). At Cheyney University, I have basic mathematics and elementary algebra students doing word problems in every class meeting and my tests are all word problems. In the past, word problems may have been something to be avoided by many students. I teach reading the textbook as the norm, so word problems are played down and taught as just another section of the book—students are required to do the advance problems in each section that usually encompasses the word problems.

At DCCC, I teach a survey of mathematics college level course that was to be taught on an individualized study format where students are given lessons by computer, video tape or they use their textbooks to pass a series of examinations. The key role of the teacher is to answer questions that students may have. My experience with computer-aided mathematics courses are they have Achilles heels where students must know how to read first, students may never really learn to handle the data well, and students may not complete their assignments in the time allotted. I am a firm believer that handling the data with pencil and paper offers the students insight into the material. I also feel that the students must have a de facto course pace set for them until they reach their academic comfort level when their native talent will then guide their efforts for the remainder of the semester. On the other hand, if students are not given this initial guidance, they may flounder and never complete the course work.

DCCC allowed me to alter the course structure where I lectured or have students work at blackboard assignments for the first twenty minutes of the course. One student, who did not know she had high mathematics capability until we chatted, completed the semester requirements with six one hundreds and one eighty-eight on her required examinations on October 20, 2005. My mathematics supervisor will meet with this young lady on October 25, 2005 to offer her options on what she can do with the remainder of the semester. As a mathematics teacher, I look for students in each class that have the potential to do higher level mathematics; then I strongly encourage them to take advance courses. My DCCC appraisal for this semester offers some idea of how my teaching philosophy works in a predominately white environment. I will offer a couple of comments from the appraisal:

q The method of instruction was appropriate in meeting the objectives. Yes. Most students are right where they should be or ahead of schedule.

q Strengths: Sherman Miller has a genuine interest in his students. He is concerned for them and wants them to be successful. The environment in his classroom is conducive to learning. He seems to have a very good rapport with his students. He has the fundamentals to be an excellent instructor in the individualized format.

In summary, I believe the achievement gap is closing because structural change is underway in the black community and the mindset in the public school teacher and administration cadre is now evolving according to The No Child Left Behind paradigm of academic inclusion for all students regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, and so on. Inner city parent involvement in public school education may become more pronounced if bachelor level degree college education opportunities are made available to these parents who can then help their own children and also be academic role models in their community. A national effort needs to take place that canonizes student academic excellence and vilifies the desire to wear dumbness as a badge of honor in America’s inner city and poor neighborhoods. The thug culture ought to be demonized and its disciples relegated to persona non grata in the national media. Finally, we want to be mindful that the educational crisis did not occur in one or two years, so we should not expect unrealistic progress in a couple of years of attempting to repair it.

References

Delpit, L. 1999. Ten Factors Essential to Success in Urban Classroom. Oakland, CA: CSENational. http://ces.edgateway.net/pub/ces_docs/fforum/1999/speeches/delpit_speech99.html

Dillon, S. October 20, 2005. Bush Education Law Shows Mixed Results in First Test. The New York Times nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/national/20exam.html?ex=1130472000&en=1844f7425dc6eccc&ei=5059&partner=AOL

Ladson-Billings, G. 1994. The DreamKeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. Tossey-Bass Inc: San Francisco, CA.

Moses, R. 2001. Radical Equations. Beacon Press: Boston, MA.