This editorial appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our September 19th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The Charlotte Observer. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.
End complacency; more can be done to help these students
Some people were uncomfortable with how he said it, but the core of educator Steve Perry’s message in Charlotte Thursday should brook little disagreement. That message is this: Too many African American students, especially males, are failing in our public schools and not enough is being done to address the problem.
That’s not a startling assessment. This editorial board has been banging that drum for several years. Graduation rates, dropout rates and performance on state tests attest to the problem. Perry, speaking at a community breakfast sponsored by MeckEd, a local education advocacy group, sought to shake people out of complacency on the matter with blunt talk, declaring that such failure shows that people don’t care enough to provide those students with good schools. He also pointed a harsh finger in general at administrators, teachers who make excuses for failure, even custodians who don’t keep schools clean.
Of course, many people and circumstances figure into this problem. That includes poor principals (Perry, a principal himself, didn’t highlight that issue), unmotivated students and uninvolved parents. And clearly home and school environments matter in terms of adequately preparing students for school, and providing the resources to help them succeed.
But those reasons for achievement problems are not excuses for failing to effectively tackle them.
Perry, a CNN commentator and principal of a Hartford, Conn., magnet school whose population is predominantly black, got a lot right in making that point. But he did get some things wrong.
The graduation rate for black males in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is not the 39 percent figure he quoted. That is from 2007-08 statistics. Neither CMS nor the state has calculated rates for black males for 2011-12 but the year before – 2010-11 – showed progress: The black male graduation rate was 57 percent, 4.5 percentage points higher than the year before.
There was a yawning gap, though, between that rate and the grad rate for other groups in CMS. The rate for black females was 74.5 percent; the rate for white males was 80.8 percent; the rate for white females was 86.9 percent. CMS black males also fell behind the statewide rate for black males in 2010-11 – 64.2 percent.
Those disparities also show up in performance on state tests. Just 66.7 percent of CMS black males passed state tests in 2011-12, that was down from 70.4 percent in 2010-11. Black females saw an increase in performance from 74.9 percent to 76 percent as did white females (from 94.5 percent to more than 95 percent) and white males (from 94 percent to 94.3 percent).
So Perry is right. There is work to do.
But his primary prescription – shuttering failing schools – is a popular reform idea that has a mixed track record in many places it’s been tried. What has proven to help, research shows, is highly effective teachers, early childhood education, more time in class and emotional and physical support services including tutoring, mentoring and counseling.
And some school systems have found success with targeted programs. Neighboring Guilford County Schools set up an Early Middle College High School, a collaborative effort with N.C. A&T State University. It is an all-male high school that’s almost entirely black. Its record of achievement? 85 percent passed state tests in 2010-11; and 94 percent passed in 2011-12. The school is predominantly low-income, and 93 percent of its low-income students performed at or above grade level on state tests. Its graduation rate? 96 percent.
Getting those kinds of results requires a whole lot more effort and commitment. Perry’s kick-in-the- pants talk was a good reminder of that.
*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.
Do you have a comment? Please post your response below:
A 57% graduation rate is still failing that’s a little greater than half this is not acceptable and should not be tolerated this is why charter schools are beneficial.
If you want to begin real school reform, begin with our youngest students.
According to a special report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 67% of American children are scoring below proficient reading levels at the beginning of 4th grade on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. Of these, 34% read at the basic level and 33% read at the below basic level. One in six children who are not reading proficiently in third grade fail to graduate from high school on time, four times the rate for children with proficient third grade reading skills. “These scores are profoundly disappointing to all of us who see school success and high school graduation as beacons in the battle against intergenerational poverty” (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2010).
At the beginning of fourth grade it is important for students to have achieved a solid foundation of early learning skills. Proficiency at this age is an alarmingly accurate predictor of learning success throughout school and life. And yet only one-third of our U.S. students reach levels of proficiency that predict successful lifelong learning.
The news is worse if you are poor. 83% of children in low-income families (Hernandez, 2011) have reading skills below the proficient level. Overall, 22% of children who have lived in poverty (for at least one year) do not graduate from high school on time, compared to 6% of those who have never been poor. For children who have lived more than half of their childhood in poverty, this rate rises to 32% (Hernandez, 2011). This rate is 16 times greater than the 2% dropout rate among proficient readers who have never been poor.
If children do not gain the skills and habits necessary to succeed in school by age eight, they are more likely to struggle to perform well and be less motivated for future learning in middle and high schools. They will also struggle to develop the higher order thinking, communication, analytic and social skills that are the essential for success in life (Foundation for Child Development, 2011).