In this Issue

America is failing its young Black boys. In metropolitan ghettos, rural villages and
midsized townships across the country, schools have become holding tanks for
populations of Black boys who have a statistically higher probability of walking the
corridors of prison than the halls of college. Across America, the problem of Black male
achievement seems intractable. We fail our Black sons more than any other racial or
ethnic group.
Volume 19, Number 3
Policy Evaluation &
Research Center
Fall 2011
POLICY NOTES
Ne ws f r o m t h e E T S Po l i c y I n f o r ma t i o n Ce n t e r
The achievement gaps that
exist today are an afront to a
society committed to equal
educational opportunity and are
a drag on the nations economy,
prosperity and competitiveness.
The large gap between Black
males and others exists before
these children start school
and continues throughout
their lifespan. This gap and the
particular plight of Black males
was the focus of two recent
ETS conferences that are
highlighted in this issue
of ETS Policy Notes.
The more recent conference, A
Strong Start: Positioning Young
Black Boys for Educational
Success, convened in partnership
with the Childrens Defense Fund,
took place at the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C., on June
14, 2011, and attracted more
than 350 educators, researchers,
practitioners and policymakers.
The conference focused attention
on the nations 3.5 million Black
males from birth to age nine.
(continued on page 15)
Addressing Achievement Gaps
Positioning Young Black Boys for Educational Success

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Frederick Douglass
2
The statistics are bleak.
1
Nationally, graduation rates for
Black teens teeter just under 50 percent. And in many
large, urban school districts, more than half of Black males
drop out of school.
Average Black male achievement falls far below that of
White and Asian boys. Only 12 percent of Black fourth-
grade boys are procient in reading, compared to 38
percent of White boys. Only 12 percent of Black eighth-
grade boys are procient in math, compared to 44
percent of White boys. By fourth grade, Black students
may be three full years behind their peers.
2
As we allow
this underclass to grow, our society and our democracy
is at risk. That is not meant as an overstatement, said ETS
President and CEO Kurt Landgraf. It really must be the
most challenging problem in American public education.
Children are sufering from a toxic cocktail
of poverty, illiteracy, racial discrimination
and massive incarceration that sentences
poor boys to dead-end and hopeless lives.
Marian Wright Edelman
The reasons for this are pervasive. Children are
suering from a toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial
discrimination and massive incarceration that sentences
poor boys to dead-end and hopeless lives, asserted
Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder of
the Childrens Defense Fund (CDF). It is a community
disaster. A national disaster. Black boys are always at the
bottom of the totem pole. We are here to change that.
Our goal today is to examine the challenges facing
young Black boys in America, said Michael Nettles, Senior
Vice President of the Policy Evaluation and Research
Center at ETS. We want to consider ways to position
this very vulnerable population for educational success
as early as possible in their educational careers.
The story for American Black boys can have a dierent
ending if society focuses its eorts on their education and
development, CDFs Edelman advised. Working together,
we can explore the challenges facing this population
and the opportunities to position young Black boys to
realize their potential. What is going on with our children
is not an act of God, but of adult choice, lamented
Edelman. We can learn from what we know how to do.
Edelman addressed the conference A Strong Start:
Positioning Young Black Boys for Educational Success
in Washington, D.C., at the National Press Club, on June
14, 2011. The conference, co-sponsored by ETS and CDF,
attracted more than 350 educators, researchers and
policymakers to confront the crisis faced by 3.5 million
Black boys from birth to age nine, and to identify and
highlight programs that are making a dierence.
This is the second in a series of conferences that ETS
has organized to look specically at the Black male
achievement gap. The rst, Climbing the Academic
Achievement Ladder: Promoting the Success of Black
Males, also covered in this issue of ETS Policy Notes,
took place at ETS headquarters in Princeton, N.J., on
November 13, 2010. ETS co-sponsored the event
with the New Jersey Department of Education and
with support from the Metropolitan Center for Urban
Education at NYUs Steinhardt School of Culture,
Education, and Human Development, and the Center
for Eective School Practices at Rutgers University.
This issue of ETS Policy Notes will weave together
highlights from both conferences, examining the
status of Black males in America as well as the important
roles that families, schools, communities and public
policy can play in improving this status. All contribute
to the perfect storm of educational and economic
negligence that society now must seek to counter.
The focus begins with the earliest achievement
gap noted at 9 months of age, and continues with
innovative programs that may alter the achievement
trajectory for these children. Finally, we will describe
an important initiative on which CDF and ETS are
collaborating that expands successful practice with
ETSs support of a CDF Freedom School in Newark, N.J.
1
In preparation for the June conference, data describing the rugged terrain that many Black males face during the course of their lives, from birth
through death, are presented in A Strong Start: Positioning Young Black Boys for Educational Success: A Statistical Prole. This publication is available at
http://www.ets.org/s/sponsored_events/pdf/16818_BlackMale_trifold3_WEB.pdf.
2
Sharon Lewis et al., A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools, Council of the Great
City Schools, October 2010.
3
Education and the Family
Families are critical, said Oscar Barbarin III, the Hertz
Endowed Chair in the Department of Psychology at
Tulane University. Families establish a home environment
and provide nurturing for children. Parents create
connectivity, Barbarin said, by exposing children to varied
experiences, expanding their knowledge and providing
the interpretive framework for their ongoing learning.
We recognize parents are the rst teachers, noted
Professor Vivian Gadsden, the William T. Carter Professor
of Child Development and Education at the University
of Pennsylvania, supporting Barbarins sentiments.
The most important factor in a childs upbringing is
whether the child is brought up in a loving, healthy,
supportive environment.
In the rst ve years of life, brain development occurs
faster than at any other time. During these years, the brain
is the most pliable, and vulnerable to inuences. The
relationships that babies build with others and the world
around them profoundly inuence their development and
life trajectory.
Complex skills build on these early, basic ones. An
ever-growing body of research tells us that executive
functioning skills, or soft skills, like self regulation,
persistence, motivation, condence are just as important
for school readiness as emerging cognitive skills, said
Rashanda Perryman, Senior Policy Associate with CDF.
Soft skills are also predictive of academic success. If
children have developed nurturing relationships, dynamic
language interactions, and have positive role models, they
will be set for school.
Yet not all students are ready. We know that the
achievement gap already exists when children start
school. But why? When do disparities begin? Why does
the gap emerge at all? asked Iheoma Iruka, a researcher
at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at
the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. According to
her analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study, a cognitive gap exists at 9 months of age, and
widens by 24 months. Thus, well before formal schooling
begins, the Black child is behind, and by fth grade, that
child lags by nearly two full years. Astonishingly, a gap
exists for Black boys of all income levels regardless
of poverty. The trend in reading scores for all children
compared with African-American boys is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Trends in Reading Scores
Source: Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 199899
(ECLS-K)
Of course, poverty exacerbates the problem. Children
in single-mother households constitute the poorest
demographic group in America. Yet the percentage
of Black babies born out of wedlock has continued to
rise, said Gadsden. From the late 1800s to the 1960s,
close to 70 percent of Black children were born to
married couples. According to the most recent data,
71 percent of Black children are born out of wedlock.
Aisha Ray, Senior Vice President for Academic Aairs
and Dean of Faculty at the Erikson Institute, reports that
research shows powerful eects of poverty from birth
to age 8, particularly in a few critical areas, like maternal
depression. When moms need to work more than one
job to meet nancial obligations, not only are they often
depressed, but time for children is squeezed. Reading
to a child and being warm and responsive to his or her
needs all compete for time. Yet, this is an issue not only
of maternal bonding, but of academic preparation.
Children whose mothers are responsive are more likely
to actively engage in their environment, have longer
attention spans, relate better to others, persevere
when frustrated, have higher tolerance for frustration
and be less anxious themselves, said Dr. Ray. These
are all factors for school success. Poor, young mothers
in particular need help. They nd it in Mississippi.
The Mississippi Delta is a snapshot of rural America,
cautioned the Reverend Anjohnette Gibbs, Project
Director for the Delta Early Learning Program (DELP),
4
an evidence-based home-visiting program that supports
young mothers and teaches them how to care for their
babies. Programs like this are urgently needed more
than 50 percent of single moms in the region are poor.
DELP provides in-home support for new mothers
during the rst days and weeks after childbirth,
connects new moms to resources and teaches them
important skills like reading to their babies. Indeed,
DELP is designed to strengthen the babys cognitive
development in ways that will better prepare them for
school. Seventy-ve percent of the infants in the programs
show that they function at or above level. Such work
is important to Reverend Gibbs: In 100 years, it wont
matter if you drove a Cadillac or a Chevy. It will matter
what we do for children. We consider a strong start
positioning young Black boys for educational success.
In 100 years, it wont matter if you drove a Cadillac
or a Chevy. It will matter what we do for children.
Reverend Anjohnette Gibbs
Fathers matter, too. Gadsdens National Center on Fathers
and Families conducts research on how a fathers presence
can contribute to the economic and social well-being
of a child. The presence of the father has documented
positive eects, maintained Gadsden. Committed and
responsible fathering during a childs infancy contributes
to emotional security, curiosity, and math and verbal
skills. Too often poverty and underemployment thwart
the best intentions. Often, young Black fathers view
their role as a traditional protector and breadwinner.
They describe a fatherhood that reects media
inuence, not personal experience, Gadsden added.
Television may be one culprit. Compared with other
groups, African-American boys, on average, watch
more television supplemented by video games. The
consequences are confusion of what a man is supposed
to be, said Barbarin. In unsupervised situations at
home, they get premature independence. Often, they
must assume the role of man of the house and accept
autonomy without possessing the good judgment to
use it. When they become fathers, lacking the necessary
background and skills, they may disengage, move away
and abdicate responsibility. Then, the cycle repeats itself.
Children raised in fatherless families are more likely to
have lower test scores and to drop out of school.
The Open Society Foundations Shawn Dove, Executive
Director of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement,
beat the odds. Raised by a strong Jamaican single mother,
Dove admits he was the kind of youth one might hope
to reform. He was lucky. In junior high, when he adopted
the herd mentality and wanted to follow friends on a
non-academic path, his mother intervened. She refused
permission for him to enroll in what Dove calls Major
Gym. Resentment high, Dove enrolled in science prep.
Dove uses the story to ask: How do we engage and
empower parents? How do we increase the odds for
these children? According to Dove, we have many gaps
to deal with besides the achievement gap. How do we
defy the issue of zip code? When we get communities
together to empower parents we will have a head start.
Committed and responsible fathering during
a childs infancy contributes to emotional
security, curiosity, and math and verbal skills.
Vivian Gadsden
Gadsdens Center has found that just about any
constructive activity contributes positively to child
development especially reading to children, which is
the pathway to literacy. Taking walks together, counting
objects, and doing simple tasks at homes also contribute.
Simply hugging children, giving them attention, and
telling them they can be successful can cause them
to rise to the occasion, Gadsden emphasized.
As CDFs Edelman reminded us: Children live up or down
to our expectations.
Community and Poverty
In too many American communities today, the
circumstances caused by poverty and disadvantage
subsume the lives of young Black boys.
5
Consider these statistics:
3
36 percent of Black children live in poverty
35 percent of Black children live in households
described as food insecure
38 percent of Black children live in households
where parents lack stable employment
13 percent of Black children have a mother with
less than a high school education
More than 75 percent of Black children born
between 1985 and 2000 grew up in high
disadvantage neighborhoods.
The fact that we are in the United States and parents are
reporting insecurity about food is an issue of concern,
noted UNCs Iruka. Children, particularly Black boys,
who are born into poverty have less access to health
care, go to lower-quality early childcare, attend inferior
neighborhood schools, and will probably live in poverty,
observes CDFs Perryman. Perhaps most distressing,
according to Edelman, is that a Black boy born in 2001 has
a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime.
In many areas, Black Americans are segregated in
minority communities where children are more likely
to go to school with other children of color. The
impact of racial, social and class stratication over a
lifetime can have devastating eects for Black boys,
notes Ray. Racial segregation and the ideologies
that support it help to spawn high levels of violence,
poor mental and physical health, substance abuse,
unemployment and underemployment. Segregation
can aect middle class Black boys, as well.
When change does come, said Russlynn Ali, Assistant
Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of
Education, it must come from communities and
community members, who together will make the
schools the hub of their community and the place to go
where you can have a safe start and a healthy start and a
fair start and a moral start.
Bremerton School District can boast one such community-
sponsored program. Bremerton, Washington, is a small
community with less than 5,000 students really a
pocket of poverty in an auent district. Their community
model was enacted with no additional funds. As Special
Programs Director for Bremerton, Linda Sullivan-Dudzic,
announced, If it can be done in Bremerton, it can be
done anywhere.
The original motivation to start a community-sponsored
program came when involved people realized that only
4 percent of students entered kindergarten knowing
alphabet letters. The group could have created a small,
private pre-school to serve their own 30 students
and serve their self-interest. Instead, they brought
community partners together, examined the research,
acted collectively, and now serve 800 students.
After reviewing neuroscience research, the community
and the school district tried to answer two essential
questions: What should children know and be able
to do? How do you best teach children? Their goals
were to increase the number of children entering
kindergarten with early reading and math skills, and
to decrease learning diculties for the students. With
buy-in from the community, participating schools share
a common language, common goals and resources.
Teachers engage in monthly professional development
meetings and remain part of an assessment loop.
Parents alone cant do everything, admonished CDFs
Edelman. We have to get kids into strong early childhood
experiences in the rst three years of life. Only then can
we assume children will be on the path to literacy. If
you cant read and compute and think in this culture,
you are sentenced to social and economic death.
Many communities share Bremertons problems few
share the accomplishments. Washington, D.C., can boast
one of the highest preschool enrollment rates in the
country. But access does not spell success: Less than
30 percent of D.C.s programs meet accepted standards
of quality. Michela English, President and CEO of Fight
for Children, an independent nonprot that focuses
on quality early childhood programs, observed, If we
3
References for these statistics and related statistics can be found in A Strong Start: Positioning Young Black Boys for Educational Success: A Statistical Prole
http://www.ets.org/s/sponsored_events/pdf/16818_BlackMale_trifold3_WEB.pdf
6
do successful interventions early, we wont have to
do expensive ones later. English sees this problem
exacerbated by the fact that young parents often do
not know how to choose a preschool program, other
than by asking friends. Fight for Children is producing
information and free videos to help teach young
families what to look for in a preschool for their child.
Quality and resources must go hand in hand. Educators in
Bremerton have combined resources and focused dollars
on what is needed to help the children. Consequently,
the number of children in strategic and intensive classes
has been signicantly decreased, freeing Title 1 funds
to move down into preschool or up into high school.
Children in Bremerton have made great strides and now
outperform children from other school districts. Within
Bremerton, children advanced from only 4 percent of
students being able to identify letters to 65 percent.
But, Sullivan warned, Strong pre-K is not sucient. It is
wasted if it is not supported by full-day kindergarten.
Revamped Schools
The need for a strong educational foundation is well
recognized. The development of high-quality, seamless
pre-K through grade three continuum programs relies
on research-based strategies for optimizing a childs
early cognitive and emotional development, said
Jeanne Middleton-Hairston, National Director of the
CDF Freedom Schools program. When implemented
correctly, the pre-K through third grade continuum
moves students smoothly from one grade to the next.
If we can get it right before age 8 or 9, if we give
children a solid foundation, theyll be on rmer
footing, noted Kristie Kauerz, Program Director for
pre-Kthird grade at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. The academic shift between learning
to read and reading to learn happens right around
grade three, and students need solid skills by then.
We know how to x this! said Kauerz. We know that
high-quality preschool is important, [and that] high-quality
full-day kindergarten has paid o tremendously. But full-
day kindergarten is not a guarantee. She added, We need
high-quality elementary schools, so skills do not drop o.
Kauerz suggested that there needs to be aligned quality
across the curriculum. A disconnect occurs when high-
quality programs are followed by programs that lack
quality. We are trying to oer superb pre-kindergarten,
only to stick kids into a low-quality kindergarten program.
The Chicago Child Parent Center (CPC) is one example
of an eective extended intervention. Students who
attended pre-K through grade three at CPC showed
encouraging statistics: early achievement gains persisted
in middle school, fewer children were retained, and
fewer were relegated to special education. A new long-
term study of the CPC program, published in the June
2011 issue of Science, shows program eects continue
through adulthood, resulting in lower incarceration
rates, higher marriage rates and higher income levels.
During these critical early years, students develop
cognitive, communication and math skills, build social
and emotional competence, and establish patterns
of engagement and learning. What is so magical
about pre-K through third is that we are focusing on
horizontal alignment, said Kauerz, by raising the quality
of each early grade to build a strong educational base.
Meanwhile, through collaboration and support, they
are creating a ladder of learning, a vertical continuum
that results in a strong foundation for young children.
After-School and Summer
Community-based Programs
Khary Lazarre-White is co-founder and Executive Director
of Brotherhood Sister Sol (BHSS), an out-of-school and
summer program in the Bronx. BHSS is an evidence-
based model, said Lazarre-White, with emphasis on
morality and ethics. Eighty-ve percent of their students
graduate from high school, as opposed to 24 percent
in similarly troubled neighborhoods. While New York
Citys teen pregnancy rate is slightly below 10 percent,
BHSSs rate falls below 2 percent. And after 15 years in
the trenches, not a single member of BHSS is part of the
prison complex. We want all of our young people to go
to college, to survive, graduate, asserted Lazarre-White.
We believe in higher education, to learn what it means
to be strong men and leaders of their community.
7
Though co-educational, they boast a single-gender
focus. Starting in 1995 with one brotherhood chapter,
the essence of BHSS is to guide thinking and behavior on
what it means to be a man. Youngsters start the program
between the ages of six and twelve, and usually stay four
to six years. They will write their own ethical and moral
code and revisit that every year and rewrite it, explained
Lazarre-White. This is the code, this is how youre going
to live your life. If you want to be a doc, go to med school.
If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. Where do
you go to learn how to be a young man? That ethos of
how you live life is through every aspect of your life.
BHSS fullls a concept the founders prized, that of
an alternate, stable home with discipline, guidance
and morals skills most middle-class kids enjoy.
The program tenets at BHSS surround support and
discipline, smattered with doses of guidance and love.
Discipline is taught as a means of inculcating personal
responsibility. In addition, sta is keen to access
student opportunities, like jobs and internships.
We need a Marshall Plan for education in
this country.
Khary Lazzare-White
Finally, BHSS takes college seriously. Guidance is
comprehensive: Sta accompanies kids on college
selection visits, and provide assistance to get in and stay
there. Meanwhile, sta does what middle-class parents
do when their kids get into trouble. We defend them
to the fullest extent of the law if they are arrested, and
make sure that isnt a permanent part of the record.
With such a lopsided number of Black sons graduating
from high school, Lazarre-White wonders aloud why there
are not programs like this in every city in America. On the
macro level, we need a Marshall Plan for education in this
country, declared Lazarre-White, who argues for the kind
of money the auent spend on their children. People
argue for this or that school its a waste of time. While
we have those arguments, hundreds of children fail.
Progressive K12 Schools for Black Male
Academic Achievement
Too often, the reality in America is that if you are poor,
Black and male, you may need to win a lottery to get a
good education. Educational lotteries exist across the
states. Without winning a lottery to get into a competitive
elementary school, the odds of graduating high school
are less than 50 percent
4
, and the chances of reading
beyond an eighth-grade level, even if you graduate, are
not much better. Yet, if you win a lottery for a superb
charter or public school, your chances of graduating are
closer to 80 percent at least, at one of the schools
described below.

With luck, a Black youngster might just
embrace the American dream. Is this the America we tout?
Several examples of trendsetting, innovative programs
for transformational reform are highlighted below.
Early Intervention and Early Education. Excellence
Boys Charter School is a model for excellence. Founding
Principal Jabali Sawicki talks passionately about imbuing
his students with the message that they are college
bound in kindergarten, from day one. What steps
create that academic mindset? To start, teachers refer to
students as scholars, homerooms bear university names,
and after-school programs emphasize leadership skills
through activities that embrace the physical and literary,
like athletic and Shakespeare clubs. More practically,
school tutoring, Saturday programs and Summer
Academy are all available. But, the real key is literacy.
Located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn,
Excellence currently serves 395 boys in grades K8. Sawicki
exudes pure energy in talking about goals for success, and
the laudable commitment to make school joyful. Statistics
are encouraging. In 2009, in grade four, 90 percent of
students passed reading exams at Advanced or Procient
levels; in grade ve, 100 percent of students passed
math exams at Advanced and Procient levels placing
Excellence among the top schools in New York City.
Schools are the critical lever to change the trajectory
of young boys, Sawicki stated and he knows that
for the lever to work, he needs more time. Students
go to school nine hours a day, about two hours
4
Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education reveals that the overall 20072008 graduation rate for Black males in the U.S.
was only 47 percent.
8
longer than average. That time is devoted to books.
What allows us to be successful is the emphasis on
literacy. Citing the crux of Americas problem with
academic achievement, Sawicki said, Something
happens between third and fth grade. At that point,
school is dominated by text. If you get to that point
and you cant read, youll only become frustrated.
When students put in practice time, they reap rewards.
This is standard in music and sports and logical for
reading. At Excellence, teachers allot three and a half
hours a day to the reading core, including reading
aloud, writing, comprehension, decoding and analysis.
To bolster boys natural inclination to be part of a group,
book groups abound, from Harry Potter to a hip hop club.
Black male authors from the community regularly come
in to read. Weekly, students stage a play on books they
have read, all to foster the notion that Reading is Cool!
The goal, maintained Sawicki, is to elevate literacy to the
highest respect and adoration, teaching not just to read
but a love of reading. Lastly, Excellence places emphasis
on ethics through a weekly community meeting.
Sawicki structures his educational agenda around
three principles which he hopes have application for
co-educational schools. He calls this framework the
Three Pillars of Excellence.
THREE PILLARS OF EXCELLENCE
1. Academics. Rigorous and challenging academics
form the foundation; students master literacy
and computing.
2. Structure. High behavior standards become the
expectation; students need to be independent
and creative thinkers, apt to succeed as they
advance to other schools.
3. Engagement. Joy leads to engagement
Excellence calls it the the J-Factor. Schools
need to create delight, to become magical
places; educators need to make school cool
while they channel boys abundant energies
into productive pursuits.
Support through Middle and High School. Eagle
Academy was created to provide high school boys
with a college preparatory education in the toughest
neighborhood in the Bronx. Defying the status quo
and the conviction that boys schools were politically
incorrect Eagle Academy is the rst all-boys public
high school in New York City in three decades. Anyone
can get into Eagle; there are no requirements. But, a
child must be lucky it is available only by lottery.
This school, like the best in the nation, is led by strong
morals and the belief in the potential of every child, said
David Banks, President of Eagle Academy Foundation.
Eagle targets high-poverty communities with excessively
high rates of incarceration: an Eagle Academy was
replicated in Brooklyn to serve grades six through 12,
and a third school in Newark, N.J. is planned for Fall
2012 opening. Noting the startling statistic that just
seven neighborhoods in New York City supply New
York State prisons with 70 percent of their inmates,
Banks hopes to disrupt the prison pipeline.
The rst precept of Eagle is comprehensive mentoring. For
young men growing up without fathers or a responsible
male role model, mentoring is essential. Each student is
paired with an adult male mentor, inspiring one young
Eagle student to coin the now-popular phrase: A young
man without a mentor is like an explorer without a map.
As at Excellence, Eagle schedules more of a students
time. The extra two hours per weekday and three or
four hours on Saturday yield 11 extra hours per week
and eight more weeks per year of learning. Engaging
activities, like debate, chess, robotics and basketball,
reduce idle time and could be an eective antidote
to the problems kids often nd on the streets.
The earlier we get them, the better, stated Banks, who
quips that if he could, he would take them straight
from the maternity ward. Like the program papa, Banks
discusses how determined Eagle is to stake an interest in
the child: We monitor them through college, and try to
provide jobs and other opportunities as they graduate.
Indeed, Banks college pipeline is unique in the pantheon
of ideas to foster academic success. While Eagle boasts
of success in enrolling students in colleges across
9
America, Banks now works to create small cohorts of
Eagle students at fewer universities, creating in eect
an ideal contingent through four campus years. The
same way they look out for each other from sixth
grade, when they arrive at [the college] campus, the
young men greet them. By making sure they are each
others keepers, they get help all the way through.
Supporting Success in College. What could be a
better cause for optimism than seeing a young Black
boy right at the door of the university? Although many
Black students arrive at college underprepared, most
are intent on achieving despite the odds, explained
Associate Professor Bryant Marks, Assistant Professor
of Psychology and Director of the Morehouse Male
Initiative at Morehouse College. For Marks, the issue
of Black male achievement involves understanding
the dierence between eort and ability.
Morehouse insists on eort. The college seeks to
develop Renaissance men with a social conscience and
global perspective. To that end, the school developed
what is called The Five Wells: A Morehouse man is
well read, well spoken, well traveled, well dressed
and well balanced. Indeed, Morehouse outperforms
the national Black college graduation rate of 43
percent, graduating 55 percent of its students.
5

Marks boasted that Morehouse males show strength
in light of challenges. African-American men are
a unique population at risk of experiencing more
negative life outcomes for example, in income,
education, health, housing, nancing, the legal
system than any other racial or gender group, but
are potential exemplars of the American Dream.
For the last three years, Marks has focused on the
Morehouse Male Initiative, which seeks to measure
the impact of Morehouse College and factors that
increase Black male success in higher education. With
a long-range plan to understand Black male behavior,
the project examines factors that facilitate positive
personal, academic and leadership development.
Take, for example, the classic metric of achievement:
grade point average (GPA). While studying signicant
factors related to GPA, Marks found that putting in
eort, holding a leadership position, positive attitudes
toward women or perceiving racism by Whites all have
a positive impact; meanwhile, saggy pants, sexual
promiscuity, changing a major or participating in a
political protest demonstrate a negative impact. Parsing
the categories provides some interesting results. While
listening to most rap music leads to a negative impact,
listening to gospel rap positively impacts GPA.
For Marks, this is not just an exercise. He suggested
that his work has signicant implications
for national policy for example:
Develop intense, aordable and possibly mandatory
summer pre-college programs for academically
underprepared Black male freshmen. Often, people
who need preparation the most cannot aord it.
Employ evidence-based practices and thorough
assessment. What works well at Morehouse may not
work at other institutions.
Make advisors aware of the negative indicators
of success. College counselors, teachers and
mentors should be aware of various indicators
of potential problems.
The eort Marks touts may be aided by the factor
called engagement. Engagement is essential
to degree attainment, declared Shaun Harper,
Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
noting 40 years of consistent supporting evidence.
Students who are actively engaged in educationally
5
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html), accessed August 23, 2011.
Pictured from left to right: Marian Wright Edelman, CDF; Michael Nettles,
ETS; and Russlyn Ali, U.S. Department of Education.
10
purposeful activities and experiences, both inside and
outside the classroom, are more likely than are their
disengaged peers to persist through graduation.
The Black male graduation rate from colleges and
universities is 35 percent versus 62 percent for
all White students.
6
Why? According to Harper,
underperformance points to disengagement. Black
male students take fewer notes, spend less time
writing papers and completing major assignments, and
participate less in campus and leadership activities.
How do you disrupt the narrative? he asked. Studying
achievers in 40 institutions e.g., those elected to
at least two leadership posts Harper found a link
between engagement and persistence. His analysis
shows that active engagement lets Black males adjust
and resolve racial, gender and identity conicts while
being better positioned for nancial success.
Harpers analysis leads him to call for policy changes
that allow separate race or gender groups to assemble
on college campuses. At Penn, Harper meets with a
group of Black men in spite of institutional policies
against openly meeting together as a single race or
gender group. He justies breaking the rule by saying:
These guys need the space to think about themselves
as males, as Black men, and share navigational
insights on how to be successful at the university.
Success in college will lead some students to the ranks
of faculty, and that opens up another issue for Black
males. Jerlando F. L. Jackson, Associate Professor of
Higher and Postsecondary Education, studies tenure
and hiring practices at The University of Wisconsin-
Madison. Jackson is also Director of Wisconsins Equity
and Inclusion Laboratory, where he examines factors
that may contribute to the unequal representation of
African-American men in tenured positions. In general,
there appears to be disadvantages in the university
workforce for African-American males, who are largely
in lower-level positions in less-prestigious institutions.
Why is this occurring? Looking at both human capital and
merit-based performance, Jackson suggests that hiring
criteria be restructured. For example, Black faculty need
to sit on key evaluation, performance and decision-
making committees.
Joseph Youngblood II, Vice Provost and Dean of the John
S. Watson School of Public Service at Thomas Edison State
College, who has been working in educational policy
for more than 30 years, feels the nation is still struggling
with the overall acceptance of African-Americans as an
integral part of mainstream society. Youngblood said
that Black males are more often than not considered
outside of the context of normative human development.
That presents a major challenge for public policy.
Youngblood believes that the public policies in New
Jersey are insucient to meet the needs of Black students.
Culture and context matter. Although social factors and
cultural contributions are clearly alluded to and taken
into consideration the disconnect between home
and school for many youngsters, and their achievement
pursuits, lack a specic theory-driven perspective that
simultaneously considers culture, context and normative
psycho-social processes, said Youngblood. He stressed
the need for high academic standards, eective teaching,
early childhood intervention and early mediation to
avert a path to prison and encourage one to college.
A Call for Public Responsibility
The kind of committee work Jerlando Jackson talks about
inuencing at the university has counterparts of inuence
in the community. Wade Henderson, President and CEO
of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,
speaks in terms of societal responsibility to communities:
You have a responsibility as a community to make sure
that these children have the resources they need. It is
immoral to steal from these children under the guise
of decit reduction to deal with the national debt. In
a nation with vast resources, this is unconscionable.
Henderson invokes Leadership Council founder A. Phillip
Randolph, who also was part of a triad who founded
the rst African-American labor union, to further explain
this social responsibility. You have no free seats at the
table of life, Randolph said. You get what you can take.
You keep what you can hold. You cant take it, and you
sure cant hold it, unless you are organized. Henderson
6
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html), accessed August 23, 2011.
11
added, We have a responsibility to speak up and
organize and to push back. That is absolutely key.
You have a responsibility as a community to
make sure that these children have the resources
they need. It is immoral to steal from these
children under the guise of defcit reduction
to deal with the national debt. In a nation
with vast resources, this is unconscionable.
Wade Henderson
This comes down to a matter of protecting the U.S.
economy. We have to not just make the promise, but
make the promise real. The failure to do that is to write
o the next generation, not just of young people who
will help lead the country, but people we will need in
the workforce of tomorrow, trained academically to do
the work required to keep the U.S. economy where it
stands in the global economy today. Lastly, Henderson
insisted, we must ensure that there is equitable funding
at the state level to ensure that investments are made
consistent with the needs of the communities we serve.
For example, New Jersey is struggling to achieve
equity in funding its schools. David Sciarra, Executive
Director of the Education Law Center, recently had a
victory on the N.J. Supreme Court in appealing the
states decision to cut $500 million from state aid to
education. Equal educational opportunity and funding
equity go hand in hand. Poor communities will not be
able to meet the needs of their students if adequate
funding is denied to the communitys schools.
Public Policy Solutions to Black
Achievement Challenges
When asked where the money could come from to
improve Black student achievement, Tulanes Barbarin
did not hesitate to weigh in on public policy. Take the
money from corrections, he suggested, some for families
and some for early childhood education. You need the
best teachers in pre-K, kindergarten and rst grade, as
well as policies that focus on poor kids particularly. Go
back to policies that allow for multi-SES classes that make
it easier for kids to attack each gap in America. We have
to attack community poverty at the same time. How do
we get America to divert resources from overseas wars
to communities here in America? And, even if it means
going into debt, we cant forget the unemployed.
Legislative Policy Considerations
New Jersey State Senator Ronald Rice noted that he
is proud to speak from a Black perspective about the
achievement challenges that he sees in New Jersey. Rice
notes that the Black community needs to seize leadership
on educational issues that aect its members. We have
to identify why these kids are struggling with learning.
We need to identify who is making these decisions.
Rice nds that the charter school movement is
problematic because it diverts funds away from
solutions to x problems in the public schools, where
most Black males attend school. To me, it creates
unnecessary debates about charter schools versus
traditional public schools and wastes time and money
that could be used better to correct the problems once
they are identied in public schools where 90 percent
of Black students attend, and will always attend.
Senator Rice highlights a number of policy objectives
that would enhance Black male achievement:
Abolish the law allowing 16-year-olds to drop
out of school.
Create a way to compel parent involvement.
Support early childhood, cognitive skill development
and academic learning programs.
Create adult programs for Black males to upgrade their
education to help children at home. This could involve
reading programs for adult males with a less-than-high
school reading level.
Supporting the Public in Public Education
Paul Tractenberg also supports public education. The
Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of
12
Law at Rutgers University has worked for equal education
for New Jerseys urban school children for nearly 40
years. For him, our nations under-resourced public
school system is being challenged on several fronts.
One of his concerns is the threat of charter schools.
Stanfords CREDO (Center for Research on Education
Outcomes) Report on charter schools found that 17
percent of charter schools outperform regular schools
and that 37 percent underperform.
7
So how can this
underperformance threaten public schools? The answer
is money, and the threat is privatization. If you are an
entrepreneur, the 6 billion dollar pot of public education
money is a pretty tempting target, said Tractenberg.
In the court battle of Abbott v. Burke, the state of New
Jersey reversed the trend of underfunding education
for the states poorest children. Now, all three- and
four-year-olds in the 31 most troubled districts have full
day kindergarten. New Jersey, under Abbott, has by far
the best early childhood program in the country, said
Tractenberg. Another major accomplishment of Abbott,
according to Tractenberg, is substantial regular education
funding for disadvantaged students. We ipped what
was an outrageous situation of spending a half, to a third,
to a quarter as much on disadvantaged students as on
advantaged. No other state has done that. Thats at risk.
Somehow, there is money to fund vouchers, or
Opportunity Scholarships. Twenty-ve percent of
those are headed to kids already in private schools
who never set foot in a public school in their lives.
This is an ideology masquerading as concern for
poor minority children and their civil rights and the
libertarian interest in choice, said Tractenberg.
Improving School Policies
In his piercingly direct manner, Associate Professor
of Higher Education Terrell Strayhorn at Ohio State
University addressed the public policy implications of
the achievement gap. For me, public policies should
establish support programs that would establish a
sense of belonging in schools. The goal should be to
reduce the isolation that Black males report in school
settings. Isolation may be a facet of racism. Statistics
reveal that about 60 percent of Black students expect
to experience racism on campus including high-
achieving Black students at prestigious schools. He calls
rst for policies that reduce racism, next for policies
that abolish the perception of Black males as athletes.
What does that do to my psyche, every time you tell
me that I must be an athlete? Strayhorn asked. You
tell me that I am not t for the classroom. Im not t
to be in the front of the classroom. Im not t to write
the article. I must always consume the knowledge
that you produce about my people, about me,
myself So we need policies that get rid of that.
He also urges the adoption of policies that deal fairly
with discipline. Recently, a teacher confessed that when
she has a problem with Johnny, she says: Johnny sit
down. When theres a problem with the proverbial
Tyrone, she says: Oh no! I dont mess with Tyrone.
Tyrone could jump and skip all over the classroom,
the worst thing Im going to do is say, Tyrone, go to
the detention center or Go to the discipline room.
Seventy-two percent of Black boys are suspended at
least once in their careers, noted DOE Assistant Secretary
Ali, whose oce is investigating disciplinary practices
at school systems where Black boys are being punished
to a greater extent than other students. UNCs Iruka
conducted research that sheds some light on why
this happens. Beyond academics, Iruka looks at how
children approach learning for example, their ability
to be curious, persistent or initiate their own learning.
When teachers rate students, we see that teachers
dont see boys as persistent or having self control. This
is in kindergarten! Either the boys are dierent or they
are seen dierently, Iruka explained. The bottom line is
that when teachers think a child cant control himself,
he gets transferred into special education classrooms.
Strayhorn, too, speaks to his frustration with a system
that manufactures bad boys. We need to understand
why Black boys are severely punished disproportionally.
When Black boys are treated as bad boys in school,
we then produce boys who get swept into the
juvenile justice system and then become castaways.
7
Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States, Stanford University, June 2009.
13
Some Promising Practices
Former Superintendent of Schools Jerry Weast revamped
the school system in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Weast led the largest and most diverse school district in
Maryland, and one of the largest in the country. During
his 12-year tenure, the school system has become
increasingly more minority and poor, growing by 25,000
students. Yet the more diverse student body has excelled.
During that period, the highest SAT scores in the history
of the district were registered. The district has 2.5 percent
of all the children in America who scored a 3 on an
AP test, and has nearly one percent of all the Latino
students in America who scored a 3 on an AP test.
If you dont think race is an issue get real,
warned Weast. The district confronted the issue
of racial sorting all minority students clustered
together by using time more eciently. Our
enemy in a sorting system is time, Weast said.
The Montgomery County school system has some of
the wealthiest and some of the poorest children in
America. However, income does not inuence class
size in the traditional way just the opposite. The
kids in rich areas go to classes of 25 to 27; the kids in
the poor area go to classes with 12 to 15. In addition,
poor areas get the rst pick of teachers. So this is not
for the timid, right? And weve been doing that for 12
years, Weast noted, adding that this was all done in the
name of evenhandedness. You have to have uneven
funding if you want evenness in achievement.
We dont do remediation, Weast reported. We do
acceleration. We dont talk down to children. We invite
them. We rae bicycles for kids who come all the time;
bring mothers in. We talk about race. We have study
circles. We teach poor people to kick my butt because
rich people know how. This is serious work. You will do
what it takes to even out your front lawn. We will do
what it takes if you want to even out a school system.
And, America better wake up and we better do what
it takes or were going to be a Third World country.
Certainly, the school superintendent wields power, but
a seat on the school board inuences the discussion
of Black male achievement in yet another way. From
his perch as a middle school science teacher, principal
of both public and charter schools, professor and
chair, and former president of the Teaneck (N.J.) Board
of Education, Henry Johnson Pruitt now serves as
Trustee on the Board. It was his idea to convene the
rst ETS conference on Black male achievement.
Pruitt warns that our country pays a price when we
ignore the problem of unproductive Black youth.
If we dont nd a way to reach and motivate all
our students now, the international education
ranking of America will continue to decline and
the prison population will continue to go up.
Black males, Pruitt maintains, are in bad shape. Echoing
other educators who say that all children possess the
capacity to learn, Pruitt asked, Why dont they? He
proposes that the reason is a lack of eort by students
and negative peer pressure. Teachers, he warns, need
to acknowledge achievement in more clever and
engaging ways. For outstanding achievement in
sports, students win huge trophies. Cant we improve
on a piece of paper for the valedictorian? he asked.
Pruitt suggested a list of potential improvements:
Revamp curriculum. Toss out dry, antiquated
textbooks and tap into student passions
(e.g, for technology).
Set high expectations. Smart is not something
that you are, smart is something you can get.
Seek student input. High school students should
feel that their opinion counts.
Teach study skills and techniques. Teach skills
to all, do not relegate them to remedial courses.
Engage community resources. Involve the
churches, community centers and barbershops
and use the resources more efectively.
Revisit assessments. In America, 50 diferent
states have 50 diferent assessments. Policy
wonks should defne national objectives and
create one set of standards. Then keep these in
place for a reasonable amount of time so districts
can meet them.
Narrow the achievement gap.
14
Re-envisioning Education
Edmund Gordon, Professor Emeritus at both Yale
University and Columbia Teachers College, draws a
parallel between education and public health. We do not
measure health by how many good hospitals there are.
You do something about pollution, sewers, garbage and
teach people to know how to use their own resources
to maintain their own health by exercising and eating
properly. The same must be true for education. How do
we prepare young people not just to t in and survive
in a dysfunctional system, but how to change the
system to be more appropriate to their own needs?
Where do you begin? From a policy perspective,
Gordon says society should start early in the life of
a child perhaps at the delivery. Evidence seems
to suggest you can inuence the course of life if
you begin earlier. But it almost appears to be never
too late. Some higher achievers did not get their
epiphany until they were in their 30s and 40s.
Meanwhile, some high school students confuse
respect with reputation. Black teens want respect, but
without success in school, they may substitute the
pursuit of reputation, which is easier to acquire with
less persistence. Students need to understand how
to act in their own self interests, even when there
is resistance from the Black youth themselves.
Gordon asks us to re-envision what education is supposed
to do for our young people to re-envision what
success means. My prescription for education for Black
men is to take that resistance and to enable it. Help
young men become competent resisters. A part of their
education ought to teach them what you do about a
system that is not working for you: You change it.
My prescription for education for Black men
is to take that resistance and to enable it.
Help young men become competent resisters.
A part of their education ought to teach
them what you do about a system that is
not working for you: You change it.
Edmund Gordon
Moving Forward
Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tsu stated, The journey
of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In 2011,
ETS President Kurt Landgraf committed ETS to extend
itself beyond assessment development and policy
research that identies achievement gaps and to work
with community organizations to help close those gaps.
ETSs partnership with CDF is a step toward improving
the plight of Black boys as they begin their journey from
early childhood through adolescence and beyond. As
part of its collaboration with CDF, ETS has committed
funds to support a new CDF Freedom Schools program
exclusively for Black males in Newark, N.J., with a
grant to Communities in Schools of New Jersey.
Among the institutions that serve Black boys in
particular, the CDF Freedom Schools program ranks
high. The CDF Freedom Schools program is rooted in
the civil rights movement and the work conducted
in 1964 in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.
Since 1995, the CDF Freedom Schools program has
reached about 90,000 low-income children, and
9,000 college students and recent graduates have
been trained to serve as teachers and mentors.
The CDF Freedom Schools program provides
summer and after-school enrichment through
a model curriculum that supports children and
families around fve essential components: high-
quality academic enrichment; parent and family
involvement; social action and civic engagement;
intergenerational servant leadership development;
and nutrition, health and mental health.
For Edelman, the operative word is freedom: We are
trying to free them from illiteracy, low expectations, and
build empowered children. We are trying to reconnect the
community to its children, said the CDF president. She
points to the lie that children do not want to read. You
give them interesting books, and give them hope; they will
read. We want to inltrate the culture of the public schools
and make learning fun. Edelman said her goal is to double
the number of CDF Freedom Schools over the next ve
years. She wants one on every Black college campus, so
15
that children can see college and not prison in their future.
You cant be what you cant imagine and dont know.
This summer, the CDF Freedom Schools program
served nearly 10,000 students according to the national
director Middleton-Hairston, and partnered with 105
organizations at 151 program sites in 27 states and 87
cities. Middleton-Hairston points to the success CDF is
having with the CDF Freedom Schools program, engaging
young children in learning, staunching summer reading
loss, and engaging young adults in teaching and giving
back to their communities and creating a hopeful future.
Where do we go from here? Nettles answered, We
continue to stay in touch and network. Colleagues came
from all across the United States to be at the conferences,
and they work in colleges and in organizations all
trying to have an inuence on Black male youth.
As ETS President Kurt Landgraf noted in his remarks, This
country simply cannot aord to write o vast swaths of
human potential. Equity and morality aside, the economics
alone require that we work to improve the academic
performance of all groups, for the ultimate benet of us all.
This country simply cannot aford to write of
vast swaths of human potential. Equity and
morality aside, the economics alone require that
we work to improve the academic performance
of all groups, for the ultimate beneft of us all.
Kurt Landgraf
Looking forward, former New Jersey Acting Education
Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks suggested, In the 21st
century, lets abandon every notion and construct that
we have about what our young people need. Lets listen
to them, lets respond to the research and lets encourage
the kind of research we heard about today and engage
that research to design a system that is not yet imagined.
Then maybe we will give our children what they deserve.
Yet, it is not just what children deserve that is at issue.
It is not just social justice, but a question of what works
for America. Who is to say that a poor Black boy we are
failing might discover a cure for cancer, solve our energy
dilemma, or write a hilarious script? How can we meet the
challenges facing our nation in the 21st century if we do
not develop all of our childrens talent to the fullest? It is
not just in the childs interest to educate him or her. It is
in our own interests. These young Black children are not
just the communitys children. They are all our children.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was once asked, Am I my
brothers keeper? He answered, More than being my
brothers keeper, I must understand that I am my brothers
brother. And, are not we brothers and sisters all?
H H H H H
The conference explored:
Connections between early brain development and
later achievement
Advantages of a well-designed pre-K-to-third-grade
continuum
Promising policy initiatives that address the holistic
needs of young Black boys
Information on this conference, including agenda,
speaker biographies, PowerPoint presentations
and video, is available at http://www.ets.org/
sponsored_events/2011_achievement_gap/.
The earlier conference, Climbing the Academic
Achievement Ladder: Promoting the Success of Black
Males, was held at the Chauncey Conference Center
at ETS headquarters in Princeton, N.J., on November
13, 2010. This conference focused on the academic
achievement of Black males from kindergarten through
university. Attended by more than 200 persons, the
conference was sponsored in partnership with the
New Jersey Department of Education, the Center
for Efective School Practices at Rutgers University,
and the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education
at New York Universitys Steinhardt School. The
conference featured presentations by 21 academics,
practitioners, government ocials and researchers.
In this Issue
(continued from page 1)
ETS Policy Notes is published by
the ETS Policy Information Center
Educational Testing Service
Rosedale Road, MS 19-R
Princeton, NJ 08541- 0001
(609) 734 -5212
e-mail: [email protected]
www.ets.org/research/pic
Director: Richard J. Coley
This article was written
by Karen Prager.
Copyright 2011 by Educational
Testing Service. All rights reserved.
Educational Testing Service
is an Armative Action/
Equal Opportunity Employer.
ETS, the ETS logo and LISTENING.
LEARNING. LEADING. are registered
trademarks of Educational Testing
Service (ETS). All other trademarks
are the property of their respective
owners. 17706
NON-PROFIT
ORGANIZATION
US POSTAGE
PAID
EDUCATIONAL
TESTING SERVICE
Rosedale Road
MS 19-R
Princeton, NJ 08541- 0001
Conference topics included:
Research on keys to Black male academic
achievement and motivation
Progressive schools and communities
of and for Black male academic
achievement
The roles of fathers and families
Public policy solutions to Black male
achievement issues
Information on this conference, including
agenda, speaker biographies, PowerPoint
presentations and video, is available at
http://www.ets.org/sponsored_events/
academic_achievement_ladder/.
In this Issue
(continued from page 15)