Education Week - May 10, 2017 - 24

COMMENTARY

Black Teachers Matter. School Integration Doesn't

Getty

By Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II

Getty

ew research confirms
what black education
reformers have always
known: The success of
black students lies not
in school integration,
but in more black teachers and black-led charter schools committed to their achievement
and well-being.
The study, issued last month by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, found that
low-income black students who have just one
black teacher in grades 3-5 are more likely to
graduate and consider college, their likelihood
of dropping out reduced by 29 percent. This
is especially true for low-income black boys,
whose dropout rates fall by a whopping 39
percent when a black teacher leads the class.
Much of the education world expressed
shock at this news. The findings are stunning, especially considering that, according to
National Center for Education Statistics data
from 2013-14, only 72.5 percent of black students nationwide graduate from high school
in four years, compared with 87 percent of
white students. For black boys, the numbers
are worse: In 2012-13, only 59 percent graduated in four years, according to a 2015 report
by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
What's at stake now is how education re-

formers choose to respond. Many proponents
of equity continue to suggest public school integration as the antidote to the achievement
gap between students of color and white
students. But as suggested by a recent socialmedia uproar over a Pepsi commercial-in
which Kendall Jenner "ends" racist violence
with a soda and a smile-mere proximity and
interracial camaraderie do not defeat racism.
Similarly, the mere presence of white students
has never benefited black students.
Embracing the placebo of black-white integration as the answer to black underachievement in K-12 education allows reformers to
ignore effective evidenced-based solutions
while inequity festers unresolved.
In New York City, where I teach, state
testing sets the stage for the annual handwringing over the achievement gap between
black and white students, which has barely
budged in more than a decade. In 2016, the
black-white achievement gap in English for
students in grades 3-8 was staggering, with
only 27 percent of black students achieving
proficiency compared with 59 percent of white
students.
Even in Brooklyn, where charter and traditional public schools put tremendous effort
into integrated classrooms, the achievement
gap remains. In 2016, none of the Brooklynbased members of the National Coalition of
Diverse Schools achieved proficiency rates in
English for black students that matched or
exceeded those of white students.

How We Stopped Sending Students to Jail
By Robert W. Runcie
& Antwan Wilson

t's no longer news that for many
kids in our most stressed communities, life can resemble that of a soldier on the battlefield-down to the
post-traumatic physiological impact.
It's now well-known that kids bring
the cumulative effects of violence,
fear, and chaos to the classroom,
operating in a constantly heightened emotional state that can damage their learning
and create behavioral crises.
What's bigger news is that schools have
found approaches to these challenges that
actually work, slashing arrest rates and lifting graduation rates.
As superintendents, we each have had
the experience of being stunned, troubled,
and moved to action by the rates at which
schools were dispatching young people-especially boys of color and special-needs students-to the juvenile-justice system. And
each of us has found that big changes in
outcomes were possible.
How? By moving away from simplistic
zero-tolerance policies, toward an understanding of social-emotional learning and
the underlying causes of disruptive behavior, and by changing from a power dynamic
to a respect dynamic. It's not about being
soft, or giving fourth and fifth chances for

Reinventing power
dynamics isn't the way
we've been trained to
think and act as school
people."

24 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 10, 2017 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

unacceptable behavior. It's about being more
effective, by addressing behavioral problems
at their roots. And it's immensely urgent in
a country where, according to data from the
U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights
Data Collection, African-American male
students are suspended at triple the rate of
white students.
It's hard to overstate what a pivotal issue
this can be for the life chances of kids in
tough neighborhoods. In recent years, America has come to recognize how toxic stress
and dysfunction in the home and neighborhood can trigger physiological fight-or-flight
responses that leave students too anxious
and distracted to learn well.
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Paul
Tough argues that childhood traumas are
a powerful predictor of school struggles. He
notes that research has identified that children with two or more such traumas demonstrate behavioral problems at a rate eight
times greater than that of their peers and
repeat grades at a rate double their peers'.
Kids with at least one such incident account
for 85 percent of behavior problems. But we
don't have to accept those hard facts as an inevitable reality.
Within the districts we lead, we've set out
to change the odds by changing structures
and approaches. Here's what happened: In
Broward County, Fla., behavioral referrals
dropped by nearly a third, and arrests declined
by nearly two-thirds. In Oakland, Calif., juvenile felony arrests declined 73 percent, accord-

ing to county data-far outpacing drops in the
surrounding county and state-and suspensions dropped by nearly half. Clearly, a lot of
factors go into those rates. But it's hard to miss
the connections between our focus on restorative practices and the change in outcomes.
So what accounts for these results?
In Broward County, alarm among civil
rights leaders and others over consistently
high suspension and arrest rates provided
the backdrop for action. In 2013, civil rights
organizations, law enforcement, the courts,
public defenders, social service agencies, and
the legislature all agreed to come together in
a task force aimed at breaking the connection
between the schoolhouse and the jailhouse.
Previously, Broward had been executing
zero tolerance pretty efficiently. But then, a
new vision took hold, which was about not
pushing kids out of school. Instead, the school
district created a new school site where students spent anywhere from three to nine
days receiving intensive intervention aimed
at understanding and dealing with the issues that landed them there. Infractions that
would have resulted in mandatory arrests
could now be handled by a three- to nineday referral to the new school. The resulting
drops in behavioral referrals and arrest rates
speak for themselves.
In Oakland, social-emotional-learning efforts were not a new focus when the district
adopted a formal SEL policy in 2013. But
there was an opportunity to deepen adult
learning by training teachers and other edu-

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Education Week - May 10, 2017

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