Education Week - May 18, 2016 - 9

'Complex Web' of Obstacles Hinders Success for Boys of Color

The American Civil Liberties
Union of the Nation's Capital released a report this month that questions the legality of the -District of Columbia school district's Empowering
Males of Color initiative. The study,
"Leaving Girls Behind," argues that
the program violates federal laws designed to bar gender discrimination.
In the District of Columbia school
system, white students far outperform black and Latino students, male
and female, on standardized tests.
The ACLU report contends that it is
unfair for the school system to paint
the problem as simply a gender issue
instead of a racial one.
"Girls and women of color absolutely need the same kind of concentrated focus that boys and men of
color have received, but the focus has
to be on their gender-specific needs,
experiences, and issues," said Shaun
Harper, a University of Pennsylvania
professor and the executive director
of the school's Center for the Study of
Race & Equity in Education.
For instance, black boys and girls
are suspended and expelled from
schools at disproportionately high
rates when compared to their peers,
but often for different reasons,
Harper said. While black males are
often perceived as threatening or
dangerous, black female students
are often disciplined for "attitude" or
dress code violations.
"A one-size-fits-all kind of approach
doesn't work," Harper said.
The same statement may apply to
the examination of challenges that
Native American boys and young
men face, said Erik Stegman, the
executive director of the Center for
Native American Youth at the Aspen
Institute. While praising Ferguson's
report, Stegman argues that the
findings won't be as useful for Native
American youth advocates.
"The cultural context is pretty
dramatically different when you're
talking urban Native American boys
versus those on the reservation," Stegman said. "Sometimes these recommendations don't drill down enough
to be useful to our community."
Ferguson acknowledges in the report that black males receive the
most attention partly because they
have been the focus of more research.
With Generation Indigenous, a
$1 billion initiative aimed at overcoming barriers to success for Native
American youths, the White House

Ferguson's report outlines pathways to achieve three goals of the
My Brother's Keeper initiative-
that all children enter school ready
to learn, that they read at grade
level by the end of 3rd grade, and
that they graduate from high school.
The report recommends: helping
parents prepare children for formal
schooling by focusing on children's
early cognitive development, training educators who work with males
of color to recognize their biases and
check them at the door, and mobilizing community support and resources
behind efforts such as My Brother's
Keeper to nurture the students.
"In every interaction that we have
with boys and young men of color, we
want to remove the counterproductive, less healthy aspects," Ferguson

It's not that you
can't escape.
A young person
with lots of family
support, resources,
and determination
can avoid a lot of
that, ... but this is
very structural and
systemic."
RONALD FERGUSON
Harvard University

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Searching for Solutions

said. That includes interaction with
their peers, he said.
In surveys that Ferguson conducted for the report, students said
they understood what is expected
of them in school. But they selfreported that they often misbehave
because they fear the social consequences of not conforming to negative behavior.
"It's as if there's a collective script,"
Ferguson said. "Everybody is handed
their part and is responsible for
learning it, even if they don't like it."
Harper, the University of Pennsylvania researcher, led a group of researchers who interviewed hundreds
of high-achieving students from New
York City schools for a report called
"Succeeding in the City," to gain insights on how to improve the academic performance of young black
and Latino men.
Pairing work that examines success stories with those reports such
as Ferguson's that examine the
pervasive predicaments that boys
and young men of color face is key
to helping students and their advocates find paths to success in K-12
and beyond, Harper said.
"It's about finding opportunities
for schools and communities ... to
do more to improve rates of success
among young men of color," he said.

for Education

Black, Latino, and Native American males face a complex web of
circumstances that can explain why
they are overrepresented among students with low grades, low test scores,
and a high incidence of disciplinary
problems, according to a new report
from the Urban Institute.
Relying heavily on student interviews, the report, titled "Aiming
Higher," paints a portrait of a socially
vulnerable group of students facing a
systemic predicament, beginning at
birth, that puts them at "risk for underperformance in school and life."
"It's like being ensnared in a web,
and you just can't quite get out of it,"
said Ronald F. Ferguson, the director
of Harvard University's Achievement
Gap Initiative and the author of the
report, which was released last week
by the Urban Institute.
"It's not that you can't escape,"
he continued. "A young person with
lots of family support, resources,
and determination can avoid a lot
of that, ... but this is very structural and systemic."
While acknowledging there have
always been
males of color
who excel academically, Ferguson makes
the case that
black, Latino,
and Native
American students face politiRONALD F. FERGUSON,
cal, sociological,
psychologithe director of the
Achievement Gap Initiative c a l , and economic barriers
at Harvard University,
examined the systemic
to success that
cut across socioand structural barriers
that make school success economic status.
Chief among
harder to achieve for black,
those barriers,
Latino, and Native
according to
American boys.
Ferguson:
* They arrive at kindergarten academically less prepared than white
males.
* They are at higher risk for out-ofschool suspensions because of disparate discipline policies.
* They are often stuck in schools
where access to orderly, well-functioning classrooms is scarce.
* They interact with teachers and
administrators who often issue judgments about them based on negative
race and gender stereotypes.
* They encounter immense peer
pressure that leads them to misbehave and hold back from doing their
best in class.
Combined, those factors create
what Ferguson calls "the predicament." Dismantling it will require
an empathetic response in schools
and an investment of public and private resources to create conditions
in homes, schools, and communities
that enable achievement rather than
stifling it, he said.
"This is not about blame," Ferguson said. "The conversation we need

has devoted more resources to programs that support Native youths
and improving education in Indian
Country.
In response to criticism about the
limited focus of My Brother's Keeper,
the Obama administration created a
Working Group on Challenges and
Opportunities for Women and Girls
of Color, an outgrowth of the White
House Council on Women and Girls.
The effort has secured $100 million
in support, which will help fund research on the issues that girls and
young women of color face.

n Thibodeaux

By Corey Mitchell

to have is about the opportunities
we have to help these young people
reach their potential."
The Urban Institute commissioned
the report to complement work in
support of President Barack Obama's
My Brother's Keeper initiative, which
he launched in 2014 to address the
needs of nonwhite boys and young
men.
As more school districts have
signed on to initiatives meant to support the needs of boys of color, some
critics have been arguing that programs designed solely to help nonwhite boys unfairly exclude nonwhite
girls who, by many measures, experience the same problems.

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Education Week - May 18, 2016

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