Education Week - October 28, 2015 - 14

BEYOND BIAS

Countering Stereotypes in School

In Minneapolis, a Targeted Effort to Bolster Black Boys
By Denisa R. Superville
In a small conference room at a
South Minneapolis school, the principal and assistant principal were trying
to come up with ways to get a group of
eight black boys to be more engaged in
school.
The administrators said they were
concerned that the 8th graders, whom
they described as extremely "smart"
and potential "leaders," were disconnected from their classrooms and did
not think it was "cool" to be smart. The
administrators wanted to figure out
how to get the boys to harness their
strengths in a positive way.
They were brainstorming with
Michael V. Walker, the director of the
Minneapolis school district's Office of
Black Male Student Achievement. As
the lead figure in a district effort focused on its 8,963 black boys, Walker
has the job ultimately, of helping close
the achievement gap between them
and their peers. In the 2014-15 school
year African-Americans made up 37
percent of the 35,300-student district,
Minnesota's largest.
In this city, as in many others, the
data show the impetus for this effort.
On almost every indicator related to
school success, black boys are at, or
near, the bottom. Nationwide, black
boys are more likely than almost any
other demographic slice of the school
population to be suspended or expelled from school and to score at the
lowest achievement level. They are
also less likely to take honors classes
or go to college.
Thus, Minneapolis is among a growing number of districts looking to right
such imbalances by establishing specialized offices or dedicating staff members to work on equity, diversity, and inclusion. Although many districts were
already doing that work, President
Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper
initiative has been a galvanizing force
for others, said Michael Casserly, the
executive director of the Council of the
Great City Schools, which represents
the nation's largest school districts.

Courtney Perry for Education Week

Minneapolis

Michael V. Walker, who directs the Office of Black Male Student Achievement for the Minneapolis public schools,
advises students on how to interact with college representatives at a college fair. The district has proposed
putting $1.2 million into the office this school year in an effort to bring about better outcomes for its black boys.

The program is focused on improving
educational and employment opportunities for boys of color.

Around the Country
The Oakland, Calif., district was
among the first to establish an office of
African-American male achievement,
and its approach is seen as a model.
Other efforts to promote equity among
diverse groups are also underway in
Orange County schools in Orlando,
Fla.; in Wake County, N.C.; Beaverton,
Ore.; and Virginia Beach, Va., among
other locations.
The Minneapolis district's office is
patterned after Oakland's. Walker
is working here to ensure that students-like the 8th graders who were
worrying their school administrators-have positive role models. They
and their parents take an active part
in their own education. The office is

also ensuring that culturally responsive practices are in place in schools,
that parents know who to call if issues
arise, and that principals who want to
develop programs for black students
have a ready resource.
The office started last year under
former schools chief Bernadeia Johnson, and has continued with her interim successor, Michael Goar. This
school year, it has a proposed $1.2 million budget and is partnering with 12
schools, four each at the elementary,
middle, and high school levels.
In those schools, teachers are expected to participate in five professional-development sessions, including
ones focused on strategies to engage
black male students; how to recognize
unconscious bias; and how to be connected to the communities in which
they teach.
Changing adult behavior is also an
important part of Walker's work. "It's

not about fixing the young people,"
he said. "It's about us [adults] changing the way we go about working with
young people; us changing how we go
about allowing them to be able to make
mistakes, and not let that be the end
for them."

Special Curriculum
At the high school and middle school
levels, about 110 students are participating in a class called Building
Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge
(BLACK), a five-day-a-week course
where they learn about African-American history, literature, and leadership
development. One session a week is
spent on tutoring and helping the students with other academic work. Students and instructors are all referred
to with the honorific "king."
The class was developed in conjunction with a professor at the University

Schools Work to Combat Biases, Buffer Students
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

to bring in more students from minority and low-income backgrounds. The
school is highly diverse; nearly half
of its students are low-income, and
white, black, and Hispanic students
each make up 22 percent to 23 percent of the population, with the rest
composed of Asian, Pacific Islander,
Filipino, and multiracial students.
"You can't just run these programs,"
said Doug Craig, the principal. "These
are teens; they don't know how to cope
with stress yet. And kids from [disadvantaged backgrounds] need to be told
over and over that they can do it."
The school now provides a fouryear support course for students entering honors or IB courses, according to Sato. In addition to academic

issues like time management and
college planning, students learn to
recognize signs of stress, speak out
in class, and advocate for themselves with teachers, she said.
The school is trying to help students see themselves as successful
learners, a strategy that studies
suggest can help counter stereotype
threat, particularly for low-income
students.

Focus on Empowerment
At Northwestern University, firstgeneration college students became
more likely to ask for help and more
comfortable discussing academic challenges with a professor after completing a five-minute writing assignment
about who they would be after college

14 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 28, 2015 | www.edweek.org

and how people would think of them.
By contrast, students who wrote about
who they were and how they were
perceived before attending college became more anxious and less comfortable asking a professor for help.
"The lower your income, the more
anxious you felt even going to a professor," said Vida Manzo, the lead
researcher and a social psychology
doctoral student at Northwestern
University, who discussed the study
of first-generation students. "For
low-[socioeconomic-status] students
thinking about their future identity,
they performed better and were more
confident in a high-pressure social
situation" after writing about their
visions for themselves.
To counter the effects of racial or
gender microaggressions, schools can

focus on building the social support
for students coming into an advanced
class. "Since African-Americans don't
see a lot of black faces in advanced
classes, they may have internal feelings of inadequacy," said Eliza Brooks,
a senior and one of three black girls
working toward the two-year IB diploma at Laguna Creek. "That's why I
love the Black Student Union, because
I can use my position as a black girl in
advanced classes dominated by white
and Asian students as a way to empower other minority students."
In a series of studies led by Gregory Walton of Stanford University,
students from different stereotyped
groups-black college students
and women in engineering classes,
among others-went through a "social belonging" intervention that

of Minnesota. The district's teaching
and learning team helped to shape the
learning targets for the curriculum.
On a recent day, a group of boys in
the class at South High School was
preparing for an assignment to interview teachers about their expectations and perceptions of black boys. In
a middle school class, students were
working on autobiographical essays.
The classes are taught by two black
"community experts," a special designation given by the Minnesota Board
of Teaching for individuals who are
not traditional educators. Having the
classes taught by African-American
men, Walker said, allows black boys
to see teaching as something to which
they can aspire, and nonblack students
get to see black men in a professional
setting.
Simultaneously, the district is working to cut discipline rates. Last year, it
entered into a voluntary agreement
with the office for civil rights in the
U.S. Department of Education over
disparities in how it disciplines black
students. According to the OCR, black
students made up about 40 percent of
the district's enrollment in the 201011 and 2011-12 school years, but accounted for 74 percent of recorded disciplinary incidents and 78 percent of
out-of-school suspensions. There were
also disparities in how black and white
students were punished for the same
infractions.
In September, the district announced
that it would eliminate suspensions
for students in 1st through 5th grades.
Last year, it officially ended suspensions for pre-K-1 students who got into
trouble for nonviolent infractions, but
the Minneapolis Star Tribune found
additional incidents in which such
children were sent home. A principal
on special assignment is also working
with teachers on strategies to reduce
discipline referrals.
"We think it's important to recognize that [inequity] exists, and begin
to acknowledge it, and begin to tackle
that issue directly, and that's why we
created Michael's office: to acknowledge it, and also give opportunities to

identified common feelings of frustration and isolation among new
students. "The worry that 'people
like me' might not belong in a school
setting sensitizes students" and
leads them to interpret interactions
through that lens, Walton concluded.
Students who participated in the intervention, by contrast, were more
likely to "see adversity as normal
for all students as they enter a new
school and as lessening with time."
For black college students, a halfhour social-belonging intervention in
freshman year was associated with
halving the gap in GPAs between
black and white students over three
years. An intervention adapted for
science majors all but eliminated
gaps between men's and women's
GPAs in the male-dominated engineering major.
At Eureka High, Ellie Bennett
helps lead East Square, an equity

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - October 28, 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 28, 2015