Plagued by high drop-out rates and low test scores, Black male students have long been a particular object of concern for education reformers. Devising solutions which take into account the special challenges faced by Black males while also taking for granted their innate ability to achieve is another matter.
DISD’s newest attempt at a solution, the African American Male Task Force, hopes to chart new paths. The task force’s mission statement: To eliminate the achievement gap of African American male students by ensuring that their academic, social, cultural and emotional needs are being met as they engage in rigorous and relevant instruction, while striving to become college and workforce ready. As part of DISD’s larger African American Student Success Initiative, the task force’s overarching aim, according to Task Force chair Robert Edison, is to deploy data-driven interventions at the academic, psychosocial, and institutional level in order to improve educational outcomes for Black males.
With the blessing of Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, Edison and the rest of the task force are trying to formulate new approaches to the problem of Black male underachievement without restigmatizing a group already stereotyped as being perpetually in crisis. The group held its first meeting last September, and received input from students during a “Speak Out” event held on Dec. 3. Edison envisions a menagerie of pilot projects that will hopefully evolve into tomorrow’s conventional wisdom for dealing with the unique challenges faced by Black male students.
Examiner: How was it decided to form this task force?
Edison: Vicente Reyes, who was Executive Director of Curriculum Instruction, basically challenged his content directors to come up with some way of impacting the achievement gap, and out of that challenged came what was called the African American Student Success Initiative. And this is where the district as a whole has committed to put forth special effort and resources toward not only closing the achievement, but trying to eliminating the gap. And then when we started looking at the data, we realized that the group that was in the greatest need of support was African-American males. Then we established an African American Task Force to come up with strategies and programs, as well as to review district policies and procedures that may be causing the underachievement of African-American males.
Examiner: Who is on the task force? What are their credentials?
Edison: The task force is made up of principals, both elementary and secondary; Ms. Leslie Williams is one of our senior executive directors; Jackie Landry, who is executive director for professional development; and then we have members from the other departments such as research and evaluation, special education, and parent services. We are taking a holistic approach so we wanted all the departments that have any type of impact on African-American students in general as well as their parents. We even have ROTC and athletics, because a lot of our students are impacted by athletics.
Examiner: What is the strategy of task force? What steps are they taking to address the problem?
Edison: Number one, we did a great deal of research. We looked at just about every major study, from the national to the local level, to identify what the problems are nationally and locally. The data that was presented helped us to identify what the problems were and what some of the best practices are. Because we say up front that we’re not talking about all African-American male students. We’ve got some that are doing very well, there are some teachers that are very effective and some schools that are very effective. We looked at the Schott Report, which is a report that covered all 50 states. The College Board did a study on the issues or problems facing male students of color. The Century 21 Foundation put together a program called Bring Your “A” Game that has video and educational materials to go with it.
So we did our homework as far as finding out what the issues are. Then we sat down and [asked], “Okay how do we approach these problems in order to help these young men?” The first thing that we tapped into was that, historically, the Black church has always been in the forefront of issues such as this. So we had a forum with African-American ministers to let them know about our initiative, to find out if there were any district roadblocks that were keeping them from working with schools, to also find out what programs they had that we can assist them with. A lot of them have mentoring programs, they have after-school programs, and we want to let them know that we’re available to assist them in any way that we can with their program, and that they can assist us [even] if it’s no more than providing space in their church bulletin when activities are taking place to help promote that in the community and get the word out to parents.
From there, the other voice that we needed to hear was the voice of the students themselves. So we had a student forum, and we asked each of our high school principals to attend and bring five of their students, students who are successful academically and those who are struggling. We held that session, and just let the young men talk. We told them we were there to listen to them—“What are the roadblocks that you see standing in the way of you graduating from high school and going on to college?”—and they were very open with us. One of the issues that they talked about was the lack of support at home. Many come from single-parent homes, some are being raised by other siblings or grandparents. They said that if they could just have a mentor, if there was one person in their life who could call them on a regular basis, check with them on a regular basis, to just find out how they’re doing and encourage them to keep going, that that would lead to tremendous effort on their part. Out of that came the Student Advocacy Program, where the district is providing funds so that we can have a student advocate at each of our secondary schools who will identify 20 students to work with.
Examiner: How will results be measured?
Edison: Number one, we’re already seeing an impact because each school is required now in the Campus Improvement Plan to list strategies on how they’re going to work with students to close the achievement gap. So that’s already in place, and they report on what they’re doing as far as achieving the goals they’ve established as a campus. And then we plan to track the young men who are a part of this Advocacy Program, because we want to look at their graduation rates, their attendance rates, their referral rates, and their college entry rates. So this is not just a one-shot thing; we’ve tried to put something in place that we can sustain over time and then expand. If we can prove that it’s having an impact on “X” number of students this year than we can justify expanding it next year. So you might say we’re piloting some programs.
Examiner: Does singling out black males as a “problem class” help or hurt? How do you focus on YBMs without re-creating a stigma?
Edison: That’s an interesting question. We don’t present it as them being a “problem.” What we present is identifying the obstacles, both historical and temporary, that stand in their way or cause them to underachieve. The one thing that those young men said to us was, “Okay, you all say, ‘finish high school, go to college, get a good job, be an entrepreneur,’ but you never tell us how we do that.” So the program is really to put in a support system to help these young men overcome those obstacles, whether it’s being from a fatherless home or being part of the juvenile justice system. So we’re taking it from that approach.
Examiner: What is your background with DISD?
Edison: I started with DISD in 1971. I am the Director of Social Studies now, but I’ve taught in the social studies department. It’s primarily African American History courses and programs that have been my background. I mentioned to one group that I got involved with young men in 1977 when my sister was shot to death by a purse-snatcher. She was two weeks from graduating from college. On the way to a celebration at the college, a young man who was cutting class tried to snatch her purse and she was shot and killed. Rather than getting negative and angry about that I wanted to do something positive, so I started with working with African-American males.
Examiner: So you’re pretty optimistic that the task force will make a real splash in terms of being able to shape DISD policy?
Edison: Yes, because the superintendent is on board and fully supportive. Remember, for special education you have legislative mandates. For ESL (English as-a-second-language) students you have a legislative mandate. But for issues related to African-American males, there’s no mandate. But we’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. And sometimes that moral imperative is what’s needed to kick-start something like this and make it part of an overall agenda.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
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