Sociation Today

State of Emergency:
Young Men of Color at the Cross Roads

by

Jonathan Livingston

Janelle Billingsley

Nathaniel Crosby

Tyler Evans

North Carolina Central University

Introduction

The challenges facing black males in the United States have been studied since the 1970’s (Nobles, 1980; Livingston and McAdoo, 2004). Scholars have noted disproportionate high school dropout rates, suspension, expulsion and lower standardized test performance among Black males for decades (Ballantine and Spade, 1993; Sanders, 1998; Noguera, 2003). Given the importance of education in regards to social mobility in the US for marginalized populations, there is a need to understand cultural, psychosocial, and structural factors impacting poor education performance for young Black men. The current paper seeks to not only provide insight and data on black males in education and the vicious cycles of incarceration and unemployment, but also seeks to demonstrate strategies that may improve the current state of Black males in America.

Black Males and Education

Currently in the US, only 52 percent of black males graduate from high school on time. 17.5 percent of AA males have been retained at least once during grades K-12 (Johnson, 2012). Black males are 2.5 more times to be enrolled in special education classes and 3 times more likely to be suspended or expelled compared to their white male counterparts (National Education Association). In many urban centers 17-25 percent of black students are suspended or expelled each year. Referral rates to law enforcement for disciplinary problems are 2 times higher for black students than their white counterparts and rates of reported violence and aggression among young black males is higher than that of their white male counterpart. From 2001-2011 black males had the highest rates of violent crimes reported by teachers, principals, and school resource officers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011).

Incarceration

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated people in the US. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2015). Moreover, contemporary data suggests that Black males born after 2001 have a 1 in 3 chance of being incarcerated at some point within their lifetime (Bonczar, 2003)

The Racial and Ethnic Make-up of the Incarcerated Population

Race/Ethnicity	% of US Population	% of U.S. Incarcerated Population	National incarceration rate
White (non-Hispanic	64%	39%	45 per 100,000
Hispanic	16%	19%	831 per 100,000
Black	13%	40%	2,306 per 100,000

Source:
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

A considerable amount of literature has been published on the school to prison pipeline. Researchers have found a strong link between school failure, high school dropout rates, and high incarceration rates between students of color (Heitzeg, 2009; Kim, Losen, and Hewitt, 2010; Wald and Losen, 2007). Even in pre-k school settings such as Head Start, prior to a child entering, information is gathered as to whether or not their parents have been incarcerated. Researchers use this to predict challenges among the children as well as their likely hood of succeeding in school. Moreover, prison has become so common in some urban settings, young men of color see it as a rite of passage. Thus, incarceration has become normalized in many urban settings.

Although this link between school failure and higher incarceration rates has been well substantiated in literature, more research is needed in an effort to understand how this relationship impacts family dynamics, family sustainability, and young people’s performance in the educational setting. Thus, future research to understand the influence of incarceration upon education must pose the following questions:

How does an arrest or imprisonment due to a crime with so called "war on drugs" impact the lives and educational aspirations of a child?
How does living in communities where in over 60 percent of the young men have been incarcerated at some point in their life, impact educational achievement and aspiration?

How has prison culture influenced and shaped the social and psychological world that young men of color are nurtured in?

Poverty and Unemployment

"It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty"–Juvenal

Although the US has witnessed substantial increases in the standard of living of African Americans since the Jim Crow era, poverty still disproportionately affects this group. Twenty four percent of all black families in the US live in poverty, and 47 percent of those are female-headed households with children under 18 (US census Bureau, 2012). Low income families are continually priced into neighborhoods that are characterized by high rates of violence, drugs and unemployment, which all cultivate nihilistic attitudes and perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of persistent poverty. According to the US census bureau 11.5 percent of black families live in government or section 8 housing, 13.6 percent receive temporary aid for needy families (TANF), 15 percent receive food stamps and 39.4 percent are on Medicaid (US census Bureau, 2012). Children, particularly young black males, reared in such environmental contexts transfer many associated challenges to the school context.

Many education scholars suggest that a cultural incongruity exists between the home circumstances of students and the school that they attend. Thus, a disproportionate rate of unprivileged children come to school hungry, without proper clothing, and from disorganized environments that may be over crowded, lacking in resources and suffering from an overarching sense of hopelessness. Children living in poverty have a higher rate of school absences, expulsion, suspension, and likelihood of dropping out than children from financially stable families. In many cases, students drop out due to familial support obligations. Dropout rates in the US are 7 times higher for low income students between 16 and 24 years of age. Thus, addressing education issues among African-American males, requires a clear understanding of the impact of poverty by educators and human service professionals.

Strategies for Ensuring Success

Strategy 1: An Interactionist approach to culture

Since the early days of integration, black students have experienced a cultural shift in attitudes and expectations in regard to their relationship with the education system. Much of the overt negativity in the past was from whites that opposed integration based on racist ideologies. Today, a major source of opposition is intraracial conflict based on misguided assumptions about the homogeneity of black identity. These attitudes dictate the expression of intellect and academic pursuits which often are characterized as "acting white" or "not real" as it pertains to one’s racial and cultural identity as a black person. These sentiments are present in popular music and entertainment, in addition to black households and neighborhoods. This is an example of what we term as “in-group culture”, and this shift is shown to influence school climate negatively. As a result, black male students are more likely to miss school due to feeling unsafe than their white counterparts (Noguera. 2003).

Outgroup culture continues to have an influence on the black experience in education as well; however, it tends to occur in a more covert and systematic manner. The term “hidden curriculum” is a characterization of the unspoken expectations that black students face in the education system in regard to their socialization and cultural expression in the classroom (Irvine, 1990). Ultimately the "hidden curriculum," which has little to do with academic competencies, serves as the basis for the labeling and subsequent disenfranchisement of a multitude of black students, as reflected in the dismal high school dropout rates for this demographic. One major flaw that contributes to this issue is a lack of cultural competency among educators. Teaching is a profession that is dominated by Caucasian women, which has proven to not bode well for black male students in particular. A great deal of variability in the way that behavioral issues are encountered and handled by educators of black boys has been consistently observed in research (Gregory and Thompson, 2010). In many cases, the same child can have contrasting experiences with teachers when moving from classroom to classroom, depending upon how competent the teacher is in interpreting and applying appropriate responses to behavioral issues. The issue of fear responses to poor behavior among white female teachers leads to an alarming rate of discipline referrals and suspensions (Kenyatta, 2012).

School administrators can facilitate these exchanges between black boys and their teachers by understanding a few key points about this dynamic. The first point is that administrators must recognize that traditional didactic methods adopt a teaching philosophy that some researchers refer to as "the banking concept of education" (Freire, 1970). The assumption here is that the instructor is the only entity in the student-teacher dynamic that has any plausible ideas to offer; therefore, the instructor is the only depositor in the interaction. In this model, ignorance is projected onto the students and the burden is placed on them to alter their knowledge base and behavior to meet the expectations of the teacher. In a vacuum this may seem plausible, but when we revisit the issue of culture and the uneven manner in which it permeates the education system, we see that this approach further diminishes the adaptability of an already marginalized group. Because the majority of teachers are white women, the standards enforced in the school system inherently become something that approximates their collective personal belief system. For this reason, white students often are at an advantage when it comes to assimilating to the structure of any given classroom.

A strategy that we have identified that may address the issue of cultural conflict in the classroom is alternative class formats and methodologies. One specific example is a method coined as “Porch Talk which, as the name implies, encourages open and honest dialogue between teachers and students (Gay, 2000). The widespread implementation of this method may potentially improve student-teacher relations for black boys by broadening the spectrum of acceptable behaviors in the classroom to include some that previously would have resulted in discipline referrals. For example, speaking in a loud or unruly manner is permissible within the Porch Talk methodology as a sign of participation and active engagement. More importantly, the burden of change is shared among all students, as well as the teacher, because the learning experience becomes an exchange of ideas as opposed to a dissemination of them.

Strategy 2: Promote healthy self-regulation

    The socioeconomic pressures that urban youth face serve as a barrier to their efforts to remain engaged with the education system. Many of these youth struggle with justifying the pursuit of formal education when: a) they have no evidence that they will ever benefit from it based on their environment and b) they have more immediate financial needs than school can address as presently constituted. With this in mind, we propose the idea that school systems can support these self-regulated, evaluative processes in order to promote more fruitful long-term decisions for these vulnerable students. At the outset, our solutions attack the issue of poverty as a threat to black education; however, on the back end it addresses the issue of incarceration as well, by promoting participation in legal means of subsistence as opposed to illegal means.

    The concept of self-regulation refers to one's ability to plan, execute and evaluate in order to achieve a defined goal. In the context of the education system, the ultimate goal is to earn a high school diploma within four years of enrolling in high school. Self-regulatory abilities involve areas of the brain that are susceptible to constant risk-reward evaluations that alter the ability to attend to one specific activity over another. We often see this play out in the school system when students decide to drop out. When we examine the potential motivators for the decision not to return to school, some of the prominent reasons include a desire to seek full-time employment, a lack of social connectedness with the school or most detrimentally, the decision to participate in economically-driven criminal activity in lieu of school such as drug-trafficking.

    The idea that individual decision-making processes serve as the frontline of the battle against racial disparities in the education system lends itself to the notion that society can do more to incentive prosocial choices. Initiatives such as the Hamilton Project study the impact of providing financial incentives to students in impoverished areas in exchange for productive education-related behaviors. Researchers at Harvard University sampled students ranging from 2nd grade to 9th grade in major U.S. cities and provided monetary compensation for input behaviors such as attendance and spending time reading, as well as output behaviors such as test scores and grades. The results show that monetary incentives promote input behaviors, meaning that they are effective at getting vulnerable students to put in the effort to be successful (Allen and Fryer, 2011). However, there were no significant findings that suggest that grades or test scores are improved by the prospect of receiving financial rewards (Allen and Fryer, 2011). Even though the latter finding is not affirmative, it is nonetheless illuminating when we consider the implicit bias in state assessments and scoring suggested by these results.

Strategy 3: Re-emphasize Career and Technical Education

    This is another strategy that addresses socioeconomic difficulties associated with education. Family income is the best predictor of college enrollment; therefore, students from low SES backgrounds have a much less chance of pursuing a four-year degree than their more wealthy counterparts. School systems can modify and improve existing vocational programs to help bridge the postsecondary transition into gainful employment for black males. These programs can also be redesigned to capture black males who are at risk of dropout due to economic hardship and disinterest in the current curriculum. This strategy is a call for a reform of the present structure of the education system as it concerns vulnerable populations that are not good candidates to pursue a college degree.

    In this reformed model, career exploration, mentorship and apprenticeship are focal components of secondary education for these students, with less of an emphasis on upper level coursework that is not directly applicable to their chosen career path. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, some of the fastest growing jobs require some higher education but not a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2009). Professions in carpentry, transport, automobile mechanics, electrical engineering, among others, can be introduced during the early years of post-secondary education, and subsequently used to keep at-risk students engaged with the education system. This model allows for the development of a professional identity and has the potential to provide tangible benefits that help mitigate the perceived benefits of participating in illegal activity for financial gain.

    We have seen institutions of higher learning successfully partner with community colleges and other agencies to facilitate post-secondary transitions in the past. The Early College program is one example, allowing college bound students to earn course credit while still in high school. Dual enrollment programs are common as well, such as the partnership between North Carolina Central University and Durham Technical Community College that provides a residential college experience to students interested in transferring their two-year degree credits toward a four year degree. Exemplary programs such as these can serve as a model for dual-enrollment opportunities designed to allow black males who are not college-bound to get the training and job skills they need prior to graduation. Moreover, this may prove to be a multi-pronged solution in that it employs an instructional technique that could potentially be more culture and gender appropriate by allowing for movement, interaction and direct application of learning.

Strategy 4: Talent Development Model

    In an effort to address the academic underperformance of African American males, schools may look to reform the instructional setting by implementing the Talent Development Model. Created by the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR), based out of Johns Hopkins University, the model seeks to enhance student achievement, as well as student and teacher expectations. The Talent Development Model (2004) addresses the five key problems that may inhibit African American males from succeeding in the instructional setting; anonymity, low student expectations, poor preparation, limited capacity, and isolation of the school.

    To address the issue of anonymity within the classroom, the Talent Development Model restructures the classroom to include small learning communities with the intention of fostering the personalization of relationships among the teachers and their students; while also creating a smaller learning environment that is more manageable for the teacher (Kemple and Herlihy, 2004; Herlihy and Kemple, 2004). Research has shown that when implemented early, African American students in particular benefit from small instructional class sizes, which has been shown to minimize the disadvantages this group of students traditionally face when testing (Ballantine and Spade, 1993). Low expectations of students in the urban school setting are addressed in that courses following the Talent Development Model are structured in an effort to prepare students for college and career with the implementation of rigorous, yet relevant content to future endeavors. To better prepare students at the high school level, students under the Talent Development Model are allowed increased learning time in the forms of block schedules and recovery opportunities during the school hours for students struggling in their mathematics and English courses. In regard to the limited capacity of teachers in urban schools to address the concerns facing African American male students, the model calls for continuous professional development as a means of effectively enforcing the instructional approaches presented. Lastly, the Talent Development Model addresses student isolation between home and school by creating partnerships among the parents, community, and school. This method of incorporation is of great importance as extensive literature has shown the academic benefits of family and community support on the education of the Black student (Sanders, 1998; Graves and Wright, 2011; Galindo and Sheldon, 2012; Fan, Williams, and Wolters, 2012; McGill, Hughes, Alicea, and Way, 2012)

    With implementation in both middle and high schools nationwide, research studies have examined the effectiveness of the reform initiative. Kemple and Herlihy (2004) examined five high schools that implemented the model in a northeastern, urban school district. The studied population consisted of a student population that was 67% African American, and 11% Hispanic/Latino. Moreover, more than 75 percent of the studied population fell below the reading and math skills level at the entrance of ninth grade; over 50 percent were chronically absent, with an attendance rate less than 80 percent; and less than 66 percent of students who entered the ninth grade in the studied district in the three years prior to the implementation of the Talent Development Model were promoted to the tenth grade. Following implementation of the model, substantial gains were noted in earned academic course credits and promotion to the tenth grade; followed by modest improvements in attendance. Like the high school model, the Talent Development Middle School Model was also examined for study in a northeastern, urban school district. Analysis found positive associations among Talent Development and math achievement among eighth-grade students, strengthening over a period of three years.

Conclusion

The predominant focus of research regarding black youth and education is on the disparities in educational attainment and school performance. Although we acknowledge the existence of these issues, the true merit of research in this area stems from the development and implementation of plausible strategies for mitigating the challenges that face this population. Therefore, we propose three domains of influence on which strategies can be targeted most fruitfully based on the common factors that form the intergenerational cycle that plagues a disproportionate number of black students. The first domain is culture, which refers to popular beliefs and practices with respect to the experience that black students have in their academic endeavors. The next domain, poverty, includes any of the socioeconomic disadvantages that influence the quality, access and feasibility of formal education that ultimately contributes to the negative outcomes observed among the target population. Incarceration is the third domain we address, particularly the various processes that take place within the context of the education system that ultimately funnel black males into the justice system at a disproportionate rate.

References

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Ballantine, J.H., and Spade, J.Z. (1993) Schools and Society: A Sociological Approach to Education. SAGE, p.80.

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Irvine, J. J. (1990). Black Students and School Failure. Policies, Practices, and     Prescriptions. Westport, CT:Greenwood Press.

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The Editorial Board of Sociation Today

Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University
 Emeritus

Robert Wortham,
 Associate Editor,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Rebecca Adams,
 UNC-Greensboro

Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Catherine Harris,
 Wake Forest
 University

Ella Keller,
 Fayetteville
 State University

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Steve McNamee,
 UNC-Wilmington

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

William Smith,
 N.C. State University