We know where the eight finalists for Guilford County Schools superintendent work, but we still don’t know who they are.
Whoever the new superintendent is, he’s going to have to deal with the issue of underachieving black males:
16 people, including educators, parents and community activists, pleaded with school board members to address what they said was teachers’ and administrators’ mistreatment of black male students — discriminating against them by labeling them as “thugs and hoodlums.”
They also referred to special reports the board received Monday about the underachievement of black male students in the district.
Monday’s reports confirmed that black males are more likely than white males to come from low-income families, have parents without a college degree and have learning disabilities. Schools with large minority populations have higher concentrations of inexperienced educators and turnover.
On the other hand, the report found that black males were more likely to be enrolled in prekindergarten classes and magnet schools. And students who stayed in the district from grades three through 12 fared better on state exams than those who did not.
“Thank God for the report,” said Yvonne Hunt Perry, who oversees an outreach program for suspended students, told the board. “But we’ve got to get busy.”
Some student advocates in the audience said they planned to talk about possible solutions in a community meeting next week.
Curriculum is a major issue, at least for school board chairman Alan Duncan:
“Where within our U.S. history course do African-American students get any sense of identity? It’s just not there, it’s just not there. It’s a subject matter that, if you look at your world history course of study or curriculum mandated by the state, you’re not making that much more progress on the issue.
Comments from other board members were equally interesting. I’ll leave interpretation of those comments up to individual readers.
Board member Dot Kearns followed up:
“We’re almost talking about young African-American males as though they couldn’t hear us, as they though they weren’t here. We talk about them. I’ve felt for a long time that if we had the capability for our counselors in our schools to meet with every incoming eight- or ninth-grader to say ‘what are your hopes, what are aspirations?’ and to try to get at what I have felt is some anger that our African American youth don’t know why is there or even that it is there, but the way they behave sometime indicates that it is there. So I’ve wondered if there is a way, as we move along, to have some dialogue with African-American male students.’
Fellow board member Anita Sharpe:
“We talk about black males like they can’t hear us, but they do hear us, at a very early, young age. And what they hear, and this is true of all children, but we say it more to black males, is ‘You can’t learn.’ We have this innate belief that poor children can’t learn…..We say it, we believe it, and our actions show that, and that what are children come to believe. They come to believe that ‘because I’m poor, I can’t learn, because I’m a poor black, that’s two strikes, Ic an learn even less.’ I know we don’t mean to convey that message, I don’t think we mean to convey that message at all.
