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Academic Programs Targeting Black Boys Fall Off, But Some Predict a Resurgence
By Jessica Shyu For three years starting in 1991, Dr. Spencer Holland poured his energy into two Baltimore City public schools. The educational psychologist reorganized classes, separating out some of the rowdiest first grade boys in the predominately African-American schools. He installed African-American male teachers and volunteers in the boys’ classrooms. Within one year, the students’ standardized test scores at one of the schools, George G. Kelson Elementary School, jumped from the bottom quarter to the top quarter in the city, said Holland, who was the program administrator. “The results were so fantastic,” he said. Similar classrooms –which relied on male instructors and boys-only classes to spur achievement -- were launching across the country: More than 500 of them opened between the late-1980s and mid-'90s, said Dr. Bobby Austin, the former director of the African-American men’s initiative at the Kellogg Foundation. Most were funded through a combination of private and public grants and donations. But by 1994, Holland’s programs at Robert W. Coleman and George G. Kelson elementary schools were over. Funding from Morgan State University and the ABEL Foundation, a private grant-giving group, had dried up. Others followed to the curriculum graveyard. At least half of the programs designed to help black boys succeed academically were dropped, many in the last five years. Apathy among African Americans, a lack of funding and a perception that the single-race, single-sex programs were a re-segregation effort hurt, said Austin and others. Groups like NAACP, the National Organization for Women and the Children’s Defense Fund led the opposition in the early-1990s, echoing concerns that the programs segregated students and created a negative stigma for the ones separated from the co-ed classrooms. “As the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has argued, introducing race-based segregation is a 180-degree change in direction for social and educational policy, and one with extremely high risks,” Carol Ascher, an anthropologist at New York University, wrote in her 1991 study on school programs for African-American males. It didn’t help that the programs were a direct assault on Title IX of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1972, which deemed classes segregated by sex illegal in public schools. But earlier this year, the Bush administration relaxed Title IX rules as part of its “No Child Left Behind” educational reforms. And now there is speculation the programs could see a rebirth. History of All-boys Programs Holland’s programs at Coleman and Kelson elementary schools launched during the first Bush administration, when the economy was stagnating and gang activities and illicit drug trades were active in urban streets. A 1985 study published by Yale University, “Keeping track: How schools structure inequality,” concluded that schools had contributed to black men’s failure with inadequate resources and unconsciously prejudiced teachers. Institutionalized racism was attacked by community groups with a vengeance. “You saw men and women begin to say we should do something because the government was doing nothing,” said Austin, now executive assistant to the president at the University of the District of Columbia. “They began to take action to save the boys from the streets, and it all amounted to one thing: How do you help a child succeed, given his circumstances?” For Holland and others, the answer was to emphasize black role models and sometimes Afrocentric curriculums in hundreds of independent schools, experimental classrooms and after-school programs. Their programs demanded greater discipline from the boys, who were unused to following orders, especially from African-American men, Holland said. They also often occupied the youths’ time long after normal school hours so that students stayed out of the streets and had space to study. “It was an effort to focus on the population that is filling our prisons,” said Holland, who founded and continues to run Project 2000, a privately funded after-school college prep program for black youths in Washington, D.C. “One of the main reasons that the African-American male population is having so many problems is because they are uneducated,” he said. “They can’t read, so they can’t be functional for a job.” Benefits At Holland’s Project 2000 center, 17-year-old Douglass Lofland lounges in a makeshift classroom with a group of seventh graders. He said he’s graduating from Eastern Senior High School with a 3.5 grade point average next month and will attend Michigan State University next fall with a full scholarship. No way will he return to live in the Anacostia projects, he said, but he’ll come back to help the younger kids at Project 2000, just as the older boys before have returned from college as tutors and mentors. The after-school program demands academic discipline, requiring the boys to finish all their schoolwork and have it checked off by an instructor, but it also forges relationships among the boys that insulate them from the harsh inner-city streets, Lofland said. According to the Maryland State Department of Education, almost 23 percent of African-American students drop out of Maryland high schools. The dropout rate is higher nationally: about 44 percent dropped out in 2000, reported the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. But those who attend Project 2000 are practically guaranteed to graduate, Holland said. It places a premium on academics, requiring students to maintain a 2.5 GPA. It uses education as a vehicle for social mobility. Supporters say such programs are important because many black youths lack respectable black role models. The 2002 U.S. Census reported that about 54 percent of all African-American families are headed by single mothers. Cameron Miles, director of Mentoring Male Teens in the Hood, a Baltimore-based program that instructs boys on proper behavior and academics, hopes male bonding will help them avoid the penal system. The mentoring groups emphasize forging relationships and fostering social skills: At each monthly meeting, the boys huddle with their mentors to work on physical exercise, schoolwork and career workshops. More than 90 percent of Project 2000’s 52 students grew up without a father figure, said Program Director Warren Kinsman. The students learn to look up to each other. The project’s male bonding network allows students to tackle the hardest math problems, he said. It also helps keep them safe and off the streets. Although not all programs are taught with an Afrocentric curriculum, the ones that do bolster a sense of identity for young people, said Paul Hill, CEO of East End Neighborhood House, an after-school, Afrocentric program in Cleveland that tutors and mentors boys and girls. Its after-school curriculum traces African Americans’ unique history and culture in America since before slavery. Understanding their roots gives the students pride in their heritage and inspires them to follow in the footsteps of African-American heroes, Hill said. But few programs targeting African-American males remain today, program directors note. The National African-American Male Collaboration, an umbrella group for the programs, fell apart in 2002 when private funding from the Kellogg Foundation ended. The end of the’80s and start of the ’90s “were what I called the ‘fat and happy years,’ ” Hill said. “But [our programs] were the first ones to be cut and eliminated during budget deficits.” Grants are now so difficult to acquire that Miles often pays expenses for his mentoring program out of his own pocket. “I don’t think there’s enough funding, and the funding that’s out there is so difficult to get,” he said. “But people still need the programs.” The ABEL Foundation, which funded and later pulled funding on Holland’s Baltimore classrooms, said it would now be open to sponsoring a project targeting African-American boys. But none have been pitched, said foundation Director Robert Embry. Future Holland is not optimistic about future programs for African-American boys, because, he said, “the community doesn’t have a stake in the education of black males.” Others, like Austin, say it’s just a matter of time before these programs reemerge. “I think someone will come along and there will be a stream of money from a philanthropic person,” he said. “The programs will come back, but not in the same way.” Spokespeople for the NAACP, NOW and CDF said their organizations no longer take a stance against the programs. In the meantime, students who have latched on to existing programs are grateful. Project 2000 “makes you stay out of trouble,” high school senior Lofland said. “You walk in here, you don’t have to worry about getting shot or stabbed.” Without it, “I probably wouldn’t be going to Michigan State. I’d probably be running wild, not caring,” he said.
Banner photo courtesy Joseph Douglas Collection, Kansas Collection, Spencer
Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries Copyright ©
2004 University
of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism
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