Black Boys and Public Education: Special Ed, Social Promotion, and Cultural Bias

As discussed in last week’s class, the achievement gap between Blacks and Whites consistently indicates disparities in academic outcomes in regards to race in the US. These differences in academic performance are argued by many to justify many employers hiring of White applicants over Blacks. This rationale supports that hiring discrimination stems not from prejudice but from mere asymmetries in qualifications between the two groups. In the event that this argument is true, one must – in exercising good policy – look to question, answer and remedy possible ways in which this phenomenon might be reversed. Though various studies prove that the achievement gap is continuously decreasing for Black females when given equal academic resources, the gap for Black men continues to remain vast over the course of various treatments. The purpose of this paper is to discuss various reasons that could account for poor academic achievement in Black men.

In recent times, many social scientists have given attention to the propensity of teachers and administrators to put Black men in Special Education classes at astronomically higher rates than their female and white counterparts. As noted in a 2005 report of the National Association for the Education of African American Students with Disabilities, in many urban areas – at any given time, two-thirds of the students in special education classes are Black and likely to be male. As displayed in the frustration of parents at a rally at a Maryland School Board meeting in 2005, many teachers prematurely transfer Black males to special education classes as a response to behavior or emotional problems. As a consequence, academically capable Black students’ intellectual growth becomes stunted while their behavioral and emotional issues continue to worsen.

Even in Chicago, the process of transferring problematic children to special education classes has sparked noteworthy attention. More specifically, within the Chicago Public Schools, criticism has been raised in the system’s use of social promotion of Black males as early as the third grade level. In effect, the public school system’s inability or lack of desire to adequately educate young Black boys “undermines student’s [life chances] when they fail to develop critical study and job-related skills.”

Oftentimes, an examination of academic outcomes for Black males brings criticism to the “culture” of African-American families who are deemed as valuing education far less than their White counterparts. While much research has gone into measuring the effects of habitual tendencies within Black households as they relate to educational performance, many remain skeptical in saying definitively that African-Americans “value” education less than Whites. However, what has recently been discovered of equal importance is the “culture” of the school and mainstream society’s perception of academic potential amongst Black male youth. On February 1, 2007, The Chicago Tribune published an article, “Young Blacks Feel Hindered” where a University of Chicago study [facilitated by Kathy Cohen] revealed that young Black people “remain alienated and pessimistic about their place in society.” The survey further revealed that students do not believe that racism will end in their lifetime and feel that it hinders their advancement leading many of the nation’s leaders to not care about them.

The feeling of cultural displacement amongst Black males was further examined in The Journal News, a newspaper serving the Westchester, New York and White Plains area. In an article entitled, “Racism still seen as a serious obstacle for Black males in America,” research from the University of Chicago revealed that 61 percent of Black teens and young adults said they believed discrimination made it harder for young blacks to get ahead. A separate survey from the Opinion Research Corp revealed similarly that 49 percent of young Blacks said that racism is still “a very serious problem.”

In examining the potential reasons that result in higher disparities in academic achievement between Blacks and Whites, one must be sensitive to the underlying cultural biases that may stunt overall life chances of Black males. Because of a perception of low life potential in the earliest stages of their academic life, these individuals are merely passed along through the education system with minimal substantive attention given to social and behavioral problems that could potentially be overcame with time and effort. As a result, many young Black males reach a proverbial “point of no return” where incentives to perform academically do not appear to be worth their time.