The effort to improve educational outcomes for African American students can fairly be described as the animating impulse behind the education reform movement broadly. Hence, it’s downright depressing to repeat some of the figures in this report: “On the 2015 NAEP, only 18 percent of African American fourth graders were found to be proficient in reading, and only 19 percent scored proficient in math,” the authors note. “The eighth-grade numbers were even worse, with only 16 percent of African American students rated proficient in reading and only 13 percent rated proficient in math.” College and career readiness? Not so much. Quick: In how many states did more than 5 percent of African American students graduate having passed at least one AP exam in a STEM subject? (Three: Colorado, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.) How many states with five hundred or more African American ACT test-takers had 17 percent or more score as college-ready on all four tested subjects? Not one.
Depressed yet?
Still there are some examples of significant progress: Twenty-five years ago, only 1 percent of Washington, D.C.’s eighth-grade African American students were proficient in math; today it’s 13 percent. High school graduation rates for black students are on the rise—as high as 84 percent in Texas, the national leader (Nevada and Oregon are the laggards, graduating only 57 percent of African American students). “But college preparedness rates that equal only one-tenth of the graduation rate seem extreme,” the authors note, with understatement.
While nothing if not clear-eyed about the challenges and results, this report ventures out where far too many publications in this sad genre fear to tread. It features hopeful news of programs large and small that have had a demonstrable positive impact on outcomes for African American kids (many of which, I confess, I was almost wholly unfamiliar with). There’s “Advancement via Individualized Determination” (A.V.I.D.), a program for C students with college ambitions. AVID reaches hundreds of thousands of kids annually and has made college entrance gaps between black and white students in the program “statistically nonexistent.” Even more promising, those gains seem to stick: “After four years, the gap between white and black AVID students making it to the senior year of college was only 3 percent.” Another option, the National Math and Science Initiatives (NMSI), has made “great strides in closing the STEM achievement gap, dramatically increasing participation and success in AP STEM courses among traditionally underserved populations.” The Ten Boys Initiative, a Boston Public Schools project, likewise shows promising gains in language proficiency, with concomitant reductions in absences and suspensions.
The highlighted initiatives “prove it is effective to identify a strategy, integrate it into everyday work, and make it a long-lasting priority rather than a fleeting program.” The authors (principally Michael Q. McShane, late of AEI and now director of education policy of Missouri’s Show-Me Institute), conclude with several “common themes” that have emerged from their research into these promising programs: small things matter, like creating environments conducive to learning; community support is also imperative; without the public’s and parents’ support, efforts can be short lived. And of course, measurement matters. “The most promising of programs highlighted are able to connect success stories to real data that are moving the needle on improving student performance.”
SOURCE: Michael Q. McShane, “The Path Forward: Improving Opportunities for African-American Students,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (December 2015).
