Education Of African American Students Research Articles

Fishbowl Colonialism: The White Colonial Gaze on the Sound of Black America in Education

To counter anti-Black racism in the current post-civil rights movement era and to serve the needs of African American students whose cultural experiences have been historically marginalized in U.S. education (Mustaffa, 2017), schools and school systems should strive to provide culturally responsive and sustaining curricula (Paris & Alim, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014). However, when attempts have been made to practice cultural responsivity in English language arts and music education, the result has been an alarming and emotionally charged public backlash (Smitherman, 2006). This article explains this backlash and the resistance to Black sound culture in the classroom by exploring the colonial gaze (Kaplan, 1997) on the Black auditory body. I call this phenomenon "fishbowl colonialism," which describes how Black American music and language are exploited for entertainment but historically have not been considered worthy of serious study or inclusion in formal education. My aim in this essay is to historicize the stigmatization and subalternity of Black sound culture (Keyes, 2003) and to analyze how this stigma hinders efforts to provide culturally responsive education for African American students. If those who shape educational policy and curricula understand how the fishbowl colonialism of Black sound culture influences education policies, African American language (AAL) and music can be reframed in the classroom as a culturally responsive practice that centers on the culture of Black students.

Improving the College-Going Process of Nursing Education for African American Students.

The lack of diversity in the nursing workforce is concerning. Because schools of nursing play an important role in diversifying the nursing workforce, effective strategies must be developed to feed the pipeline. One such strategy is mentoring. The Diversity in Nursing Awareness Project was a mentoring program developed to assist African American students and their parents through the college-going process of nursing education. The aim of the program was not only to bring awareness of nursing as viable career option but also to increase acceptance and enrollment rates of African Americans into baccalaureate degree nursing programs.

Shifting Paradigms to Better Serve Twice-Exceptional African-American Learners

Existing research on students with twice-exceptional abilities concentrates on strategies to improve the educational experiences of individuals who demonstrate the comorbid presence of a talent for high academic achievement (often considered a strength) and a disability (often considered a weakness). However, this body of work typically excludes the sociocultural context in which these abilities manifest and how the current deficit perspective of ability infringes upon an appropriate education for African-American students with twice-exceptional abilities. Using Hill Collins’ (2008) Interlocking Systems of Oppression as a framework, we expound on the discourse about twice-exceptional abilities specific to African-American students with a focus on African-American males. We present a case study about the impact deficit perspectives have on identifying and supporting twice-exceptional abilities in African-American students. Recommendations are made to improve the conditions in which twice-exceptional abilities among African-Americans are identified and supported in schools.

The myth of the first African-American electrical engineer: Arthur U. Craig and the importance of teaching in technological history

In recent years, historians of technology including Bruce Sinclair, Rayvon Fouché, and Amy Slaton have analyzed the intersection of technological and African-American history to redress the historical and enduring correlation between whiteness and technology. This paper contributes to this conversation by chronicling the story of Arthur U. Craig, a faculty member at the Tuskegee Institute who installed the university’s famous lighting system. During Craig’s tenure at the Institute, he was touted to be the ‘first black electrical engineer’ – but he resisted that title. This article examines why. In so doing, ‘The Myth of the First African-American Electrical Engineer’ builds upon three scholarly conversations. First, it discusses how the cultural meanings of electricity inflected how Tuskegee advertised Craig’s contributions to campus. Second, it re-situates the often-overlooked Craig within the history of Tuskegee Institute. Finally, it examines Craig’s contribution to debates about engineering education for African American students.

The Problems of Implementation of Educational Reform Initiatives after Brown and Their Impact on African American Children and Their Community

This article is organized into sections, with the first consisting of a discussion of many efforts to discrimination against African Americans citizens and public school students in the United States. These discriminations include slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the “massive resistance” movement to public school desegregation, which was a major problem for the implementation of the Brown decisions. Additional forms of discrimination against African American public school students include school finance disparities, tracking, special education placements, and discipline practices. The second section of this article is based on educational innovations implemented in public schools to address the discriminations against African American citizens and public school students since the Brown decisions. These innovations include charter schools, vouchers, privatization, school reform, and restructuring the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top–-the final two of which are federal programs advanced by presidents George W. Bush and Barrack Obama. The final section of the article includes 10 recommendations that I believe are necessary if the nation is to improve public education for African American students. This, I maintain, will not be possible without first fully recognizing the gravity of the 416-plus years of discrimination waged against African American citizens and public school students in the United States.

The State of Black Education: The Politics of Educating African American Students at Colleges and Universities

In terms of higher education for African American students, the “school-to-prison pipeline” or Prison Industrial Complex must be totally dismantled in order to focus entirely on academic performance at colleges and universities and HBCUs. Additionally, mentors should be identified to tutor and guide and help black youngsters overcome their fear of learning and going to school, so that our whole society can benefit and improve academically. Finally, in this respect, we-the-people can move our nation forward by graduating people of color at higher institutions of learning, while providing them with a more productive life, and social advancement.

Our Own Communities, Our Own Schools: Educational Counter-Narratives of African American Civil Rights Generation Students

This study sought to document the schooling experiences and perceptions of African American students who attended segregated schools in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Through counter-narratives the participants provided insight into education in Edgecombe County during the 1960s. Findings suggested that schools were social and academic environments where education was valued. Additionally, findings suggested that participants had a deep connection to their segregated schools and therefore believed that integration removed the community involvement and educational environments that African American students needed to be engaged in school and academically successful. Implications for current issues related to the education of African American students are discussed in the conclusion.Keywords: segregated schools, counter-narratives, community, relationshipsSchools across the southern United States and the nation have become increasingly segregated due to legislation and policies that have eliminated busing and other methods of creating racially diverse schools (Kozol, 2005; McPherson, 2011; Mickelson, 2001; Woodward, 2011). As a result, the academic conversation often focuses on the consequences of attending segregated neighborhood schools versus purposefully integrated ones while failing to examine the more substantial issues. Research and policy must move beyond student assignment and address the quality of education and support that need to occur within schools regardless of environment in order for African American students to be successful. Much can be learned from the experiences of students who attended segregated schools throughout the South before Brown v. The Board of Education (1954) and federal court mandates ended racially segregated schooling. Their voices are often excluded from the literature, but without first-hand knowledge of their schooling experiences many current educational policies, including student assignment, will continue to miss the mark for African American students (King, 2005).This article includes the counter-narratives of four African Americans who attended a segregated school in Edgecombe County, North Carolina during the 1960s. The participants' stories paint a vivid picture of the segregated schooling environment and provide insight into the role of education in the lives of African Americans in this area during this time period.Literature ReviewCurrent State of Education for African American StudentsMuch research has been devoted to the disparities that exist today with regard to African American students (Delpit, 2006; King, 2005; Mickelson, 2001; Orfield & Eaton, 1996, Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003). Beyond test scores and dropout statistics that present African Americans underperforming in comparison to White students are the day to day differences that exist in the educational environments and social and academic experiences of many low-income and minority students in comparison to their middle-class and White peers. As Kozol (2005) noted in his seminal text The Shame of the Nation, American schools have become increasingly re-segregated. Many school systems have shifted from the desegregated settings mandated by Brown, to neighborhood schools that reflect the segregated populations of their neighborhoods. For example, in Charlotte, North Carolina many schools currently have minority populations that exceed 80% (Mickelson, 2001), despite the 1971 Supreme Court ruling that supported mandatory busing as a means of achieving school desegregation, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg 's (1971). These neighborhood schools, supported by local property taxes, have led to schools with high minority and low-income populations that are underfunded and poorly resourced (Eaton, 2008; Kozol, 1991,2005).The variations in environments are one reason for the differences in achievement between Black and White students. Nevertheless, in environments that are racially desegregated, many African American students are still unsuccessful. …

“Give a Brotha a Break!”: The Experiences and Dilemmas of Middle-Class African American Male Students in White Suburban Schools

Background/Context Today, in the era of the first African American president, approximately one third of all African Americans live in suburban communities, and their children are attending suburban schools. Although most research on the education of African American students, particularly males, focuses on their plight in urban schooling, what occurs in suburban schools is also in need of examination. Purpose/Focus of Study This research focused on the lived experiences of 4 middle-class African American male students attending affluent White suburban schools. Through vignettes focusing on their various experiences and recollections, this study provides a preliminary snapshot, part of a larger study, of the schooling environments in the life stories of middle-class Black suburban youth. Research Design Qualitative methodology was used to explore the life histories of the 4 African American males. Each student participated in a tape-recorded interview to examine what it meant to grow up in White upper-middle-class suburban communities and to matriculate within suburban district schools from elementary through high school. Findings/Results The salient themes that emerged from the rich, interactive conversations and dialoguing address issues related to disillusionment and resilience; the presence or absence of racism; academic pressures; social bonding and identity development in racialized social and academic settings; and the gatekeeping role of athletics. Conclusions/Recommendations Suburban education may not be the panacea that African American families had hoped. The socioeconomic status of African American families who live in affluent White suburban communities may not be enough to mitigate against the situated “otherness” that Black students—in this case, males—experienced in affluent White suburban schools. More research is needed to understand the positionality of Black male students in suburban schools; relationships between suburban Black adolescent males and females; school life beyond athletics; the role of the family and community in combating racism and otherness; and how student agency can be a force for change.

Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson Mcmillon, & Jennifer D. Turner, Change is gonna come: Transforming literacy education for African American students. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Pp. xx, 202. Hb. $59. Pb. $24.95.

Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson Mcmillon, & Jennifer D. Turner, Change is gonna come: Transforming literacy education for African American students. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Pp. xx, 202. Hb. 24.95. - Volume 40 Issue 5

Re]conceptualizing Inclusion: Can Critical Race Theory and Interest Convergence be Utilized to Achieve Inclusion and Equity for African American Students?

Background/Context Even though not fully realized, in legislation and theory, the requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act have created pressure to address the historical inequity in educational opportunity, achievement, and outcomes, as well as disparities in achievement between students of color and White students; disproportionality in special education referral, identification, and placement; high dropout rates for students of color; and disproportionate discipline and referrals for students of color, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, students from immigrant families, and students in urban areas. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The authors argue that inclusive education never had the potential to be truly inclusive because it is built on the premises of an inferiority paradigm. Issues of race, class, and privilege have rarely been incorporated into the inclusive education definitions or debates in the United States, and certainly not in practice. The purpose of this article is to examine: (a) the historical context of public schooling in America; (b) inclusive education in practice: segregation of African American and other students of color; (c) [re]conceptualizing inclusion: the importance of a social justice lens and critical theory; and (d) the relevance of interest convergence. Research Design Analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The authors contend that the inclusive education movement has not resulted in positive outcomes or inclusion in general education for African American students because the movement was built on faulty assumptions that centered on ability and placement and did not look at the intersection of ability/disability with race, class, culture, and language. More important, the movement did not address issues of racism, White privilege, White dominance, and social class dominance. The authors assert that social justice, critical race theory, and interest convergence are powerful tools with which to [re]conceptualize inclusion and inclusive education in America.

Professional Book Reviews: Building Knowledge for Life

This column features books that reflect strong convictions about teachers’ and teacher educators’ “nonnegotiable and moral imperative and mandatory professional responsibility” (Gay, 2010, p. 250) to “act now, without a moment’s hesitation” (p. 247) to transform classrooms and teacher education programs so that no child is lost in the so-called achievement gap. The works reviewed offer possibilities for building academically rigorous classrooms that honor and support children as they build on their funds of knowledge within the very real confines and constraints that so many educators experience on a regular basis. Included in this issue are: Change Is Gonna Come: Transforming Literacy Education for African American Students by Patricia A. Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon, and Jennifer D. Turner; Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice by Geneva Gay; Latino Children Learning English: Steps in the Journey by Guadalupe Valdés, Sarah Capitelli, & Laura Alvarez; Teaching with Vision: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Standards-Based Classrooms edited by Christine E. Sleeter and Catherine Cornbleth; and Bedtime Stories and Book Reports: Connecting Parent Involvement and Parent Literacy, edited by Catherine Compton-Lilly and Stuart Greene. Additionally, Douglas Kaufman and Ryan Colwell review a number of seminal texts by Donald Graves, including: Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, A Fresh Look at Writing, Bringing Life into Learning: Creating a Lasting Literacy, and How to Catch a Shark: And Other Stories about Teaching and Learning.

JOHN DEWEY’S RACIALIZED VISIONS OF THE STUDENT AND CLASSROOM COMMUNITY

Abstract John Dewey’s willingness to endorse a remedial form of education for African American students offers us a rare glimpse of the racial assumptions underlying Dewey’s educational philosophy. By considering a variety of clues — Dewey’s silences on racial equality, his understanding of race and racial progress, and his respective prescriptions for European American and African American students — Frank Margonis offers in this essay a speculative case suggesting that the visionary child‐centered education for which Dewey was most well‐known was intended for European American students and not African American students. Because of the racial assumptions operative in Dewey’s educational philosophy, Margonis suggests, Dewey’s fundamental conceptions of the “student” and “classroom community” would best be abandoned by educational philosophers hoping to write philosophy that serves all students.

The Scholarship of Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III: Implications for Black Principal Leadership

For over 40 years the scholarship of Dr. Asa G. Hilliard has impacted the fields of educational psychology, testing and measurement, teacher education, and African and African American history. Dr. Hilliard was also concerned about school leadership, and much of his work is closely aligned with current discussions about school reform and accountability as they relate to effective school leadership. The purpose of this article is to present a review of a selected body of Dr. Hilliard’s scholarship, and to situate this work in the context of African American principal leadership and the education of African American students.

Prospective Principals' Openness to Organizational Change and the Education of African American Students

The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a research study that sought to examine and describe prospective principals’ attitudes and perceptions regarding current efforts to transform urban education for the betterment of African American Students. Given the current wave of reforms targeted at schools serving large numbers of African American students is driven by policies emanating from President Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation, this study focuses on prospective principals’ openness to the changes required by this federal legislation. This investigation is an attempt to assess the extent to which a principal preparation program at a large public university in the state of California is meeting its goal of preparing urban school administrators to transform urban education in the state of California. It explores the connection between the beliefs of prospective principals and the support of urban school reform.

Nathan B. Young and the Struggle Over Black Higher Education (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 152 agents and community blacks (p. 242). Hoffschwelle affirms the importance of black churches and ministers in rallying support for schools but does not detail that role as fully as she might have. Overall,Hoffschwelledoesjusticetothissignificantchapterofthesouthern experience. For African Americans across the South, a Rosenwald school in their community symbolized “the visible result of [their] initiative and persistence” (p. 264). Many of the buildings made possible by their sacrifice remain part of the southern landscape. Scholars and laypersons interested in educational history, African American history, Progressive reform and philanthropy, architecture, and material culture will be especially interested in this excellent volume. ANDREW J. WOOD Auburn University Nathan B. Young and the Struggle Over Black Higher Education. By Antonio F. Holland. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. x, 236 pp. $34.95. ISBN 978-0-8262-1690-3. Nathan B. Young was both a remarkable individual and, as Antonio Holland’s title suggests, historically representative. Young’s entire adult life was devoted to a struggle against assumptions a century ago that the proper education for African American students was strictly vocational. An Alabamian, Young was born a slave in Newbern in 1862. He never knew his father—Young was the surname of the ex-slave whom his mother married shortly after the Civil War and emancipation. That mother, Susan Young, was determined that her son would be successful, and pushed him to get a secondary education at Talladega College and then a college degree from Oberlin in 1888. Though he held several other posts for short periods, Young’s long career as an educator consisted chiefly of three positions: as teacher and something akin to academic dean at Tuskegee Institute (1892–97), as president at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College (1901–23), and as president at Lincoln University of Missouri (1923–27 and 1929– 31). Young parted ways with the authorities who controlled each of these schools, partly because he sought to make classic academic education available to black students and partly because he was, evidently, temperamentally unbending. At Tuskegee, Booker Washington made Young “head teacher” of the Academic Department, responsible for personnel decisions and arrang- A P R I L 2 0 0 7 153 ing class offerings. Young consistently requested more resources for his department than Washington wanted to supply; the principal focused his attention and resources on the Mechanic and Trades Department. Holland finds that Washington became more dictatorial—he had always had that tendency—after the fame of his Atlanta Exposition speech of 1895. Two years later Young resigned. After four years at a college in Georgia, Young accepted the presidency of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he enjoyed a remarkably successful tenure of more than twenty years. Despite the college’s name, for two decades (1901–21) Young managed to wage a successful sort of guerilla warfare, using both federal and state funds which whites appropriated for vocational training to build a college with a strong traditional academic curriculum. Such high-minded subterfuge was possible only because the white, state-appointed Board of Control essentially chose to look the other way and allow Young to build a genuine college. All this changed with the 1920 election of a governor determined to return Florida A&M to vocational training. A new Board of Control sacked Young in 1923. He immediately assumed the presidency of Lincoln University in Missouri—a state, unlike Florida, in which the black community had a significant voice. Unfortunately, Lincoln was politicized even more than Florida A&M. Over the decades since its founding in 1867, some faculty and staff positions had regularly been filled by political patronage. Here Young had to battle not only those forces in the white community which wanted to limit the education of blacks, but a whirlpool of partisan political forces, white and black. In 1925 the inauguration of a governor unsympathetic to Young’s high academic goals presaged the inevitable: he was fired in 1927 after only four years at the helm. But, in keeping with the rapid changes in Missouri’s political weather, a sympathetic new governor in 1929 returned Young...

The Black College Mystique (review)

Reviewed by: The Black College Mystique M. Christopher Brown II The Black College Mystique, by Charles V. Willie, Richard J. Reddick, and Ronald Brown. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 160 pp. Cloth $60.00, ISBN 0-7425-4616-0; Paper $19.95, ISBN 0-7425-4617. The cohort of institutions federally designated as historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) represents a unique collegiate context in the corporate system called American higher education. Institutions founded prior to 1964 for the purpose of providing collegiate education to African Americans, HBCUs have a unique educational history compared to other postsecondary institutions in the United States. There are 103 public, private, four-year, and two-year [End Page 604] HBCUs. In addition to those 103 HBCUs, there are approximately 50 predominantly Black institutions—institutions that have greater than 50% Black student enrollment, that were not founded primarily for the education of African American students, and that may or may not have been founded prior to 1964. HBCUs remain an indispensable part of the national higher education landscape. Despite all of the positive evidence relating to their successes and achievements, negative misconceptions and erroneous information continue to affect the image of HBCUs (Brown, Ricard, & Donahoo, 2004). In the introduction to a special issue of The Review of Higher Education focusing on empirical research on HBCUs, Brown and Freeman (2002) issued a clarion call for higher education researchers to document, describe, and detail these unique institutions. They stated, "Historically black colleges evince objectives, populations, philosophies, and environments which are worthy of scholarly investigation" (p. 240). This call resulted in a number of book-length projects on the topic, each referring to Brown and Freeman's introduction: Brown and Freeman (2004), Ashley and Williams (2004), Samuels (2004), and now Willie, Reddick, and Brown (2006). The latter of these is the focus of this review. The Black College Mystique is somewhat authored by the father of Black college research, Charles Willie, and two of his students—Richard J. Reddick and Ronald Brown. Actually, three of the seven chapters are reprinted from seminal articles published by Willie in the 1970s. The volume hews back to many of the classic ideas offered about HBCUs during the last century. However, the book offers few new citations to publications on what we know about HBCUs as a result of the last decade of empirical research by scholars like Walter Allen, M. Christopher Brown, James Earl Davis, Len Foster, Kassie Freeman, Sharon Fries-Britt, Marybeth Gasman, Barbara Johnson, Charles Outcalt, and Albert Samuels. The Black College Mystique does not join the recent cavalcade of scholarship responding to the call to expand the extant research base on HBCUs. In fact, the book never defines the "black college mystique," leaving the reader to wonder what it is, how it is relevant, or why the project was given this name. According to the preface, the volume has two overall findings: (1) HBCUs are essential to the national system of higher education, and (2) the mentoring of students by HBCU faculty is significantly greater than in all other institutions. It is extremely difficult to link either of the two findings to the research and/or logic offered in the volume. It is as if the findings were drafted before the volume was ever written. Despite its absence in The Black College Mystique, there is evidence of the essential role that Black colleges play on the postsecondary landscape, albeit not for the reasons Willie, Reddick, and Brown suggest related to racial homogeneity and heterogeneity. Recent literature speaks to the role of HBCUs in providing access and opportunity that could not otherwise be afforded to many African American, low-income, or undereducated students, as well as to other racial minorities (Brown, 1999; Brown & Davis, 2001; Wenglinsky, 1996, 1997). Despite common parlance that HBCUs are culturally more congenial living and learning communities, there is no empirical data on the role of HBCU faculty as superior mentors when controlling for institutional size (Brown, 1998). The issue of the intangible and dynamic cultural context of the Black college has been referenced anecdotally by numerous writers. However, prior to this [End Page 605] "treatise," no effort had been made to name or explain...

Segregation, Desegregation, and Resegregation in Cincinnati: The Perspective of an African American Principal

Recent research on Brown v. Board of Education has emphasized continuing disparities in the education of White and African American students. This research has used the failure of desegregation to account for persisting gaps in White and Black school funding, teacher qualifications, and student achievement. But the current focus on the failure of desegregation has overshadowed an equally significant but underreported success in the area of improving education for African American students. According to the most recent findings on student achievement, for example, the gaps between African American and White students are again narrowing, in some cases approaching zero. The present article shows that the failure of desegregation is not the only, nor is it likely to prove to be the most enduring, legacy of Brown. At the same time that desegregation was being resisted and ultimately reversed in Cincinnati, as elsewhere, Brown was inspiring an emphasis on quality education that resulted in two of the city's worst-performing Black schools’ being transformed into schools of excellence.

Understanding the discipline gap through a cultural lens: implications for the education of African American students

African American students are disciplined at rates that are disproportionately higher than Black students’ statistical representation in public schools. Coined as the discipline gap, racial and ethnic disparities are present in virtually every major school system across the United States. Because African American students seldom share the cultural frameworks of their teachers, the overrepresentation of Black students on measures of school discipline may, in part, be a function of cultural mismatches in the classroom. This article contains a synopsis of what is currently known about the discipline gap, and sets forth suggestions to address the issue. Recommendations focus on the roles of culturally responsive discipline, teacher recruitment and cultural immersion experiences. Irvine’s construct of cultural synchronization serves as the article’s interpretive basis.

The Impact of Cultural Biases on African American Students’ Education

Education, at all levels, opens routes to achieve higher incomes, status advancement, and upward social mobility. The goal for most families is to present an opportunity for their children to receive a jump on acquiring knowledge to afford this achievement. Schools within our education system declare they offer a quality education for African American students. This concept will be examined along with the research that maintains schooling for African American students is deliberately sabotaged. To ensure success for all students, awareness and sensitivity to diversity issues should reflect the importance of presenting different cultural perspectives in education.

From Old Schools to Tomorrow's Schools

Despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, segregation is alive and well in today's schools. African American students are overrepresented in special education, have higher dropout rates, are suspended and expelled at higher rates, and are subject to persistent educational inequity. The role of psychoeducational assessment at the intersection of difference and disability has contributed to the persistent misidentification and overrepresentation of African American students in special education. However, paradigms for assessment hold promise for fulfilling the hope of Brown in tomorrow's schools. In order to describe the impact of past and present psychoeducational assessment practices on African American learners, we track the evolution of psychoeducational assessment in the context of three eras: (a) prior to Brown, or “old schools”; (b) post Brown, an era of hope for “new schools”; and (c) the situation in today's schools. The education of African American students and students with disabilities emerge as parallel and intertwined throughout this history.