African American Male High School Students
How can schools in the US lower African American high school dropout rates and increase the graduation percentage?
Derrick Blackston Jr
Ms.Hill
March 13, 2015
Senior Seminar
Black males face an upheaval educational battle; Their graduation statistics are sobering across America. Over the years the dropout percentage for African American males has gone to its lowest percentage ever yet African American males still account for the highest number of high school dropouts. The Nation graduates only 47% of black males who enter the 9th grade.(Dr.Bell, 2010, Pg.1) The US can decrease the African American male dropout rates by directly interacting with African American male teens. Teens could attend tutoring if struggling in school with: note taking, homework, studying, test preparation/taking. In addition to a Mentor program for teens that might just need a positive influence, are having social issues or are struggling with problems at home. Furthermore, schools should make learning more engaging by directly interacting with the students. Teachers teach the school curriculum using the lessons and activities that everyone else has already used and have used for years. The curriculum in the book does not have a lesson plan that African Americans can relate too as much as other races or genders. The lessons that teachers teach are what the teachers feel as though the student needs to know in life rather than what might really be essential to the future development of the students.
There are many different reasons why kids decide to drop out of high school. Such reasons could be parents forcing post-secondary school upon their child, making them go to unneeded tutoring or extracurriculars that they do not want to be in. Some students may drop out because They do not feel as though they are learning anything that will benefit them in the long run. In addition to not benefiting, if classes are not engageable enough and if a student is constantly getting writes up or in trouble for a simple situation that they feel as though is not that serious a student might stop going to school now the student is kicked out for truancy. Some teens drop out simply because they believe that school is too difficult. Dr. Edward Bell developed a study using 15 African American males from ages 18-55 that dropped out of school. This study was to figure out what was the impetus for the students to drop out of high school. In the study Dr. Bell learned, twenty-six percent of the participants dropped out of school because of academic factors such as school work being too difficult and not liking the teacher. However, 73% of the black males from the study dropped out of school because of non-academic factors such as medical needs, peer pressure, loss of focus, home problems, and hanging with friends, which were the common themes that emerged from the data analysis. Revealing black males are bombarded with a sundry of social and educational issues such as peer pressure or education biases and/or practices that hinder progression towards graduating from high school (Bell, 2010, Pg.1).
Furthermore there are other reasons why students drop out discovered by a recent highly-comprehensive study conducted by Communities In Schools and the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University. The report states that while there is no single risk factor that causes dropping out, each additional risk factor an individual faces increases the likelihood of dropping out. Some of the key, alterable risk factors the study cites are: Teen parenthood, substance abuse, criminal behaviors, lack of self-esteem, poor school performance/grade retention, absenteeism, discipline problems at school, low educational expectations/lack of plans for education beyond high school, and lack of interaction with extracurricular activities. There are also numerous external risk factors for dropping out, such as gender, socioeconomic status, level of parental education, involvement with child welfare services, living in a single parent home and having a parent in prison. Given that the more risk factors a student faces the more likely the student is to drop out. One could theorize that interventions aimed at reducing and removing these alterable risk factors will be more successful at preventing students from dropping out.
Today African American males account for a nice percentage of high school dropouts, and this percent also accounts for a majority of crime and violence. 60% of prison occupants are African American male high school dropouts. Blacks, particularly young black males, make up a disproportionate share of the U.S. prison population. In 2008, young black men (ages 18-34) were at least six times more likely to be incarcerated than young white men according to a recent analysis by Becky Pettit, a University of Washington sociologist. She finds that young black males without a high school diploma were more likely to be in prison or jail (37 percent) on any given day in 2008 than to be working (26 percent).
In Addition, The Population Reference Bureau stated, “A high school diploma matters to individuals, communities, and society”(2012, Pg.1). Showing that having a high school diploma can be greatly beneficial not for just the individual person but everyone else around them as well. High school graduates are more likely to be employed over people that drop out of high school. Furthermore, high school graduates make a higher taxable income and aid in job generation. A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his lifetime, and almost a million dollars less than a college graduate. Additionally A high-school dropout is ineligible for 90% of jobs in America.
To lower the amount of African American high school dropouts by directly interacting with students. Sara Rimm-Kaufman, PhD, UVA stated, “Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflictual relationships. If a student feels a personal connection to a teacher, experiences frequent communication with a teacher, and receives more guidance and praise than criticism from the teacher, then the student is likely to become more trustful of that teacher, show more engagement in the academic content presented, display better classroom behavior, and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn given that the content material of the class is engaging. Positive teacher-student relationships — evidenced by teachers' Reports of Low Conflict, a high degree of closeness and support, and little dependency — have been shown to support students' adjustment to school, contribute to their social skills, promote academic performance, and foster students' resiliency in academic performance (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative, and more engaged in learning (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if they had a close relationship with their teachers. Students with better teacher-student relationships also showed better performance on measures of academic performance and school readiness (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Teachers who use more learner-centered practices (i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students, include students in decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and relational needs), produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such practices (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012).
Direct interaction with students can give the teacher better knowledge of their students that they could use to mold their teaching and lessons to greater grab the attention of all the different students, they are trying to teach. Not every student works the same or retains information as well as others especially throughout the African American population. These differences in learning partially comes from different interests in life or having different intentions after graduating school that they feel as though what is being taught is not important. In some cases failing or struggling in a class comes from the teacher not being able to teach the individual student in a way that better helps them in retaining what he is supposed to be learning. Directly interacting with individual students would give the teacher that insight into the students personal lives, personalities, and ideas.
Most African American males do not even have the thought in their head that they will make it out of the hood, and that the best place for them is the streets trapping. The majority of African American males, at a young age, already have the thinking that they will not do much in life besides end up in jail and the only place they feel as though they can make something of themselves is on the block selling drugs. Students like to see that teachers show their pleasure and enjoyment of students. Teachers interact in a responsive and respectful manner. Teachers offer students help in achieving academic and social objectives. Teachers help students reflect on their thinking and learning skills. Teachers know and demonstrate knowledge about individual students' backgrounds, interests, emotional strengths and academic levels. Teachers seldom show irritability or aggravation toward students.These attributes in a teacher would increase the chance that less students will drop out and more students will graduate from high school (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012).
Along with directly interacting with the students to learn more about them a teacher should positively influence the students. They should show them there is more to life than just chilling on the block, selling drugs, or talking to females, and encourage them to keep going to school. In addition open the students up to positive extracurriculars that could help keep their optimism up and help connect them with other students with positive attitudes. Friendly environments can be very effective to teenagers. The positive atmosphere is good because now the teen is around other teenagers that are doing well in school and have high spirits. Teenagers talk, and if they all have a common interest getting to know one another would be simple. additionally, they could help each other if struggling with school or if someone is just having a bad day. They could be there for each other giving off positive vibes letting the struggling student know things will turn around and that situations are not as bad as they seem.
In supplement to tutoring students could join a mentorship program. Mentoring by a caring adult over a prolonged period of time has been shown in countless academic studies to be effective in combating the numerous risk factors causing students to dropout. A number of studies have revealed a correlation between a young person’s involvement in a quality mentoring relationship and positive outcomes in the areas of school, mental health, problem behavior, and overall health (DuBois & Karcher, 2005; Rhodes, 2002; Zimmerman, Bingenheimer & Behrendt, 2005). Substantiating that anecdotally or intuitively — mentoring works. The 2013 study “The Role of Risk: Mentoring Experiences and Outcomes for Youth with Varying Risk Profiles,” examined mentoring program relationships, experiences and benefits for higher-risk youth, and among the findings determined, the strongest program benefit, and most consistent across risk groups, was a reduction in depressive symptoms — a particularly noteworthy finding given that almost one in four youth reported worrisome levels of these symptoms at baseline. Findings also suggested gains in social acceptance, academic attitudes and grades. Overall, the study’s results suggest that mentoring programs can be beneficial for youth with a broad range of backgrounds and characteristics.
There is a Public/Private Ventures project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and distributed by MDRC, involving more than 1,300 youth, drawn from seven programs serving young people in Washington State. Oversight and support for the project were provided by Washington State Mentors. The report builds on existing research, including a research brief published by Child Trends and titled "Mentoring: A Promising Strategy for Youth Development" found that youth who participate in mentoring relationships experience a number of positive benefits. In terms of educational achievement, mentored youth have better school attendance; a better chance of going on to higher education; and better attitudes toward school. In terms of health and safety, mentoring appears to help prevent substance abuse and reduce some negative youth behaviors. On the social and emotional development front, taking part in mentoring promotes positive social attitudes and relationships. Mentored youth tend to trust their parents more and communicate better with them. Dropping out of school is not a singular event but rather the culmination of a long process of disengagement. It is critical that intervention efforts aimed at students with a disproportionate number of risk indicators for dropping out of high school reach students young enough to where the mind is still in its early development stages . Children between 9 and 15 are at important turning points in their lives (Centre for Addiction and Mental Behavior, 2013). It is during this time that they may permanently turn off from serious engagement in school life and turn to a variety of risky behaviors that can limit their chances of reaching productive adulthood. Encouragingly, this is also the age bracket during which preventative intervention is most successful and youth are most capable of envisioning a positive future and plotting the steps they need to take to reach their goals. They are at the right stage of development to best absorb and benefit from the skills of a strong mentor (Centre for Addiction and Mental Behavior, 2013).
Furthermore, tutoring is an option for struggling students. In the past decade tutoring has become a common means parents use to educate their children. It is all the more important to understand when to tutor and when not to tutor, what good tutoring looks like, and how parents can increase the chances that the tutoring succeeds. Many kids need to go to tutoring either because they are failing a class(es) or are in danger of failing. Whether or not tutoring is popular it could still be useful to students at “RISK”. This is an easy way to gain extra study time and help for work a student may be struggling with. Several major reviews of studies on how effective studying is, have appeared in the educational literature over the years (Devin-Sheehan, Feldman, & Allen, 1976; Ellson, 1976; Fitz-Gibbon, 1977; Rosenshine & Furst, 1969). Each of the reviews concluded that tutoring programs can contribute to the academic growth of the children who receive the tutoring and probably to the growth of the children who provide the tutoring as well. However, Some children are being driven toward tutoring out of a mistaken belief that it is always valuable —that it is simply another way to enrich the educational experience of a child, as if it were a guaranteed means to improve the quality of education for any child. This is not true. Tutoring for enrichment is often the purported reason for tutoring rather than the true motive. The widespread tendency to tutor children is instead, at least in part, the result of parents’ anxiety about the future of their children. For decades, parents have questioned whether the education they provide their children prepares them for their futures (Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1).
With the issues surrounding tutoring one would find that they simply cannot be resolved by addressing parents alone. Tutors bear a responsibility for ensuring that they are working in the best interests of students, which sometimes includes recommending to parents that it is unwise to tutor a child. A tutor is entrusted with a role in the educational development of a child. And yet, unlike a teacher or a child therapist, there are few comprehensive, well-articulated ideas about the responsibilities of the tutor(Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1). One Columbia University professor of education referred to tutoring as “the Wild West” because of its lack of clear standards and wide range of practices. Some recognizable types of students who are directed toward tutoring are students whose parents drive them to excel;Students with organizational difficulties; and Students who want to score well on standardized tests, especially the SAT or ACT.
Consider the first group, students whose parents drive them to excel. James Mendelsohn said, “I have had students brought to me because their parents insist they could do better in school, that they must receive only good or very good grades.” In some cases, parents had a squad of tutors attending to their child’s every subject and organizational need. Stated by James Mendelsohn, Ph.d holder and tutor, “On close inspection, I found these children to be good students who were working hard and had no desire to be tutored. They were students who, to my mind, shouldn’t be tutored because it would send them exactly the wrong message: that their ability and their stage of intellectual development aren’t good enough; they don’t have it in themselves to learn on their own.” Meaning, The parents in these cases were not trying to enrich the educational experience of their child. Instead, the parents wanted tutoring because of an overwhelming desire for their child to be competitive for the best colleges and universities. The wish to be competitive is not in itself a problem, but when it trumps all other elements in the decision to tutor it undermines a vital part of educational development: the discovery of patience, individual interests, internal resources, and limitations (Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1).
The decision to tutor should nonetheless be an individual one. Some students have disabling organizational styles, which prevent them from starting or completing assignments. Or they exhibit a divergent style of thinking, which may frustrate their ability to untangle their thoughts and thereby produce a good essay. They may respond well to tutoring. Still other students walk around with backpacks that are exploding with papers and handouts, their rooms equally a mess —seemingly poster children for organizational help—and yet they are doing fine in school. There are also students who are paralyzed with anxiety at the prospect of a test. They benefit from individualized testing strategies that a tutor could provide. However, there are students who go for SAT test preparation even though they have already performed well on the test because they aren’t satisfied; They want a near perfect score because they are convinced they cannot be happy anywhere but at a small, selective group of colleges or universities. Tutoring these students will encourage impatience with their development and promote a narrow idea of what success in their lives should be. It could divert them from a profound realization of their abilities and interests all because their education did not follow a story of their lives that others tell them should be their story. In each case, the decision to tutor should be an individual determination. Regardless of how scared a parent is of the success of their child in the future, to put a child through tutoring unwillingly or unnecessarily is detrimental to a kids interest in continuing to go to school and a child’s participation during school. Which is why it is all the more important to understand when to tutor and when not to tutor, what good tutoring looks like, and how parents can increase the chances that the tutoring succeeds.
In conclusion, to reduce the number of African American dropouts and increase the number of African American graduates first, teachers should directly interact with their students. Direct interaction between teachers and students puts them at equal levels in understanding each other from personal thoughts and ideas to the way each other learns and teaches to their likes and dislikes. Second, African American youth can go to mentorship programs. Mentoring gives kids positive influences and instruction. Mentors are positive role models that can help kids with making friends to helping them with their school work. Lastly, struggling students can go to tutoring but only if necessary.The U.S., which had some of the highest graduation rates of any developed country, now ranks 22nd out of 27 developed countries.
Annotated Bibliography
BANCHERO, STEPHANIE. "High-School Graduation Rate Inches Up." The Wall Street Journal. Accessed February 27, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323301104578256142504828724.
Dr. Bell, Edward. “Why Black Males Drop Out”. 2010.
http://dredbell.com/images/blackmalesstudy.pdf
The purpose of this study was to assess why Black males drop out of school and if they are unemployed.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. (2013, January 15). Youth mentoring linked to many positive effects, new study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 17, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115143850.htm
Mentoring effects and when/how mentoring is useful. Mentoring is best is started young.
http://www.coseboc.org/policy/dropout-prevention
Coalition Of Schools Educating Boys Of Color.
COSEBOC is the only national education organization of practitioners solely focused on promoting the educational success of boys and young men of color. They provide statistics on dropout percentages, graduation rates, and other factors pertaining to African Americans and their education.
A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his lifetime. And almost a million dollars less than a college graduate.
Cheeseman Day, Jennifer, and Eric C. Newburger. "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings." United States Census Bureau. Accessed February 26, 2014, https://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3265.pdf
Magnus Lofstrom.Why Are Hispanic and African American Dropout rates so high?, December 2007. University Of Dallas.
The Paper talks about utilizing unique student-level data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel in an attempt to determine what factors contribute to the higher minority dropout rates.
Book #1 Black Students. Middle Class Teachers. Jawanza Kunjufu
http://www.parentsleague.org/publications/selected_articles/does_tutoring_help_or_harm_your_childs_education/index.aspx
Parents League of New York. “Does Tutoring Help or Harm Your Child's Education?” James Mendelsohn, Ph.D., TutorDescribes the negative reasons for tutoring as well as the positive reasons. Also provides information on how students would benefit from tutoring and what type of students should go to tutoring.
Book #2 Kill Them Before They Grow - Misdiagnosis of African American Boys in American Classrooms- Michael Porter
The percentage of Latino students who graduate have significantly increased. In 2010, 71.4% received their diploma vs. the 61.4% in 2006. Asian-American and white students are still far more likely to graduate than Latino and African-American students.
Resmovits, Joy. "Graduation Rate Hits Record High For High School Students: Government Report." The Huffington Post. Accessed February 26, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/graduation-rate-record-high-school-students_n_2522128.html.
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx
Population Reference Bureau. U.S. has World’s Highest Incarceration Rates. Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna. 2012.This talks about America’s population and those incarcerated. Also the amount of those incarcerated from each race. What ages and genders are incarcerated.
http://www.apa.org/education/k12/relationships.aspx
Sara Rimm-Kaufman, PhD, and Lia Sandilos, PhD, University of VirginiaAmerican Psychological disorder Association. “Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning”. Provides information on how interaction between a student and their teacher affects the student. Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development.
States with lower concentrations of black people have higher graduation percentages than states with high concentrations of black people.
Schott Foundation’s efforts to collect and publish national data on the four-year graduation rates for Black males compared to other sub-groups has been to highlight how the persistent systemic disparity in opportunity creates a climate and perception of a population who is less valued. http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/#sthash.SZyfafm4.dpuf
How can schools in the US lower African American high school dropout rates and increase the graduation percentage?
Derrick Blackston Jr
Ms.Hill
March 13, 2015
Senior Seminar
Black males face an upheaval educational battle; Their graduation statistics are sobering across America. Over the years the dropout percentage for African American males has gone to its lowest percentage ever yet African American males still account for the highest number of high school dropouts. The Nation graduates only 47% of black males who enter the 9th grade.(Dr.Bell, 2010, Pg.1) The US can decrease the African American male dropout rates by directly interacting with African American male teens. Teens could attend tutoring if struggling in school with: note taking, homework, studying, test preparation/taking. In addition to a Mentor program for teens that might just need a positive influence, are having social issues or are struggling with problems at home. Furthermore, schools should make learning more engaging by directly interacting with the students. Teachers teach the school curriculum using the lessons and activities that everyone else has already used and have used for years. The curriculum in the book does not have a lesson plan that African Americans can relate too as much as other races or genders. The lessons that teachers teach are what the teachers feel as though the student needs to know in life rather than what might really be essential to the future development of the students.
There are many different reasons why kids decide to drop out of high school. Such reasons could be parents forcing post-secondary school upon their child, making them go to unneeded tutoring or extracurriculars that they do not want to be in. Some students may drop out because They do not feel as though they are learning anything that will benefit them in the long run. In addition to not benefiting, if classes are not engageable enough and if a student is constantly getting writes up or in trouble for a simple situation that they feel as though is not that serious a student might stop going to school now the student is kicked out for truancy. Some teens drop out simply because they believe that school is too difficult. Dr. Edward Bell developed a study using 15 African American males from ages 18-55 that dropped out of school. This study was to figure out what was the impetus for the students to drop out of high school. In the study Dr. Bell learned, twenty-six percent of the participants dropped out of school because of academic factors such as school work being too difficult and not liking the teacher. However, 73% of the black males from the study dropped out of school because of non-academic factors such as medical needs, peer pressure, loss of focus, home problems, and hanging with friends, which were the common themes that emerged from the data analysis. Revealing black males are bombarded with a sundry of social and educational issues such as peer pressure or education biases and/or practices that hinder progression towards graduating from high school (Bell, 2010, Pg.1).
Furthermore there are other reasons why students drop out discovered by a recent highly-comprehensive study conducted by Communities In Schools and the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University. The report states that while there is no single risk factor that causes dropping out, each additional risk factor an individual faces increases the likelihood of dropping out. Some of the key, alterable risk factors the study cites are: Teen parenthood, substance abuse, criminal behaviors, lack of self-esteem, poor school performance/grade retention, absenteeism, discipline problems at school, low educational expectations/lack of plans for education beyond high school, and lack of interaction with extracurricular activities. There are also numerous external risk factors for dropping out, such as gender, socioeconomic status, level of parental education, involvement with child welfare services, living in a single parent home and having a parent in prison. Given that the more risk factors a student faces the more likely the student is to drop out. One could theorize that interventions aimed at reducing and removing these alterable risk factors will be more successful at preventing students from dropping out.
Today African American males account for a nice percentage of high school dropouts, and this percent also accounts for a majority of crime and violence. 60% of prison occupants are African American male high school dropouts. Blacks, particularly young black males, make up a disproportionate share of the U.S. prison population. In 2008, young black men (ages 18-34) were at least six times more likely to be incarcerated than young white men according to a recent analysis by Becky Pettit, a University of Washington sociologist. She finds that young black males without a high school diploma were more likely to be in prison or jail (37 percent) on any given day in 2008 than to be working (26 percent).
In Addition, The Population Reference Bureau stated, “A high school diploma matters to individuals, communities, and society”(2012, Pg.1). Showing that having a high school diploma can be greatly beneficial not for just the individual person but everyone else around them as well. High school graduates are more likely to be employed over people that drop out of high school. Furthermore, high school graduates make a higher taxable income and aid in job generation. A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his lifetime, and almost a million dollars less than a college graduate. Additionally A high-school dropout is ineligible for 90% of jobs in America.
To lower the amount of African American high school dropouts by directly interacting with students. Sara Rimm-Kaufman, PhD, UVA stated, “Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflictual relationships. If a student feels a personal connection to a teacher, experiences frequent communication with a teacher, and receives more guidance and praise than criticism from the teacher, then the student is likely to become more trustful of that teacher, show more engagement in the academic content presented, display better classroom behavior, and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn given that the content material of the class is engaging. Positive teacher-student relationships — evidenced by teachers' Reports of Low Conflict, a high degree of closeness and support, and little dependency — have been shown to support students' adjustment to school, contribute to their social skills, promote academic performance, and foster students' resiliency in academic performance (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Teachers who experience close relationships with students reported that their students were less likely to avoid school, appeared more self-directed, more cooperative, and more engaged in learning (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Students reported liking school more and experiencing less loneliness if they had a close relationship with their teachers. Students with better teacher-student relationships also showed better performance on measures of academic performance and school readiness (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012). Teachers who use more learner-centered practices (i.e., practices that show sensitivity to individual differences among students, include students in decision-making, and acknowledge students' developmental, personal and relational needs), produced greater motivation in their students than those who used fewer of such practices (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012).
Direct interaction with students can give the teacher better knowledge of their students that they could use to mold their teaching and lessons to greater grab the attention of all the different students, they are trying to teach. Not every student works the same or retains information as well as others especially throughout the African American population. These differences in learning partially comes from different interests in life or having different intentions after graduating school that they feel as though what is being taught is not important. In some cases failing or struggling in a class comes from the teacher not being able to teach the individual student in a way that better helps them in retaining what he is supposed to be learning. Directly interacting with individual students would give the teacher that insight into the students personal lives, personalities, and ideas.
Most African American males do not even have the thought in their head that they will make it out of the hood, and that the best place for them is the streets trapping. The majority of African American males, at a young age, already have the thinking that they will not do much in life besides end up in jail and the only place they feel as though they can make something of themselves is on the block selling drugs. Students like to see that teachers show their pleasure and enjoyment of students. Teachers interact in a responsive and respectful manner. Teachers offer students help in achieving academic and social objectives. Teachers help students reflect on their thinking and learning skills. Teachers know and demonstrate knowledge about individual students' backgrounds, interests, emotional strengths and academic levels. Teachers seldom show irritability or aggravation toward students.These attributes in a teacher would increase the chance that less students will drop out and more students will graduate from high school (Kaufman & Sandilos, 2012).
Along with directly interacting with the students to learn more about them a teacher should positively influence the students. They should show them there is more to life than just chilling on the block, selling drugs, or talking to females, and encourage them to keep going to school. In addition open the students up to positive extracurriculars that could help keep their optimism up and help connect them with other students with positive attitudes. Friendly environments can be very effective to teenagers. The positive atmosphere is good because now the teen is around other teenagers that are doing well in school and have high spirits. Teenagers talk, and if they all have a common interest getting to know one another would be simple. additionally, they could help each other if struggling with school or if someone is just having a bad day. They could be there for each other giving off positive vibes letting the struggling student know things will turn around and that situations are not as bad as they seem.
In supplement to tutoring students could join a mentorship program. Mentoring by a caring adult over a prolonged period of time has been shown in countless academic studies to be effective in combating the numerous risk factors causing students to dropout. A number of studies have revealed a correlation between a young person’s involvement in a quality mentoring relationship and positive outcomes in the areas of school, mental health, problem behavior, and overall health (DuBois & Karcher, 2005; Rhodes, 2002; Zimmerman, Bingenheimer & Behrendt, 2005). Substantiating that anecdotally or intuitively — mentoring works. The 2013 study “The Role of Risk: Mentoring Experiences and Outcomes for Youth with Varying Risk Profiles,” examined mentoring program relationships, experiences and benefits for higher-risk youth, and among the findings determined, the strongest program benefit, and most consistent across risk groups, was a reduction in depressive symptoms — a particularly noteworthy finding given that almost one in four youth reported worrisome levels of these symptoms at baseline. Findings also suggested gains in social acceptance, academic attitudes and grades. Overall, the study’s results suggest that mentoring programs can be beneficial for youth with a broad range of backgrounds and characteristics.
There is a Public/Private Ventures project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and distributed by MDRC, involving more than 1,300 youth, drawn from seven programs serving young people in Washington State. Oversight and support for the project were provided by Washington State Mentors. The report builds on existing research, including a research brief published by Child Trends and titled "Mentoring: A Promising Strategy for Youth Development" found that youth who participate in mentoring relationships experience a number of positive benefits. In terms of educational achievement, mentored youth have better school attendance; a better chance of going on to higher education; and better attitudes toward school. In terms of health and safety, mentoring appears to help prevent substance abuse and reduce some negative youth behaviors. On the social and emotional development front, taking part in mentoring promotes positive social attitudes and relationships. Mentored youth tend to trust their parents more and communicate better with them. Dropping out of school is not a singular event but rather the culmination of a long process of disengagement. It is critical that intervention efforts aimed at students with a disproportionate number of risk indicators for dropping out of high school reach students young enough to where the mind is still in its early development stages . Children between 9 and 15 are at important turning points in their lives (Centre for Addiction and Mental Behavior, 2013). It is during this time that they may permanently turn off from serious engagement in school life and turn to a variety of risky behaviors that can limit their chances of reaching productive adulthood. Encouragingly, this is also the age bracket during which preventative intervention is most successful and youth are most capable of envisioning a positive future and plotting the steps they need to take to reach their goals. They are at the right stage of development to best absorb and benefit from the skills of a strong mentor (Centre for Addiction and Mental Behavior, 2013).
Furthermore, tutoring is an option for struggling students. In the past decade tutoring has become a common means parents use to educate their children. It is all the more important to understand when to tutor and when not to tutor, what good tutoring looks like, and how parents can increase the chances that the tutoring succeeds. Many kids need to go to tutoring either because they are failing a class(es) or are in danger of failing. Whether or not tutoring is popular it could still be useful to students at “RISK”. This is an easy way to gain extra study time and help for work a student may be struggling with. Several major reviews of studies on how effective studying is, have appeared in the educational literature over the years (Devin-Sheehan, Feldman, & Allen, 1976; Ellson, 1976; Fitz-Gibbon, 1977; Rosenshine & Furst, 1969). Each of the reviews concluded that tutoring programs can contribute to the academic growth of the children who receive the tutoring and probably to the growth of the children who provide the tutoring as well. However, Some children are being driven toward tutoring out of a mistaken belief that it is always valuable —that it is simply another way to enrich the educational experience of a child, as if it were a guaranteed means to improve the quality of education for any child. This is not true. Tutoring for enrichment is often the purported reason for tutoring rather than the true motive. The widespread tendency to tutor children is instead, at least in part, the result of parents’ anxiety about the future of their children. For decades, parents have questioned whether the education they provide their children prepares them for their futures (Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1).
With the issues surrounding tutoring one would find that they simply cannot be resolved by addressing parents alone. Tutors bear a responsibility for ensuring that they are working in the best interests of students, which sometimes includes recommending to parents that it is unwise to tutor a child. A tutor is entrusted with a role in the educational development of a child. And yet, unlike a teacher or a child therapist, there are few comprehensive, well-articulated ideas about the responsibilities of the tutor(Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1). One Columbia University professor of education referred to tutoring as “the Wild West” because of its lack of clear standards and wide range of practices. Some recognizable types of students who are directed toward tutoring are students whose parents drive them to excel;Students with organizational difficulties; and Students who want to score well on standardized tests, especially the SAT or ACT.
Consider the first group, students whose parents drive them to excel. James Mendelsohn said, “I have had students brought to me because their parents insist they could do better in school, that they must receive only good or very good grades.” In some cases, parents had a squad of tutors attending to their child’s every subject and organizational need. Stated by James Mendelsohn, Ph.d holder and tutor, “On close inspection, I found these children to be good students who were working hard and had no desire to be tutored. They were students who, to my mind, shouldn’t be tutored because it would send them exactly the wrong message: that their ability and their stage of intellectual development aren’t good enough; they don’t have it in themselves to learn on their own.” Meaning, The parents in these cases were not trying to enrich the educational experience of their child. Instead, the parents wanted tutoring because of an overwhelming desire for their child to be competitive for the best colleges and universities. The wish to be competitive is not in itself a problem, but when it trumps all other elements in the decision to tutor it undermines a vital part of educational development: the discovery of patience, individual interests, internal resources, and limitations (Mendelsohn, 2012, Pg1).
The decision to tutor should nonetheless be an individual one. Some students have disabling organizational styles, which prevent them from starting or completing assignments. Or they exhibit a divergent style of thinking, which may frustrate their ability to untangle their thoughts and thereby produce a good essay. They may respond well to tutoring. Still other students walk around with backpacks that are exploding with papers and handouts, their rooms equally a mess —seemingly poster children for organizational help—and yet they are doing fine in school. There are also students who are paralyzed with anxiety at the prospect of a test. They benefit from individualized testing strategies that a tutor could provide. However, there are students who go for SAT test preparation even though they have already performed well on the test because they aren’t satisfied; They want a near perfect score because they are convinced they cannot be happy anywhere but at a small, selective group of colleges or universities. Tutoring these students will encourage impatience with their development and promote a narrow idea of what success in their lives should be. It could divert them from a profound realization of their abilities and interests all because their education did not follow a story of their lives that others tell them should be their story. In each case, the decision to tutor should be an individual determination. Regardless of how scared a parent is of the success of their child in the future, to put a child through tutoring unwillingly or unnecessarily is detrimental to a kids interest in continuing to go to school and a child’s participation during school. Which is why it is all the more important to understand when to tutor and when not to tutor, what good tutoring looks like, and how parents can increase the chances that the tutoring succeeds.
In conclusion, to reduce the number of African American dropouts and increase the number of African American graduates first, teachers should directly interact with their students. Direct interaction between teachers and students puts them at equal levels in understanding each other from personal thoughts and ideas to the way each other learns and teaches to their likes and dislikes. Second, African American youth can go to mentorship programs. Mentoring gives kids positive influences and instruction. Mentors are positive role models that can help kids with making friends to helping them with their school work. Lastly, struggling students can go to tutoring but only if necessary.The U.S., which had some of the highest graduation rates of any developed country, now ranks 22nd out of 27 developed countries.
Annotated Bibliography
BANCHERO, STEPHANIE. "High-School Graduation Rate Inches Up." The Wall Street Journal. Accessed February 27, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323301104578256142504828724.
Dr. Bell, Edward. “Why Black Males Drop Out”. 2010.
http://dredbell.com/images/blackmalesstudy.pdf
The purpose of this study was to assess why Black males drop out of school and if they are unemployed.
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. (2013, January 15). Youth mentoring linked to many positive effects, new study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 17, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115143850.htm
Mentoring effects and when/how mentoring is useful. Mentoring is best is started young.
http://www.coseboc.org/policy/dropout-prevention
Coalition Of Schools Educating Boys Of Color.
COSEBOC is the only national education organization of practitioners solely focused on promoting the educational success of boys and young men of color. They provide statistics on dropout percentages, graduation rates, and other factors pertaining to African Americans and their education.
A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his lifetime. And almost a million dollars less than a college graduate.
Cheeseman Day, Jennifer, and Eric C. Newburger. "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings." United States Census Bureau. Accessed February 26, 2014, https://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-210.pdf.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3265.pdf
Magnus Lofstrom.Why Are Hispanic and African American Dropout rates so high?, December 2007. University Of Dallas.
The Paper talks about utilizing unique student-level data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel in an attempt to determine what factors contribute to the higher minority dropout rates.
Book #1 Black Students. Middle Class Teachers. Jawanza Kunjufu
http://www.parentsleague.org/publications/selected_articles/does_tutoring_help_or_harm_your_childs_education/index.aspx
Parents League of New York. “Does Tutoring Help or Harm Your Child's Education?” James Mendelsohn, Ph.D., TutorDescribes the negative reasons for tutoring as well as the positive reasons. Also provides information on how students would benefit from tutoring and what type of students should go to tutoring.
Book #2 Kill Them Before They Grow - Misdiagnosis of African American Boys in American Classrooms- Michael Porter
The percentage of Latino students who graduate have significantly increased. In 2010, 71.4% received their diploma vs. the 61.4% in 2006. Asian-American and white students are still far more likely to graduate than Latino and African-American students.
Resmovits, Joy. "Graduation Rate Hits Record High For High School Students: Government Report." The Huffington Post. Accessed February 26, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/graduation-rate-record-high-school-students_n_2522128.html.
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx
Population Reference Bureau. U.S. has World’s Highest Incarceration Rates. Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna. 2012.This talks about America’s population and those incarcerated. Also the amount of those incarcerated from each race. What ages and genders are incarcerated.
http://www.apa.org/education/k12/relationships.aspx
Sara Rimm-Kaufman, PhD, and Lia Sandilos, PhD, University of VirginiaAmerican Psychological disorder Association. “Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning”. Provides information on how interaction between a student and their teacher affects the student. Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development.
States with lower concentrations of black people have higher graduation percentages than states with high concentrations of black people.
Schott Foundation’s efforts to collect and publish national data on the four-year graduation rates for Black males compared to other sub-groups has been to highlight how the persistent systemic disparity in opportunity creates a climate and perception of a population who is less valued. http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/#sthash.SZyfafm4.dpuf