Black Students’ Poor Academic Achievement:
Who Is Responsible?

YOU are if you are a teacher, principal, administrator or you work with African-American students. You are responsible for their poor achievement and attitudes. You know more than anyone, that as a whole, African-American students are not prepared to succeed in college and not prepared to participate in the fast-changing technological 21^st Century.

I know that as an educator you probably cannot hear your responsibility in this. You probably believe that you have done all that can be done given the students’ abilities and attitudes and given the available resources.

Yes, it is true…

• That many students come to you unprepared for academic work, lack motivation to learn, have bad behavior or negative attitudes, and come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds; and
• That many parents are not adequately preparing their children for learning, are involved neither at school nor with homework, and do not support you when needed; and
• That the public pays you inadequately for the professional job demanded, creates too many restrictive laws and regulations without providing sufficient resources, demands too much testing, asks you to be social workers, policemen, and parents, and does not give the respect you deserve.

• That students’ ability to learn is mainly genetic rather than environmental, or
• That students have been so damaged by their socioeconomic status that they cannot achieve at high levels, (“They are doing their best given their abilities.”), or
• That the ethnic achievement gap cannot be eliminated, or
• That you, as an individual, cannot make a significant difference with low-achieving students, given the current circumstances.

Across the nation educators, who do not believe these myths, have demonstrated that low-performing students from impoverished conditions can achieve at high levels with consistent, effective instruction.  They know that “Students are undertrained, not underbrained.” The testing and achievement gaps can be eliminated!

• Enroll two or three educators in your commitment to close the gaps.
• Learn what the current research says about critical thinking skills, instructional techniques and strategies for low-performing students. The cognitive processes are the bases for all learning.
• See www.ASCD.org - Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Kappan, African-American educators groups, college education professors, etc.
• Ask instruction specialists and principals about the best instructional strategies for effectively teaching African-American students. If they do not know, ask them to find out.
• Do you know what excellence looks like in today’s world? And how to achieve it with 90% of your students? Research and develop a concept of excellence that is based on the realities of 21st Century world competition.
• Visit schools that are successful in closing the ethnic academic gap.
• Complete your plan to implement the appropriate research into your daily instruction in ways that will bring excellence.

• Insist that all students fully participate, focus and do most of the thinking and learning.
• Add to your traditional strategies a Socratic instructional methodology designed to develop cognitive skills. Become an expert at asking questions that force thinking and that require justified answers. Ask: “How did you come to that conclusion”? “Where in the text did you find evidence to support your answer?”
• Students should leave school tired (and happy) from learning (and thinking) about the possibilities for their lives.

• Mastering thinking skills enables students to understand and remember content, create knowledge, and generate applications to their lives as they move toward excellence.
• Mastery is most important for low-performing students. They are missing vital skills and necessary strategies to be successful. For example: Make certain that all students can adequately explain all instructions and explain how different parts of the task relate to the whole. Eliminate guessing and trial and error by insisting on evidence and logic for all answers. Students must understand why “wrong” answers are wrong  as well as why “correct” ones are correct. Guessing only stifles mastery and knowing.

YOU and the education community have a choice: Either eliminate the ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps or allow someone else to do it. The choice is yours. What will you do?

Next: Part III: Students

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Denver, CO 80205

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