An Oakland Charter School for (mostly inner-city) black boys

Agree with me said:
Special Ed and Gifted classes are segregated by race?
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Not what I said at all. And I am not playing your games today.

The charter school is attempting to help inner city black males achieve in school. That is worthy of at least some respect, even from a political debate forum.

If you think a one-size-fits-all school system works everywhere, you should do a little research.

If it works and you want to call it segregation, then feel free to do so.
 
cawacko said:
Interesting concept and one I like. I'm a big believer in one size fits all education doesn't necessarily work for everyone. Black children in the inner-city often face challenges many of us will never know. I'm sure this school will be watched closely as will its results. I'm rooting hard for it to succeed.



A separate but equal school for black boys


Alonzo Swift has pretty much settled on Yale University.

The Oakland boy knows he needs to pass fifth grade first and that it's cold in Connecticut, but he has heard Yale "is a good college" and he's sure his mom would send him there with plenty of hot chocolate, marshmallows and a warm coat.

"It's hard to get in there, so you have to be focused," the 9-year-old said.

Where Alonzo will go to college might still be up in the air, but if he'll go is not.

At the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area Community School, every student, including Alonzo, is black, male and on the road to college.

If the public charter school is successful, it will - within a decade - significantly boost the number of African American boys graduating from high school in Oakland and heading to a four-year university.

Among a handful of public schools across the country designed to specifically serve black boys, the race-based charter school is one of the more extreme strategies in a wide-ranging national response to the vexing failure of black boys in schools and across society.

The premise wassimple: Give boys African American male role models. Give them mentors, patient teachers and more time in the classroom to excel in science, math, technology and art. Make sure they get breakfast, lunch and snacks. Give them discipline, rituals, and a curriculum that acknowledges the role of African Americans in history and society.

Take in the black boys no one else wanted and make them feel safe, loved and smart.

As the school's creators would discover since its opening last year, it wouldn't be easy.

In Oakland, black males post lower scores than English learners and virtually all other subgroups of students on standardized tests.

In addition, they miss more school. In 2011, 20 percent of black male students missed at least one day out of every two weeks of school.

The standard school system has not worked, said Patricia Nunley, a consultant to the charter school and a Mills College professor with expertise in black male student achievement.

"You've had 57 years and you have not done it," Nunley said, referring to the mid-1950s forced desegregation of schools. "Honestly, do you really want them to keep failing?"

For many African American males, separate is not only equal but better, she said.

"I see our school for the most vulnerable black males," Nunley said. "We're going to send you back a better black person."

Establishing order

In the courtyard of the former Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, the students lined up by grade - kindergartners on the right, sixth-graders on the left.

Teachers, administrators and other staff members nudged them to keep the lines straight. Untucked shirts were identified with a raised eyebrow, a pointed finger or a curt "Shirt!"

Principal Stanley Johnson stood in front of the students for the morning chant.

"Good morning, scholars!" he said with a raised voice. "Who are we?"

"We are readers. We are responsible," the boys yelled in unison. "We are empowered. We are accountable. We are dependable. We are excellent. We are respectful.

"We are scholars with a goal! We are ready to learn!"

"Who's ready to learn?" Johnson asked.

"We are!"

Then, line by line, they filed through the doorway and to their classrooms to start the day.

This daily ritual was an act of faith - faith that their repetition would make the words come true, despite the extraordinary obstacles this radical startup faced.

In the school's five classrooms, three teachers were rookies - first-year teachers hired through Teach for America, briefly trained to work with disadvantaged students, but without professional credentials.

The two other teachers had decades of experience in public schools between them, but none in a race-based school.

Their pupils were disproportionately from single-parent and low-income homes. Many had been expelled from or suspended at their previous schools. Some struggled to cope with the mental-health effects of trauma and grief. Many had not succeeded in the standard school system.

These children needed to learn to read, to write, but also to believe in themselves and their potential, said Johnson, who has a doctorate in education but was serving as a principal for the first time.

"They need to learn and to understand how this will successfully make them great citizens. It starts with a mind-set, a paradigm shift," Johnson said.

A scholastic culture

The school opened in September 2012 with 94 students in five grades: kindergarten, first and fourth through sixth. Its long-term plan calls for it to grow into a K-12 school with 900 students.

It is open only to boys - technically to males of any race. So far, only black families have opted to enroll.

Most of the teachers and staff are African American men.

At other schools, "there is a fear of black children," said Mark Alexander, board chairman for the local 100 Black Men Inc., a professional organization for African American men that created the charter school. "We need teachers who are not afraid, who understand them, love them."

The school is modeled after the well-regarded Eagle Academy public schools in New York, which offer inner-city males a college prep curriculum in a structured and ritual-filled schedule.

Students are required to wear uniforms - khaki pants, belt and white tucked-in shirt, with optional tie.

They are taught to walk down the center of the hall in silence, hands clasped in front of them as they go to class, lunch or recess.

And every student learned to sit up straight up in his chair, eyes on the teacher, hands clasped on the desk in the "scholar position."

"Peacemakers" - African American men assigned to help enforce rules and resolve conflicts - monitored the playground, the cafeteria and hallways, and helped calm disruptive behavior in classrooms.

African American history, going back to African civilizations preceding slavery, and positive examples of black culture were emphasized.

Still, managing behavior was a daily struggle.

In the school's fourth-grade class, more than half the 14 students faced "very, very legitimate challenges," either developmentally or in their homes or community, said teacher Max Stafford-Glenn.

Some had learning disorders or were considered "emotionally disturbed," a status that qualifies them for special education services. It is a disorder disproportionately associated with black males.

Other students had conditions that included depression or post-traumatic stress disorder related to the loss of a family member or other trauma.

"They are very rebellious. They're very emotional," Stafford-Glenn said. "It's scary they're so high-strung at such a young age."

As a result, on some days it took his class an hour to get through two pages of a textbook.

Unruly students might be sent to the Restorative Justice room, a classroom where they could talk about their transgressions with an adult, discuss consequences and devise plans to avoid the behavior in the future. It offered an alternative to traditional discipline options, including suspension.

"We've got to get them to want to be in a classroom," Stafford-Glenn said.

But the school did not work for everyone.

Two of its five teachers opted to leave, and Johnson resigned at the end of the school year to address family health issues.

The school gained a few new students over the year, but by school's end, enrollment was 76, a net loss of 18 students.

Those who stayed had faith in the school's formula, as well as the inherent belief that every black boy would succeed if he were given the chance.

"We're going to create a culture that hopefully will be stronger than the streets," 100 Black Men's Alexander said.

Broadening horizons

On a bright fall day, a dozen students from the school's sixth-grade class piled into a van headed to Oakland International Airport.

Aeronautics was one of several areas of study introduced by the new school, along with medicine and robotics.

"We want them to compete in the global marketplace," Alexander said. "We're going to fully utilize the resources the community has to offer."

Pilot Sam Giddy and a Cessna 182 four-seater plane were waiting on the tarmac to take them up three at a time.

D'Marco Lindsey, 10, eyed the plane. "I like being on the ground," he said. "It's safe."

He had never been on an airplane, but climbed into the co-pilot's seat and buckled up.

The pilot, an African American man and member of 100 Black Men, reassured him.

"You're safe, OK?" he said.

Minutes later, D'Marco was flying above East Oakland, the O.co Coliseum appearing as a small green oval below him.

"Wow!" D'Marco said through his headset as he stared out the window.

Twenty minutes later, D'Marco's feet were back on the ground.

His dad, Marco Lindsey, a chaperone on the field trip and member of the school's Dad's Club, was waiting. He was thrilled that his son could see his city and the world in a different way while learning about a possible career option.

D'Marco said he'd like to fly again, but was still committed to a professional football career.

That's fine, his dad said.

"It's giving them the option in their mind," Lindsey said, smiling. "This is the only way I want my son getting high."

Providing hope

The Oakland charter school hopes to emulate the success of the Eagle Academy schools. Its high school has an 85 percent graduation rate, and 90 percent of those graduates attend a four-year college.

The new school is seeing some glimmers of hope.

There were just six suspensions all year, a significant drop from what the students posted at previous schools the year before, Alexander said.

Standardized test scores released earlier this month showed that 23 percent of the students tested were proficient or advanced in English and 31 percent were proficient or above in math - a bit lower than the scores for African American males across the district.

Yet 100 Black Men charter officials noted that many of the students, especially the older ones, had entered behind by at least one or more grades in reading, writing and math. Catching up, they say, will take some time.

And most first-year students are returning, along with an equal number of new students. Nearly 160 have signed up to attend this fall.

Alonzo Swift will be back for fifth grade, the next step on his path to Yale.

At his previous school, Emerson Elementary, said his mother, Sarah Perkins, he was labeled a troublemaker, a kid teachers didn't want in their classrooms.

"The other school, they're overworked, they're underpaid," she said. "They didn't want to take the time for these kids."

At 100 Black Men, Alonzo is thriving, she said.

His fourth-grade teacher frequently texted her and e-mailed pictures of Alonzo in class.

"I didn't know they had schools like this," Perkins, 40, said. "It's a school that is demonstrating the future for an African American man.

"You can grow up to be a positive role model - you can be a teacher, you can run the school," she said. "The possibilities are endless."


http://www.sfchronicle.com/local/item/Even-Odds-Part-3-23284.php
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Where as I agree with you on one size fits all educaiton (a reason why I opposed the NCLB Act), I also oppose undermining and underfunding public education. I've seen to much and to often in the South how charter schools are used to undermine public educaiton, particularly in minority communities in the south, so that white conservatives can resegregate schools.
 
tekkychick said:
Thanks for the post, Cawacko. I admit I'm torn; I think our schools should work for everyone; and that this school could benefit girls as well as boys, as well as other races.

But... if it's on a small scale and it's for a particular purpose, it's probably worth trying. But I would hate for anyone to think we should change all schools into a single gender/single race school.
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I have those concerns. I don't have a problem with Charter schools as long as they are not manipulated to undermine and underfund public educaiton and in most cases they do, not to mention that the evidence is conclusive that charter schools don't out perform public schools.
 
cawacko said:
I don't think anyone else in our country has gone through what young black males in our inner city have. The statistics in the article show how poorly they have performed in school. The status quo is not working. That is why I support this attempt at change. This effort is strictly focused. There's not going to be a call for entire education system nationally to be run this way.
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The problem with that is that Charter schools have never been proven to work better than public schools and they have been habitually used, particularly in the South to undermine and underfund public education for minorities and poor whites. I'd rather see the underlying issues that impact education address, such as shitty parenting, than risk undermining universal public educaiton which is one of our nations greatest historical achievements.
 
leaningright said:
Me too cawacko. I've been in the business long enough to have learned that our one size fits all approach to education isn't good enough for everyone. Something has to change.
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Agreed, improving public education in the inner cities and in the south has been a huge vexing problem for a long, long time. I agree that a one shoe fits all approach is certainly not ideal. However, any approach that undermines a sound investment in a quality public education is nothing short of insanity.
 
Howey said:
I like to hear of charter schools that work. Thanks!
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Mostly they don't. There's no evidence indicating that Charter schools perform better than public schools and they do erode funding for public schools not to mention that Charter schools essentially get to cherry pick their students. I'm very leary of Charter schools. They cause more problems then they solve, for the most part and they should be absolutely forbid in the former Jim Crow states with out Federal authorization cause too many times they are used to re-segregate public education.
 
WinterBorn said:
Creating an environment in which a group, which has typically had serious problems academically, can achieve.

The Special Ed classes and Gifted classes are along the same principle.
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In principle I agree. In practice though I've seen Charter Schools used primarily as a front to re-segregate schools and to underfund public schools for minorities and poor whites.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
You have to try and break the cycle somehow otherwise you just end with yet another generation of gang bangers.
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True and as long as those methods don't undermine public education I have no problem with that. Sadly, that is not the history of Charter schools in the country. Particularly in the Southern states.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
They segregated white from blacks as they wanted blacks to know their place and not mix with whites.
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Which is pretty much the case now if most Southern States. When civil rights laws were passed enforcing the rights of minorities in the south to access to public education the white conservatives simply started sending their children to private schools. They have also consistantly cut their noses off to spite their face by systematically undermining the tax base that supports public education. The end result is that the Private white schools in the South mostly suck compared to Northern public schools and the southern public schools are atrociously bad and are of third world quality. It also has had the intended affect of keeping schools in the south just as segregated today as they were before the major civil rights laws of the 1960's were enacted with the exception that very poor white students are stuck in these terrible public schools.

This is not the fualt of public education. It's been a systematic political effort to undermine public education as southern conservative whites don't want to pay for schools they aren't using. The end result is it's created a vicious cycle of lousy education in the Southern states.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
The problem with that is that Charter schools have never been proven to work better than public schools and they have been habitually used, particularly in the South to undermine and underfund public education for minorities and poor whites. I'd rather see the underlying issues that impact education address, such as shitty parenting, than risk undermining universal public educaiton which is one of our nations greatest historical achievements.
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You keep talking about the South when this article is about Oakland, California. California is a liberal state and there are no elected Republicans in the Bay Area or Oakland so your 'conservatives are trying to undermine education' argument doesn't fly here. Years and years of poor tests scores and results show the status quo isn't working in inner-city Oakland. So here is an example of people in the community being pro-active in a positive way attempting to do something about it. The government can't control parenting but since it does fund the schools it can make changes that way.
 
cawacko said:
You keep talking about the South when this article is about Oakland, California. California is a liberal state and there are no elected Republicans in the Bay Area or Oakland so your 'conservatives are trying to undermine education' argument doesn't fly here. Years and years of poor tests scores and results show the status quo isn't working in inner-city Oakland. So here is an example of people in the community being pro-active in a positive way attempting to do something about it. The government can't control parenting but since it does fund the schools it can make changes that way.
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Mutt likes making up bullshit about charter schools because anything that goes against his love for unions he must disparage. He also likes to mock the south because he feels so inferior having lived in Ohio for so long.
 
cawacko said:
This story was on the front page of the SF Chronicle today and a friend also posted it on Facebook. The first comment was from a white woman who said "segregation? Great." (she meant it sarcastically).

She got this response from a black woman I went to high school with. Pretty deep about her life as a black woman in corporate America and her opinion as a black person in America.


I can see her p.o.v. and why this could look and feel like segregation to her. I grew up in Oakland's inner city (not Montclair, Rockridge, Piedmont, or the Oakland Hills...not the projects either but definitely not in a place where my parents wanted to send me to the public school right up the street). My cousin and I were part of the first generation in my family to be able to go to college, graduating from UC Berkeley with a business degree and I spent 20 years in a predominantly white (or non-black) corporate culture fighting my way through double glass ceilings. Oftentimes, I was the only black person around or maybe one of 2 or 3. In the business school maybe we had 10 or so who graduated in my entire class and that's pushing it. I can't remember but it was a very small handful.

Throughout my career, I worked harder than everyone else trying to prove that I am good enough and I faced off all kinds of people of other cultures, predominantly white, chinese, japanese MALES in boardrooms all over this country trying to prove to them, but mostly to myself, that I am indeed smart, intelligent and not like the black people you see on the news/television, the coons in the movies or any other derogatory thing people have historically believed us to be. Even though I was extremely intelligent, I had to battle with my own self esteem issues many of which stemmed from simply being black trying to strive and be successful in a non-black world/environment and ultimately prove that I am not dumb.

I would say that of all of the corporate clients I had, I can think of maybe 5-10 black males in VP or above positions, professional attorneys, etc out of perhaps thousands of people I ran across in my 20 year history in corporate America. Furthermore, I've spent the last year dealing with thousands of executives from every major corporation in America, entrepreneurs/business owners, inventors, etc who come to our town for trade shows and conventions. I've dealt with almost every industry under then sun and I can honestly say that with the exception of music/entertainment, athletics and fashion, black males are a very small percentage of this population. I could see with my own eyes that maybe as little as 1% of the men running our businesses and economy are black males. That is not any kind of statistical reality or measurement that can be verified, it's just what I saw with my very own eyes over this past year. White male privilege played out right in front of me as the world's business leaders converge on our town.

I get that times are changing and many things are different now than let's say the civil rights era, however, some people will NEVER understand our experience (nor seek to try to understand) and will therefore never comprehend why we need schools like this, especially for black boys in inner cities. We would like to think that because we are human, we are all the same/equal now, but my experience is that many of us have faced an entirely different reality than those of other cultures/races and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Many will say, "but we have a black president" or "my best friend is black" but until they live in our shoes both as individuals and as black people in general, they may never ever understand and won't care to try....only to make snap uninformed judgments. Her comment makes sense in light of the fact that she is more than likely (given her skin color) coming from a psychological, sociological, cultural, and historical experience that is different from ours (or at least mine). She's certainly entitled to feel that way even if I have an entirely different perspective.

Quite frankly, however, I don't really care what she or any other non-black person says or thinks on this issue because, in my opinion, they have never EVER walked a mile in our shoes and therefore their opinion is entirely irrelevant. That is, of course, unless she or others like her want to donate their time, money and/or attention to helping schools like these thrive and be successful.

Bottom line is that every inner city can use thousands of schools like these to help build up the self esteem of black children and give them chances they may not otherwise have. Especially our black boys who will one day become successful black men.
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Rana, since you agreed with many of Mott's posts against charter schools what do you think of what my former class mate, a black woman, thinks of this school targeting young black males?
 
cawacko said:
You keep talking about the South when this article is about Oakland, California. California is a liberal state and there are no elected Republicans in the Bay Area or Oakland so your 'conservatives are trying to undermine education' argument doesn't fly here. Years and years of poor tests scores and results show the status quo isn't working in inner-city Oakland. So here is an example of people in the community being pro-active in a positive way attempting to do something about it. The government can't control parenting but since it does fund the schools it can make changes that way.
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That's because I lived in the South for Seven years and traveled widely throughout the region. In principle I agree with trying new and innovative approaches to improving public education where it has historically done poorly in this country. Namely urban inner cities and the south but I have just seen how the game with Charter schools is played in the south and how the primary intent is not to improve public education but to undermine it and essentially resegragate education, which they have essentially suceeded in doing in most of the Southern States. There are some exceptions, North Carolina for example. You can't try to implement these kinds of programs Wacko and be niave about the political motives of others.
 
tekkychick said:
It's because the system is skewed toward white boys. Think of it this way - most other schools are biased for white boys, so they don't need a school of their own.
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More bullshit....thats the blacks excuse for everything.....2+2=4 in all schools....for all genders....for all races......
Blacks have been integrated into our schools from grade 1 to grade 12 for over 50 freakin' years.....

Because white kids actually speak English instead of gibberish.....if someone can't speak on the level of a five year old white kid on entering first grade, there is
something wrong all right, and it ain't because of racism.
How the hell are they 'skewed' ?....
Because most white kids actually wear their pants at their hips and don't have their ass hanging out...

The only thing 'skewed' is your excuse filled thinking.....
 
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