Black students earn lower grades and test scores than Asian-Americans and whites at Milpitas High School near San Jose; they do about the same or slightly worse than Hispanic students. Working with a parents’ group, the principal has focused extraordinary attention on black students with hopes of raising their achievement. From the San Jose Mercury News:
About every six weeks, each black student at Milpitas High School takes home something no white, Asian or Latino student receives:
The Letter.
They get it simply because of the color of their skin.
Short and to the point, The Letter mixes no-nonsense encouragement with updates about each student’s grade-point average – whether it has gone up, held steady or dropped. All 114 letters are personally signed by principal Chuck Gary and Demetress Morris, head of a groundbreaking African-American community group known as the Flame Keepers.
Before the Flame Keepers started, in 2002, only 14 percent of black students at Milpitas High reached proficient on the math portion of the state’s high school exit exam. By 2007, 44 percent tested as proficient. Still, the average GPA for black students was only 1.90 in the last grading period, while the school’s average GPA is 2.55.
At an annual “come to Jesus meeting” for blacks only, the principal shows where blacks test relative to other racial and ethnic groups.
Students write down their “dream career” and hear from a successful black alum.
“It does inspire me to try much harder, because they care about us,” said Kamala Bridges, 18, who said she now makes a point to ask more questions in class.
The effort includes a dizzying array of programs that extend far beyond assemblies. Struggling students are assigned to a teacher who acts as a mentor. A Saturday Support Club provides additional tutoring and workshops.
Inthia White, 18, appreciates the constant nagging. “If you have people rooting for you,” she said, “you can’t let them down.”
Other schools have held color-coded pre-test pep rallies. Usually students assume the school thinks they’re all losers.
Darren Miller is troubled by a Sacramento Bee story about a white elementary principal who held a meeting for black students to urge them to pull up their group scores. He backs reporting scores by racial categories, so low-scoring groups get attention, but this bothered him.
Black parents were so offended, the principal canceled the meeting for Hispanic students. The school has announced a partnership with a black men’s group, which will provide mentors for black boys.
Milpitas High hasn’t faced controversy, probably because the campaign is lead by black parents and a black principal. Students see it as helpful, not punitive. In fact, I wondered why non-black parents haven’t demanded the same attention to their kids. Hispanic parents have started a group inspired by Flame Keepers, but the school hasn’t targeted their children.
Blacks make up only four percent of the student body at Milpitas High, which is 62 percent Asian, 19 percent Latino and 14 percent white. So there are plenty of low achievers at the school who aren’t black and some black students who are doing well.
If a subset of parents want to form a group to honor “their” achievers and help those who are struggling, that seems healthy to me. When the school singles out students by race, it’s hard to avoid the message that all students in that racial or ethnic group, whatever their individual performance, are problem students.
Why not send The Letter to parents of all students with less than a C average? Why not assign mentors and invite students to the Saturday Support Club based on their needs rather than their color?
I agree that targeting all black students in this way may send a message that all black students have some sort of issue, and that it can miss other students who need help. On the other hand, I also believe that “their needs and their color” may intersect. I had a fascinating talk with parents of color at my school recently about how their kids’ experiences can be totally different from those of white kids, and we’ve all seen articles about how popularity and GPA correlate differently for different races. I doubt it’s possible to fully address the problem of underachievement without taking race in some way into account.
So by all means — target underachieving students of any race. But that doesn’t mean the students are best cultivated all in the same way, without reference to race.
I have some black friends who excel in their academics. I think this is just one case of racism. And I agree that if educators, administrators and school officials tend to be so busy watching the performance of a specific group they might miss the other children that also needs attention. I think it is just right for us to be fair with everybody regardless of their color and race.