AFRICAN AMERICAN MALES

Single Sex Schools for African American Males



Single Sex Schools for African American Males

Background

Across the African American nation scores of African American male adolescents can be observed wandering the halls of public schools, alienated from the educational process, searching for the making of their American dream. (Hoberman, 2007) Their absence is often conspicuous in upper-level academic and gifted classes, as well as in student government, athletics, or any school-sponsored program that require students to at least earn average grades required for participation in extra-curricular activities (Hoberman, 2007).

With the job loss rate at a twenty-eight-year reduced of 4.5 per hundred, and consideration of discrimination unpopula in this post-affirmative activity era, scant vigilance has been concentrated on the job loss rate gap and the differential rank of African American workers. But yes, there is still an job loss rate gap, and it broadened -- not tapered -- in the face of financial prosperity.

Instead of the customary 2:1 connection between Black and White job loss rates, in August the Black job loss rate was 9 per hundred, 2.25 times the White rate of 4 percent.

Wage breaches stay as well. The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute handed out an early exact duplicate of its State of Working America this past Labor Day. According to EPI, the 1997 hourly salary for White women was $10.02, in evaluation to $8.49 for African American women. The salary gap has worsened over time: in 1989 the White feminine salary was $9.84, while the Black salary was $8.76. Regardless of informative grade, White salaries increased from 1989 to 1997, while salaries for African Americans fell.

College-educated African American women glimpsed their salaries fall 3.2 per hundred in the last five years, while White women who were school graduates glimpsed their salaries augment by 4.4 percent.

The best chance of changing these negative social and educational trends for African American male adolescents lies within the school environment and will require innovative strategies if the trend is to be reversed (Jackson and Smith 2004). Many educators, community leaders, and even some school systems believe that enrichment initiatives geared toward the special needs of African American male youth could reverse the present trend toward failure within the educational system as well as society. Depending on the racial breakdown of the student population, these enrichment initiatives over the past decade have resulted in significant changes to the curriculum and school mission or in the addition of special after-school programs (Hoberman, 2007).

Black males are more likely to obtain low test scores and grades, less likely to enroll in college, and more likely to drop out, to be categorized as learning disabled, to be absent from honors and gifted programs, and to be over-represented among students who are suspended and expelled from school (Gregory, Skiba, and Noguera 2009). The ubiquity of these patterns, and the ominous implication of these trends on the long-term life chances of adult Black males has led to a growing chorus that something must be done to ...