Black Male Dropout Rates and the Educational Achievement Gap

Los Angeles Unified School District has the seventh largest enrollment of African American males in the nation at 45,164 students; however, as of the 2001-02 school year, the school district graduated fewer than half of these black male students. This forty-five percent graduation rate fell short of the national average graduation rate of black males at forty-eight percent; however, this also represents a twenty-three percent gap between Black and White student graduation rates (with over sixty-eight percent of white students graduating).

Policy Problem

Black male students in Los Angeles’ public schools do not reach their full learning potential in the traditionally structured classrooms of your school district. African American males experience a cultural and racial dichotomy between themselves and the “normative” cultures of teachers, who are mostly white, middle class, monolingual females. This cultural gap results in a loss of knowledge transfer as these students home cultures are discredited rather than built upon, because they do not align with the teacher or the school’s ethos. These practices which undervalue and frequently undermine African American learning styles are most often undertaken unknowingly or supposedly for the benefit of the student. An important and frequent example can be found in the devaluation of non-Standard English language forms. Teachers often correct African American’s linguistic forms because they recognize that mastery of Standard English is necessary to be successful in today’s society. However, what they often overlook is the fact that these home vernaculars are not inherently “wrong,” and that in fact students learn best when they can learn new material in the language form that is most comfortable to them.

Ultimately, we see this dichotomy reflected in reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In the mathematics section for eight graders during the 2001-02 assessment period, the test score difference between white and black students in Los Angeles amounted to over forty-five points. White students scored on average at 280 points, while Black students averaged 232 points on the 500 point exam.

Additionally, both nationally and in the Los Angeles School District black male students are disciplined in highly disproportionate ratios to their enrollment numbers. In 2000 on a national level, black males made up twenty-two percent of students expelled and twenty-three percent of students suspended, even though they represented only 8.6% of the public school population. Likewise, in 2001-02 in the Los Angeles School District, black students accounted for thirteen percent of public school enrollments but received twenty-seven percent of the out-of-school suspensions and twenty-one percent of expulsions. In contrast, while white students accounted for ten percent of the enrollment population in your public schools that same year, they only received eight percent of suspensions and ten percent of expulsions The rates at which black students were disciplined was nearly double what would be expected if enrollment ratios were applied, suggesting that there is some racial bias in disciplinary policies.

Lastly, a black male student can go through school without ever seeing someone who looks like him in his textbook or at the front of the class. Schools must recognize the impact that curriculum and teaching strategies have on student success and ultimately their desire to remain in school. With black male teachers making up only eight percent of all classroom teachers and with a Eurocentric based curriculum, black males and other students are taught that the valuable skills in education are those that derive from this European based tradition ─ this void of any positive role model in the learning material or the classroom is demoralizing. At the same time, over sixty-seven percent of African Americans are raised in single-parent predominantly female headed homes; thus these black male students lack positive black male role models both at home and in school.