Giving Black Boys a Strong Start
When Shawn Dove was in sixth grade, the students at his New York City school were asked to decide which academic track they wanted to follow for the next two years. He decided to choose “major gym,” just like the rest of his friends. But when he brought the form home to his single mother and said “Hey, Mom—can you sign this for me?,” his mother said, “No—you’re not going to major in gym! There’s no future in gym. You’re taking science and math.” Shawn spent the next two years mad at his mother every day as he could hear the noise and laughter coming from the gym while he went thirty yards down the hall for math and science classes. But then when Shawn finished eighth grade, he understood. He and the other young people who had majored in science and math had the chance to move on to good high schools like Bronx Science, but Shawn realized those who had taken mostly gym weren’t moving on to much of anything.
Today Shawn leads the Campaign for Black Male Achievement for the Open Society Foundations. He shared this story at an achievement gap symposium hosted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) on June 14 that brought together some of the leading educators, researchers, and policy experts in Washington, D.C. to confront the crisis facing the 3.5 million Black boys from birth to age nine and to highlight programs that are making a difference. A Strong Start: Positioning Young Black Boys For Educational Success addressed the daunting achievement gap many incorrectly believe is too big to solve and shared examples of best practices and leadership that are doing so.
The need to increase and support parent involvement was a key theme throughout the conference. In a week when the nation was preparing to celebrate Father’s Day, scholars noted that the high percentages of Black boys growing up in poverty and in single-mother households has had a devastating effect on Black boys’ outcomes. But as Shawn pointed out in his story, although being a single mother to Black boys is full of challenges, his mother made the right choices that opened doors for him. All parents need to be encouraged and educated to make the same kinds of choices throughout their sons’—and daughters’—development.
Many lessons came out of the symposium’s sessions, but above all, speaker after speaker reinforced how critical it is to intervene early. Dr. Iheoma Iruka, a researcher in the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, warned us, “we can’t wait for the gap to show up”—because by the time we measure achievement gaps in school, many Black boys are already behind. She explained that “the social and family disparities exist at birth and continue throughout. When you start at that low level you stay at that low level and the disparity continues.”
Right now, too many people don’t even see our nation’s educational achievement gap as a problem that affects them. Many Americans think they lack any self interest in assuring a level playing field for other people's children, especially poor and minority children. But Black, Hispanic, and other minority children will be the majority of the child population in 2019. As Tulane University professor Dr. Oscar Barbarin put it, Black boys often function like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, giving us our first indication of how well or how poorly our society’s systems are doing. When they are suffering, we should all be paying attention because this is the early warning for everyone—and if we fix our educational system for Black boys, we will fix it for all children.
ETS and CDF—working with many others—are taking steps to focus on this most vulnerable group in America. Our schools and communities are failing the 3.5 million Black boys under age nine in shocking ways. They face a toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparities, violence, massive incarceration, and family breakdown. A Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime. But ETS, CDF, and many of the leaders attending the symposium believe that by looking at the early years and providing a high quality continuum of care and high expectations for every child, we can impact and change the odds for young Black boys right now. Focusing on an evidence-based approach to education and early childhood development can change the trajectory for young Black boys and all underserved children.
CDF and ETS hope by identifying best practices, policies, and strategies that work it will be possible to rewrite the story for young Black boys and replace the cradle to prison pipeline with a pipeline to college, work, and a productive life. This symposium brought together researchers who have analyzed what works specifically for the 0-9 age group of Black boys with scholars and program leaders sharing research-based solutions and effective programs that show negative outcomes can be averted with local investment in local programs, community involvement, nutrition, and, at every stage, parental involvement. These kinds of proven results provide a guide for policy changes at the state and national level for we don’t have a moment or a child to waste. I hope we will follow this symposium with one on Black boys ages 9-13 and subsequent ones which get them out of high school and into and through college.
President Obama has called education the civil rights issue of our time. Now is the time for the next transforming freedom moment and movement—to set our children free from illiteracy, low expectations, and jobless, hopeless futures, preparing them to thrive and succeed in the lives God provided them. Children have only one childhood, and for them tomorrow is today. We need to act with urgency to narrow the achievement gap, stop the erosion of the hard-earned progress of the past 50 years, and move our nation towards true educational equality and excellence for all children. But this will not happen unless adults in all walks of our children’s lives step up and pick up our responsibilities to nurture and protect the next generation. As the symposium was documenting examples of what works to save children and money in the long haul, the very kinds of critical programs and supports we know can close achievement gaps are on the chopping block in statehouses around the country and in our nation’s capital. Providing all children a healthy start, quality early childhood experiences, first rate schools with first rate teachers, and stimulating high quality out of school time programs must be the first order of national business in this quick fix, quarterly profit driven culture. Our most dangerous deficit is not the budget deficit—it’s our values deficit.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.
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Make It In America
American manufacturing helped make this the most prosperous country on earth—and it helped build a strong middle class. As we continue to focus on job creation and economic growth, I believe a key part of that effort must be rebuilding our manufacturing strength. That’s why House Democrats have created the Make It In America agenda: it’s about creating the conditions for American businesses to innovate here, create jobs here, make products here, and sell them to the world—and about making sure we have a workforce qualified for well-paying jobs. I believe strongly that when we make more products in America, more families will be able to Make It In America, as well.
Even as much of our economy has struggled, the manufacturing sector has consistently added jobs—it’s been a bright spot for our recovery. But the news isn’t all good. Manufacturing employment is still near its lowest point since World War II. And more worryingly, the index of manufacturing activity—a measure of the sector’s productivity and growth—fell sharply last month, to its lowest point since fall of 2009.
Whether or not you work in manufacturing, that ought to concern you for a number of reasons. Manufacturing stimulates more activity across our whole economy than any other sector—so a fall in manufacturing activity is felt across the economy, which is bad for all of us. It’s also bad for the middle class because manufacturing jobs pay better-than-average wages, and it’s bad for America’s competitiveness because China has overtaken us as the world leader in the dollar value of manufacturing output. Last but not least, a decline in manufacturing is bad for American innovation. As assembly lines move overseas, innovation often follows to be closer to production. That’s resulted in America losing the innovative lead in a number of technological fields, from precision optics to photovoltaic cells to computer chips—we can’t afford to lose ground elsewhere.
So this spring, Democrats introduced a wide-ranging set of new Make It In America bills for the 112th Congress. One new bill would expand and make permanent the research and development tax credit to help spur the innovation that creates new industries and new jobs. Another bill, which I am proud to sponsor, builds job-training partnerships between advanced manufacturers and community colleges, helping students find good jobs, and helping employers fill their most pressing needs. Also on the agenda is a more efficient corporate tax code: one with lower rates and fewer loopholes, which will increase productivity by encouraging businesses to make decisions based on economic common sense, not on tax write-offs.
This agenda builds on the six Make It In America bills signed into law last year, which promote innovation, strengthen our workforce, and help companies produce more at home. These bills invest in science, technology, engineering, and math education to prepare a highly-skilled workforce; streamline the patent process to help get products to market faster; support small businesses through tax cuts and loans; and more. It’s important to note that many of these bills received bipartisan support—and that this agenda as a whole has won the backing of both business and labor leaders.
With millions of Americans still out of work, it is more vital than ever for Congress to put forward a strong, positive agenda to get our economy back on track. It’s essential that manufacturing be a central part of that effort. I believe that we can work together to ensure that we Make It In America.
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Newly Elected African American Mayors Bolster the War on Unemployment
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The recent elections of Alvin Brown as Jacksonville, Florida’s first African American mayor and Michael Hancock as Denver’s second Black mayor, provide much needed new hope and leadership in the war on unemployment. Both Brown and Hancock have strong Urban League roots and both have made job creation in their cities job number one.
On May 19th, Alvin Brown, a former president of the Greater Washington Urban League Guild, shook up the political establishment of Florida’s largest city when he won election as Jacksonville’s first African American mayor. Mayor-elect Brown’s long arc to City Hall began in the working class neighborhoods of Jacksonville, where he was raised by a devoted mother and grandmother who worked two jobs to raise him and his siblings. He worked as a meat cutter at the local Winn Dixie while attending Jacksonville State University. Hard times almost derailed his college aspirations until a Jacksonville pastor co-signed for a loan to keep him in school.
Brown earned his B.S. and M.B.A. from Jacksonville State and completed post graduate study at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He served as a senior urban affairs advisor for both President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. As executive director of the White House Community Empowerment Board, he managed a $4 billion initiative to create jobs in urban America. Upon winning the election, Brown said, “My first priority is jobs. We must invest in the inner
Denver Mayor-elect, Michael Hancock, credits his background as the former President of the Denver Urban League and his two-terms as President of the Denver City Council with inspiring his run for City Hall. He won a run-off election on June 6 and becomes the second African American mayor in the history of the Mile High City. Wellington Webb was the first, serving from 1991-2003.
Hancock had a tough childhood. Growing up, he and his nine siblings experienced periods of homelessness. A brother died of AIDS. A sister was killed by an estranged boyfriend. Through it all, Hancock has always been a leader, both in his family and in the Denver community. He attended college in Nebraska, returning home every summer to work in Mayor Frederico Pena’s office. After graduation he earned his Master’s in public administration from The University of Colorado-Denver.
Hancock started his career in the 1990’s, holding down two jobs at the Denver Housing Authority and the National Civic League. He joined Metro Denver’s Urban League affiliate in 1995 and in 1999, at the age of 29, became the youngest Urban League president in America.
When asked about his priorities as Mayor, Hancock answered, “Growing jobs, without question. Everything we do will be about the sustainability of jobs in this city. Nothing’s more important…”
Alvin Brown and Michael Hancock know what it means to beat the odds. They are also both committed to creating good jobs so that more Americans like them have the chance to realize their dreams. We congratulate them on their victories and wish them all the best.
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