Along with the excitement and anticipation that come with heading off to college, freshmen often find questions of belonging lurking in the background: Am I going to make friends? Are people going to respect me? Will I fit in?

 

Those concerns are trickier for black students and others who are often stereotyped or outnumbered on college campuses.  They have good reason to wonder whether they will belong - worries that can result in lower grades and a sense of alienation.

 

But when black freshmen participated in an hour-long exercise designed by Stanford psychologists to show that everyone - no matter what their race or ethnicity - has a tough time adjusting to college right away, their grades went up and the minority achievement gap shrank by 52 percent. And years later, those students said they were happier and healthier than some of their black peers who didn't take part in the exercise.

 

"We all experience small slights and criticisms in coming to a new school" said Greg Walton, an assistant professor of psychology whose findings are slated for publication in the March 18 edition of Science.

 

"Being a member of a minority group can make those events have a larger meaning," Walton said. "When your group is in the minority, being rejected by a classmate or having a teacher say something negative to you could seem like proof that you don't belong, and maybe evidence that your group doesn't belong either. That feeling could lead you to work less hard and ultimately do less well."

 

Walton's paper, co-authored by psychology and education Professor Geoffrey Cohen, reports that the grade point averages of black students who participated in the exercise went up by almost a third of a grade between their sophomore and senior years.

 

And 22 percent of those students landed in the top 25 percent of their graduating class, while only about 5 percent of black students who didn't participate in the exercise did that well. At the same time, half of the black test subjects who didn't take part in the exercise were in the bottom 25 percent of their class.  Only 33 percent of black students who went through the exercise did that poorly.

 

Walton and Cohen split about 90 second-semester freshmen at a top American university into "treatment" and "control" groups. About half of the students in each group were black; the others were white.

 

All the test subjects - who were unaware of the full purpose of the exercise - were told the researchers were trying to understand students' college experiences.

 

Those in the treatment group read surveys and essays written by upperclassmen of different races and ethnicities describing the difficulties they had fitting in during their first year at school. The subjects in the control group read about experiences unrelated to a sense of belonging.

 

The upperclassmen had reported feeling intimidated by professors, being snubbed by new friends and ignored in their quest for help early in their college careers. But they all emphasized that, with time, their confidence grew, they made good friends and they developed strong relationships with professors.

 

"Everybody feels they are different freshman year from everybody else, when really in at least some ways we are all pretty similar," one older student - a black woman - was quoted as saying. "Since I realized that, my experience . . . has been almost 100 percent positive."

 

The test subjects in the treatment group were then asked to write essays about why they thought the older college students' experiences changed. The researchers asked them to illustrate their essays with stories of their own lives, and then rewrite their essays into speeches that would be videotaped and could be shown to future students. The point was to have the test subjects internalize and personalize the idea that adjustments are tough for everyone.

 

"We didn't want them to think of difficulties as unique to them or specific to their racial group," Walton said of the black test subjects. "We wanted them to realize that some of those bad things that happen are just part of the transition that everyone goes through when they go off to college."

 

The researchers tracked their test subjects during their sophomore, junior and senior years. While they found the social-belonging exercise had virtually no impact on white students, it had a significant impact on black students.

 

Along with improved GPAs by their senior year, the black students who were in the treatment group reported a greater sense of belonging compared to their peers in the control group.   They also said they were happier and were less likely to spontaneously think about negative racial stereotypes.  And they seemed healthier: 28 percent said they visited a doctor recently, as compared to 60 percent in the control group.

 

Despite the impressive outcomes, Walton and Cohen say the social-belonging exercise isn't a quick fix to closing the academic race gap - a problem fed by a host of issues tied to diversity, socioeconomics and public policy.But their research shows how addressing feelings of belonging can improve student performance. And similar exercises may succeed in addressing concerns about belonging among other groups, like first-generation college students, immigrants and new employees.

 

"This intervention alone is not the answer, but we know more about what types of things help," Cohen said. "The intervention is like turning on a light switch. It seems miraculous when the lights go on, but it all hinges on the infrastructure that's already in place." 

  

Four of the top educators and speakers in the United States who successfully teach parents and educators to help young Black men excel academically will be in Chicago on Saturday, May 14, 2011. Will you?  

  

Our Dynamic Speakers Are:  

  

 

  

He will teach parents, community members and educators to keep Black boys out of special education and away from the psycho-chemical drugs designs to trap Black boys in a chemically induced slavery.  

  

  

He will teach parents, community members and educators to create elementary schools that successfully educate Black boys.    

  Dr. Alfred Tatum

Author: Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap and"A Roadmap for Reading Specialists Entering Schools Without Exemplary Reading Programs: Seven Quick Lessons," The Reading Teacher.

  

He will teach parents, community members and educators to teach Black boys and young Black men to become outstanding readers.

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The cost of the conference is $225.00 until April 29, 2011 and $275.00 after April 29, 2011. Space is limited.  A full breakfast and a full lunch will be served.  The conference will be at the Ramada Inn Hyde Park on 50th and Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, on Saturday, May 14, 2011. Please call 773.285.9600 for more information or to register for one of the best conferences in decades on educating Black boys and young men. You will leave this conference with skills and the knowledge to immediately improve the way you educate Black boys.  This conference is sponsored by The Black Star Project.

A Saturday Afternoon with

 MICHELLE ALEXANDER

Author of "The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration In The Age of Color Blindness"

 

Professor Michelle Alexander

Saturday, May 21, 2011

12:30 pm to 4:00 pm

at the

Historic Riverside Church

490 Riverside Drive

Manhattan, New York

Click Here to Register

 
 Review by Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

This system of legal discrimination came into being much as the first one did. After the rout of the South by the Civil War, millions of newly freed Africans exercised these new rights under Reconstruction.  Black men became senators and legislators across the South. But this period was short lived, and as soon as possible, states passed harsh laws known as  Black Codes, which denied rights and criminalized behavior by Blacks, and exposed them to the repression of southern prisons, where convicts were leased out to labor for others; it was the rebirth of slavery by other means. 

 

This present era began at the height of the US Civil Rights Movement, when millions of Blacks fought for their rights denied for more than a century.  Alexander concludes that this new system, this new coalescence of economic and political interests, targeted Blacks, especially those engaged in the drug industry, as the human capital with which to provide massive construction, huge prison staffs, and the other appendages of the apparatus of state repression. 

 

But perhaps Alexander's most salient point is her finding that America's Black population constitutes a 'racial caste' that feeds and perpetuates mass incarceration  [195]
Indeed, every other societal structure supports this superstructure, from broken schools, to de-industrialization, to population concentration in isolated urban ghettoes, to the violence of police, and the silence of the Black Middle class. 

 

One might argue that such a claim seems unsustainable when we see a Black president, hundreds of black political figures and those in entertainment and sports.  But Alexander explains that every system allows exceptions, for they serve to legitimize the system and mask its ugliness and its gross effects upon the majority of Blacks. 

 

For example, while it's well-known that apartheid was an overtly racist system, it allowed Asian and even African American diplomats to live and work in such a regime, by the political expediency of identifying them as "honorary whites" in their official papers.  When comparing both systems, Alexander argues that the US imprisons more Blacks both in raw number and per capita than South Africa at the height of apartheid! 

 

The New Jim Crow - indeed!

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954) is an American who was found guilty of and sentenced to death for the December 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He has been described as "perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world", and his sentence is one of the most debated today. Before his arrest, he was an activist, radio journalist, and part-time cab driver. He was a member of the Black Panther Party until October 1970.

 Opinion  

Black homicide rate solution is elusive

Civic, religious leaders must rejoin search for answers 

  

Nashville can do better. Nashville must do better. It should be very disturbing to most residents that the city's black homicide rate has reached a "crisis.''

  

In fact, that puts Nashville's rate above the state's, and Tennessee ranked fifth-worst in the nation in 2008.

  

Something needs to be done immediately to get at this crisis.

  

In fall 1997, when violent crime was increasing in Nashville and guns were easily getting into the hands of violent criminals, then Mayor Phil Bredesen appointed a commission to come up with a plan to more effectively fight crime.

  

In May 1998, violence was still a pressing problem, and a group of rabbis, priests and ministers came together to plan ways to get at the problem.

  

Members of the clergy heard from four special guest representatives from Boston, who talked about how that city had come together over the past few years to reduce homicides, especially among juveniles. They were told that Boston had community centers for people to go to from preschoolers to senior citizens. Those centers had played a key role in keeping youth in Boston occupied and reducing crime.

  

The commission formed by Bredesen suggested that large public housing developments such as Sam Levy Homes in East Nashville and Preston Taylor Homes in North Nashville, where much violence took place, be torn down and newer, and less populated, housing be built. Some of that has been done, but Nashville still has large public housing developments such as J.C. Napier Homes and Tony Sudekum Homes in South Nashville.

  

It's not uncommon for homicides to take place in and around those two public housing developments. City officials need to find a way to demolish those developments and replace them with smaller units similar to those at the old John Henry Hale Homes off Charlotte, not far from the state Capitol, and Preston Taylor in North Nashville.

  

Any time you have large communities of poor people living together they tend not to have any hope.

  

We have to find ways of giving our young people hope, something to dream about. We do that by finding ways for them to participate in activities such as music, dance and even sports. How many youngsters who take part in the W.O. Smith School of Music have you heard about getting in trouble?

  

We also have to be present to be real mentors to our youngsters at an early age, especially those who come from the underclass. We cannot leave it to the gangs to mentor our children. If we do that, they will continue to kill one another, and possibly others as well.

  

This weekend when people go to their respective religious institutions, Nashville clergy members should ask for volunteers to work with poor kids. They should also open their doors to youngsters who need help with their school work or who might need something to eat.

  

Just imagine the cost of this black homicide crisis in Nashville - the medical costs to some of the victims, the funeral costs, the time spent by police and emergency personnel taking victims to the hospital or to a funeral home. We have to reduce those costs.

  

"We've also got to rebuild the black family,'' says Phillip Jackson, founder and executive director of Chicago's Black Star Project. "There's no way the American criminal justice system and educational system can stop violence. Violence occurs when people are poor, uneducated and desperate. The more black people you see who are poor, uneducated and desperate, the more violence you will see.''

  

According to statistics released in January by the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund, black children are three times as likely to be poor (35 percent) as white children (12 percent). Fewer than 40 percent of all black children live with two parents, compared to about 75 percent of white children.

  

The CDF reported, too, that black children continue to fall further behind as they progress through school: In the fourth grade, 85 percent cannot read or do math at grade level. And in 12th grade, 84 percent of those black students cannot read at grade level, and 94 percent cannot do math at grade level.

  

While this may be seen by some as a "black problem,'' it is one that all of us should be concerned about. If you want to participate in helping to solve this crisis and don't know how to do it, call this newspaper's editorial department at 726-5928 and we will lead you to the right people.

  

Again, Nashville must start working with more of our youngsters at an early age. We should give all of our children a chance to dream for a life full of opportunity, and not one where you have to sell drugs or kill to get ahead in life.

  

Perhaps it's time for Mayor Karl Dean to appoint a commission, such as was formed in 1997. Perhaps it's time for the rabbis, priests and ministers to get back together again. Nashville cannot afford to wait any longer to get at this problem. Too many lives are being lost.

  

BY DWIGHT LEWIS

April 13, 2011
FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD

  

Study: Third Grade Reading Predicts Later High School Graduation

 

By Sarah D. Sparks

April 8, 2011

  

The disquieting side effect of our increasingly detailed longitudinal studies of students is we keep finding warning signs of a future graduation derailment earlier and earlier in a child's school years.

Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found those warning signs as early as 6th grade- chronic absences, poor behavior, failing math or language arts, which when put together lead to a 90 percent risk that a student won't graduate on time.

  

A study to be released this morning at the American Educational Research Association convention here in New Orleans presents an even earlier warning sign: A student who can't read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time. Add poverty to the mix, and a student is 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.

  

"Third grade is a kind of pivot point," said Donald J. Hernandez, the study's author and a sociology professor at Hunter College, at the City University of New York. "We teach reading for the first three grades and then after that children are not so much learning to read but using their reading skills to learn other topics. In that sense if you haven't succeeded by 3rd grade it's more difficult to [remediate] than it would have been if you started before then."

  

Mr. Hernandez analyzed the reading scores and later graduation rates of 3,975 students born between 1979 and 1989 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. He found 16 percent overall did not have a diploma by age 19, but students who struggled with reading in early elementary school grew up to comprise 88 percent of those who did not receive a diploma. That made low reading skills an even stronger predictor than spending at least a year in poverty, which affected 70 percent of the students who didn't graduate. In fact, 89 percent of students in poverty who did read on level by 3rd grade graduated on time, statistically no different from the students who never experienced poverty but did struggle with reading early on.

  

By contrast, more than one in four poor, struggling readers did not graduate, compared with only 2 percent of good readers from wealthier backgrounds. Mr. Hernandez found that gaps in graduation rates among white, black and Hispanic students closed once poverty and reading proficiency were taken into account. "If they are proficient in reading, they basically have the same rate of graduation" above 90 percent, Mr. Hernandez said. "If they did not reach proficiency, that's when you see these big gaps emerge."

  

For some children in the sample, Mr. Hernandez was able to track reading scores as early as 2nd grade, but not enough to do a separate analysis. It's interesting to me that since we don't do much testing before grade three, the first accountability point under NCLB, it's difficult to say exactly when these reading gaps emerge.

  

Mr. Hernandez is working on further studies on the nuances of these findings, including the effects of concentrated poverty-often associated with low-performing schools-and factors that make some students more resilient to poverty and early academic difficulty.

  

The study, "Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation," will be posted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation here. 

We need tutors, administrators, mentors, chaperones and new, additional sites for the Saturday University.  Please call 773.285.9600 to become the solution to the problem of educating our youth. You must register for these classes before your child attends class.

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