Poverty and African American

Education
What's Really Going On.
Ruben Herron CRC, LPC-candidate
 Slowly but Surely
• Nationwide, the black student graduation rate
remains at a dismally low 42 percent. But the
rate has improved by three percentage points
over the past two years. More encouraging is
the fact that over the past seven years the
black student graduation rate has improved at
almost all of the nation's highest-ranked
universities.
• http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
 Explaining the Differences in Black 
Student Graduation Rates
• Why are black graduation rates very strong at
some high-ranking institutions and
considerably weaker at other top-ranked
schools? Here are a few possible explanations.

• http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
 Explaining the Differences in Black 
Student Graduation Rates
• Clearly, the racial climate at some colleges and
universities is more favorable toward African
Americans than at other campuses. A
nurturing environment for black students is
almost certain to have a positive impact on
black student retention and graduation rates
• http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
 Explaining the Differences in Black 
Student Graduation Rates
• Many of the colleges and universities with high black student
graduation rates have set in place orientation and retention
programs to help black students adapt to the culture of
predominantly white campuses.
•  cultural and family issues bear a huge responsibility.
Invariably, the critical problem is that a very high number
of young blacks are entering college with wholly
inadequate academic credentials, ambition, and study
habits.

• http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
 Explaining the Differences in Black 
Student Graduation Rates
• The presence of a strong and relatively large core of black students on campus is important. Black students
may have problems adjusting to college life in an overwhelmingly white environment. And these schools
are less likely to have black-oriented social or cultural events to make black students feel at home.
• High dropout rates appear to be primarily caused by inferior K-12 preparation and an absence of a family
college tradition, conditions that apply to a very large percentage of today's college-bound African
Americans. But equally important considerations are family wealth and the availability of financial aid.
According to a study by Nellie Mae, the largest nonprofit provider of federal and private education loan
funds in this country, 69 percent of African Americans who enrolled in college but did not finish said that
they left college because of high student loan debt as opposed to 43 percent of white students who cited
the same reason

• http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html
 Graduation Rates at Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities
• The low graduation rates at black colleges are due to a number of reasons.
Many of the students enrolled at these institutions are from low-income
families, often ones in which there are few books in the home and where
neither parent nor grandparent went to college. In addition, the black colleges
on the whole have very small and totally inadequate endowments. They often
lack the resources necessary to generate funds for student financial aid. Often
they are unable to furnish sufficient aid packages for upperclassmen to permit
them to stay in school. This circumstance appears to be a major factor in
accounting for the low black student graduation rate at these schools. But
probably the most important explanation for the high dropout rate at the black
colleges is the fact that large numbers of African-American HBCU students do
not come to college with strong academic preparation and study habits. The
graduation results at the HBCUs are worsened by the fact that flagship
universities in the southern states often tend to shuttle the lowest-performing
black applicants into the state-controlled black colleges in their state.
 The Role and Influence of Environmental and Cultural Factors on
the Academic Performance of African American Males
• Beset with such an ominous array of social and economic hardships, it is
hardly surprising that the experience of Black males in education, with
respect to attainment and most indicators of academic performance,
also shows signs of trouble and distress. In many school districts
throughout the United States, Black males are more likely than any other
group to be suspended and expelled from school.
• Black males are more likely to be classified as mentally retarded or
suffering from a learning disability, more likely to be placed in special
education (Milofsky, 1974), and more likely to be absent from advanced-
placement and honors courses

• Noguera, P. A. (2003). The trouble with Black boys: The role and influence of environmental and cultural factors on the academic performance of
African American males. Urban education, 38(4), 431-459.
 The Role and Influence of Environmental and Cultural
Factors on the Academic Performance of African
American Males
• There is considerable evidence that the ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds of students have bearing on how
students are perceived and treated by the adults who work
with them within schools
• Structural and cultural forces combine in complex ways to
influence the formation of individual and collective identities,
even as individuals may resist, actively or passively, the various
processes involved in the molding of the “self.” The fact that
individuals can resist, subvert, and react against the cultural
and structural forces which shape social identities compels us
to recognize that individual choice, or what many scholars refer
to as agency, also plays a major role in the way identities are
constructed and formed
• Noguera, P. A. (2003). The trouble with Black boys: The role and influence of environmental and cultural factors on the academic performance of African
American males. Urban education, 38(4), 431-459.
They (Don’t) Care about Education:
• Some teachers have unsubstantiated, unquestioned,
and inaccurate thoughts and beliefs about Black male
students; put simply, these thoughts can be harmful
and quite detrimental.
• Kunjufu (1995) noted that Black boys effectively stop
caring about school around the end of elementary
school. He contended that teachers halt their efforts
to nurture and promote achievement among Black
males as early as fourth grade, thus inciting apathy
and disengagement among those students.
• Harper, S. R., & Davis III, C. H. (2012). They (don't) care about education: A counternarrative on Black male students' responses to
inequitable schooling.The Journal of Educational Foundations, 26(1/2), 103.
They (Don’t) Care about Education
• Visiting an average of four schools per week,
Kunjufu saw no male teachers in any of the
classrooms he assessed during an eight-year
period. Instead, “men can usually be found as
janitors, physical education teachers, or
administrators”