Experts Call for Early Focus on Black Boys' Nonacademic Skills

By Mary Ann Zehr

Ed Week

Schools should increase their attention to social and emotional development in the early grades as one way to prevent black boys from falling behind their peers, researchers said Tuesday at a symposium on closing the achievement gap between African-American males and other student groups.

Panelists at the meeting hosted Tuesday by the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service and the Washington-based Children’s Defense Fund also said that a significant portion of the dollars spent on incarcerating black males in this country would be better spent on high-quality early-childhood education.

Given the typically low graduation rates and low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress of black boys and youth, the symposium’s goal was to identify promising practices and policies to get black males off to a strong start. It focused on how to influence the path for the nation’s 3.5 million black boys under the age of 9.

“We want to consider ways to position this vulnerable population for educational success as early as possible in their lives,” said Michael T. Nettles, a senior vice president of ETS, in opening the forum.

To make that happen, said Oscar A. Barbarin III, a psychology professor at Tulane University, in New Orleans, “kindergarten and 1st grade have to be more like preschool” in addressing children’s needs holistically.

“You have to help your teachers incorporate more developmentally sensitive approaches,” added Mr. Barbarin, a panelist at the symposium. His research has focused on how social factors and family practices correlate with ethnic and gender achievement gaps that start in early childhood.

Mr. Barbarin characterized schools as stressing the teaching of academic content, starting in kindergarten, but giving short shrift to supporting children to learn social and emotional skills. He said principals should be placing their very best teachers in preschool and kindergarten, so that all children get a good start in school.

In addition, Mr. Barbarin likened the low academic achievement of black males in the United States to the proverbial canary in the coal mine. “They tell us an early-warning signal that things are not right,” he said.

He added that black boys respond negatively to school environments that aren’t conducive to learning, but at the same time, they “show the most gains” when those environments are improved.

The Tulane professor said he’d like to see the policies changed in the United States so that the estimated $40,000 typically spent each year to incarcerate a prisoner could instead be used to help low-income families establish good practices for learning and to improve education in preschool and the early grades.

The convergence of “maleness, ethnicity, and poverty,” he said, contributes to academic outcomes for black boys, which tend to be more negative than those for black girls.

The achievement gap between black boys and the average achievement levels for all children starts early and persists through the school years, said another presenter, Iheoma U. Iruka, a researcher at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the ...

Click here to continue reading