Improving Education for African Americans
The Council’s third policy research initiative is “Improving Education for African Americans.” Although there has been considerable research on education issues with ongoing policy shifts, a severe gap between black and white achievement rates still persists today. We are taking a different approach to address the failure of schools to educate African-American children and leave no child behind.
We are conducting bottom-up, community-based research that involves the parents, community leaders, school administrators, teachers and the students of schools with a predominantly black student population in four target communities. The research will be conducted in two phases. The first phase of this three-year long project is a community-based needs assessment to determine the concerns of the parents. This phase began in January 2005. The second phase began in 2006.
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Research Objectives
Target Cities
Needs Assessment Highlights |
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Performance: Black vs. White |
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Despite gains among black students ages 9, 13 and 17 in reading, math and science, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that in 1999:
• Black student reading performance remained significantly lower than that of white students.
• The gap between black and white students’ mathematics performance continued.
• Large gaps persisted between black and white Student performance in science.
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