Proactively Serving Our Disenfranchised Youth 61more shocking was that states like South Dakota and Maine, with very small numbers of
Black male students, graduated less than 30% of these students via a traditional timeline.
Quite possibly the most shocking of all, was the unearthed fact that in major cities like New
York and Chicago approximately 70% of these young men did not graduate with their peers.
I submit that “race matters”—if these statistics were attributed to Caucasian young men or
women, our nation would be in an absolute uproar. Do our local business professionals and
politicians know these statistics? If not, the education administration professoriate must be
held partially at fault. We are the public intellectuals responsible for disseminating this
research – not only must our students be familiar with these facts and figures, all those who
work or live around us must be sensitized to these data – it is our professional responsibility
to do so. Anything less is shameful individual and collective incompetence.
CAN WE MAKE CHANGE COME TO FRUITION?
Those who are intimately familiar with the corpus of my work often note that reading
virtually any piece that I have composed, or coauthored with my colleague, Connie Ruhl-
Smith, is a bit like listening to a modern-day death march. I often do not openly disagree
with these statements; however, I do maintain that all of my work contains opportunities to
embrace both hope and change. This lecture is no different. Yes, the statistics with regard to
such things as class size, race, and poverty can be daunting. I agree that the lack of overall
funding for P-12 education is a disquieting and sobering fact, and I do believe we can make
changes in modern American education. For example, we know that Head Start students
who remain in identifiable cohorts have been found, consistently, to experience positive
outcomes with regard to grade retention and eventual graduation (Barnett, 1998). We know
that additional affirmative outcomes from Head Start include positive attitudinal constructs
on the part of parents; positive academic interest on the part of children; increased scores
overall on state-wide achievement tests; and faculty and staff buy-in unlike that found in
similar educational institutions serving like children (Washington & Oyemade, 1987; Currie
& Duncan, 1995). Simply stated, Head Start works!
Similarly, we know that summer vouchers for the poorest of our children can be utilized
to close the achievement gap (i.e., between those with and without wealth) during the
summer months (Krueger, 2000). This novel concept could be used to allow for the infusion
of enhancements commonly provided to students of wealth—small group reading
experiences, visitations to art museums and other cultural settings, attendance at summer
camps, and one-on-one tutoring in areas of academic difficulty. We know, additionally, that
these scholarships would and could powerfully supplement, rather than substitute for, the
traditional public school experience. Students would not be encouraged to attend charter
schools or schools of a similar ilk—these students would be succeeding in public schools
and, thus, be embracing and living the dream of an egalitarian educational system that so
many of us have described to our students year after year. There is hope here, my friends.
We must embrace that hope, in visible and powerful ways, and act accordingly. As my
Grandmother was often fond of saying, “the devil is in the details.” Unlike those who remain
hopeless, I believe that we can indeed overcome tragedies like those that have been so
carefully described in the following words composed by Kusimo (1999):
... in the... 623 counties in eleven Old South states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas,