If you are an African American educator or teaching in a predominately African American school, it would be great for you to post a comment to this blog!

A number of researchers and scholars have helped students of child development understand that African American children face a more complex array of developmental tasks as they grow than European American children. One reason is that African American children typically live in and must learn to travel between two cultures that often have significantly different values and accepted patterns of behavior: the Black-dominated culture of their homes, neighborhoods, and community entities such as religious groups; and the White-dominated culture of the wider world, which includes everything from school to banks to the political system. (Holliday in McAdoo 1985, p. 56)

Another very important and related reason, these researchers and scholars say, is that America as a whole, to this day, still devalues African Americans. Sometimes this devaluing is subtle, but it’s still enormously damaging. The fact that when we teach U.S. history, we’re mostly teaching about Euro-Americans’ European heritage and not teaching much about African Americans’ African heritage is just one example of this devaluing. (McAdoo in McAdoo 2002, p. 48-49; Rivers in McAdoo 2002, p. 176; Holliday in Neal-Barnett 2001, p. xii)

Bertha Garrett Holliday, an authority on psychological issues in ethnic minorities, has pointed out that as a result of living bicultural lives and having to learn different roles and expectations in each culture, African American children may have greater flexibility and agility in social interactions with teachers and peers. At the same time, as a result of living with racial inequality, they can be less sure whether their efforts to work hard or solve problems will in fact lead to success. They may feel undue anxiety about the unpredictability of responses from teachers and school peers.  Holliday suggests that African American children tend to get “older younger,” or show older social behaviors than their European American counterparts, because the unique environment they grow up in often fosters social maturity and independence. (Holliday in McAdoo and McAdoo, 1985)

Any discussion of African American children’s development inevitably brings to mind the question of children’s school achievement and the disturbing fact that in most standardized measures of school achievement, African-American students score lower on the whole than Euro-American students. Just as disturbing is the all too common belief among educators and the public that the reason for this lower achievement is that African American children come to school lagging behind Euro-American peers in developmental abilities or lacking the skills necessary for school success. Garrett Holliday’s research throws doubt on this belief. Other researchers, too, have convincingly countered this idea that African American homes or communities have some sort of deficit when it comes to raising their children for success. The highly respected sociology professor Harriette Pipes McAdoo, for example, points to the extended family support system and the deep church involvement of many African American families as strengths that help the children deal with adversities. (McAdoo 2002, p. 49; McAdoo 2007, p. 99)

Janice Hale-Benson, who has written widely on the education of African American children, emphasizes that lower achievement among African American children is often a function of the way they are perceived and treated by their teachers, rather than a function of their home or community culture. (Note that only 9.6% of the teaching force in the U.S. was African American in 2000 and this percentage is declining.) Many researchers, she notes, have found that teachers expect more from European American students than from African American students. In general, she writes, teachers expect the most of European American females, followed by European American males, then African American females, and finally African American males (Hale-Benson 2001, 1982). Of course it is seldom the intent of any teacher to expect less from some students than others, and increased professional development in cross-cultural interactions will help teachers recognize the strengths in our African American students and avoid unintentionally lowering our expectations of them.

In her most recent work, Hale-Benson presents a strong model for helping African American children do well in school. That can be done, she says, by connecting African American students, especially boys, to academic achievement at an early age. Hale-Benson calls on school principals to be accountable to the community for this achievement. (Hale-Benson 2001, pp. xvii, xxiv).

I agree with Hale-Benson’s call. As school leaders, principals have a special mandate to be clear with teachers and parents alike that the entire school community is responsible for the progress of every child. Further, principals must ensure that every parent feels comfortable making an appointment to talk directly with them, as well as with their child’s teacher.  This, truly, would help us achieve “no child left behind.”