Puzzling gap Newest scores show African American students continue to lag behind

By Cynthia E. Griffin
OW Staff Writer

They can memorize the lyrics to hundreds of songs, easily master and create complicated dance routines, and navigate the intricacies of the Internet without blinking an eye.
Yet African American children post scores on the Academic Performance Index (API) behind students who are learning English as a second language. In fact, the California Department of Education just released its 2007 API base scores, growth targets, and school rankings, and state-wide African American students scored lower than all subgroups except disabled students.
The Los Angeles Unified School District scores are only fractionally better. African American youngsters scored above English Language Learners (by only two points) and disabled students here.
What is the problem?
Racism.

That’s one stark, in-your-face answer, according to Fluke Fluker, who is co-founder with Bill Payton and Andre Chevalier of the Village Nation at LAUSD’s Cleveland High School. As a result of the mentoring and motivational effort, the API test scores of African American students at this San Fernando Valley secondary school have jumped 140 points in the last four years. The program has also become a model people all over the nation are studying.

The organization is also planning its first summer institute July 25-27 to train other administrators and teachers on how to do the same thing at their respective schools.
The Village Nation Summer Institute, called Unlocking the Genius of the African American Student, will show participants how to replicate what has happened at Cleveland. Designed for teams of three to five people, the event will be held at UCLA and includes lodging and food. For information, visit www.thevillagenation.com
“Jack O’Connell alluded to it when he said over the last several years, some of the studies he has seen say it is much more than an issue of poverty; it’s an issue of race. . . We find that many of these students go from one hostile environment to another hostile environment.”

“What that means is that in some of the neighborhoods they come from, the environment is hostile. They then enter into the school system, and there is a different type of hostility, and the coping mechanisms they use to deal with the hostile environment of the street is counter-productive to use in coping with the hostility they find in a learning institution,” explained Fluker.
Lack of understanding is one of the first things the veteran Cleveland High School teacher identifies as a component of a hostile learning environment.

“A lot of teachers, administrators, and counselors do not understand psychologically, emotionally, and even historically what these kids are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. To be an effective communicator you have to know about your audience to bring home the point. I think there is a lot of unknowns and ignorance on behalf of a lot of educators. Add the fact that we (African Americans) do not come together collectively as a village to service the kids, and I don’t just mean educationally. I mean parents, the church organizations that served us so well during the civil rights era, and businesses. All these entities need to be willing to invest in youth.”

Fluker added that the investment must be in time, energy, resources, and money.
“The data is like a bikini,” said Fluker of the API scores. “What it reveals is vital; and what it conceals is instrumental in knowing the truth. What it reveals in terms of test scores in comparison to ESL and other groups is important to know. But what it conceals is who these kids are.”

Noma LeMoine, director of the Los Angeles Unified School District Academic English Mastery Program (AEMP)/Closing the Achievement Gap Branch, takes the explanation even deeper. She identified four groups of students—African American, American Indian, Hawaiian American, and Mexican American—as Standard English Learners and said that because of the unique cultural and linguistic styles these youngsters bring to school, there is a clash of cultures that results in reduced learning opportunities.

Although classified as “English only” learners, these four groups of youth often do not speak or necessarily totally understand the Standard American and academic English taught in the typical American school. Consequently, if no effort is taken to bridge the gap, these students fall behind.

Added to the lack of understanding of how to use the language, LeMoine said often the information taught is not culturally relevant to the students or their lives, which makes it even more difficult for them to grasp or internalize the information.

Another problem that adds to the clash of cultures is the learning styles of students of color, said LeMoine.

“African American students have verbal strength and verbal agility they bring to class that is often treated as a deficit. They like to talk, and teachers are not always sure how to deal with that,” said LeMoine, who noted that in the traditional American classroom pupils are expected to come into class, sit down, and be quiet.
African American children also tend to learn better in groups as opposed to independently, added the LAUSD administrator. In order to optimize the learning for these youngsters, LeMoine said teachers must have the professional training to help them integrate into their classroom methods to capitalize on the differences.
While the Village Nation has been able to increase the test scores of African Americans at Cleveland, a comprehensive high school with more than 4,000 students; a 65 percent Latino student body; and more than 30 different languages spoken in student homes, the organization was not created to focus on improving scores.

“We formed our organization to get kids to make better choices. The by-product of making better choices has been that test scores have gone up,” said Fluker.
Another difference at the village comes because teachers realize and believe they can make a difference, noted Fluker. “. . . That difference comes first in knowing the kids have the sense that we care about them as people. The API thing is totally out of the situation until I get to know you, and come at you with help. The Village Nation has done that without extra people and no extra money.”
Fluker said another key difference in the Village Nation is that they challenge the students through expectations, such as “I expect you to be better behaved.” “We show (them their) roots and their bloodline historically and the greatness that lurks inside. When kids buy into that, they begin to not want to let themselves down as much as they don’t want to let me down.”
Parents can also play a part in closing this achievement gap between African American and other students by exposing their children to a learning environment very early, said LeMoine.
“Take them to the museum or the library. Buy them books, and make books and reading a priority,” said LeMoine. Additionally the LAUSD has parent centers at the AEMP schools that host a variety of workshops to help parents understand how to prepare their children to achieve.
The state also has an entire website devoted to the achievement gap—www.closingtheachievementgap.org.

Report of California School Testing Released

Scores offer questionable results for local schools

By Cynthia E. Griffin
OW Staff Writer

As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles Unified School District battle in the state legislature for the next two weeks over who will ultimately claim control of the nation’s second largest school system, one measure of just where students in the sprawling district stand academically was released by the California Department of Education last week.

LAUSD reported that for the sixth straight year scores for elementary students on the California Standardized Testing and Report (STAR) have continued to climb. There was an increase in English Language Arts in every grade from elementary level ranging from one to six percentage points. Math scores crept up in every grade level from one to five percentage points.

And while continuously increasing scores are good to note, it is a lot more instructive to look at what is happening on the individual school level. A quick sampling of what is happening at three different middle schools in distinctive parts of the district paints a picture that is much more disturbing.

Without exception, whether it is South Gate Middle School, Johnny L. Cochran Jr. Middle School (formerly Mt. Vernon) in Los Angeles, or Sutter Middle School in Canoga Park, the percentage of sixth graders below and far below proficient in reading for example has hovered around 47 percent at South Gate since 2004. At Cochran, the numbers are between 53 and 68 percent; and at Sutter percentages have ranged from 34 to 36 percent.

Even if you picked one group of students-students who were in sixth grade in 2004--and followed their scores for three years, there does not seem to be any significant improvement.

UCLA education professor John Rogers cautions, however, that while it is logical to think following one group of students across three years would lend consistency to the picture, there are a few problems with this approach that must be considered.

“You have a large percentage of turnover in any of these schools, and even if it is just 25 percent, that means if you start off with 1,000, the next year you will roughly have 750 students and the following year it will be only 600. You will end up with only 60 percent of your original cohort,” explained the researcher, who speculates that the turnover at a school like South Gate may be even higher than the district average of 25 percent.
Rogers heads the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA).

The other thing to consider is that as the students advance in each grade, the work is supposed to be more complex. Consequently, a child working at proficient level in sixth grade may not do so in grade seven.
“The difficulty I have with these tests is that they base accountability on one-time numbers,” said Rogers, when asked about the relevance of such tests given all the unpredictable factors. “They may not mean that much or as much as we try to read into them. It’s hard from the numbers you are sharing to see whether or not a group of students improved their academic standards over the course of three years.”

What the numbers do in part, believes Rogers, is show the public the quality of learning that is going on in some schools, and while he believes there is some merit to this, the UCLA professor thinks something else is also needed.

“The difficulty I have with this rationale is that we should be reporting also on the quality of the conditions in those schools,” Rogers pointed out.

He said it is not surprising that in schools with dramatic overcrowding, a high turnover rate in teachers, and a large percent of young or new teachers, that the number of proficient students is low.”
In addition to the general lack of resources in the state’s schools in general, Rogers said there is also inequities across school districts that is tied to race, class and an overall inadequacy in the educational system.
These overall inadequacies are created, he notes, by a lack of funds and the cost of living in California.
Rogers also believes that another real problem that more testing will not address is the lack of motivation of parents, teachers, students and the educational system.

Fluke Fluker, a physical education and life skills teacher at Cleveland High School, is well aware of how abysmal the test scores are from kids at Sutter.

“They are well, well below par, below what they should be. We understand that. So when they come to Cleveland, we let them know that they are in a new place and new time,” explained Fluker of the students from one of the three Cleveland High feeder middle schools.

And with a program they began at the Reseda-based high school a little less than three years ago, Fluker said they have been able to make dramatic changes among the school’s African-American student body population.
Called The Village, the program, which is a combination mentoring, mothering, fathering, motivational, kick-their-butts-when-they-need-it effort, was created by three African-American male teachers at the school--Fluker, Andre Chevalier and Bill Paden.

“We saw a desperate need for the kids to make better choices and we saw a desperate need for them to improve academically. The scores did not truly reflect them . . . They were much more intelligent than what the tests reflected. We had to bring it to their attention and find out why.”

Fluker said when they began talking to the young people, the students were shocked at the scores and a little upset when they saw themselves in comparison with other kids.

Calling upon the inherent competitiveness they saw in African-American youth, the three men, aided by other black faculty and staff that ranged from school bus drivers to the custodian, began to work with the young people to instill in them a sense of pride, historic understanding of how they came to be in the school in the first place; and give them an exposure (via field trips and hearing speakers like baseball’s Reggie Smith and even an ex-felon) to the positives that could await them in the future.

They formed a village that provided some 300 youngsters with a caring and sheltered environment in which they could talk about issues more freely than possible in an integrated setting, Fluker said.
The results were nothing short of amazing, pointed out the educator.

“The first year the Academic Performance Index scores of the black students went up 53 points. It shocked everyone from Sacramento on down,” said Fluker, who added that up until that point the black students’ scores had been below those of the English as a Second Language learners.

“People said the first one was a fluke,” added Fluker with a laugh. “Yeah it was a Fluker; it was a Chavier; it was a Paden, and all the other elders at the school.”

The second year of the program, scores jumped an additional 37 points.
Now the Village program is in place across the Valley at Chatsworth High School, and already the results are being felt as the school went from only 50 percent of their black students passing the high school exit exam to a 75 percent passage rate.

Chatsworth is not the only school looking to export the village concept to the campus. Fluker said he has had conversations with retired LAUSD administrator Larry Moore about taking the program to Cochran.
Moore is working with the principal of this inner city school on ways to help African-American children achieve.
At South Gate Middle School, which this school year had less than 10 African-American students, none of whom were scoring at or above proficiency in English, Mary Johnson has been a parent activist involved in trying to make a difference for years.

Through her parent-training efforts she has begun to address some of those quality-of-school conditions Rogers believes are part of an essential learning environment.
This includes leading parents and students on a general school strike three years ago to get rid of year-round schools in South Gate.

“We wanted our kids to have 180 days of school and not 163,” said Johnson, an African American, who has stayed active in the Southeast area schools even though her last child graduated from South Gate High in 2001.
At the middle school, the principal asked Johnson and her parents to be his “eyes and ears” on campus to report on school cleanliness and the academic engagement they saw going on in classrooms.
Johnson attributes the low STAR scores to a number of factors.

“In my belief, they don’t have the right teachers in the classrooms. A lot of LAUSD teachers have been given special permits. They have not finished their full credentials. Then, when you have all these students, who have special needs and need teachers that can re-engage, motivate and stimulate learning. New teachers can’t do that.”

Johnson also believes the 40 to 1 student: teacher ratio in the classroom does not equate to an environment for learning.