Data collected in 2009-2010 by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, says Black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than White students and 70 percent of students involved in school related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Black or Latino.
One in five Black boys and one in 10 Black girls received an out of school suspension according to department data. Black students are less likely to have access to college preparatory classes but are quick to be ushered into special education classes. Black and Latino schools are grossly underfunded compared to majority-White schools.
Reports and studies are released year after year, with the same results; Black children are falling further and further behind as collateral damage, victims of an educational system that is failing them.
Despite the recent executive order signed in July by President Barack Obama to establish the first ever White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, it remains to be seen if the pressing issues critical to cultivating Black children toward excellence will change.
“Educational research has demonstrated that the real purpose of public education is to reproduce current power relations. So if Blacks and Latinos are disempowered, the current system is set up to perpetuate this disempowerment,” says Chike Akua, Executive Director of the Teacher Transformation Institute and author of “Education for Transformation: The Keys to Releasing the Genius of African American Students”.