Back to School or back to Hell? Why America’s Education System Continues failing Black Students

Dr. Umar Abdullah-Johnson, a nationally certified school psychologist agrees telling The Final Call institutional racism is a major contributing factor to why the public education system is failing Black children. The fact that there are not enough Black male teachers is a huge problem he says. “That is the number one institutional issue that is breeding the crime, dropout, suspensions and enormous referral rates to special education. I often argue that if you want to eliminate half of drop outs, special ed (education), ADHD, drugs, gangs, give every Black Boy a heterosexual, culturally competent, Black male teacher. You will eliminate half the problems in school,” says Dr. Abdullah-Johnson.  The problems grow out of the gender inequity in the teaching corps he adds.

“Ninety-three percent of all American school teachers, public, private, charter, parochial, are middle class White women and too often we fail to look at the failure of the Black male and the girl but especially the male from the perspective of the racial disconnect between the instructor and the student. That is major,” said Dr. Abdullah-Johnson. How teachers feel about the students in his or her class lend to the outcome of how the students do in that class he explains.

According to statistics, more than 35 percent of public school students are Black or Latino but only six to nine percent of teachers are Black or Latino. Less than two percent of U.S. teachers are Black men.

“People like to minimize the role of the racial background of the teacher as it relates to academic failure. You can’t minimize that, you have to maximize that. Well race don’t matter, as long as you have a teacher who can teach, that is nonsense,” says Dr. Abdullah-Johnson.

“The top three problems are low expectations, cultural incompetence, and economic educational disparities.  Often educators and administrators do not expect our children to achieve and they produce exactly what they expect,” adds Mr. Akua. The root of these problems is racism and the need for perpetual power and control, he says.

“Unless we begin to hold schools and school boards accountable and begin to build and develop our own schools, curricula, programs and Saturday schools, we will continue to see more of the same devastation and miseducation,” says Mr. Akua.

Only 40 percent of high schools serving the mostly Black and Latino students offer physics and less than one-third offer calculus.

“Most teachers lack an understanding of the keys to releasing the genius of Black children. Though many are well-meaning, they have not been instructed in the methods and materials necessary to bring out the best in Black youth,” says Mr. Akua.

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