Author, educational consultant, lecturer, former teacher, activist, Male Responsibility Specialist, and designer of the Advanced Model of Academic Achievement Richard Clay wrote the book “Raised Wrong, Educated Worse,” and developed this web site in order to empower educators, administrators, parents, concerned community members, and Black youth to help more young Black males achieve academic excellence in school, and thrive in life as strong and productive men. 

Here you will find hard-hitting expert analysis, timely insight, and real solutions to America’s constantly growing Black male education crisis, as well as its atrocious Black male graduation rate crisis.

View Full List of Articles

Two black boys working on an assignment in class.
Two black boys working on an assignment in class.

Copyright Disclaimer:

All of the content material displayed on or linked to this site is the legally copyrighted property of its attributed authors, or of site developer Richard Clay. Using information from this site without properly referencing the original authors, or changing or distorting content displayed here in any way is a direct violation of U.S. copyright law. Such actions are expressly prohibited.
Adoption and Foster Care Issues
By Richard Clay

Before young Black males learn anything in school, they need to live in homes that provide them with plenty of: love, nurturing, protection, knowledge, motivation, discipline, guidance, and life’s basic necessities. While it is somewhat difficult to define what a “stable” home is today, I consider a stable home to be one that provides our developing sons with these essential elements. A single parent could thus create a stable home. Thanks to some hard working, committed parents, some young Black males do live in “stable” homes.

Yet teachers are dismayed by the fact that far too many of them live in unstable and dysfunctional homes that fail to bestow the essential elements discussed above upon them. Often times, the entire educational process stalls, and both psychological and behavioral fall-out occur when guardians at home do not adequately support their children’s development or education.

What causes the greatest disruption to the educational process however is students who do not know, or who never have known any real sense of home. While this sad and tragic situation applies to many students, I am specifically referring to the tens of thousands of young Black males that are hopelessly trapped in America’s hell-whole called the foster care system. Many of our sons are born into the Foster Care System and live in it as wards of the state for their entire childhood lives.

America’s Foster Care System, which provides housing and adult supervision to otherwise homeless or parentless children either in group home facilities or the homes of private citizens, is extremely overcrowded, highly disorganized, ill conceived, and poorly regulated. Above all, it is a chaotic system that none of our children should have to grow up in. Yet unable to live in the homes of their biological parents, or any other responsible family members, record breaking numbers of young Black males are being abused and neglected in every possible manner inside this system.

Download this entire article in Word Document Format (DOC).

Back to Top
 
Raising Achievement In Math And Science
Excerpts From
Saving Our Sons In School: An Ultimate Guide To Understanding And Educating Young Black Males
By Richard Clay (A Future Publication)

The Department of Education knows very well from prior studies that once young Black males begin to loose real interest in school and lean towards the notion that education is an exercise in futility, their academic skills and abilities in the more technical math and science classes begin to decline rapidly. Yet the American educational system has strategically turned these two most practical of all subjects into the most abstract classes.

Math and science classes are challenging enough to students who are fully engaged with their schoolwork. They become extremely difficult and mentally draining to those who take a lackadaisical approach towards their school work, are excessively bored by their school work, can barely read their work, or see little real life value or application in these classes as they are taught.

At the junior high and high school levels, math and science classes are generally taught to Black students in very dry and abstract formats, inside classrooms that severely lack basic equipment and supplies. Additionally, the educational system works hard to turn the descendants of the African people who first introduce science and math to the world into a people who hate and fear these very bodies of knowledge that their ancestors created. As George James documents in his classic book Stolen Legacy, the American educational system goes to great lengths to emphasize the Greek reproduction of popular African mathematical and scientific concepts without ever, in any meaningful way, acknowledging the well-documented African origins of math and science.

Download this entire article in Word Document Format (DOC).

Back to Top
 

Black Males – An Endangered Species
by Kenny Anderson

*This article is an excerpt from Mr. Anderson’s book, ‘Targets of Oppression: Speech Essays On The Crisis of Black Men in America’.

In his book, “The Myth of Male Power”, popular male issues author, Warren Farrell states: “The Black man is sometimes called an endan­gered species but receives little of the protection an endangered species is normally accorded.”      

As Black males, we need to seriously reflect on the words endangered species’ that many social analysts are using to describe our peril in America. When I think of the words ‘endangered species’, I immediately think of a life form that is facing extinction. When I think of an endangered species, the spotted owl comes to mind.

Many social analysts have looked at the quality of life data on Black men, concluding our future looks bleak. Many economists refer to Black men as be­coming economically obsolete in America due to domestic immigrant workers and international cheap labor.

The two words ‘endangered’ and ‘obsolete’ are powerful, grim terms de­scribing our fate. According to a report of the National Criminal Justice Commis­sion on Imprisonment and Race; if current incarceration rates continue, by the year 2020 - 63.3% of all Black men in the U.S. ages 18-34 will be behind bars.

The fact that so many Black men end up jobless or in prison is not sur­prising to scholars like Jewelle Taylor-Gibbs; for her, Black males in America are ‘at-risk’ from inception:

“Black males are endangered even before they are born, since male fetuses are more likely to spontaneously abort; this vulnerability character­izes their health and mental health for the rest of their lives, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood. If Black males survive the high infant mortality rates, which are nearly double the rates for white infants, they are more likely to ex­perience problems associated with low birth weight and lack of preventative health care. They are less likely to be immunized against infectious childhood diseases such as diphtheria, polio, measles, rubella, and mumps. They are more likely to have chronic illnesses and higher rates of psychological or behavioral problems. They are less likely to have access to regular medical and dental care. They are more likely to suffer from poor nutrition and related health problems. And most tragic of all statistics, they are more likely to die before age 20 than any other sex-age group.”

Indeed, from birth too many Black males lives are in jeopardy. From my perspective, psychologically speaking, most Black males are socialized with en­dangering traits, which results in self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors that compounds the external racial oppression that jeopardizes their lives.

As a social work psychotherapist, who has provided behavioral prevention and intervention services to at-risk Black male youth for over 20 years, I’ve wit­nessed first hand the negative consequences of these jeopardizing traits. I’ve seen too many young Black males become teen fathers, under-achieve, drop out of school, use drugs, engage in criminal activities, end up dead, or incarcerated.

Based on the ‘psychological insights’ from my own socialization as a Black man and from my counseling experiences with young Black males, I’ve identified several jeopardizing traits that I define as the ‘S-Traits Syndrome’ (STS); words beginning with the letter S which provide psycho-analytical insights.

The S-Traits Syndrome is a group of socialized symptoms, self-limiting character traits that make up most Black males’ personalities. For time’s sake, there are nine S-Traits Syndrome terms, I will mention all of them, but I’ll only ad­dress three in some detail; the terms are:

  1. Slickness (manipulation)
  2. Stud (womanizing, sexual conquests)
  3. Substance Abusing (using and selling drugs)
  4. Sportsmen (jock mentality)
  5. Styling (preoccupation with obtaining expensive vehicles, clothes, shoes, and jewelry)
  6. Smoothness (cool pose; masking and posturing)
  7. Silliness (comedian attitude)
  8. Sensationalizing (fantasy thinking, exaggeration)
  9. Set-tripping (Gangs, promoting sectarian violence)
From this list and from my experience and perspective, sportsmen, silli­ness, and sensationalizing have the greatest detrimental effects on adolescent Black males.

Download this entire article in Word Document Format (DOC).

Back to Top
 
LOSING OUR FUTURE: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis
By Gary Orfield, Daniel Losen, Johanna Wald, Christopher B. Swanson

I. INTRODUCTION: AN INVISIBLE CRISIS

In an increasingly competitive, global economy the consequences of dropping out of high school are devastating to individuals, communities and our national economy. At an absolute minimum, adults need a high school diploma if they are to have any reasonable opportunities to earn a living wage. A community where many parents are dropouts is unlikely to have stable families or social structures. Most businesses need workers with technical skills that require at least a high school diploma. Yet, with little notice, the United States is allowing a dangerously high percentage of students to disappear from the educational pipeline before graduating from high school.

Nationally, high school graduation rates are low for all students, with only an estimated 68% of those who enter 9th grade graduating with a regular diploma in12th grade. But, as the table below makes clear, they are substantially lower for most minority groups, and particularly for males. According to the calculations used in this report1, in 2001, only 50% of all black students, 51% of Native American students, and 53% of all Hispanic students graduated from high school. Black, Native American, and Hispanic males fare even worse: 43%, 47%, and 48% respectively.

National Graduation Rates By Race and Gender
By Race/Ethnicity Nation Female Male
American Indian/AK Nat 51.1 51.4† 47.0†
Asian/Pacific Islander 76.8 80.0† 72.6†
Hispanic 53.2 58.5 48
Black 50.2 56.2 42.8
White 74.9 77 70.8
All Students 68 72 64.1
To make matters worse, official "dropout" statistics neither accurately count nor report the vast numbers of students who do not graduate from high school. For a variety of reasons that are detailed later in this report, the two major sources used most often - the Center for Educational Statistics and the Current Population Survey - to calculate dropout and graduation rates produce misleading figures. Moreover, because states rarely disaggregate graduation rates by race or socio-economic status, the extremely low graduation rates for racial and ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, low-income students, and students with limited English proficiency subgroups are rarely the focus of debates on education reform. As a result, the public remains largely unaware of this national crisis.
Low Graduation Rates for Students With Disabilities
According to data reported by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), graduation rates for students with disabilities are just over 32%. Another 11% no longer identified as needing special education services which means that they became fully mainstreamed students without an Individualized Educational Plan (LEP). Even if all of those students who were no longer listed as having a disability earned regular diplomas, that would still mean that only 43% of students identified as in need of special services earn a high school diploma. Six states (Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida) graduate under 25% of students with special needs. Yet, despite these deeply alarming figures, there is little to no publicly reported data on graduation rates for this subgroup at the district level.
Sources: Education Week, Quality Counts 2004 Citing U.S. Department of Education Office for Special Education Programs. See State Pages for more information on New York.

This report seeks to highlight these disparities to draw the public's and policymakers' attention to the urgent need to address this educational and civil rights crisis. Using a more accurate method for calculating graduation rates developed by the Urban Institute (see discussion on p. 8) we provide estimates of high school graduation rates, distinguished at the state and district level, and disaggregated by race. We assert that these figures provide a far more realistic portrait of graduation rates in this country than those commonly reported by states and the federal government.

Our analysis of this data focuses on three major questions: First, how deep and widespread are the racial disparities that exist at the state and district levels? Second, how has the misleading and incomplete reporting of this issue obscured both the magnitude of the crisis and its racial dimensions? Finally, focusing primarily on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, we ask whether state and federal accountability systems, as implemented, are appropriately structured to improve high school graduation rates, especially among children of color.

Woven throughout this report are narratives about students from a sampling of states—Alabama, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Mississippi—who have either dropped or felt "pushed" out of school (some are in the 15 state review). Several of these stories illustrate the "dark side" of high stakes testing policies. Many of these students and their families express shock and dismay when they are told they will not be allowed to return to school or to graduate because of their poor test performance. Some were conscientious and hard-working, had done well in their classes and had made plans to pursue post-secondary education. Others had experienced severe problems outside of school, but still expressed interest in continuing their education. Yet, they found themselves stranded in an educational no-man's land with few options or advocates. Collectively, these stories suggest that there may be "perverse incentives" in many states to push low-performing students out the back door. If true, without more powerful incentives for schools to "hold onto" students through graduation, the "push-out syndrome" is likely to grow more severe.

Download this entire report in Portable Document Format (PDF).

Back to Top

Plight Deepens For Black Men, Studies Warn
New York Times Article By Erik Eckholm

BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.

Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.

Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined.

Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.
Ryan Donnell for The New York Times

Curtis E. Brannon of Baltimore with Curtis Jr., one of the four children he has fathered with three mothers. "I was with the street life," Mr. Brannon said, "but now I feel like I've got to get myself together."
"There's something very different happening with young black men, and it's something we can no longer ignore," said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of "Black Males Left Behind" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

"Over the last two decades, the economy did great," Mr. Mincy said, "and low-skilled women, helped by public policy, latched onto it. But young black men were falling farther back."

Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.

"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.

Download this entire article in Word Document Format (DOC).

Back to Top
 

Click on a title below to read the article. Some of these articles are in MS Word or PDF format, while others are links to other websites.
 
Home Articles Workshops Online Store Resources & Activities Videos Contact Us

© 2008 Richard Clay. All Rights Reserved.
Website designed by DWP Music Services